The pus focus of a deep festering abscess

http://www.thestatesman.org/page.news.php?clid=4&theme=&usrsess=1&id=157812

by Sunanda Sanyal

What’s absolutely the limit to violence on their women that males in Bengal can bear with? What future do those living in Bengal intend for their children? These are two of the many questions that confront us today, following the state terrorism at Singur and Nandigram.
On 18 December, 2006, Tapasi Malik went out, before it got light, to defecate in a field close to her house at Singur. Girls her age have to because the state government has failed to cash in on the centrally-sponsored Nirmal Gram (Clean Village) Project which funds toilets in poor homes. Tapasi was seized by the hands and legs, gagged, and repeatedly raped. She was lifted to a fireplace and thrust into it – headfirst. Well, my description of her death by fire is imaginary but, you can see, the reality must have been as grim, if not grimmer. However, contemporary Bengal failed to sense the searing pain Tapasi had been through – till she died. We in Bengal failed to burst into the kind of rage that the CPI-M takes seriously. And Nandigram happened, as a result!
Dr Sarmistha Roy, who has worked with medical teams at Nandigram, says the women in particular had been shot at the genitalia. A cadre, reported Medha Patkar to the Governor, pressed a rod into a woman’s vagina. Her uterus ruptured. Another woman, Kabita Das (35), was pinned between two sticks, and gang raped. Her husband tried to rescue her, but forced to watch on instead, since the cadres had threatened to dash their six-month-old baby to the ground and stamp it underfoot. The Statesman reported (21 March) that Sahadeb Pramanick (30), a CPI-M cadre from Gangra, was caught on 20 March while sneaking into Sonachura. He admitted to having raped two women, including a 13-year-old, on 14 March. It is also widely reported that police had opened fire near a bridge on March 14, virtually helping the CPI-M cadres to shepherd 17 girls into a deserted house owned by Shankar Samanta, a CPI-M leader. The CBI officials later found bits and pieces of women’s undergarments there, stained with blood. “Villagers had heard women’s shrieks from that house, which the cadres guarded.”
Led by Ganamukti Parishad, this writer visited Tamluk Hospital where he met a farmer’s wife in her twenties. Seeing a man in his mid-seventies, she confided that she was gang raped in the presence of policemen, the cadres tore off her blouse, and bit off her nipples. One of the women she knew had a part of her cheek bitten off. I urged the camera crew of a Bengali TV news channel, shooting around, to record her experience. But she didn’t breathe a word of what she had unburdened to me. I later heard Dola Sen reporting, at the instance of Mamata Banerjee, to Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi that the number of women thus maimed ran into hundreds.
The whole truth, though, will never be out with the CPI-M government, headed by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, in place. And Biman Bose expects people to “forget about Nandigram very soon”. Our insensitivity to Tapasi’s death shows that he might well be right.
Reportedly again, when cadres and police together acting in tandem went on the rampage at Nandigram, a child was seen falling to a cadre’s bullet. A woman rushed to him. They beat her with truncheons. She fled. The cadres beheaded the child, dead or half dead, for the ease of transportation – or for the fun of it. Some they buried and covered with slabs of concrete. They disembowelled the rest, so that the corpses wouldn’t float, stuffed the severed heads and torsos into sacks, drove off in truckloads, and flung them into the canals. Those who ended up in the hospitals had bullets in their heads, stomachs, chests and so on, which proves that the cadres had shot to kill them. The Dainik Statesman has since published photographs of a cadre in police uniform thrashing a villager. A local shop, called Sunny Tailors, sewed the uniforms.
The whole operation was a blitzkrieg – masterminded by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Nirupam Sen – with Laksman Seth, Benoy Konar, Biman Bose and the rest of the party providing logistic support at various levels. Much as Buddhadeb owns up his “constitutional responsibility”, he pleads innocence. Kshiti Goswami, RSP leader, said on TV Buddha had two faces – one of them was a mask. Prasad Ranjan Ray, state home secretary, commented: “We had mobilised forces on the basis of Intelligence reports… of course in the full knowledge of the chief minister.” Unsurprisingly, the most preferred charge against Buddha is that he is a “habitual liar”, a “confirmed liar”.
The Dainik Statesman reports (10 March) that at a meeting of 14 political leaders and police, the District Magistrate of East Midnapore announced that “any resistance to the repair of the bridges and roads at Nandigram would be dealt with according to the law of the land”. On 13 March in another meeting held at the house of Sambhu Maiti (CPI-M), police and cadres together decided on the plan of action for the capture of Sonachura and Nandigram. They fabricated fake number plates for the cars in which to carry off dead bodies, the caps the cadres and their leaders would put on – down to the last detail.
Another report says the CBI found at the Jononi Brickfield, where the cadres had encamped, buntings, bulletins and leaflets of various CPI-M outfits, six police helmets, a Chinese revolver, 500 bullets, 14 country-made firearms, nine modern rifles and two binoculars.
Now given the size of the village, and the time (two to three hours) taken to complete the operation, the whole village, including children, must have witnessed the arson, rape and murder in action. What is to become of them – particularly the children? Small wonder, Bengal’s society today teems with arsonists, rapists and supari killers.
Dr Tapash Bhattacharjee, who frequently visits Nandigram with medical help, says living as they do under the depressing prospect of a perpetual threat of CPI-M attacks, the young men there demand “weapons rather than medicines”. The fear is not baseless, if you keep in mind Benoy Konar’s warning that only the first two of the “five-act play” are over.
Actually the CPI(M)-run state government is the pus focus of a deep social abscess that has festered over the past 30 years. Its brand of politics is an unremitting evil. It splits the entire society into us and them: those who take dictates of Alimuddin Street are us – the rest them. When the farmers of Nandigram, including their cadres, disobeyed the party, Benoy Konar threatened to knock hell out of them (life hell kore debo). Konar, of Sainbari notoriety, in which a young Sain was hacked to death before his mother, had earlier warned that, should Mahasveta Devi, Medha Patkar or Mamata Banerjee dare to visit Nandigram, the women of his party would show their bottoms (pachha). And he was as good as his word. He wouldn’t care if what he said had demeaned Indian womanhood, not to speak of that of his own party. So the villagers of Singur and Nandigram had to pay the price with arson, rape and murder. If the CPI-M has its way, the rest of India will have to in the not too distant future.

(The author is former member, West Bengal Education Commission)

Development, displacement and 'hawkers'

An edited version was published by The Statesman. You can read it here.
It is part of Samantak Das' column Jabberwocky.

Dear friends,

This is an article of mine first published at www.sacredmediacow.com (http://sacredmediacow.com/?p=606) which I am re-posting here at the request of Ushmi. I was initally hesitant about putting it up here as it doesn't relate directly to the land acquisition issue, but the reigning development-displacement paradigm is very evident in this issue as well, as well as the construction of a globalised future excluding various sections of society and the disavowal of their contribution and rights. Would welcome any comments/criticisms,

- Aniruddha Dutta



Space, Sanitization and the Press: The coverage of street vending in Kolkata


One of the most troublesome blotches on the spectre of the global, post-liberalisation metropolis in India is the ‘hawker problem’ – that is, the ‘illegal encroachment’ of hawkers (lower class vendors who informally set out and sell their wares on streets, pavements, rail coaches etc.) into public spaces, apparently causing everything from traffic chaos to tainted brand equity. Especially in my city Kolkata, this is a prominent field of quotidian media coverage where the lines between the citizen and non-citizen, civic order and disorder, and the legitimate and the illegitimate are being continually (re)defined. The local English print media has often targeted hawkers invoking a liberal-democratic discourse of citizenship: the rights of the ‘common man’ or the ‘pedestrian’ to public space, the ‘common man’ being a politically innocent, classless, neutral entity (“civic rights cannot forever remain captive to an illegality that has been allowed to prosper for the convenience of a few”, says an edit in The Telegraph on April 20, 2007). The free-market rhetoric condemning ‘free riding’ on public infrastructure is also used – “a facility created with the help of taxpayer’s money is freely handed over to petty traders even as serious business initiatives are inconvenienced”, argues another Telegraph article on May 15, 2007. The general hypocrisy and convenient elisions of this discourse are easily exposable. For example, such reports rarely target the proliferation of cars, accompanied by vehicular pollution, illegal parking, state support to car owners by building swanky car parks, etc., as indicative of any unfair tilt within public spaces. Nor do they concede how hawkers may be an integral, if problematic, part of the local microeconomics of consumption (in which many middle class readers of the media are also implicated) and larger networks of distribution, for a variety of essential and inessential goods and services.
Interestingly, the sane and rational discourse of civic rights and public space that condemns ‘encroachment’, while challengeable on its own terms, is often accompanied by an affective, even visceral appropriation of urban space, and a passionate re-construction of the ‘city’ in quasi-organic terms. In the two following sections of the article, I link these seemingly contrary aspects of the anti-hawker coverage, and explore how they might show up the pressure of a negative post-colonial image of Kolkata intensified in the aspiration to ‘global’ standards, as well as an urge to consolidate middle class agency and identity vis-à-vis city space. All of which, of course, result in the exclusion of sections such as hawkers both from the debating citizenry and the future cityscape, and throw up questions regarding the nature of liberal discourse in the Indian mainstream media.

