The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation

http://www.countercurrents.org/glo-shiva050404.htm

The Suicide Economy Of
Corporate Globalisation

By Vandana Shiva

05 April, 2004

The Indian peasantry, the largest body of surviving small farmers in the world, today faces a crisis of extinction.

Two thirds of India makes its living from the land. The earth is the most generous employer in this country of a billion, that has farmed this land for more than 5000 years.

However, as farming is delinked from the earth, the soil, the biodiversity, and the climate, and linked to global corporations and global markets, and the generosity of the earth is replaced by the greed of corporations, the viability of small farmers and small farms is destroyed. Farmers suicides are the most tragic and dramatic symptom of the crisis of survival faced by Indian peasants.

1997 witnessed the first emergence of farm suicides in India. A rapid increase in indebtedness, was at the root of farmers taking their lives. Debt is a reflection of a negative economy, a loosing economy. Two factors have transformed the positive economy of agriculture into a negative economy for peasants - the rising costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities. Both these factors are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalisation.

In 1998, the World Bank's structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds which needed fertilizers and pesticides and could not be saved.

As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the engineering of seeds with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by poor peasants. A free resource available on farms became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness.

As debts increase and become unpayable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide. More than 25,000 peasants in India have taken their lives since 1997 when the practice of seed saving was transformed under globalisation pressures and multinational seed corporations started to take control of the seed supply. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life.

The shift from farm saved seed to corporate monopolies of the seed supply is also a shift from biodiversity to monocultures in agriculture. The District of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh used to grow diverse legumes, millets, and oilseeds. Seed monopolies created crop monocultures of cotton, leading to disappearance of millions of products of nature's evolution and farmer's breeding.

Monocultures and uniformity increase the risks of crop failure as diverse seeds adapted to diverse ecosystems are replaced by rushed introduction of unadapted and often untested seeds into the market. When Monsanto first introduced Bt Cotton in India in 2002, the farmers lost Rs. 1 billion due to crop failure. Instead of 1,500 Kg / acre as promised by the company, the harvest was as low as 200 kg. Instead of increased incomes of Rs. 10,000 / acre, farmers ran into losses of Rs. 6400 / acre.

In the state of Bihar, when farm saved corn seed was displaced by Monsanto's hybrid corn, the entire crop failed creating Rs. 4 billion losses and increased poverty for already desperately poor farmers. Poor peasants of the South cannot survive seed monopolies.

And the crisis of suicides shows how the survival of small farmers is incompatible with the seed monopolies of global corporations.

The second pressure Indian farmers are facing is the dramatic fall in prices of farm produce as a result of free trade policies of the W.T.O. The WTO rules for trade in agriculture are essentially rules for dumping. They have allowed an increase in agribusiness subsidies while preventing countries from protecting their farmers from the dumping of artificially cheap produce.

High subsidies of $ 400 billion combined with forced removal of import restrictions is a ready-made recipe for farmer suicides. Global prices have dropped from $ 216 / ton in 1995 to $ 133 / ton in 2001 for wheat, $ 98.2 / ton in 1995 to $ 49.1 / ton in 2001 for cotton, $ 273 / ton in 1995 to $ 178 / ton for soyabean. This reduction to half the price is not due to a doubling in productivity but due to an increase in subsidies and an increase in market monopolies controlled by a handful of agribusiness corporations.

Thus the U.S government pays $ 193 per ton to US Soya farmers, which artificially lowers the rice of soya. Due to removal of Quantitative Restrictions and lowering of tariffs, cheap soya has destroyed the livelihoods of coconut growers, mustard farmers, producers of sesame, groundnut and soya.

Similarly, 25000 cotton producers in the U.S are given a subsidy of $ 4 billion annually. This has brought cotton prices down artificially, allowing the U.S to capture world markets which were earlier accessible to poor African countries such as Burkina, Faso, Benin, Mali. The subsidy of $ 230 per acre in the U.S is genocidal for the African farmers. African cotton farmers are loosing $ 250 million every year. That is why small African countries walked out of the Cancun negotiations, leading to the collapse of the W.T.O ministerial.

The rigged prices of globally traded agriculture commodities are stealing incomes from poor peasants of the south. Analysis carried out by the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology shows that due to falling farm prices, Indian peasants are loosing $ 26 billion or Rs. 1.2 trillion annually. This is a burden their poverty does not allow them to bear. Hence the epidemic of farmer suicides.

India was among the countries that questioned the unfair rules of W.T.O in agriculture and led the G-22 alliance along with with Brazil and China. India with other southern countries addressed the need to safeguard the livelihoods of small farmers from the injustice of free trade based on high subsidies and dumping. Yet at the domestic level, official agencies in India are in deep denial of any links between free trade and farmers survival.

An example of this denial is a Government of Karnataka report on "Farmers suicide in Karnataka - A scientific analysis". The report while claiming to be "scientific", makes unscientific reductionist claims that the farm suicides have only psychological causes, not economic ones, and identifies alcoholism as the root cause of suicides. Therefore, instead of proposing changes in agricultural policy, the report recommends that farmers be required to boost up their self respect (swabhiman) and self-reliance (swavalambam).

And ironically, its recommendations for farmer self-reliance are changes in the Karnataka Land Reforms Act to allow larger land holdings and leasing. These are steps towards the further decimation of small farmers who have been protected by land "ceilings" (an upper limit on land ownership) and policies that only allow peasants and agriculturalists to own agricultural land (part of the land to the tiller policies of the Devraj Urs government).

While the "expert committee" report identified "alcoholism" as the main cause for suicides, the figures of this "scientific" claim are inconsistent and do not reflect the survey. On page 10, the report states in one place that 68 percent of the suicide victims were alcoholics. Five lines later it states that 17 percent were "alcohol and illicit drinkers".

It also states that the majority of suicide victims were small and marginal farmers and the majority had high levels of indebtedness. Yet debt is not identified as a factor leading to suicide. On page 32 of the report it is stated that of the 105 cases studied among the 3544 suicides which had occurred in five districts during 2000 - 2001, 93 had debts, 54 percent had borrowed from private sources and money lenders.

More than 90% of suicide victims were in debt. Yet a table on page 63 has mysteriously reduced debt as a reason for suicide to 2.6%, and equally mysteriously, "suicide victims having a bad habit" has emerged as the primary cause of farmers suicides.

The government is desperate to delink farm suicides from economic processes linked to globalisation such as rise in indebtedness and increased frequency of crop failure due to higher ecologic vulnerability arising from climate change and drought and higher economic risks due to introduction of untested, unadopted seeds.

This is evident in recommendation no. 4.3.24.3 "The government should launch prosecution on the responsible persons involved in misleading the public and government by providing false information about farmers suicide as crop failure or indebtedness" (page 113 of expert committee report).

However, farmers suicides cannot be delinked from indebtedness and the economic distress small farmers are facing. Indebtedness is not new. Farmers have always organised for freedom from debt.

In the nineteenth century the so call "Deccan Riots" were farmers protests against the debt trap into which they had been pushed to supply cheap cotton to the textile mills in Britain. In the eighties they formed peasant organisations to fight for debt relief from public debt linked to Green Revolution inputs.

