British legacy in decline in former second city of the empire

A mood of goodwill towards all fellow humans runs through the western world and its former colonies as the year draws to a close. Calcutta, as it was called then, was dubbed the second city of the empire and had imbibed the most among all Indian cities the British way of life.

How dear things British are to some of the old timers in the city came home to me one day when I was admiring a beautifully maintained Sixties car in the Calcutta Club parking lot when its owner came up to me and said with much pride, “I drove it down all the way from London.”

Today that British legacy is retained foremost by some of the city’s spectacular architecture and in a dwindling manner by the odd institution and the way it is run. Or supposed to be. Calcutta Club retains its British origins in its architectural façade but less and less in the way it is run.

The social club is a unique British institution in which like-minded gentlemen spent their moments of leisure in likeable company. Unseemly quarrels and disputes were the last things one would expect in such a club. Khushwant Singh recalled all this many years ago when Delhi’s Gymkhana Club witnessed an ugly fight between groups jockeying for victory in the club office bearers’ elections. He said that when the British were there elections were nonevents and the same group continued from term to term uncontested.

In the run-up to Christmas, members of Calcutta Club who should have been thumping each other on the back and saying ‘good riddance’ to a horrible year about to depart, were busy menacing each other and having a fair bit of mud thrown around when that mud should have never left the banks of the wide Hooghly river nearby.

In the latter part of December, the club's members have done two extremely unusual things. They have held an EGM at which they have passed by a wide margin several resolutions. Notable among them is one calling for a forensic audit of the club’s accounts. Underlying this is the belief among many members that irregularities abound in the way the club's affairs have been run by the outgoing committee.

The members have also elected a brand new committee. Nine of the eleven members of the outgoing committee have failed to find a place in the new one. What is more, a fresh face will now adorn the head of the new committee's table in another clean break with tradition. The senior most member of the last committee will not become the president of the new committee, as has been the custom so far. A new president, a scientist, is taking over.

The aggrieved members of the club feel it is being very poorly run, sometimes bordering on ineptitude. A classic example of this is the way the outgoing committee parked nearly two crores of the provident fund monies in so many of the once leading  financial institutions of the country which have recently collapsed like IL&FS, DHFL and Yes Bank. The committee was so unerringly correct in picking tomorrow’s losers!

All this has prompted a whistleblower member to refer the matter to the department of company affairs. The club is run as a non-profit sec 8 entity under the company law and thus now the new committee of the club will have to answer a lot of questions to the department of company affairs.

What has prompted many senior members to act is the sense that the rot must stop getting worse so that it does not start affecting employee morale. They believe that the biggest asset of the club, among all its stakeholders, are the employees who have till now remained highly disciplined and not uttered a word about the controversies.

Some members assert that what keeps them going to the club is, beyond everything else, to be able to interact with those who have served them for decades and whom you address by their first names. Says Swapan Basu, a successful entrepreneur and exporter, “When the senior barman Saukat smiles on seeing me, it makes my day.”

Saya senior member Soumen Basu, former executive chairman of Manpower Services India, “The primary responsibility of committees that run social clubs is to look after the welfare and motivation of their staff. They are the pillars of the club. Committees not paying attention to this run the risk of alienating their members.”

Attention has inevitably turned towards Bengal Club, another elite institution in the same city which is arguably the best run. Hit by the pandemic and lockdown, it has just asked employees to take a pay “adjustment” and actively engaged in hand holding so that things remain under control.

Where does the good sense in the committee come from? Bengal Club has not had to hold an election to select the managing committee in living memory! So some things British still survive in little corners, like Flurys cakes for the season.