Dis-ease and the Organic City

To summarise the issue at hand and provide a brief timeline - the national policy National Policy for Urban Street Vendors was ratified by the Government in 2004 (ref. ) and makes provisions for hawkers on the streets though subject to regulations. However, implementation has been slow, and the Calcutta High Court has come out with several directives and orders (e.g. in May 2006 and April 2007) directed at the municipal body or rail authorities (for rail hawkers). The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has pursued a variable stance on hawkers and has alternately threatened and appeased them, with the Chief Minister putting in his bit from time to time . The period since 2004 has also seen several PILs (public interest litigations), prominently one filed by the environmentalist Subhas Dutta , regarding the inconveniences caused by hawkers on cramped roads, while hawkers’ bodies like the Hawkers Sangram Committee have agitated against any drastic moves, like the mass eviction of 1996 (which was called ‘Operation Sunshine’). The local English-language press has been remarkably united in condemning the politics around the hawkers issue and in demanding civic betterment through regulation or even outright removal of hawkers, often exceeding the injunctions of the national policy. City newspapers that have been opposed on issues like land acquisition at Singur (like The Telegraph and The Statesman) have had very similar takes on hawkers. National newspapers like The Times of India and Hindustan Times have sometimes pursued similar agendas regarding cities like Delhi and Mumbai, but for the moment that shall be outside my purview.
First, let us note the condemnation of ‘vote-bank’ politics regarding hawkers, and how that translates into a condemnation of hawkers themselves. The Statesman, for instance, carries a report on March 14, 2006 titled “Buddha roots for hucksters, city blisters”, which decries a softening of the chief minister’s stance on the issue of hawker eviction, seeing the turnaround as prompted by the coming assembly elections: “Chief minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee insisted today at Writers’ Buildings… that hawkers and pedestrians could coexist on city roads. His declaration is particularly distressing for the citizens as it comes a decade after Operation Sunshine - a drive launched in 1996 to rid city pavements of hawkers.” But this political double standard is neatly coupled with the imputed criminality of hawkers (‘hucksters’ is of course evocative of words like fraudster and gangster), and in the rhetoric of the phrase ‘city blisters’ - through the metaphor of a bodily reaction - we see the all-too-smooth construction of a uniform, organic city and the separation of the (criminally endowed) hawkers from it. But who or what, indeed, is this ‘city’? The report tells us, “At a time when Kolkata is competing with other Indian metros to attract investment, the chief minister’s U-turn on the hawker policy have caused dismay among Kolkatans, particularly the business community, who say the city would give away the gains of Operation Sunshine… They urged the government to see to it that vendors didn’t have the run of pavements and street corners and that filth did not pile up on roads… IT industrialists also believe that hawking needs to be professionally handled. ‘As long as it is done that way, the investors won’t be offended,” Mr Kalyan Kar, director, Acclaris Solutions, said.’” This section of businessmen and IT officials, concerned with the city’s brand equity and its aspirational image (so that external investors may not take offence), has of course the least to do with the hawker economy. Their apparently benign demand for “professional handling” is belied by the unqualified support for the mass eviction during the State-backed ‘Operation Sunshine’, before the National Policy had been formulated. Other headlines around the same issue carry out a similar conflation of electoral opportunism with the petty criminality associated with hawkers: witness the verb ‘hawks’ in headlines like “Poll in sight, CM hawks soft line” (The Telegraph, March 13, 2006), or “CM hawks sops for hucksters” (The Statesman, April 24, 2006). Ironically, this sense of a supposed collusion between political corruption and hawkers elides the fact that political support is fickle and hawkers are often subject to State violence, from organised bribery to the arbitrary seizure of goods (something that has been documented, in detail, in the case of Delhi hawkers by the activist Madhu Kishwar) .
While judicial action is usually supported over political action, in doing so, some reports even over-reach the actual scope of the court orders or directives. A series of articles in The Telegraph demonstrates this advocacy of judicial action against hawkers, and again we observe simultaneous tropes by which hawkers are excluded from the debating citizenry and posited as external/hostile to the projected “city” itself. The report “Free roads or court trouble - Hawkers like cancer, says chief justice” (The Telegraph, May 20, 2006) highlights a court directive to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation “to submit reports within a month on what steps they have taken regarding hawker congestion and traffic chaos on city streets”. Though hostile, the court directive thus does not ask outright for eviction (as suggested by the direct threat “free roads or court trouble”) and, in fact, indicates several other factors that also contribute to blocked roads, like the absence of automatic traffic signals and rule-breaking by public buses, which are not emphasized at par in the article. Neither does the article provide any statistics or concrete evidence of the supposed hawker-induced accidents (any cases? which roads? which group of hawkers? etc.). Rather, what we see are organic metaphors of parasitic growth and corruption: “ ‘The hawker menace is growing like cancer. It is impossible for people to walk on the roads, forget about footpaths,’ observed the division bench”. A follow-up article, decrying the slackness of the municipal authorities in submitting the said report, misquotes the directive to transfer the ‘cancer’ metaphor from the “hawker menace” (the multiplying civic problems associated with hawking) to the hawkers themselves: “The court had expressed grave concern over the “cancerous growth” of hawkers on city footpaths” (“Take-it-easy twist to hawker trouble”, The Telegraph, June 16, 2006). Of course, this extreme metaphor draws from and can be seen as a culmination of more common affective clichés in reporting the hawkers’ issue. For example, important thoroughfares are commonly referred to as ‘arteries’: “Neither the city police nor the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) has taken any step to oust several thousand hawkers from eight main arteries of the city”, rues the report “Hawker ouster order gathers dust” (The Telegraph, October 31, 2005). The hawkers, of course, ‘choke’ these roads: “At least 1.5 lakh vendors now choke eight key roads in Calcutta” (“Elections near, so hawkers dear”, The Telegraph, July 27, 2005). This complex of images and metaphors makes considerations of space seem doubly urgent through the biological referent of life itself, and almost with a sleight of hand, locates hawkers as threatening extraneous agents having nothing to do with the micro-economic organisation of urban space. Similarly, the report “Hawking spaces” in Outlook speaks of “the city’s two-lakh-odd hawkers” as a “perennial scourge”, “afflicting” the city’s pavements, who need to be “disciplined” by court and State action: “its pavements will continue to be afflicted by that perennial scourge that forces pedestrians to risk their lives and limbs by traversing on the dangerous roads… Now, on the urging of the Calcutta High Court… the vendors would be disciplined… and pedestrians could then return to the streets” (Outlook, June 16, 2006). Thus, besides the images of disease and bodily overburdening, the group of hawkers is perceived as an indistinct, mob-like entity, shown up in the inconsistency and vagueness about their numbers: they may be “several thousand” or “at least 1.5 lakh” (one hundred and fifty thousand) or “two-lakh-odd” (two hundred thousand or so), and they are, of course, swelling and in need of authoritarian control. Another article in The Telegraph (May 13, 2006) reports a specific alleged incident where a court survey team encounters hostility from a group of hawkers: “a high court-appointed committee, out on the streets again on Tuesday to study traffic management… had to call it a day after they were mobbed by a group of hawkers on Brabourne Road.” The headline of the article, “Hawkers defiant on chaos - Court survey team, three men short, mobbed and sent back” escalates this alleged incident, involving a few hawkers, into a general chaotic state blamed on all hawkers, and it is not surprising that given this larger construction, no other details of the specific mobbing incident are thought to be necessary in the article.
But the media stance against hawking is not prompted purely by considerations of a ‘civic order’, which may be, naively or deviously, seen as in the interest of all ‘citizens’. It is, of course, an image-cleansing exercise toward a globalised metropolitan model. The association of hawkers per se with the chaos, squalor and filth commonly attributed to Kolkata, and the projection of an aspirational image that would exclude these, become clear in another article in Outlook that opposes the proposed reservation of 2% of the land area for hawkers in a developing exurb of Kolkata: a proposal to reign in the hawkers’ economic contributions, and avoid those very civic problems that are often derided in the media. But if such a reservation were to be carried out, the article tells us, “visions of a gleaming, international-class city [sic]… sans the chaos that this city is mired in” would be “dashed by those who feel occupying any available piece of land is their birthright” (“Not Again” in ‘Kolkata Korner’, Outlook, June 23, 2006). The pressure of the historical image of Kolkata (filthy, overpopulated, crowded) lends a certain urgency to shifting its burden, and forces us to reflect critically on the discourse of temporal progress thus constructed. For instance, note the light/darkness binary in the titles of two interconnected reports on the mayor’s shifting stance on hawkers. “So long sunshine, hello hawkers” (The Telegraph, Feb 23, 2006) derides the mayor’s circumstantial support for hawkers with an allusion to the decade-old eviction drive, and its follow-up, “Sunshine – The rising: Buddha frown prompts mayor U-turn on Hawker comeback” (TT, Feb 25) extols the mayor’s turnaround, upon pressure from the chief minister, just as dramatically. A letter to the editor, approving the anti-hawker stance of the first article and decrying the proposed extension of municipal support to hawking, is published on 24th February with the editorially added caption “Road back to hell” (TT, February 24, 2006).
Another related area where considerations of image prompt the exclusion of hawkers is ‘heritage’. Attempts of the State towards the protection and restoration of ‘heritage’ areas in Kolkata, dotted with relics of the British Raj, often includes the removal and ‘relocation’ of hawkers, supported by the media. The approval is evident in reports like “Hawkers shut out of BBD Bag”, (The Statesman, May 31, 2006) and “Heritage look for BBD Bag” (The Statesman, June 19, 2006), where we read that the “State government, in its endeavour to lure foreign and domestic investment, has decided to render the area a heritage look. The main stumbling block for the officials seems to be the relocating of hawkers from this area. A committee comprising police officers and KMC officials have been formed to find out an amicable way of evicting them.” This “amicable way” of eviction finds more sinister expression in the related headline “Heritage axe for hawkers” (TT, May 13, 2006), where the article tells us, “The crux of the matter, as the mayor put it after the meeting: if Dalhousie is to be declared a heritage zone, the hawkers must be displaced.” Mention must be made here of the fact that the Dalousie area is not only a heritage zone that could be decked up for investors, but the main office area of the city with thousands of office-goers and labouring class people who are regularly seen lining up beside hawkers’ stalls for their cheap workaday lunches.