However, under globalisation, the farmer is loosing her / his social, cultural, economic identity as a producer. A farmer is now a "consumer" of costly seeds and costly chemicals sold by powerful global corporations through powerful landlords and money lenders locally.

This combination is leading to corporate feudalism, the most inhumane, brutal and exploitative convergence of global corporate capitalism and local feudalism, in the face of which the farmer as an individual victim feels helpless. The bureaucratic and technocratic systems of the state are coming to the rescue of the dominant economic interests by blaming the victim.

It is necessary to stop this war against small farmers. It is necessary to re-write the rules of trade in agriculture. It is necessary to change our paradigms of food production. Feeding humanity should not depend on the extinction of farmers and extinction of species. Another agriculture is possible and necessary - an agriculture that protects farmers livelihoods, the earth and its biodiversity and public health.

Article on Acquisiton and Environment, from countercurrents.org

http://www.countercurrents.org/en-shrivastava100307.htm

Development Through Industrialization? Or Environmental Colonialism Leading To Catastrophe?

By Aseem Shrivastava
10 March, 2007

Countercurrents.org

Part I

“You can’t save land and water unless you can save agriculture and forests.”
- Prafullah Samantara, an activist from Orissa, speaking at the National Convention on Corporate Land-Grab at the Indian Social Institute, New Delhi, February 8, 2007
“If the company comes up we will lose thousands and thousands of acres of cultivable land and be reduced to beggars. That’s the reason why we won’t allow our land to be destroyed.”
- Shankar Prasad Muduli, a local farmer from Kashipur, Orissa, testifying before the Indian People’s Tribunal, October 2006.
In times of corporate totalitarianism such as ours, when the media – with visibly noble exceptions – is merely the obedient tail of the capitalist canine, the impression that is sought to be created is that in “the world’s largest democracy” there is an unchallenged consensus that India needs economic development, that rapid economic growth is the most reliable way to achieve it (through the infamous “trickle-down” effect), that this in turn is best achieved through break-neck industrialization and that anyone who stands in the way of such “development” needs to have her patriotic credentials (read: “head”) examined. This may include, for instance, those who (following the latest warnings of the IPCC) are pointing to dangerously threatened, rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers.
Nothing is in fact farther from the truth, especially when one keeps reminding oneself that the free press is city-based and is anything but free. People have by now heard of Nandigram and Singur – perhaps because they happen to be in Communist-ruled West Bengal, the hypocrisy of the government all too transparent there. However, as a National Convention held in New Delhi recently revealed there are fires of protest growing in number, frequency and intensity against the large-scale acquisition of land for purposes of industrial/infrastructural/real-estate “development” all across India. The question is whether city-based media outlets are reporting the facts adequately and accurately and whether urban elites have the integrity and courage to face the monstrous injustices that their leaders are busy inflicting on the countryside and its hapless populations.
Orissa: A plain enough case of environmental colonialism

Consider just one of many cases: Orissa. In addition to the massive bauxite mining (which has already disrupted the traditional livelihoods of dozens of local tribal communities), thanks to huge iron ore deposits under the forests, as many as 45 steel plants are on the anvil in this small state alone! Importantly, the people of the state have not asked for them. No democracy there, no plebiscite or referendum.
On the contrary human rights are being routinely violated under what can be best understood as a military-economic regime of extractive-colonialist globalization – whose competitive cost-cutting pressures, led by totalitarian, environmentally destructive China – are creating a lethal race to the bottom, undermining chances of sustainable development and of course, substantive democracy. Constitutional provisions and state tribal and environmental laws are both being routinely violated by the state government to override tribal and community rights to land and resources.
After visiting the joint venture project of Birla and Alcan, Utkal Alumina (UAIL), in Baphlimali (Kashipur), and reviewing the consequences of Sterlite’s aluminium project at Lanjigarh , the Indian People’s Tribunal recommended in October 2006 that the Orissa government “abandon the UAIL project with immediate effect.” Voices of protest from local tribes “are being met by repressive measures in the form of large scale arrests, disruption of public meetings by force, violent beatings to disperse gatherings, official encouragement to the employment of private goons by UAIL, midnight raids by the police, unmitigated violence on women and children. Deposing before the Tribunal Bhagban Majhi stated “instead of answering our concerns, they are replying with bullets and lathis.” What is even more shocking is that even minors like Pradip Majhi (aged 14) who deposed before the Tribunal spoke of being physically stripped and humiliated by the Police.”
People have expressed their displeasure and dissent in the tens of thousands: places like Kashipur, Kalinganagar, Jagatsinghpur and Gopalpur have been under siege for months (and often, years) by the police and paramilitaries on account of the angry political ferment over the past decade. The war between the corporate state and the people is on. The lands and water sources of farmers and forest-dwellers in these areas are being taken over through the powerful offices of the state government in order to make way for the steel and aluminium plants (and the associated coal, iron ore and bauxite mines) of business interests like Tatas, Jindals, POSCO, Mittal, Birlas, Alcan, Alcoa and Vedanta (Sterlite). Hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land have already been destroyed. Comparable areas of reserve forests have been torn out of the earth. Water sources are being polluted by mining and the industrial sludge. The air around the mines and factories is full of cancerous gases. After all, who has time to think of clean-up measures when Chinese competition is breathing down the necks of global players.
On many occasions peasants and tribals have been killed in police firing while resisting the take-over of their lands, forests and water resources. The defence of Jal, Jungle, Zameen, Zindagi – and not the treacherous hope of compensation, resettlement, rehabilitation, employment and “modernization” – are the issues as far as local populations are concerned. If “development” implies mere industrialization on their own backs and displacement from their lands and forests, the rural communities of Orissa have declared in no uncertain terms – often through the sacrifice of human lives – that they want none of it.
So if such “development” is not for the people of Orissa, who is the brutally break-neck industrialization in the state for? (Orissa attracted over 10% of the foreign direct investment in India in 2006.) It is for the many companies who have been gouging the earth to extract the abundant mineral wealth from the region (most of it lying under thick forests or farmed fields) for the price of dirt and make huge profits by selling abroad (If a company can get away by paying Rs.100-150 per ton of iron ore to the state and fetch a price of Rs.1500-3000 abroad – depending upon the grade of the ore – there is little surprise that there is a growing queue of foreign investors.)
It will make it a lot easier and faster for the Tatas to pay off the astronomical debt (of close to $10 billion: more than Orissa’s entire GDP) that they have taken on recently in order to acquire the Anglo-Dutch steel major, Corus. Importantly, it will enable the rich countries to derive the benefits of cheap steel (for construction, transport and industry) and aluminium (so critical to aeroplanes and soda-cans alike) while keeping “dirty” industries and mining away from their own environmentally sanitized shores (the reason why companies like Corus and Novelis have been selling out so readily – and at exorbitant prices – to Tatas and Birlas: the cleaner the industry the less likely it is to be auctioned off to bidders from countries like India or Brazil. On the contrary service sector businesses are being taken over by multinationals from rich countries: notice the recent acquisition of the Indian company Hutch-Essar by the British multinational Vodafone – the fact that it is led by an Indian CEO is of little import here (Pepsi does not become an Indian company simply because its CEO happens to be an Indian these days.))
The moral horror of such a pattern of industrialization in Orissa – fitting snugly and conveniently into a socially and ecologically unfair global division of labor and pollution – is that the beneficiaries from it (barring the few Netas and Babus who get cuts from each business contract) are not from Orissa but are scattered around urban India and the rest of the world. It is a thinly disguised form of environmental colonialism orchestrated by the comprador government of the state, the Mir Jafar dalals only too happy to sell off both their people and nature to outsiders.
Such a pattern of industrialization has less to do with development (understood as lasting change and transformation in the quality of people’s lives, reflected but minimally in such measures as life expectancy, the literacy rate and growth of real per capita income) than it has to do with the imperative to compete and win at any cost that Indian and global industrial business interests feel at this uncertain juncture of history. “Orissa is not there to enrich the rich and strengthen the economies of America and the West”, one activist from Orissa argues.
However, the Patnaik government of Orissa continues on its merry path, inviting investment recently from NRIs, among many others. The Korean steel giant POSCO has already planned on investing $12 billion in the state (though its tax breaks and other incentives amount, if it is possible to imagine, to an even greater sum). The same is true for Laxmi Mittal’s Mittal-Arcelor group (the world’s largest steel conglomerate) which signed a MoU with the Orissa government in December 2006, agreeing to invest $ 9 billion in Keonjhar district (and deriving tax benefits of comparable magnitude). Mittal has asked for 8000 acres of land (2000 acres more than POSCO) for the project. He has also asked that (just like the concession to POSCO) the land be classified as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), with all the attendant privileges, tantamount to a de jure suspension of the Indian Constitution.
Only the ecological future – global and local climate change, to name only one of dozens of environmental ailments brought on by mindless industrialization – will reveal the ultimately suicidal nature of this putatively “free market” economics – which is in fact a case of active promotion of private corporate profit by the state, even if it means rampant exploitation of the poor citizens (who are citizens for one day and subjects for 5 years) of a famous democracy, in addition to the rapid accretion to the ecological debt of the region.
The Indian People’s Tribunal reported last year in October “that the bauxite-mining project proposed by UAIL will have adverse environmental and health effects: water sources and agricultural land will be contaminated by toxic wastes, grasslands and forest land will be destroyed, and pollution including the release of cancerous gases that will create a health hazard for those living in proximity of the alumina refinery. Further the location of the mine in the Eastern ghats will cause irreversible loss of plant genetic material and biodiversity of this region.”
Let us forget any other ideals or values and come together to challenge the brutally flawed corporate vision – itself in accord with the so-called “neo-liberal” economics purveyed by Washington and its multilateral agencies – which imperils today the very basis of human survival in India.

