Bangalore - Bengaluru, Madras-Chennai, Bombay-Mumbai, Calcutta-Kolkata.. How significant is the name change? What is it’s positive impact on the city and its people?
Trivandrum became Thiruvananthapuram during the United Democratic Front’s rule in 1991
Bombay became Mumbai during Shiv Sena’s rule in 1995
Madras became Chennai during the DMK’s rule in 1996
Calcutta became Kolkata during the Left Front rule in 2001
The whole name change exercise involves crores of tax payers money! All the sign boards, government and private forms, notices need to be replaced and tenders of crores of money are opened. All this money is spent without a direct or indirect benefit to the citizen’s life. The money that can be invested into city’s infrastructure to make the citizen’s life better. That precious tax payers money, yours and my money goes into the hands of corrupt politicians, their friends and family. It just makes these good-for-nothing politicians better off by increasing their excess pile of money and probably some more votes to their kitty. We keep using the old names. I know my friends from “Kolkata” still prefer to address it as Calcutta, “Mumbai” is still Bombay for the people who have been living there for ages, Madras will never be Chennai for all the inhabitants. Do we really not have any checks and balances into our system to prevent such abuse of our money?
Taking cue from such easy way to dupe citizens and steal the tax payers money, many more name changes are the pipeline: Indore-Indur, Bhopal-Bhojpaland even more karnataka cities like Mysore, Belgam, Mangalore etc.
Other links on the same topic:
Rediff blog
outlook india article
I completely agree. This whole exercise of changing names that people are used to is futile. It is a waste of tax payer’s money for printing new forms, boards etc. Also, politicians use it as a tool to take attention away from more wanting tasks. I am from ‘madras’ and I can never bring myself up to say ‘chennai’, I am sure folks from calcutta and bombay will never be from ‘kolkatta’ or ‘mumbai’ either. The politicians claim that is for the people, I hardly think so. It is for them to hand out contracts to their people and make money.