‘Our Space – Their Mess’

The media coverage of street vending demands attention not only due to the constructions of civic space and of a projected cityscape, but also for the constitution of citizenship and class identity vis-a-vis city space. Articles with a pronounced activist edge in the TOI or the HT, as well as the column of letters to the editor in The Telegraph, seem to be part of a process of opinion-creation and action on civic issues. But as I argue, such civic activism, or simulation of public debate on civic problems, often becomes a process in which the ‘public’ itself is constituted. Thereupon, class identity is sometimes asserted through an appropriation of city space.
A Times of India article, for example, lauds citizenship activism and the “healthy one-on-one” between residents and councillors of a particular locality in Mumbai, clubbing hawkers with the “de-silting of nallahs, increasing dog menace and other civic matters” and thus completely externalising them. “Around 150 people gathered to deliberate on issues… and thrashed out problems ranging from proliferation of hawkers, safeguarding the beach, cleaning and de-silting of nallahs, the increasing dog menace and other civic matters. Interestingly, the interactive meet saw a healthy one-on-one between the councillors and the citizens, with cooperation between the two being reiterated at every point” (“A collaboration of competence”, Mumbai Plus, April 23, 2007). Again, a series of articles in the Hindustan Times in May, 2007 urge police action to make a market area safe for citizens, and laud the resultant action: “Hawkers selling coolers in front of the police station in Central Market were ultimately thrown out on Saturday… similarly ram laddoo vendors near the barricades installed for the safety of commuters were also displaced… But, the problem still persists… action has been taken only on those unaouthorised occupiers mentioned in our story” (“Cops act finally”, HT Live Impact, May 10, 2007). Again, the possible contribution of the hawkers to the marketplace, as well as any communication with them regarding the real problems at hand, are ruled out in favour of a benevolent relation between the activist media and the citizen addressee.
On another front, debates on civic issues are sometimes set up and conducted in media spaces. Columns like letters to the editor are edited and provided with a general caption that is supposed to ‘reflect’ the dominant opinion, but when readership is limited by class factors, this can be the deliberate construction of a class-restricted consensus. In this context, a column of letters specifically on the hawker issue, carried weekly by The Telegraph from April 12 to May 10, 2006, lends itself to examination. The column is subtitled ‘We ask, You answer’. In each instalment, this apparent delegation of authority to the ‘public’ is prefaced by the question “Do you support the mayor’s call to bring hawkers back to the pavements?” Instead of framing it as a neutral question (viz. should the mayor’s call be supported? etc.), the question pits the ‘you’ of the ‘public’ against the hawkers. Some of the published responses neatly carry over the ‘you’ to an ‘us’: “The hawkers cheat us in terms of price, quality and weight. They create traffic congestion, forcing people to walk along carriageways” (letter published on April 12), or “we should not forget that the ruling parties had once evicted hawkers… They thrive because of corrupt cops and leaders” (letter published on May 3). However, one notes that many letters are subtler in argument, and may combine opposition with demand for alternate arrangements for hawkers: “footpaths are meant for the safety of pedestrians… the mayor could have constructed markets to house them” (letter published on April 12), or “if the hawkers are allowed to set up businesses elsewhere, then not only will the state coffers be enriched, but the rights of the citizens will not be violated” (letter published on April 12). However, in most instalments, the headline for the column highlights only the general opposition and ignores issues like rehabilitation: “Freedom of movement for sale” (April 12), “Ballot clue to hawker call”, (May 10), “Lip service to poll needs”, (April 19), “Ploy to grab more votes” (April 26).
Thus, the strident anti-hawker stand here requires a homogenisation even within the class context: an editorial management that smoothens out variations in readers’ opinions. There is a parallel between the editorial regulation of internal space in this case with the (verbal/visual) construction of external, city space, where pejorative metaphors and images may be used to suppress any sense of a middle-class/hawker relation: the caption for a photo in The Telegraph neatly expresses the binary as “Our Space, Their Mess” (The Telegraph, April 12, 2006). A careful look at the photograph, however, reveals several middle-class buyers browsing in the background. Thus, a critical examination reveals the mechanisms of construction of both the “our” and the “space”.

Whither conclusion?

The combination of affect and rationalism in the coverage of street vending seems, to me, to reveal the anxious exclusions in the liberal-democratic discourse of civic rights and public space that elides, for example, the often-symbiotic relation between the ‘citizen’ and hawkers and the complex organisation of city spaces that does not permit any simple externalisation of any one section. In my brief and localised study, I have attempted to show how the coverage relates to the construction of middle class agency within a projected globalised city which finds expression in a blanket appropriation of space. From here, the interesting question would be to imagine what form of class agency and public discourse could result from a more wholesome engagement with groups like the hawkers, who seem to pose such an indissoluble problem towards elite conceptions of a uniform and ordered cityscape. However, in the scope of this piece, that has to be left to conjecture and hope.

ENDNOTES
1 See, for example, “Sunshine – The rising: Buddha frown prompts mayor U-turn on Hawker comeback” (The Telegraph, February 25, 2006) and “Buddha roots for hucksters, city blisters” (The Statesman, March 14, 2006).
2 This PIL was filed in June, 2003 and blamed several other factors besides hawkers for traffic problems, but press reports have in general emphasised the hawker issue when discussing the PIL (e.g. “Glare on hawkers and car chaos”, The Telegraph, March 13, 2007).
3 “Bribes, beating and blackmail”, accessed on May 17, 2007

Aggressive industrialisation drive by Buddhadev

Lakshman Seth justifying the model of industrialisation being undertaken by the CPI(M)

The CPI(M) trying to conceal facts about the Nandigram massacre

Sukumari Bhattacharya's article in the Dainik Statesman

Police dissatisfied with their conditions in Singur

Private retail chains

Sukumar Mitra's report on Rajarhat

see also : http://development-dialogues.blogspot.com/search/label/Haldia

Victims of the Nandigram massacre being denied medical treatment

Aparna Sen's and Amlan Dutta's articles in the Dainik Statesman

Aparna Sen's article



Amlan Dutta's article

Haldia - 3

see also : http://development-dialogues.blogspot.com/search/label/Haldia

Involvement of CPM cadres in the Nandigram massacre

Also see http://development-dialogues.blogspot.com/2007/04/naru-maiti-and-possibility-of-cpim.html

Peace gets a chance, courtesy CPM

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2007-05-15&usrsess=1729188831841&clid=1&id=183691

Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, May 14: Peace has finally got a chance. Under pressure from the Trinamul and its own allies, the CPI-M today finally agreed to hold a state-level all-party meeting on Nandigram in the city.
The decision was taken at a crucial Left Front meeting this morning. A senior Front leader said that Mr Biman Bose, who had been insisting talks should be held in East Midnapore, changed his stance. After the meeting, Mr Bose told reporters that the venue for the talks and other technicalities would be jointly decided by him and Forward Bloc state secretary Mr Ashok Ghosh. “The two of us have been entrusted to work out the details. Mr Ghosh will talk to the Opposition,” Mr Bose said.
It was, however, apparent that as CPI-M state secretary Mr Bose still preferred to hold district-level talks in East Midnapore. “That was the decision we took at the last Left Front meeting. It would have been better since the problem lies in the district,” he said. The Front chairman lost his cool when he was asked whether the CPI-M led government would accept Miss Mamata Banerjee’s demand and offer a public apology for the 14 March killings. “The media is at liberty to pass any comment but I won’t say a word.” Miss Banerjee, who is in Delhi now, said she was happy that peace talks were going to take place at the state level.
Mr Jyoti Basu, who had initially advised his party to let the Front allies initiate the peace process, could not attend the meeting because of his failing health.
Meanwhile, Mr Buddh-adeb Bhattacharjee today made one more attempt to rebuild bridges with Left intellectuals who resigned from the state Natya Akademi in protest against police brutalities at Nandigram on 14 March.
The chief minister met Manoj Mitra, Bibhas Chakraborty, Kaushik Sen and others ostensibly to persuade them to withdraw their resignations, but the over two-hour-long meeting ended inconclusively. The meeting was convened by Mr Kumar Roy, chairman, Natya Akademi.

see also : http://development-dialogues.blogspot.com/2007/05/mamata-pleas-on-agenda.html

Readers' Responses (The Statesman)

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2007-05-15&usrsess=1729188831841&clid=13&id=184207

THE ISSUE:
Even though the party has been blaming the Opposition for the continuing violence at Nandigram, the state home department report has directly held CPI-M cadres responsible in at least three cases. End of party propaganda?

The status report of the state home department, submitted to Calcutta High Court, has deflated the propaganda balloon of the CPI-M that the Opposition parties are responsible for the continuing violence in Nandigram.
The indictment of the CPI-M by its own government and specially at a time when its own chief minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, is holding the home (police) portfolio, has raised many eye-brows not only at Alimuddin Street or its headquarters in New Delhi, but even among the main constituents of the ruling Left Front, if not the Opposition parties and groups as well.
The home department has tried to demonstrate a “minimum honesty” by mentioning only three cases, although it knows full well that it was the CPI-M armed cadres who had resorted to violence in police uniform and carried out gang rapes to teach the peasants a lesson.
Even now the CPI-M is playing the same old record that the Trinamul, BJP, Congress and Naxalites are behind the continuing violence at Nandigram.
JUGNAUTH PUNDIT,
7 May, Kolkata.

Unlikely to end
It appears that the Nandigram chapter is not likely to be closed in the near future and it will remain an eventful subject in the annals of CPI-M and Trinamul politics. All along CPI-M mandarins have been blaming the opposition for the continuing violence at Nandigram.
The state’s home department has held CPI-M cadres responsible for stocking arms and ammunition as well as for the reprisals being committed by them after the massacre on 14 March. The report has brought discomfiture to the LF partners.
With this report in her favour, Miss Mamata Banerjee should consider attending the all-party meeting convened by the chief minister and try to nail the CPI-M to her advantage.
CVS MURTY,
7 May, Kolkata.

Demigods
Three decades in power have made the CPI-M cadres assume the status of demigods to whom the people of the state should pay obeisance to buy peace. The CPI-M cadres have come to believe that they are a law unto themselves with their political bosses giving clandestine protection. Goons, law-breakers, extortionist have a field-day with the blessings of cadres who share the spoils of booty. All this may sound incredible to the uninitiated, but the facts cannot be kept under wraps for long.
The report of the state home department blaming CPI-M cadres for violence at Nandigram has let the cat out of the bag. The report has made explicit what has all along been implicit. Presumably, CPI-M bosses in government had reached the end of their tether to rein in the cadres and thought it best to come clean and spill the beans even if it meant acute embarrassment.
PS PONNUSWAMI,
7 May, Kolkata.

Fresh propaganda
Despite the Marxist leaders blaming the opposition for the continuing violence at Nandigram, the status report has held CPI-M cadres responsible in at least three cases.
But a well-organised and cadre-based party like the CPI-M refuses to give up. Its well-oiled propaganda unit has already mounted a fresh offensive through meetings and rallies to tone up the supporters who may have been dispirited to retrieve lost ground; while singing their own glory and achievements they cannot but blame and belittle the opposition.
ARUN KUMAR BHADURI,
8 May, Kolkata.


see also : http://development-dialogues.blogspot.com/2007/04/letters-to-editor-in-dainik-statesman.html

Nandigram recuperates

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2007-05-16&usrsess=1729188831841&clid=23&id=183879

Shyam Sundar Roy
MIDNAPORE, May 15: After four months of turmoil, development activities have resumed in Nandigram with the Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee giving their support to the district administration, Mr Ashok Sarkar, Nandigram BDO, said.
Repair work of a three-kilometre road from Tekha to Brindabanchowk in Nandigram I block has been taken up by the administration.A canal flowing through Kendemari and Kalicharanpur gram panchayats will be reclaimed. The decision to take up these schemes was taken at a meeting of gram pradhans and Opposition leaders in the block office on 11 May, following a Calcutta High Court directive. A Division Bench of the Chief Justice Mr SS Nijjar and Mr Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghosh passed an order on 3 May, directing the state government to ensure fundamental rights guaranteed under Section 21 of the Constitution to the people of Nandigram.
It also directed the state government to ensure uninterrupted ferry services between Nandigram and Haldia, and movement of people of Nandigram and adjoining areas to markets, schools and colleges.
Nandigram became tense after the police firing on 3 January on the Bhutamore procession taken out to protest against acquisition of farm land for the proposed chemical hub. Agitators ten dug up roads in vast areas across five gram panchayat areas of the block, virtually cutting off Nandigram from the rest of the country for four months.
The situation worsened following the police-CPM combine’s mayhem on 14 March to establish “rule of law”, when 14 people, including six women, fell to their bullets.
Women were raped and more than 100 people injured.

Displaced villagers relive camp trauma

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2007-05-16&usrsess=1729188831841&clid=23&id=183881


Statesman News Service
HALDIA, May 15: Peace talks hope to end months of turmoil in Nandigram. But the question of resettlement of displaced villagers of the conflicting sides has not been answered.
The CPI-M has claimed that more than 1,000 supporters from troubled areas of Nandigram have been living in the camps on the Khejuri side, while Trinamul Congress said at least 50 families fled from Khejuri to the Nandigram side, fearing assault from CPI-M goons.
After the anti-land agitation flared up in Nandigram, many CPI-M supporters deserted their homes to seek shelter in Khejuri’s CPI-M camps.
Since then, the CPI-M has been complaining of oppression on their supporters by Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee members. But BUPC leaders denied the allegations of the ruling party and said the movement in Nandigram has been a spontaneous people’s movement.
“We assure safe return of CPI-M supporters to their villages, but they must not spread tension in the area again,” BUPC leaders said.
Recently, 45 CPI-M supporters who live in the Sherkhanchak camp of Khejuri, returned to their villages in Nandigram. Most of them do not want to recall the bitter experience of the camps.
Mr Anil Hazra, (name changed on request), a villager of Brindabanchak, said: “We had to join the rallies and patrol the border areas on the Khejuri side along the Talpati canal everyday. We were given one meal of rice and dal each day, while there was a separate arrangement for leaders and armed men.”
Another CPI-M camp inmate of Khejuri said: “I was forced to stay back in the camp because the leaders threatened us. Somehow, I managed to send my wife and children to a relative’s house as I did not find the camp safe enough for them.”
A senior Trinamul Congress leader of the district said: “We have been told that many women were sexually harassed by CPI-M activists in the camps and their supporters urged us to do something to end the tyranny.”
He added: “There has been CPI-M’s jungle rule in Khejuri for the last decade. Once their terror in Khejuri stops, peace will follow in Nandigram.”