Aseem Shrivastava is an independent writer. He can be reached at aseem62@yahoo.com.

Political battle

Political battle

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2406/stories/20070406003812800.htm

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Volume 24 - Issue 06 :: Mar. 24-Apr. 06, 2007

SUHRID SANKAR CHATTOPADHYAY

The police firing and violence in Nandigram, which claimed 14 lives, are the culmination of disturbing activities since January.

ARUNANGSU ROY CHOWDHURY

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee caught in a traffic jam on his way to address a public meeting in East Midnapore district, of which Nandigram is a part, on February 11. The blockade was caused by the huge crowd that had gathered to hear him.

The police firing and subsequent violence at Nandigram in East Midnapore district of West Bengal on March 14, in which 14 people, including two women, were killed and 75 were injured, have come as a major embarrassment to the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front government in the State.

Speculation in January that the government would acquire land in the area to establish a chemical hub, to be set up as a special economic zone (SEZ), apparently led a motley group of people, including naxalites and members of the Trinamool Congress, the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) and the Jamait-i-Ulema-e-Hind, to come together under the banner of the Bhoomi Ucched Pratirodh (Land Eviction Resistance) Committee (BUPC) against the move. They began by targeting supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), whom they chased out of the area and virtually established their own rule there.

For more than two and a half months, Nandigram, which is around 150 km from Kolkata, was a ticking time bomb, isolated from the rest of the State as the BUPC dug up roads and damaged bridges leading to the place. It finally exploded on March 14 when the police, sent in to restore the road links and law and order, fired bullets. Nandigram turned into a political battlefield.

The visuals on television news channels strengthened charges of police excesses. Most of the injured were women and children, who had been placed as a human shield to prevent a police advance. Many of them later said they were given to believe by their leaders that the police would not hurt them. The police have been accused of using more force than was necessary to disperse the crowd, and of allowing outsiders to don police uniforms and use firearms.

While the inquiries that are on will bring out the truth about these accusations, the CPI(M) Polit Bureau put the matter in perspective: "It is regrettable that lives have been lost in police firing. But the organised elements who utilised bombs and pipe-guns on the police have to take the blame."

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee accepted responsibility for the incident and expressed distress at the loss of so many innocent lives. The Opposition, led by Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress, some Congress leaders and sections of the literati, demanded his resignation and the imposition of President's Rule in the State.

Incidentally, there was no direction from the Chief Minister to open fire. Then, it should have been a decision taken by senior police officers and the executive magistrate present on the spot. The police said they opened fire in exercise of their right of private defence when the mob turned violent and started firing pipe-guns and throwing stones and bombs. However, the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court reportedly held that the firing was prima facie "unconstitutional".

The State government directed an executive inquiry by the Divisional Commissioner and a police investigation by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), West Bengal. The High Court, in an order on March 15 while hearing a petition filed by the National Alliance of People's Movement, directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to conduct a preliminary investigation and report to it. The CBI submitted its report on March 22, the contents of which the court has not made public yet.

Addressing the press on March 15, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said: "We had not gone there looking for a confrontation, nor to acquire land... When I had already said there would be no land acquisition in Nandigram, then it is final." He apprised the media of the prevailing lawlessness in Nandigram and asked: "Can any government allow this to continue indefinitely?"

Condemnation

Reactions condemning the incident flowed unendingly as it were. In a press statement Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi said: "The news of the deaths by police firing in Nandigram this morning has filled me with a sense of cold horror... . [T]he point uppermost in my mind is not `who started it', `who provoked it' or whether there were agent-provocateurs behind it. Investigations will reveal that. The thought in my mind - and of all sensitive people now is - `Was this spilling of human blood not avoidable? What is the public purpose served by the use of force that we have witnessed today?'"

Nandigram soon became the mainspring for a political agitation by Opposition parties of all hues. A team of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) leaders, led by Bharatiya Janata Party leader L.K. Advani, and including George Fernandes, Sushma Swaraj, S.S. Ahluwalia, Dinesh Trivedi and Mukul Roy, visited Nandigram on March 17. Advani compared the police firing to the Jalianwalla Bagh massacre and Fernandes, while participating in a Trinamool Congress procession in Kolkata told reporters: "This government [in West Bengal] is a criminal government and I demand its immediate dismissal."

Mamata Banerjee accused the State government of "creating unrest" in the guise of industrialisation and called for a 12-hour bandh on March 16 in protest against the Nandigram deaths. She said her "agitation against acquiring farmland would continue unabated". Her stand on industrialisation, however, still remains unclear. She says she is "not" against industrialisation, but has opposed almost every endeavour of the State government to bring in investments.

