Pleasure of defacing wall

If you want to have pleasure at others’ cost, yet enjoy full protection of law then Kolkata must be your destination. For, perhaps in no large city will you find hawkers being legally allotted space on pavements of busy roads to sell their wares. Neither perhaps you’ll see political parties enjoying full freedom to deface city walls with their slogans.

You may argue the pavements are properties of government, so it can do whatever it wants there. If so, it’ll overlook that in a republic, whatever government owns is actually public property, so in real sense it cannot do whatever it wants especially if that inconveniences common people. But let me keep it aside for the moment and take it that yes, the government can do anything it wishes so far pavement is concerned.

What about walls of private properties? If the new plan to legitimize writing on walls of private properties comes as a law, it’ll not only trespass on citizens’ rights, it’ll forever turn the city ugly.

If and when that happens, I’ll request the rulers to periodically conduct contest to decide winners among the most-defaced walls. For, you never know, this may well be another compelling reason for foreigners to visit the city, in addition to their seeing other hotspots like slums, squalor, ghettos, etc.

Want to know what people think? Here is a letter in today’s The Telegraph by Bagdogra’s Dipak Dutta Roy, which I reproduce verbatim:

The West Bengal government is about to endorse the dirtying the private citizens’ property by semi-literate political goons. It was the left, which popularized the practice, inspired by the Chinese wall posters. Even the erudite communist leader, Ashok Mitra, wrote paeans to the beauty and utility of wall graffiti before the last assembly elections. On a recent visit to Darjeeling, I found a few boys competing with one another on how high one could urinate against a wall. I was very impressed and took a photograph. If I knew Ashok Mitra’s address, I would have sent a copy to him. He and his fellow comrades are among the few who should be able to appreciate such things.

Guarding our walls the democratic way [Picture source]