CPM spins a tale for Governor

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2007-05-16&usrsess=1729188831841&clid=6&id=183923


Uday Basu
KOLKATA, May 15: Even when the CPI-M’s state leadership is desperately trying to restore peace at Nandigram and treat the whole episode as a closed chapter, its district unit today tried to present before the Governor and the chief minister a distorted picture about the situation prevailing there.
A Left Front delegation from East Midnapore, which met Governor Mr Gopal Krishna Gandhi, reprotedly told him the number of villagers still unable to return home was around 2,000. The figure crossed 3,000 when the same delegation met the chief minister and then it came down to around 800 when it briefed the media at Writers’ Buildings.
LF insiders told The Statesman the CPI-M’s district leadership had yesterday wanted to put the number of villagers evicted from their homes at 5,000 in the memorandum to be submitted to the governor.
However, at the insistence of the LF junior partners the figure was changed to around 2,000. The discrepancy was mentioned during the meeting with the chief minister and it was learnt Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee wasn’t pleased with the matter. Similarly, the CPI-M’s district unit put the number of schools closed at Nandigram since the trouble erupted at “over 70 per cent”. But the truth, according to LF insiders, is out of 122 schools only 11 still remain closed. Another distortion was about mid-day meal. Contrary to the figures provided by the CPI-M mid-day meal can’t be given at only two schools and that too because the panchayant pradhans there are away.

Intellectuals cool to Buddha overtures

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2007-05-16&usrsess=1729188831841&clid=6&id=183920


Kolkata, May 15: The chief minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee ’s attempts to rebuild bridges with the antagonised section of the Left intellectuals came to a nought when members of Natya Akademi who had resigned following the carnage at Nandigram refused to withdraw their resignations today.
“The issue over which we had tendered our resignation from Natya Akademi is yet to be resolved. Hence, we have decided against withdrawing our resignation for the time being,” said Mr Chandan Sen after a meeting with other members of the Akademi at Sujata Sadan. In a letter addressed to the chairman, Mr Kumar Ray, the theatre personalities and members of Natya Akademi have communicated their decision. n SNS

A seed farm’s success story

http://www.thestatesman.org/page.arcview.php?date=2007-05-17&usrsess=1&clid=23&id=183972


Statesman News Service
MEMARI, May 16: An NGO and an officer with the district seed farm have succeeded in their experiment to prevent the gradual decrease in fertility of agricultural fields in Burdwan villages. It will reduce to a large extent the extensive use of chemical fertilizer and multiply average productivity.
For long, the district agricultural authority has been expressing concern over the drastic decrease in fertility of the farmlands due to the widespread use of chemical fertilizer.
The ADO, Burdwan, Mr Manas Mukherjee, said: “We have been indulging in use of manure and organic fertilizer, instead of chemical fertilizer, for some time to enrich the fields and improve yields.”
The Sankalpa People’s Development Society, an NGO operating in the villages of Memari block in the eastern part of Burdwan, undertook a comprehensive development programme, leading to a positive change in the lifestyle and professional design of the farmer families in such villages as Kathalia, Sridharpur, Satgachia, and Balia.
The hazardous components in chemical fertilizer such as nitrogen, potassium and phosphate are said to be harming the fields.
The joint effort of the NGO and officials of the district agricultural farmhouse has reduced nitrogen and phosphate up to 30 per cent and 25 per cent, respectively, while cultivating 77 bigha of land scattered in these villages.
Mr Mukherjee said: “Organic fertilizer and manure utilise bacteria synthesis. The cultivation cost has reduced by Rs 365 a bigha, with the removal of chemical fertilizer and reduction in pesticide use.” The yield, according to farmers Jatindramohan Sil of Satgachia and Nausar Ali of Sridharpur, “has increased by about seven to eight times a bigha with the new cultivation method.”
The seed quality has improved and so has its resistance power to fight diseases. The experiments were done on Boro paddy seeds of IR-64 and Ratna brand.
The yield per bigha used to be 880 kg on an average. It is now 1,160 kg per bigha.

Left Front govt’s annus horribilis

Pranesh Sarkar
http://www.thestatesman.org/page.arcview.php?date=2007-05-19&usrsess=1&clid=6&id=184103

KOLKATA, May 18: “United we stand, divided we fall” was the mantra behind the Left Front’s success in emerging as the ruling front in the state seven consecutive times. But on the first anniversary of the seventh Left Front government, there’s a twist in the tale.
Differences between chief minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and some of his Cabinet colleagues, particularly from the smaller Left parties, are now clearly visible. This conflict within the government has become more evident after various ministers criticised the government’s stand on several issues over the past year.
The growing chasm between Mr Bhattacharjee and his colleagues first came to light when Mr Kshiti Goswami, PWD minister, and Mr Nandagopal Bhattacharya, water resources minister, raised their voices against police atrocities on protesting villagers in Singur. Post-Singur, differences became more visible over acquisition of land for setting up industries. Apart from the PWD and water resources ministers, Mr Bhattacharjee’s land and land reforms minister, Mr Abdur Razzak Molla, also expressed his dissatisfaction over forcible acquisition of farmland. And he did so repeatedly.
When 14 residents fell to police bullets in Nandigram while protesting against land acquisition, the chinks in the Cabinet became wider. After the Nandigram episode, a number of ministers criticised the state government’s policy openly. Differences over other policy ~ and personality ~ issues too were evident. Veteran Forward Bloc leader and agriculture minister Mr Naren Dey offered his resignation after the chief minister criticised his department’s “failures” at a public meeting. The elections to the Cricket Association of Bengal proved yet another divisive issue for an allegedly cohesive Cabinet. Though Mr Bhattacharjee did not, this time around, publicly support Kolkata Police Commissioner Mr Prasun Mukherjee’s candidature for CAB president, a senior minister, alleged that the CM’s office was actively garnering votes for Mr Mukherjee. The drama ended only when the rebel-without-a-pause, Mr Subhas Chakraborty, was persuaded not to push it by filing his own nomination for the CAB president’s post.
Today, on the first anniversary of the seventh Left Front government, some ministers admitted to The Statesman that they did sometimes have ideas different from those of the government. Mr Kshiti Goswami termed it a manifestation of “ideological differences”. Other ministers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that whenever the Buddha administration took “irrational steps” they had to protest... for the “benefit” of the Left Front. A year of woes it certainly was.

Mamata pleas on agenda

http://www.thestatesman.org/page.arcview.php?date=2007-05-20&usrsess=1&clid=6&id=184164

Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, May 19: Miss Mamata Banerjee was not stretching her imagination this afternoon when she described the outcome of her meeting with Mr Ashok Ghosh as “the turning point in West Bengal politics.”
For, in those 30-odd minutes she had convinced the Forward Bloc state secretary that four of her main demands will be taken up at the all-party talks on Nandigram. One, introspection of the “mass killings” of 14 March. Two, to identify the culprits and affix punishment for them. Three, to pull up the state CID for not filing chargesheet against the CP-M members who were arrested by a CBI team from a brick kiln in Nandigram after the killings. And four, that the CBI should continue its investigation.
The all-party meeting, the tea leaders decided today, will be held at Mahajati Sadan on 24 May. Before that Mr Ghosh will request the Left Front chairman Mr Biman Bose to convene a meeting of the Left allies to endorse the date and agenda - a holds barred discussion on all aspects of Nandigram.
Mr Bose was in Purulia when, for the first time in Bengal’s history, the top leader of a right wing party walked into the head quarters of a Left party to discuss an incident in which the most powerful ruling party stands on the dock. It was also the first time that arch rivals in Bengal’s politics jointly held a press conference where Mr Ghosh described her as “our leader” and Miss Banerjee admitted that “no one is untouchable in politics”. It could not be ascertained till this evening whether the CPI-M leadership will agree to discuss the sensitive issues raised by Miss Banerjee, given that leaders like Mr Benoy Konar have already turned them down. However, Mr Ghosh was confident that he could convince the CPI-M. “Leave all that to me”, he said.
“I will convene the all-party meeting and we hope all parties will come and freely discuss all aspects of the Nandigram issue. We will try to reach a consensus. The chief minister has already promised me that our decisions will be carried out by the government”, Mr Ghosh said. He too described today’s development as historic. “Its not just Bengal, the whole country is watching us. We have to restore peace in the troubled area as soon as possible.”
Would Mr Biman Bose be there? “I will request the top leaders of all parties to be present. Else, the talks will be useless,” Mr Ghosh replied.