At the East Midnapore District Hospital, a woman who was injured in the clashes and police firing.

The Congress team to Nandigram was led by All India Congress Committee general secretary Digvijay Singh. The Congress State unit general secretary Manas Bhuniya said the Pradesh Congress Committee, in its report to party president Sonia Gandhi, stated that "the prevailing situation in the State warrants the imposition of Article 356".

The constituents of the Left Front - the All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), and the Communist Party of India (CPI) - did not spare the government either. They accused the CPI(M) and the State government of keeping them in the dark on vital issues and even threatened to reconsider their participation in the government if the situation was allowed to persist. Matters were thrashed out and the "crisis" was averted through two important meetings in which former Chief Minister Jyoti Basu was present.

Addressing a press conference after the final meeting, Left Front chairman and Polit Bureau member Biman Bose said: "The unity of the Left Front was there, is there, and will be there." It was decided that Left Front meetings would be held more regularly and all major political decisions would be taken in consultation with the Front members. The meeting also stated that "the Nandigram incident was tragic and the government will have to be careful that something like that is never repeated".

Left leaning intellectuals and well-known personalities in the fields of art, literature, theatre and cinema deplored the incident and decried the government. They organised rallies, some resigned from their posts in different akademis, and quite a few returned the honours awarded to them by the government.

Film-maker Goutam Ghosh is reported to have commented: "Although the Chief Minister has been citing the example of China as his model, he isn't aware that the Chinese government does not allow private firms to own land." Sources in the CPI(M) say that the Left Front government does not follow any model. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, in an interview to Frontline ("From agriculture to industry", February 9), made it clear that "India should not follow any country or any model" in its special economic zone (SEZ) policy.

However, not everyone among Kolkata's intelligentsia feels that the CPI(M) has abandoned its ideals. Noted author Sunil Gangopadhyay and actor Soumitro Chatterjee, while expressing grief at the deaths, said they did not feel that the government was treading the wrong path in pursuing industrialisation. Others point out that the Chief Minister had stated that there was no question of land acquisition in Nandigram, and ask: What then was the basis for such a violent resistance to the entry of the police?

Planned violence

It all started on January 3, when the Haldia Development Authority, on its own initiative, sent a letter to the block development officer (BDO) in Nandigram for a preliminary study of the region to earmark areas that may be required for an SEZ project. Following the violent reaction to this by the local people, the State government ruled out land acquisition in Nandigram without the consent of the people. However, this sparked off a series of incidents, which the Trinamool Congress and others used to carve out for themselves an area beyond the control of the State administration. This they achieved by driving out all CPI(M) supporters from the area, using force or threatening them, and digging up roads and making Nandigram inaccessible. Repeated efforts by the government for meetings were rebuffed and clashes between the CPI(M) and BUPC members bloodied the once peaceful, sleepy nook in the State.

By many accounts, the chaos at Nandigram soon ceased to be a land issue and took the shape of a political campaign by the disparate elements that had tied up with the Trinamool Congress. Since January, there have been reports of "outsiders" skilled in the use of firearms and explosives being brought in as powerful enforcers of the BUPC.

On the morning of February 10, Sumita Mandal, a 15-year-old schoolgirl at Sonachura village was helping her mother in the field. Around 11 a.m., she went home to refresh herself. When her mother returned home an hour later, she saw her daughter's body strung up on a tree behind their house. Neither the police nor members of the State Women's Commission could enter the village to collect information on the incident.

The post-mortem report revealed that Sumita, the daughter of a CPI(M) sympathiser, had been physically abused by at least five persons before she was hanged alive and left to die. Her father Sukdeb Mandal had fled the village on January 7 following threats from the BUPC. The same day supporters of the Trinamool Congress almost beat to death Sukdeb's elder brother Bhudeb, a government employee, and killed a CPI(M) panchayat member Sankar Samanta. The child's killers remain at large.

Three days before this incident, seven policemen assigned to enter the region on a peace mission were attacked by Trinamool activists. All of them, except one, escaped, but with grievous injuries. Sadhucharan Chatterjee, an elderly policeman, died of his injures and his body was retrieved from the Haldi river. Among the 23 identified and arrested over the incident was Gouranga Doloi, a Trinamool Congress worker and a leader of the BUPC.

On Holi, March 3, a housewife of Kalicharanpur in Nandigram was gang-raped in her house, ostensibly because she did not pay the `fine', a heavy one, for not participating in a rally of the BUPC. Unlike Sumita Mandal, the victim lived to tell the tale. She managed to flee in the dead of night and take shelter in the CPI(M) camp at Tekhali, from where she was taken to the zilla hospital in Tamluk. Her husband and elder son, like more than a thousand others, had left the village and were staying with relatives in a neighbouring village. Enraged by her escape, her assailants waited for her husband and son to return and when they did, beat them up badly. Two months ago, the family was threatened and asked to pay Rs.5,000 as `fine'. When they paid the amount, a further Rs.50,000 was demanded.

Such incidents became the order of the day in Nandigram, though only a few found their way into the public domain. Nandigram had become an anarchic realm beyond the law of the land and the Constitution. The writ of the government did not run there. Addressing a press conference on March 19, State Home Secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy said: "We entered only five of the 18 villages in the five gram panchayats in Nandigram." After this, the State government had to withdraw police forces following the violence of March 14. At that point the situation in the 13 villages deep within Nandigram still remained outside the knowledge and jurisdiction of the State administration.

This was despite Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's assurance on February 11 while addressing a massive rally in Khejuri in Nandigram: "There is no reason to blame the people of Nandigram. They will understand one day, and until that day we will not be taking a single step towards industrialisation in the region. No land will be taken by force from the people of Nandigram... It is true we want industrialisation, but not at the expense of the tears of the people."

He had said so earlier as well and had even made it clear that the proposed chemical hub would be shifted if the people of the region did not want it. Still, barely a week after his public pronouncement in Khejuri, 22 houses (18 on February 17 and four on February 18) were plundered and burnt by the BUPC. It was not necessary that the victims be CPI(M) workers or supporters; anyone who refused to carry the black flag and join them faced their wrath, including landless labourers.

Hijacked

SUSHANTA PATRONOBISH

Some of the CPI(M) supporters of Nandigram who took refuge in a relief camp at Tekhali stage a dharna in Kolkata.

The struggle for land seemed to have been hijacked by the Trinamool Congress' partners into one for the creation of a "liberated" area for themselves. The Chief Minister's verbal assurances were not enough for Mamata Banerjee. Addressing a convention of the Krishi Jami Rakshya Committee in Kolkata on March 18, she said: "Only verbal assurances will not do, all notices will have to be withdrawn legally. The Chief Minister had earlier said that the notice should be scrapped in Nandigram, but even after that genocide has taken place there."

To go back to January, when the trouble first began with the inopportune notice from the Haldia Development Authority, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee made a public statement, saying: "I have asked the District Magistrate to tear up that notice." He also made it clear that the deployment of the police force in Nandigram had nothing to do with land acquisition and was meant to bring about a semblance of the rule of law in the area.

