All the agencies have come together to convert Calcutta into another London,” Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, announced this week. There is to be a Calcutta Eye, modelled on London’s South Bank ferris wheel; the redevelopment of Alipore Zoo along the lines of London Zoo; and a redesign of Curzon Park as a Hooghly version of Hyde Park.
Disposing with a century of anti-colonialism, Ms Banerjee has returned to “the heart of the empire” for inspiration in rebuilding a city founded by the East India Company over three hundred years ago. Then, it was known as The City of Palaces, but today it is all too often associated with communism and crippling poverty – a reputation Ms Banerjee is determined to dispel with her £60m ($98m) redevelopment.
In doing so, she is signalling a trend within Bric cities when it comes to confronting their imperial inheritance. As China and India rise towards global pre-eminence, their great conurbations are becoming altogether less neurotic about their imperial pasts. Indeed, this legacy has become something of an asset.