Kolkata: The urban sprawl has significantly altered the voting pattern in the Diamond Harbour constituency over the past decade. The blend of cosmopolitan influences within a predominantly rural milieu has made the election in Diamond Harbour distinct from other constituencies on the final day of polling.
Despite being an overwhelmingly rural constituency, the scene at P K High School in Budge Budge was strikingly different.Voters were not surprised to hear fluent Tamil among the members of the Iyengar family from a high-rise near the Budge Budge Rail Gate. Similarly, at Batanagar Girls’ High School, the queue buzzed with the Hindi accent of the animated Jha family.
Off Diamond Harbour Road, the mushrooming of high-rises and gated complexes and the influx of upwardly mobile cosmopolitan citizens, who love “modern amenities amidst unspoilt nature”, blurred the typical urban-rural divide. Soni Jha of Highland Greens or Ailita Chatterjee of Bata Housing Complex perfectly mixed with Anima Das and Chameli Bibi in the queue to make a colourful palette of democracy.
At Jote Shibrampore Sikshaniketan as well, there was a rural-urban mix of voters with residents of Greenfield City, a gated housing complex, standing in the queue with the conventional rural voters. “Ours is still a panchayat area even though our surroundings are typically urban. Ideally, there should be municipalities as panchayats are not designed to develop urban infrastructure,” said Anup Mukhopadhyay, a resident of Jote Shibrampore.
“Gated complexes mushroomed off D H Road of late, thanks to two important infrastructure developments — the construction of Joka-Esplanade Metro and the Sampriti flyover, the longest of the elevated corridors which facilitate vehicles to zip past the chaos below,” said Tapan Dasgupta, a voter at Nangi Young Bengals Association.
The cosmopolitan influence has also helped to alleviate the tensions that used to typically characterise elections in Diamond Harbour. “There has been a conscious effort to reject violence. This change is largely due to the presence of a more diverse population. People are now more aware of comparisons between Bengal and other regions of the country during elections,” said Arati Karmakar, a polling agent at Bakrahat Secondary School.