To defuse the tension, the very next day the East Midnapore District Magistrate issued a notification stating categorically that no land in Nandigram block would be acquired for industrial purposes. This was also a reiteration of the decision announced two days earlier at a meeting of the CPI(M) and its partners. It was also decided at the meeting that there would be phased withdrawal of the police from the region. On the night following the District Magistrate's notification, violence erupted again in Nandigram. Trinamool Congress activists attacked people in Sonachura, grievously injuring three, and dug up the roads and culverts that had been repaired. The next day, around 500 Trinamool Congress supporters, armed with crude bombs and guns, stormed the relief camp where those rendered homeless in Nandigram had sought shelter and ransacked the CPI(M) office set up there.

What went wrong in Nandigram on March 14 will be known only when the Calcutta High Court gives its full judgment on the basis of the CBI's report. One of the factors may be the deep-seated conspiracy that Biman Bose spoke about to Frontline to disrupt the industrial drive and even oust the government.

Whatever be the outcome of the High Court's findings and the various inquiries and investigations, the ultimate loser might be the unemployed young men and women who saw a ray of hope in the steadily improving rating of West Bengal among industrial investors from outside the State.

Police to remain unchanged

Police to remain unchanged

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=4&id=154656&usrsess=1

AMIYA K SAMANTA
The Dainik Statesman of 19/4/07 carries on the front page a photograph of a policeman beating a villager with a regulation cane, while a few of his comrades in uniform watch with evident glee.
After a careful look at the photograph, it appears that the man in uniform, whose star on the epaulette reveals his official rank as an assistant sub-inspector of police (ASI) is not really a policeman. He is wearing a full-sleeve shirt with a lanyard hanging from the wrong shoulder, while the rest of the policemen are in half-sleeve summer uniform. His hair is long beyond the permissible limit and his cap is not a regulation police headgear.
The newspaper has given out the identity of the “ASI” and has printed his photograph in civvies. He is reported to be a member of the youth front of the ruling party, and allegedly one of the ten fugitives arrested by officers of the CBI on 17 March from a nearby brick kiln, from where a huge cache of arms and a good number of police uniforms were also seized. It has been widely reported in the print and electronic media that the police action for political re-occupation of Nandigram was carried out by a combined force of regular police and political activists in police uniform and jointly commanded by police officers and local political leaders.
A noticeable trend in our democracy is that the constituencies of political support are not created by persuasion and appeal to people’s mind but by physical occupation of the area with the help of the muscle of the party, dutifully backed by the police. This may ensure electoral victory even in the most adverse circumstances, but it destroys democratic values in our polity.
This photograph reminds me of another one, which I saw in a book on the Third Reich. A gang of Storm Troopers (SS) of the Nazi party in Berlin was ransacking and setting fire to a bookshop selling socialist literature and a man, presumably the shop owner, was being ruthlessly belaboured, while a traffic constable and a large number of onlookers were watching in anguished silence. That was, in fact, a rehearsal for the forthcoming election in Germany in 1933, which the SS had won for Hitler.
Soon after Hitler’s ascendancy to supreme power, the SS, which had till then been the Nazi Party’s private security wing consisting of the most faithful followers of the party, was given the legal status as an indispensable organ of the Nazi State. In course of time, several branches like Gestapo, etc. were added, and their “exploits” are too well known to be recapitulated here.
The Nandigram photograph shows that the private army of the ruling party is in the process of being integrated with the state’s police force, which has been adequately suborned so as to accommodate the party’s armed cadres within its command structure. There is no reason to believe that the linkage is superficial, and it is confined to the outward similarity of dress alone. The reports that the local party bosses jointly led the police-cadre combine against the protesting villagers and the smile of approval of the comrades in the regular police force, as seen in the photograph, underscore that the relationship is rather visceral.
In this connection, it is relevant to note that the local SP has reportedly admitted that on the day of assault on the village two constables raped two women following perhaps the examples of their non-police allies who committed similar crimes in good number. As a result of long association and growing mutual inter-dependence, there has evidently been a superimposition of the party’s aims and objects on the duties and responsibilities of the police force. The sphere of the State and that of the ruling party are fast becoming co-terminus and identical.
This scenario is not unique; it is, in fact, emerging as an all-India pattern. More than five years ago in Gujarat, the police stood silently by when gruesome crimes were perpetrated on defenceless people by the activists of the ruling party. It has since been established that the police went into a stupor at the instance of the chief minister who had a political axe to grind. The police officers who refused to succumb to his dictates were punished, but unfortunately the number of such officer is just one or two.
So the police force’s loyalty and commitment to the law and the Constitution has been effectively subverted by the party in power, although the highest and the lowest in the police force have all taken oath to uphold the Constitution and the law.
To safeguard the interests of the ruling party vis-à-vis the opposition party, the police are used in two ways. First, the party’s muscle power is encouraged and patronised by taking little or no action when its activists break the law.
Secondly, to marginalise the influence of the opposition party, all the harshness of law and procedure is brought to bear on their members whenever they are suspected to have committed an unlawful act. On the whole, the police and their powers are used rampantly to gain and sustain political influence.
Consequently, the credibility of the police is now hitting the rock-bottom. Whenever there is a change of political regime, the former ruling party leaders are sure to face plethora of criminal cases, all of which may not be without substance. Some of the images like that of an octogenarian former chief minister being dragged out of his bed at dead of night by a group of policemen at the instance of the new CM still haunt the mind as a blatant example of the use of police for political vendetta.
Investigation into cases of various types of corruption involving political leaders have been monitored and modulated in such a manner as to derive maximum political advantage out of it. The CBI has not covered itself with glory in its handling of the Bofors case. If this be the fate of the well-publicised cases, one can well imagine the results of investigation of the huge number of cases arising out of political conflicts with the ruling party taking place all over the country every now and then.
In the context of growing extraneous influence on the police leading inexorably to the subversion of democracy and violation of human rights, the Supreme Court issued a seven-point directive last September for time-bound implementation by the Centre and state governments. But the state governments are resisting their implementation with the aid and assistance of a powerful bureaucracy.
The Soli Sorabji Committee has drafted a Police Act, which contains in a slightly modified form all the directives of the Supreme Court, at the behest of the Centre; but it has so far failed to persuade a single state government to opt for the new Police Act. The government in New Delhi has feet of clay, and as such it lacks the political will to press for crucial reforms. More with a view to appeasing political groups than out of conviction, the Prime Minister seems to have tried to browbeat the judiciary by making some unwholesome comments on judicial pronouncements. Such undesirable developments will cloud the visions of both the judiciary and the executive.
Only four states, namely Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh, have consented to abide by the directives. Sixteen states and Union Territories, which include Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, have condescended to partially follow the directives, but ten states and UTs, including West Bengal, Gujarat, UP, Maharastra, have stubbornly resisted implementation of any of the directives and have refused even to enact a law on the basis of the Draft Police Act. Significantly, though poles apart politically, both Gujarat and West Bengal have commonality of views on insulating the police from unwarranted interference. They put forward the untenable plea that the proposed “Security Commission” will undermine the power of the state government, though either the CM or the Home Minister will head the Commission. It is not understood how fixed tenure of officers like the DGP, SP and the OC will demoralise the officers.
And if the Police Establishment Board for transfer and posting of officers is a duplication of the existing system, then what is the ground for not opting for the Board? Any hint of impartiality and independence is detested by politicians and bureaucrats. Since corruption from the highest to the lowest levels of the force is used as a lever for control, it is contended that creation of a complaint authority to deal with police corruption will demoralise the force.
The morale of the whole story is that no political party will agree to change the British legacy of policing in India, as it is most advantageous. And in this regard the political parties on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, that is, those ruling Gujarat and West Bengal, have identical approach. On this issue they are consenting and comfortable bedfellows.