Buddha condemns rivals

http://www.thestatesman.org/page.arcview.php?date=2007-05-21&usrsess=1&clid=6&id=184260

Statesman News Service
NAGADI (Nadia), May 20: Chief minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today strongly condemned the rivals who have fought pitched battle with police at the site of the upcoming Tata Motors small car unit in Singur.
Having learnt the hard way, Mr Bhattacharjee said: “A handful of people are creating trouble against the interests of the majority of the people in the state.”
Expressing surprise over the fresh violence at Singur erupted today, he said: “After the successful achievement in agriculture, when we are trying to woo industrialists in our state for the overall development of our society, a few number of people are bent on opposing us. Even, today a group of 200 people pelted stones at the police in Singur when over 2000 people were working there. Police have taken action and they fled away. Once the Tata’s car project will complete, it will offer employment to 4000 people and it will enrich the economy of the area. Then, why they are pelting stones at the police? Are we making any wrong step on the question of development of the state?,” said Mr Bhattacharjee.
Announcing that the people whose land had been taken away by the Tata Motors small car project site would be given job at the plant, the CM told the opposition “explain to me why are you against it. Won’t an automobile hub change the economy of the area and change the lives of local people.”
Mr Bhattacharjee was addressing a mass rally at Nagadi, a Muslim dominated area in Nakashipara block this afternoon.
“Apart from giving due stress on agriculture, the Left Front government was determined to pursue the policy of industrialisation. We have to take our state to the top through development of agriculture, industry and agri-science weathering opposition and conflict. While agri-related development is the prerequisite for primary development of an area, industrial development is needed for its all round growth. At Singur, 96 per cent people are in favour of industrialization but as majority of people at Nandigram are opposing the industrialization, we have stepped back from our proposed chemical hub there. But, we cannot let the opportunity go away. We need to have a chemical hub in the state,” he said.
There will be discussion on the issue and “we will put across our views,” Mr Bhattacharjee said apparently hinting at the proposed all party meeting later this week.
While speaking at the rally, Mr Bhattachajee also said: “A total investment of Rs 28000 crore from various industrialists was came to us last year but within five months of this year, I have received Rs 74000 crore investment proposals.”
Earlier, Mr Bhattacharjee attended a seminar and inaugurated a building in Krishnagar this morning.

Fresh violence in Singur

http://www.thestatesman.org/page.arcview.php?date=2007-05-21&usrsess=1&clid=1&id=184227 SINGUR/NAKASHIPARA, May 20: Fresh trouble erupted at Singur today when farmers tried to demolish the boundary wall of the proposed Tata small car factory in a bid to reoccupy their land taken away for the project and police used lathis, burst tear gas shells and fired rubber bullets to quell the mob. At least 60 villagers, including six women, and five policemen and the sub-divisional police officer were injured in the clash that ensued. Two of the injured villagers were admitted to Singur block hospital. Three persons were arrested. Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee expressed surprise when he was informed of the trouble at Singur and told a rally at Nakashipara in Nadia that “only a handful of people are creating trouble against the interests of a majority of people in the state”. “When we are trying to woo industrialists for the state’s development after our success in agriculture, a small number of people are bent on opposing us. Even, today a group of 200 people threw stones at the police at Singur when over 2,000 people are working there. Police have taken action and they fled away”. Trouble began soon after farmers from Bajemelia mouza gathered near a local club to attend a rally organised by Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKJRC). The villagers became agitated when the SKJRC leaders exhorted them to demolish the boundary wall and reoccupy their land which, according to them, the state government had “grabbed at gun-point”. The farmers marched towards the project site and tried to break the police cordon. They also unsuccessfully tried to break the wall with shovels and pick-axes. Police appealed to the farmers not to damage the walls, but to no effect. There was a scuffle following which agitating farmers threw stones at the cops and the police responded by using lathis and bursting tear gas shells. Rubber bullets were also fired. A senior police officer claimed that six policemen, including Chandernagore SDPO, Mr Kalyan Mukherjee, were injured in the clash which continued for about an hour. The farmers retreated about an hour after the trouble had begun. The SDPO later said: “About 350 villagers, including scores of women, were mobilised outside the boundary wall, whereas the SKJRC positioned its other activists at neighbouring villages.” However, the CPI-M leaders repeated their old charge that “outsiders” had taken part in the agitation and there were about 100 people who resorted to violence. This contradicted the SDPO’s estimate of the strength of the mob. “We learnt from local sources that it was the handiwork of about 100 outsiders, while only a few local residents joined them,” said Mr Ranjit Mondal, a CPI-M Singur zonal committee member and also president of the Left Front-controlled Singur Panchayat Samiti. On the other hand, Mr Becharam Manna, convener, SKJRC, claimed that at least 60 farmers were injured in today’s police action. “Even aged farmers were beaten up mercilessly and police didn’t spare women and children who were unarmed,” Mr Manna alleged. He claimed 13-year-old Somnath Koley and Haripada Das (72), both residents of Bajemelia Mouza, were rushed to Singur block hospital after being beaten up by police while 21-year-old Amita Bag was taken to a private clinic.

‘Human rights violated in Nandigram’

http://www.thestatesman.org/page.news.php?clid=6&theme=&usrsess=1&id=157091

Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, May 23 : There has been gross violation of human rights when a posse of armed policemen and CPI-M activists fired on retreating villagers at Nandigram, the Amnesty International (AI), concluded today.
It criticised the state government for creating an atmosphere of terror in the state and violation of human rights. At a meet organised on the occasion of release of its annual report it was observed that the government has suppressed facts regarding the recent mayhem in Nandigram and demanded that the findings of investigation into the massacre be made public.
“The way the government used the police to kill innocent people with the help of CPI-M activists and evoked fear among people is unprecedented,” said former justice of Calcutta High Court, Mr DK Basu while speaking on the occasion. Citing extracts from the periodic reports released by the human rights organisation in January and march this year, the former justice said, “Normal life has been disrupted in the region and people have been robbed of their dignity. basic rights of human beings are not functional here.”
The organisation urged the government to conduct a fair enquiry into the incident and make the findings public. It also requested the government to have a detailed consultation with locals before initiating any development process affecting their normal life.
Mr Soumya Bhoumik, human rights education coordinator of AI in Kolkata said that the world had a mixed experience this year regarding human rights. “While there were instances where fear is driving divisions into the society there has been some improvements on issues like abolition of death penalties,” he said.


see also : http://development-dialogues.blogspot.com/search/label/Amnesty%20International

Rains not quite good for Tata

http://www.thestatesman.org/page.news.php?clid=6&theme=&usrsess=1&id=157089

Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, May 23: While elsewhere in the state the rains have proved a blessing from the heat in Singur they have been a curse.
The three recent attacks by farmers on the boundary wall of the Tata project site were made during heavy downpours when policemen were running for cover and were therefore caught unaware.
Inspector general of police (Law and Order) Mr Raj Kanojia told The Statesman: “There is a direct relationship between the attacks and the rains in the Singur project site.”
The last attack took place on the evening of 21 May while it was raining. The attack on the afternoon of 8 May also happened during a heavy downpour, as did the first attack in the week before that.
However, Mr Kanojia said steps have been taken to remedy this.
“Several camps have been posted along the boundary walls recently to provide shelters to the policemen during the rains. Movement of people around the project site can be monitored from the camps during rain.”
In addition a police vehicle has been stationed near a club in Bajemelia village, which is where the attacks were triggered. Police will take shelter in the vehicle when it rains and will monitor the movement of the people, Mr Kanojia said.
Mr Priyabrata Baxi, officer-in-charge at Singur police station, said: “We have set up 32 makeshift camps along the 15 kilometre boundary wall for the policemen to take shelter during the rains.
Because they are close to the boundary walls officers will be able to keep a constant watch. More camps will be set up if needed.”
The police have also learnt that farmers spearheading the movement in Singur are preparing for a fresh attack and are waiting for more rain to hit the area.
“We have so far been able to thwart their attempts. We don’t want rain to avert fresh trouble,” Mr Baxi said.
The senior police officers have instructed junior colleagues not to go far from the boundary walls during rain. “Officers have been asked to stay careful and alert when rains begin,” Mr Baxi said.

Lies, Lies and still more Lies

Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji5w9IeMBFDX7q5wxzmWZRfmRVNBidii3AspDbpy4BFs0wtOmmwbaqzxh2iahBzdl4FGYkZ0JVCsUZ-TgAFiF3bHRxEtZCowf9VcUzgsgNQVidMnn2XP9FUnVR3zS98UMxDfz0b4fGvJA/s1600-h/Untitled-1+copy.jpg

The debate on Nandigram at Kafila - usefully covers almost all the perspectives on what happened there (especially the comments)

Dear all,

This gives a range of the views expressed on the events at Nandigram, the arguments and the counter-arguments by those for or against CPM... my own comment is appended at the end although it hasn't been approved by the moderator as yet.
- Aniruddha


http://www.kafila.org/2007/03/14/monobina-gupta-on-nandigram-and-the-cpm-whitewash/

Monobina Gupta on Nandigram and the CPM WhitewashPublished by Aditya Nigam March 14th, 2007 in Left watch and Debates.

