SOME firm of public relations consultants has persuaded the West Bengal state government that all official buildings and assets in Calcutta, right down to the lane dividers on highways, should be painted light blue. Taxis and other public services that require licences will also have the blue paint, and owners of private property will be asked to do the same, with tax cuts for those who comply.

It’s all about branding, really. West Bengal got a new government last year, after 34 years of communist rule, and the state’s new rulers decided that the capital city, Kolkata, needs a new colour scheme. As Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim told The Indian Express newspaper, “Our leader Mamata Banerjee has decided that the theme colour of the city will be sky blue because the motto of the new government is ‘the sky is the limit’.”

Well, why not? If the state of Rajasthan can have both a ‘pink city’ (Jaipur) and a ‘blue city’ (Jodhpur), why shouldn’t Kolkata brand itself as ‘the other blue city’? However, Jaipur is naturally pink because of widespread use of terracotta, and in Jodhpur the residents got out their paint brushes voluntarily, whereas the West Bengal state government is spending a reported Rs800m on making Kolkata blue.

Kolkata’s leading newspaper, the Telegraph was so swept away by the wonderfulness of the concept that it wrote a fulsome editorial about it. “Finding the right colour combination is undoubtedly the crucial first step in making a city safer, healthier, cleaner and generally more user-friendly for its inhabitants,” the newspaper wrote. But there is a better way for Kolkata to spend most of its available money on sewers and garbage disposal, roads and buses, pollution control, art galleries and the airport.

Kolkata was the capital of British-ruled India for two centuries. For much of that time it was the second-largest city in the British empire, only surpassed by London. So the centre of the city was full of Georgian and Regency buildings that reflected the city’s power and wealth at that time. Most of them are still there.

Kolkata was poor for a long time, so it hasn’t had the money to erase its past in the way it is happening in other Asian big cities.

Almost all Chinese cities have already destroyed their architectural heritage, and beautiful cities like Hanoi are working at it full-time. Kolkata’s wonderful buildings are in dreadful shape, and soon it will find enough money to start destroying them wholesale.

There is a better way. Fifteen years ago I was walking up Bentinck Street, surrounded by the chaos of cars and trams and the crumbling buildings festooned with washing lines and movie posters. I came round a slight bend in the road — and saw a miraculous sight.

It was a four-storey town house restored to all its former glory: the stucco replaced, the balconies repaired, the whole thing repainted in the mustard-yellow colour that was fashionable in the late 18th century. It was in a row of other such houses that were still rotting, and suddenly I realised what central Kolkata used to look like.

I don’t know if that particular house has fallen into disrepair again, but I do know that the example did not work although it could work. Since labour isn’t expensive in the city, it’s cheaper to restore than to destroy and rebuild. If Kolkata started now, it could have a city centre that is the envy of Asia in 10 years.

Alternatively, the West Bengal government could push the blue business a bit further. After all, nothing exceeds like excess.