(The author was a member of the West Bengal Police Commission during 1996-2000)

Kanu barb for Mamata

Kanu barb for Mamata

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=6&id=154671&usrsess=1

Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, April 25: Three decades ago he was called an enemy of the state and the parties in power. Today, he still finds no difference between the Left and the Right.
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) general secretary Mr Kanu Sanyal today alleged that the Trinamul Congress has resorted to coercion to grab land at Nandigram for political gains. Although he supported the people’s resistance to acquisition of land, the notorious Naxalite leader of the 70s strongly criticised the Trinamul.
“Miss Mamata Banerjee is more keen to emerge as a political figure. She is not working for the interest of farmers. Earlier we have seen how she hijacked the farmers’ movement from Singur to Kolkata, allowing the government to set up walls around the project site. As minister in the NDA government she supported the Centre’s Special Economic Zone policy. She never said a word after the violence at Kalinganagar in Orissa. Even now she is silent on SEZs. That’s why we never joined her movement.”
The CPI (M-L) had sent a team to Nandigram on 21 April two days later met the governor Mr Gopalkrishna Gandhi to submit a report on its observations. Interestingly, most of the report criticises the Trinamul.
“During our visit, Mr Nishikanta Mondal, a Trinamul leader from Sonachura, and his goons severely assaulted Mr Ramkrishna Maity a villager who is still recovering from bullet injury he sustained on 14 March. His only crime was that he helped us organise a meeting at Sonachura Bazar. The same Trinamul goons attacked some other people and ransacked their houses. When we went to hold the meeting we found they had put up Trinamul flags and posters. They said the meeting would be held under Trinamul banner, which we refused to accept. I lodged a complaint with Trinamul legislator Mr Subhendu Adhikary,” Mr Sanyal said.
“The Left Front government is responsible for the crisis in Nandigram. But after 14 March, the Trinamul Congress is using the same methods it had used to establish control over the area. Nandigram has become a farce”.
The CPI(M-L) will organise people’s movement across the state against the state government’s industrial policy, said Mr Sanyal. In its memorandum to the Governor the party complained about the state government’s failure to solve the crisis in the tea gardens in north Bengal.

Trinamul slams CM’s Haldia meet

Trinamul slams CM’s Haldia meet

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=6&id=154672&usrsess=1

NANDIGRAM, April 25: Trinamul Congress chief Miss Mamata Banerjee today lambasted the chief minister for holding a meeting at Haldia yesterday with the “principal conspirator of the Nandigram massacre” . She feared that the chief minister’s meeting at Haldia would spark off fresh violence in Nandigram.
Addressing a large meeting at Garchakraberia where the land acquisition notice was first put up at the BDO’s office, she said “The chief minister is repeatedly calling for an all-party meeting. Even today he held a Press conference at Writers’ Buildings and asking for the same.” “For the past one week there has been continuous bombing and firing at Nandigram from the Khejuri side. Though the chief minister is fully aware of the situation, he is taking no steps to stop these criminal acts” she said. n SNS

Shuvaprasanna, Haldia - 2

Please look at the article by Shuvaprasanna and the article about Haldia and Rabindra Bhavan.

Rajarhat

Haldia - 1

Bibhash Chakraborty in the Dainik Statesman

Report in the Dainik Statesman

Missing children

Shaoli Mitra

Naru Maiti and the possibility of CPI(M) cadres donning police uniforms

Governor's 'cold horror' speech

http://www.hindu.com/2007/03/15/stories/2007031521071600.htm

15.3.2007
Expressing anguish at the turn of events in Nandigram on Wednesday, West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi hoped that the State Government would ensure that such incidents would not repeat.
His statement read:
"The news of deaths by police firing in Nandigram this morning has filled me with a sense of cold horror. We will soon know more details of the sequence of events that led to this tragedy. But the point uppermost in my mind is not `who started it,' `who provoked it' or whether there were agent-provocateurs behind it. Investigations will reveal that. The thought in my mind — and of all sensitive people now is — `Was this spilling of human blood not avoidable? What is the public purpose served by the use of force that we have witnessed today?'
"Force against anti-national elements, terrorists, extremists, insurgents, is one thing. The receiving end of the force used today does not belong to that order.
"What I advised Government over the last two days, as I received inputs of rising tension in Nandigram, Government knows. It is not my intention to enter into blame-fixing. But I cannot be so casual to the Oath I have taken as to restrict my reaction to a pious expression of anguish and outrage. I trust the Government will not only go into the whys and wherefores of this tragic occurrence but will also ensure that it leaves no room for a repetition of the kind of trauma witnessed today.
"I leave it to the conscience of officials responsible to atone for the event in the manner they deem fit. But I also expect the Government to do what it thinks is necessary to mitigate the effects of this bitter March 14, and to do it visibly and fast."

Nandigram takes its toll on grand industry agenda

Nandigram takes its toll on grand industry agenda

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?clid=6&id=181807&usrsess=1

Uday Basu
KOLKATA, April. 22: However much Left intellectuals unabashedly praise Mr Buddhadeb Bhattcharjee’s industrialisation policy, investors or industrialists are no longer seen on the corridors of Writers’ Buildings as they were on the Nandigram pre-fiasco days.
As Mr Bhattacharjee sent the message across that precious land for industries was there for the asking, industrialists at home and abroad were making a beeline for the state secretariat and the entire Writers’ Buildings seemed to have been squeezed into three rooms ~ the offices of the chief minister, industries minister Mr Nirupam Sen and the principal secretary of his department, Mr Sabyasachi Sen.
All other departments virtually became non-existent. Even the land and land reforms department, which was to have a big say on transfer of land for industrialisation, was reduced to a non-entity. Prospective investors shuttled from the offices of the industries minister and his principal secretary to that of the chief minister.
But, as the backlash at Nandigram and public fury against police brutality there made national headlines, the movement of investors and industrialists on the corridors of the state secretariat went down to a faint trickle.
During the past fortnight only two such groups of investors visited the chief minister and the industries minister and both of them were desperately trying to salvage whatever remained of the promised land. On 12 April Salim Group showcased before the CM its technology-cum-equity partner, the Jong Shen group of China after it had been nudged by the industries department to immediately begin work for the Mahabharat motorcycle factory at Uluberia for which it had got land over a year ago.
This project was becoming a scandal of sorts, as when the state government had drawn flak from all quarters for its shoddy distribution of land, not a brick was laid on the land allotted for the factory. The Chinese manufacturer promised to bring in several component manufacturers to set up shop at Howrah if they are given land. The next day it was the turn of Mr Venugopal Dhoot, chairman, Videocon, to meet the chief minister to extract 100 acres of prized land within the city limits for a project which has the precondition that it enjoys all the advantages of a major metropolis.
The chief minister conceded the demand after Mr Dhoot made it clear that the Andhra Pradesh government had offered him land at Hyderabad for the project with initial investment worth Rs 1,000 crore. Mr Bhattacharjee was, of course, loath to disclose the location of the land. The very next day the chief minister received a US delegation at his chamber. But that was more of a courtesy session when the CM was invited to visit the USA and the delegation expressed its keenness to invest in the state.

