Sharing the poster, party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee wondered whether he had learnt Bengali incorrectly as a child or whether the language had changed without anyone bothering to inform him.
Party MLA and spokesperson Kunal Ghosh was less inclined to treat the matter as a linguistic puzzle.
“What is this? Is this Bengali? Are you joking? How much more bad culture will the BJP impose on West Bengal? How much more will it distort Bengali? Delete all this immediately. Change it. Write proper Bengali. The current state of the corporation is just as bad as this piece of writing,” Ghosh, the Beleghata MLA, said.
Following the criticism, the KMC changed the main slogan, replacing the Bengali-Hindi hybrid with a Bengali sentence. But ‘Swachhata Se Swagat’ continued to occupy its place at the top of the poster — a reminder that, in municipal publicity as in politics, a correction does not always mean a complete clean-up.
The campaign urges Kolkata residents to keep the city clean during the festive season and welcome Goddess Durga into a cleaner metropolis. That is a worthy message. The civic body might now consider extending the same principle to its copywriting: a little attention to detail can prevent a routine cleanliness drive from becoming an exercise in political damage control.
For now, the streets are meant to be cleaned, the Bengali has been tidied up, and the Hindi slogan remains. In Kolkata, it seems, even a poster can end up with a foot in two languages — and both parties ready to pull.
With PTI inputs
About the Author