[As reports started coming in on Wednesday of wanton killings of the local population by a combination of the state’s police forces and that dreaded being called ‘cadre’ in today’s West Bengal, the CPM lie-machine in New Delhi swung into action. Monobina Gupta, a senior journalist who has been covering the Left for almost two decades now, reports on both the press conference and the incidents that brought it forth. Our further information is that two days ago the chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had called a meeting in Writers’ Building to plan out the offensive. As the report below shows, the Bengali daily, Bartaman had already predicted today’s action almost to the detail - obviously based on information that the CPM finds uncomfortable. We have also been informed that the call went out from the state CPM leadership of “Occupy and Liberate” Nandigram shortly before the cadres swung into action along with the police force. Thirty years of unbroken rule has made the state leadership belief that they can get away with anything. This time they may have miscalculated. It is also worth bearing in mind that faced with feisty women leaders like Medha Patkar and Mamata Banerjee the most disgusting colours of the CPM leadership are coming out. So if Biman Basu had gone on record saying that Mamata is behaving like a spoilt little girl (in Singur), then his comrade-in-arms Benoy Konar had done far better. He announced that women from his party’s women’s wing would “display their buttocks if Medha visited Nandigram”. We will soon be publishing Medha’s recent report after her return from Nandigram where she was actually greeted by a demonstration of buttocks - of about a hundred and fifty little Benoy Konars. Only, the women - even from his party seem to have politely refused. Some hope here - even though the top leadership of the Mahila Samity has been completely silent. Is comrade Brinda Karat listening? - AN]For the CPM central leadership in Delhi defending police actions in Singur and Nandigram has now become a routine matter. It is left usually to Sitaram Yechury - second in command in the CPM politburo (and Rajya Sabha member) to address the media in Parliament and whitewash the whole incident.
Today was just one more of such press conferences. The CPM politburo member condemned the killings at the same time made it clear that the police had no choice other than to do what they did. “The kiilings are unfortunate. But we condemn such activities that took place even afterthe West Bengal state government assured that no land will be acquired without the consent of the people.”
By “such activities” Yechury of course meant the “activity” of the CPM’s political rivals - the Trinamul Congress, the Naxals and the Maoists. “The police action is not connected to the land acquistion issue. It is a political battle. We have fought it in the past and will fight itnow” said the Yechury.
He made repeated references to the bloody CPM-Trinamul clashes in Keshpur. “This is exactly what our adversaries did in Keshpur”, said Yechury swiftly disconnecting the real issue of land acquistion from the police action. He made it sound like a political conspiracy that hasbeen hatched by the Trinamul Congress and the Maoists.
CPM politburo member Brinda Karat said there were ‘agent provocateurs’ in Nandigram. The state government did nothing for days. But they could not allow the situation to continue.
Mediapersons drew Yechury’s attention to what Benoy Konar a CPM leader in West Bengal had said at a public meeting earlier. “Konar had said that the critics of land acquistition should be ostracised. Can this incident be looked at from that perspective ?” asked reporters. Yechuryasked, “Was this reported in the media ?” Many of us said yes. Then he asked with a sneer “Which media? the Bengali media ?” and laughed loudly dismissing at one stroke everything that is published in the Bengali newspapers.
For the CPM it is clearly now a matter of “Do or Die”. “Either with us or Them”. In today’s CPM language - either for or against industrialisation.
Later in the evening today the CPM politburo sent a press handout. “It is regrettable that lives have been lost in the police firing. But the organised elements who utilised bombs and pipe guns on the police have to take the blame,” said the politburo. There was no mention of the factthat newsreports filtering in by the evening clearly indicated that those killed included more women and children than men. There were also reports that the police hd started whisking away the bodies to keep the toll down.
Yechury took great pains to explain how the people in Nandigram had first attacked the police and the police had only reacted. He kept repeating, “The outsiders had cut off a person’s leg.” Nobody in the media could confirm the incident. The CPM politburo in its statement said, “Even after the government categorically declared that no land is being acquired in Nandigram the Trinamul Congress and the other elements refused to allow the administration or the police into the area. Those who did not go along with their disruptive activities were targeted. Only a few days ago a woman Sumita Mandal was raped and killed.”
Yechury made the killings sound like acts in self defence. There was actually no even an iota of self defence involved in the incident. ‘Bartaman’ a Bengali daily, has been carryingnews about police preparations in Nandigram, for the last two days. Today’s edition of Bartaman said there were 3000 policemen surrounding Nandigram and there would be a police operation this morning.
Earlier reports in the same newspaper informed of a meeting that the chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had this Monday with the state’s chief secretary and director general of police. The administration was asked to go ahead and ‘clean up’ Nandigram. The newspaper reports showed that the administartion had made preparations for the action and it was a well-planned attack on the villagers.
When the police attacked villagers in Singur the first time, even at that time Yechury at a press conference in Parliament said what he said today. “The police acted in self defence. The villagers attacked first.” The party then struck up a chorus about ‘outsiders’. When the clashes in Nandigram took place and the police fired killing several two months ago the CPMagain blamed the incident on ‘outsiders’ who were creating ‘trouble’.No Tags
29 Responses to “Monobina Gupta on Nandigram and the CPM Whitewash”
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1 Shuddhabrata Sengupta Mar 15th, 2007 at 1:47 am
Dear Aditya,
Thank you for this text on Nandigram. I am pasting below (as comment) what I have already posted on the reader list.
The incident of the brutal armed police attack in order to ‘re-take’Nandigram in West Bengal yesterday is yet another milestone in therelationship between police and people in that state. According tonewspaper reports, 14 people have died and more than 75 people have beeninjured in yesterday’s violence. The injured include around 12policemen. However, estimates of the dead and the injured vary.
A brief and incomplete history of police violence in West Bengal wouldhave to include police attacks on agitating Calcutta tram workers in1954, on the general population during the food riots of 1954, onstriking school teachers in 1954-56, on protesting students on August31, 1959, which resulted in the death of 80 students, on 2nd September1959, when several others were killed (bringing the August-September1959, total of deaths up to 102). Again, in 1966, students agitating onissues to do with the rising prices of essential commodities werebrutally repressed by police action, leading to the death of severalyoung people.
In all these conflicts, it was very often militants and activistsbelonging to the Communist Parties, and since 1965, the CPI (M) thatfaced police violence. However, with the election of the first (and thenthe second) United Front ministries (1967-69) (which included the CPIand the CPI(M) , the pattern of victims and patrons of violence had toundergo a subtle shift. And while the CPI (M) did continue to enjoy adegree of respect for having borne the brunt of police violence throughsuccessive erstwhile Congress administrations, it became equally clearthat the party was not by any means hesitant to use the repressivemachinery of the state to further its own ends. This became abundantlyclear when, in the wake of the Naxalbari uprising, the then homeminister Jyoti Basu (later to be Chief Minister of West Bengal),sanctioned the use of CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) to quelldissident peasant activists from what had once been his own party inNorth Bengal. Hence, the popular slogan of the late 1960s “Jyoti Babudoley, CRP er koley” (Jyoti Babu Swings in the Lap of the CRP)
After the fall of the United Front government and the Congress’s returnto power police terror gripped West Bengal in the wake of the Naxalbarimovement, and the state terror unleashed in Calcutta and severaldistricts of West Bengal by the Siddhartha Shankar Ray led Congressministry left several hundreds dead, and imprisoned. Many peopledisappeared.
Since the CPI (M) dominated Left Front government came to power in 1977,clashes within the left front, within the CPI(M) and with an array ofelectoral and extra-parliamentary opponents (on the left and the right)as well as confrontations with ordinary people have left many more deadin West Bengal. Violence has been routinely used by the CITU, theCPI(M)’s trade union to enforce its writ in Industrial areas. When thesuffocating tactics of consensus have failed, the Left Front governmenthas routinely used official as well as unofficial forms of violence.This is a part of everyday life in West Bengal, and anyone with anylinks to the state is very well aware of the micro-managerialstranglehold that zonal, block and para committees of the CPI (M) haveon most aspects of life in that state.
The current conflict in Nandigram, which pits well armed police and CPI(M) cadre, acting directly in the interests of Capital against villagersand their sympathisers (politically organized as well as those who arenot necessarily part of organized political formations) is just areminder that in the more than three decades that it has enjoyed powerin West Bengal, the CPI (M) has become the clone of the Congress.