Rape victims seek justice

Rape victims seek justice

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=6&id=154495&usrsess=1

KOLKATA, April 23: Six rape victims from Nandigram, including a 12-year-old girl, today met the Governor, Mr Gopal Krishna Gandhi, and the chairman of the state Human Rights Commission and requested them to take action against the accused.
The government has failed, even after a month of the complaints being lodged, to take any action against the accused even though the women have identified them. One of the rape victims said: “Even now, CPI-M cadres and police threaten they will rape us again or kill us if we make statements before the commission.”
The Governor had reportedly assured the victims to take up the matter with the state government. The women also urged the commission to hold an open forum in Nandigram where victims who have been intimidated into silence can speak about their plight. n SNS

HC wants Governor’s name deleted from petition

HC wants Governor’s name deleted from petition

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=6&id=154494&usrsess=1

Our Legal Correspondent
KOLKATA, April 23: Mr Kedar Nath Yadav, an advocate of Calcutta High Court, had filed a writ petition claiming compensation for the victims of police firing at Nandigram and making the West Bengal Governor a respondent in this case. In the petition, Mr Yadav quoted the Governor’s statement on this incident as published in the newspapers. That was the reason why he had made the Governor a respondent. When the matter came up for hearing before the Division Bench of Mr Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Mr Justice Biswanath Somadder, the Bench asked the petitioner to delete the Governor’s name and to amend the petition’s cause title.

Nandigram hub: Basu sees govt blunder

Nandigram hub: Basu sees govt blunder

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=6&id=154496&usrsess=1

Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, April 23: The state government has made a blunder by not sharing details of the proposed chemical hub with Nandigram residents before initiating land acquisition, former chief minister Mr Jyoti Basu said today, more than a month after 14 people lost their lives. He was addressing a meeting of Left trade unions organised by the 12 July Committee at Mahajati Sadan this afternoon.
“I never imagined that the anti-industry agitation could take such shape. Even now about 2,500 of our supporters are being forced to live in makeshift camps. The chief minister has announced that there will be no chemical hub in Nandigram. But many people had no idea what a chemical hub is. We made a mistake. We never told them about the project. I won’t say much on this issue since the court is hearing the case,” Mr Basu said even as he maintained, citing examples from the past, that the only role of the Opposition was to “oppose progress.”
At Esplanade, where street hawkers had organised a rally, CPI-M state secretary Mr Biman Bose alleged that some “outsiders” have already started to misguide residents of Raghunathpur in Bankura where people have agreed to hand over land for a proposed steel plant.
A few kilometres away, Mr Jyoti Basu recounted many incidents related to land acquisition during his tenure. “When I was head of the fifth Left Front government we finalised plans to set up five new cities. Naxalites put up resistance when we tried to acquire land for the development of Siluguri. One man was also killed in police firing. We have to acquire land. But we will try not to touch fertile multicrop land unless there is no option. Many intellectuals have left us. They have misunderstood us. But I am sure some of them will come back,” he said.
Even as he lauded the government for taking up ambitious projects, it was apparent that Mr Basu was not happy with the Nandigram incident. “We had acquired so much land in the past. But we never faced any problem. At Rajarhat, for example, I personally handed over cheques to farmers and they voluntarily gave us the deeds to their land. But I still asked the minister in charge to set up co-operatives for the children of these farmers. We have to work hard. And our party alone cannot take West Bengal ahead. We have to organise the masses and take people with us,” Mr Basu said.
Witnesses to firing
sceptical about probe
The eye-witnesses to the Nandigram massacre who appeared at the hearing for the administrative probe at Chandipur block office today said they did not believe the probe would come up with honest findings.
Members of Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee also alleged that the trial of the killing of at least 14 villagers in Nandigram by police and CPI-M cadres on 14 March have been tangled up in legal and departmental procedures while the real culprits were roaming free.
Mrs Arati Modal, one of the eye-witnesses, said: “At least 200 women and several children had gathered on that fateful day at Gokulnagar for worshipping Gouranga ***thakur and to protest against the entry of police into our villages. But without any intimation, police opened fire on us and CPI-M cadres started beating us up. Several women sustained bullet injuries. Many were molested. Even after I slumped to the ground with a bullet hitting on my right leg, CPI-M cadres thrashed me severely. Many of the goons were dressed in khaki uniforms but wore slippers and red head bands which suggest they were carrying out orders from the CPI-M leadership.”
The probe team, led by Mr Balbir Ram, today conversed with 47 villagers ~ 25 of them women ~ who were witness to the massacre that took place on 14 March at Bhangabhera and Gokulnagar in Nandigram. Mr Abu Taher, BUPC leader, said: “Neither the CBI, nor the CID have come up with their reports on the Nandigram slaughter even after a month after the incident. We don’t expect the administrative probe to yield a fair ruling but we shall certainly take part in the process.”
The hearing is likely to continue for a few more days as nearly 320 villagers from Nandigram have registered as witnesses to the Nandigram massacre.

Oppose violence against women in politics

As horrific tales of sexual violence against women and girls in Nandigram allegedly by CPI(M) cadres and the West Bengal police emerged in the media, we have been asking ourselves the simple question, "Why?" This is not the first time that this question is being asked: why has violence against women in most unspeakable forms become part and parcel of political conflicts? The violence in Nandigram was after all a political contest, essentially between the CPI(M) and local people, many of them former supporters of the CPI(M) itself, who were apprehensive of their lands being taken over by the Government to set up SEZs.

In fact this question arises again and again in the recent history of political violence in India. The Committee against Violence on Women (CAVOW) reported the rape of 8 women from Kandkipura village of Bastar by uniformed police personnel. The provocation for this was the people protesting against forcible land acquisition for industry. The CAVOW fact-finding report highlights many atrocities perpetrated on women by Salwa Judum goons and the state security forces. In Kalinganagar, in the wake of police firing against an unarmed crowd protesting against the forcible take-over of their land for industry, corpses of women with breasts cut off were handed over to their relatives. While mainstream media rarely takes notice of the violence against civilians indulged in by the Indian Army in the North East, the recent outpouring of extreme resentment at the military forces shook both the media and the state as forty Manipuri women --twelve of them naked-- stormed the Army headquarters in Imphal, holding signs that read "Indian Army, Rape Us!" Thanglam Manorama's brutal murder by Army personnel was the source of anger for the protesters. Manorama's murder is far from being an exceptional case in Manipur where rape, abuse and murder are everyday realities. In their brave protest, Manipuri women shamed the Indian army by parading the very female body that brought humiliation and death to their sisters. With their raw anger and amazing mobilization, these women refused to get knocked down by the 'rape culture' that enables the 'victor' to demoralize their victim. And about the violence against women in Gujarat in 2002, it was reported, "…The pattern of cruelty suggests three things. One, the woman's body was a site of almost inexhaustible violence, with infinitely plural and innovative forms of torture. Second, their sexual and reproductive organs were attacked with a special savagery. Third, their children, born and unborn, shared the attacks and were killed before their eyes…"

