Kolkata's chosen theme colours blue and white may be a costly affair

The economics of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s proposed initiative may not exactly add up but the politics is palpable: strike (y)our colours and get a property tax waiver.

Considering that the cost of painting will not be borne by the state government, the expense will outstrip the amount of the tax waiver. So, the financial incentive to go blue-andwhite is not very apparent.

The prospect of an entire sprawling city clad in the same colours — inspired apparently by a similar move in post-communist Tirana, Albania — would certainly make aesthetes and pluralists blanch — or give them the blues.

But that may be just what chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress want, as these are their chosen “theme” colours for Kolkata. And the benefits of earning political goodwill by going blue-and-white could outweigh any pecuniary losses.

As long as these colours were associated with the sarees of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, they had a certain cachet.

Splashed as they now are over public buildings, flyovers, railings and pavements, it’s become kind of Messi.

It remains to be seen whether the government’s colour makeover will extend to ridding the under-renovation Writers’ Buildings of its now politically incorrect red coating, as also the tellingly named police headquarters, Lalbazar