The question "Why?" can be asked and answered in varieties of ways using many different frameworks of analysis. What is clear is that these instances of violence against women are occurring in the context of an aggressive expansive thrust of Indian capitalism, seeking hegemonic status in the global arena. Nandigram is clearly tied to the aspirations of investors like the Salim group of Indonesia and the CPI(M)'s vision of industrialisation through national and trans-national capital. Kalinganagar and Dantewada (Bastar) are similarly the product of a political clash between the same vision of industrialisation and resistance to it. The violence in Gujarat happened at a time when the State Government was aggressively marketing it as an attractive destination for global investments. The North-East has been afire due to the conflicts between the oppressed sub-nationalities of that region and the dominant nationalities of peninsular India, who now see it as a hub for investment and trade.

While these are the most egregious examples of violence against women in political conflicts, there are also other forms of violence against women, which are widespread and invisible. Familial violence or domestic violence includes, for example, the violence of traditional practices and foeticide, infanticide, forced/early marriage, forced sex-work, wife battering, and violence against widows. Violence at the community level includes caste-based violence, body mutilation, honour-killings, abduction, rape and other forms of sexual violence, sexual harassment and workplace violence, and trafficking . The beating, rape and mutilation of sexual organs of women of a dalit family at Khairlanji in full view of the public is a recent example. All forms of gender-based violence against women and also children (girls and boys) violate their human rights and are political, involving power and patriarchal domination. The common thread in these diverse forms of violence is social and gender-based domination which makes violence against women acceptable in familial and community contexts.

After economic liberalisation, the focus on women is increasingly as a cheap labour force. Despite apparently positive indicators of progress, particularly in education and paid employment, little has changed in the position of women. Studies suggest that while there is an increase in low-wage employment and self-employment, gender discrimination is being reinforced. While micro-credit is a necessary but altogether insufficient condition to address poverty, evidence suggests that the burden of its access, utilisation, and repayment fall entirely on the shoulders of women. Notions of `family honour' are being re-worked such that women must bear the brunt of family survival strategies through credit and increased workload, while financial players reap the benefits of reduced transaction costs. Even more worrying are the increasingly reported instances of sexual harassment and assault at workplaces where women are essentially unorganised. In this context, the liberating and empowering effect of the workplace has only partially materialised.

Without losing sight of its intrinsic links with all forms of gender-based violence, we would like to focus attention on the violence against women indulged in by State agencies and political actors. All politics, regardless of ideology, is ostensibly about making a better world. Political activity draws upon the thoughts and aspirations of the people for a better life. Violence against women can never be countenanced by the political imagination as a means to a noble end. Yet such violence persists because of the patriarchal view of women as chattel, as `territory' to be conquered, as `honour' to be saved or violated. This is closely tied to the practice of male control of women's sexuality and reproduction. In general, the cultural construction of masculinity and femininity reify women's roles in reproducing community and nation, and men's roles in their defence.

What seems to emerge clearly from the examples we have cited is that whether it is politics of the Right or of the Left, of the hegemonic or of oppressed groups, of neoliberalism or of the resistance, certain essentialist notions of masculine and feminine with their roots in patriarchy seem to regularly result in sexual violence against women as a `legitimate' form of conflict. As neoliberal economies take root, whether in the form of industrialisation in Bengal or irrigation projects in Andhra Pradesh or in the form of urban renewal missions, we fear that gross physical violence against women will only increase and escape the conventional institutional solutions available to us. As persons who believe in and participate in progressive politics, this is a matter of grave concern to us. We believe that this clandestine indulgence towards violence against women is intolerable. We therefore call upon fellow citizens to declare that there is no place in politics for this assault on the bodies and minds of women. This is a precondition for achieving any vision for a better world.

Anant Maringanti, Research Scholar, University of Minnesota

Viren Lobo, Development Professional, Udaipur

Rajesh Ramakrishnan, Researcher and Consultant, New Delhi

Pradeep Narayanan, Development Researcher, New Delhi

Vanita Suneja, Development Professional, Faridabad

Cynthia Stephen, Independent Researcher, Bangalore

OUTLOOK

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fname=jaideep&fodname=20070323&sid=1

Kolkata Korner

Don't Kolkata's 'intellectuals' know Communist history? Why are they so shocked at the massacre of villagers who didn't want to part with their land at Nandigram?

Jaideep Mazumdar

Damning Exposé
The cat will be out of the bag on Monday. The CBI, which has been asked to probe the Nandigram carnage by the Calcutta High Court, submitted its findings in a sealed cover to the Court on Thursday. The contents of the report, which by all accounts would be a damning one, will be made public on Monday. From various newspaper accounts, one gathers that the CBI has unearthed evidence that does more than disproving the police version that the protesting villagers at Nandigram had hurled bombs and fired at the cops, thus forcing the police to open fire at them. The CBI sleuths had more to find—they stumbled on spent and live cartridges of bullets that clearly hadn’t been fired by the police. Many of the victims, they noted, sustained injuries caused by sharp weapons such as choppers. And they arrested ten CPI(M) supporters and activities who were holed up in a brick kiln—they were members of the CPI(M) death squads and confessed as much. Arms, ammunition, police uniforms, helmets and diaries containing numbers of top CPI(M) functionaries were recovered from them. Their cellphone records showed they were in constant touch with senior CPI(M) leaders. Whether the CBI has been honest in detailing all its findings is a matter of speculation, but it can be safely assumed that not all of these pieces of evidence that severely indict Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s police and government can be brushed under the carpet. In which case, wouldn’t it only be logical to demand, once the contents of the CBI report are made public, to demand a trial of the indicted persons, including the CPI(M) leaders? And would Bhattacharjee have any moral right to continue to occupy the CM’s chair then?

Amazing Naiveté
Left-leaning intellectuals, academics, poets, artistes, writers and stage personalities are up in arms against the Bhattacharjee government and the CPI(M) over the Nandigram carnage. They are, like everyone else, horrified. All of them say they thought the CPI(M)-led Left Front government is supposed to be different, its supposed to be pro-poor, have a humane face and is supposed to be sympathetic to the masses. Oh, really? I can’t believe how naïve these people can be. All they have to do is look around and recall events around the world. Tiananmen Square, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, the Siberian concentration camps, despotic Communist rulers in erstwhile USSR’s satellite states in Eastern Europe, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Il….the list goes on. All Communist regimes are despotic in nature and have inflicted untold sufferings on their people. The atrocities of Saddam Hussein on Kurds and Shias or Slobodan Milosevic’s on Yugoslav’s Muslims would fade in comparison to what Stalin, Mao and others have done or what Kim, Fidel Castro and a few more are doing today. Don’t these ‘intellectuals’ read history? Why, then, are they so shocked at the massacre of villagers who didn’t want to part with their land at Nandigram? It is but only natural for communists to suppress opposition brutally.