The same imperial arrogance, the same intemperate use of armed police,the same combination of urbane Kolkata sophistication and suburban,mofussil, para thuggery. The identical lethal combination of sleaze,rhetoric, money, muscle and humbug. The CPI (M) of today, is the perfectinheritor of the legacy of the Congress Party in West Bengal. Manypeople in families with a link to the history of the Communist Partiesin West Bengal would no doubt find themselves waking up to thedisturbing conclusion that the party that they have had an unthinking,emotional relationship with, through good days and bad, has in factbecome that arrogant, belligerent, hypocritical other that they hadgrown up to despise.
The metamorphosis of the CPI (M) into its own terrible alterity (asmanifest in Nandigram) is an occasion for all those who remember 1954,1956, 1959 and 1966 to enter into some introspection. What is tragic isnot just the fact that 14 people have died terrible deaths, but alsothat those ordering the police firing, including Chief MinisterBuddhadeb Bhattacharya might have actually been once on the other sideof the barricades.
Three decades after 1977, the CPI (M) in West Bengal is a party withouta moral backbone, bloated, sad, bankrupt and eager to be in bed with anenterprise (the Salim Group) that is itself implicated (historically) inbankrolling the masterminds of the genocide of Communists in 1965 inIndonesia.
Those of us who continue to consider ourselves claimants to the legacyof the International Communist movement (in whichever form) have to addanother notch on our long list of events and processes that should causeintrospection.
Kronstadt 1921The Show Trials of the 1930s in the USSRThe Gulag Experience in the USSRBerlin 1953Hungary 1956Mao’s repression of Chinese CommunistsCzeckoslovakia 1968The Declaration of Martial Law in PolandThe Soviet Invasion of AfghanistanPol PotThe Vietnamese invasion of CambodiaThe Continued Romance of Bankrupt Authoritarianism in Cuba and North KoreaTienanmen Square 1989Nandigram and the Left Front Government in West Bengal
(Everyone can add to this list)
Let us take stock of all this, and then salvage what we can from ourhistory for the twenty first century.
In sorrow and solidarity with the people of Nandigram
2 suchetha Mar 16th, 2007 at 1:34 am
much of the violence in Bengal over Nandigram is clear proof of how some people masquarade with red banners and kill the class they are supposed to serve. This whole desire of the CPIM to satisfy Salim’s monopolist greed for an SEZ in India is indication enough of its true colour which is certainly not red. perhaps many still remember that Salim is the one who butchered millions of communists in Indonesia and now he is invited to India by so called communists.
3 Manoj Mar 20th, 2007 at 10:58 am
This is points to same old society structure - rulers and ruled. Rulers justify all actions even killing of innocents people. Is this political solution to problem? CM and others involved should charged with murder of innocents in court of law.
4 B Prasant Mar 22nd, 2007 at 10:04 am
A spate of accusations have been made against the CPI(M) and the Left Front government headed by it in West Bengal. It has been accused of being insensitive to people’s concerns, anti-democratic etc. Several well-meaning individuals have fallen prey to the misinformation campaign launched by vested interests and the opponents of the West Bengal Left Front and the CPI(M).
It needs to be made clear at the outset that as far as land for industrialisation is concerned, in contrast to other Governments the West Bengal Government and its Chief Minister have repeatedly stated that the Government will have widespread consultations with local communities and elected Panchayat officials and will not proceed with any acquisition of land without taking all sections into confidence. The Government is firmly committed to protect the interests of the peasantry, sharecroppers, agricultural workers and other sections of the rural poor while taking forward the process of industrialisation.
As far as the specific violent incidents related to Nandigram is concerned there has been no notice issued for land acquisition. Yet a deliberate campaign of misinformation is being run by opposition parties. This includes the most outrageous accusation that the Communists plan to destroy masjids and mandirs in the area. It needs to be pointed out that at least six CPI(M) workers have been brutally killed and two offices of the party burnt. In a planned drive, houses of CPI(M) workers were identified in areas where opposition parties dominate and families have been driven out and their homes attacked. This not a spontaneous outburst but a planned political attack led by the TMC and ultra-Left elements committed to violence. In spite of this huge provocation, the administration has displayed the utmost caution in not using the police so as to enable a normalization of the situation.
The facts about the incidents are detailed below:
What happened on 3rd January?
The recent trouble in Nandigram began with attacks on Panchayat members, administrative officials and police on 3rd January, 2007. East Midnapur is poised to be declared as the first “Nirmal” district of the country,for excellent achievements in sanitation. A central team is scheduled to visit Nandigram on 12th and 13th January for this purpose. On 3rd January , the preparatory meeting for the visit was taking place in Kalicharanpur Panchayat .The Block officials were also present. The opposition parties, including Trinamool Congress, SUCI, some Naxalite factions and fundamentalist forces gathered together and spread rumors that the said meeting was for land acquisition. Suddenly 25-30 people gathered here and tried to break in the meeting. They were violent and abusive. They started pelting stones and the Panchayat secretary was injured. The health sub-centre was also stoned. Then only the panchayat members informed the Nandigram police station. As the police vehicle was proceed
The so-called “Nandigram Bhumi Raksha Committee” destroyed bridges and culverts linking roads. On 4th January, they burnt a 25KV electric sub-station, In the afternoon, an armed gang with firearms attacked the CPI(M) local committee office and burnt it. Cadres of TMC and other forces roamed around and threatened CPI(M) leaders and sympathizers with dire consequences. In the night, they kidnapped local Panchayat pradhan. Many among the mob were naxalite activists from Kolkata, Gaya and certain places from Orissa. CPI(M) workers were forced to leave the villages where the opposition dominates and took shelter in a nearby camp. That the mob was armed were seen in the photographs published in newspapers too. The entire incident was meticulously planned.
For the next two days, the Bhumi Raksha Committee blocked the roads within the villages, prohibited every movement and raised money forcibly from the people. The TMC, Congress leaders went there and issued threats of more violence. Meanwhile a heinous communal campaign was also been unleashed. The police remained restrained and they have not entered the village at all. The police convened a meeting on 5th January in Nandigram police station and leaders of TMC,SUCI ,JAMAT ULEMA were present. They verbally agreed to maintain peace and then reacted very differently in the villages.
The incident on 6th night –7th morning
On 6th January midnight armed miscreants of Bhumi Raksha Committee attacked the camps of CPI(M) workers who took refuge there. The attackers hurled bombs .The CPI(M) workers were forced to resist and in the ensuing clash two of the attackers were killed. Almost at the same time, the armed gangs of Bhumi Raksha Committee unleashed mayhem within the village. They killed CPI(M) supporters,torched homes,Panchayat offices .Five bodies of CPI(M) activists and sympathizers who have been killed lynched and hacked to death were found. They were: Bhudev Mandal,Sankar Samanta,Rabin Bhuia,Sudeb Mandal,Biswajit Maiti. According to reports, two more CPI(M) workers were also killed though their bodies have not yet been found. Four more Party workers have been kidnapped. Some of those who were killed have been threatened earlier too and it was reported in the newspapesrs.
To cover up the ghastardly killing the TMC,CONGRESS and others called a Bandh .On 7th January night and 8th morning they burnt two CPI(M) offices in Talapati and Bhekutia-Dibanandapur.
There was no case of so-called retaliation provocation from CPI(M).The Party leaders, including Biman Basu have appealed for maintaining peace to all political parties.
5 Aditya Nigam Mar 23rd, 2007 at 2:27 am
Prasant:Thanks for the CPM handout. It is interesting that a correspondent of People’s Democracy has to ‘clarify’ the situation in this way, in a forum like Kafila. I am sure that no such refutation of a People’s Democracy report would ever see the light of the day - were one to ever contradict it. And Why speak of PD, even The Hindu only ever dishes out party handouts and no refutation is entertained. Nonetheless, I must add that while I have no intention of refuting your ridiculous version of ‘what actually happened’ in Nandigram two glaring omissions in this version reveal your whitewash attempt.1. It has already been accepted by the state CPM leadership, after much ado, that the initial turmoil had been caused by an order of the Haldia Development Authority. We have had occasion to trace that entire sequence of events in this very blog(http://www.kafila.org/2007/01/10/‘scientific’-land-grab-and-the-lie-machine/). Thus to say that there was absolutely nothing - that everything was but a figment of people’s imagination, ignited by the false propaganda of the opposition parties is disingenuous to say the least.
2.The second omission is even more damning: the peasants themselves are completely absent in your account - except as those manipulated by a whole range of scheming political parties/groups. When they support you, they are acting as enlightened peasants, but when they turn against you they are ‘misled’ and ‘manipulated’. This is a standard strategy of power: reduce all opposition to manipulation by some outside elements: Trotsky was a German agent, remember? And so was all the opposition in the Soviet Union, till, one day, it was no more. Utterly condescending statements like “several well-meaning individuals have fallen prey to the misinformation” will not hide the fact that it is not just interested parties like the Trinamool Congress or the Jamait-e-Ulema-Hind who have been ’spreading misinformation’ but that all independent fact-finding initiatives have corroborated that it was a CPM sponsored massacre.
6 B Prasant Mar 23rd, 2007 at 6:22 am
Dear Aditya Nigam,
1. Thank you for going through our report.
2. CPI (M) has always stood by the fact that taking advantage of the situation, the right-ultra left combination ‘opposition’ ran riot at Nandigram. If indulging in mayhem and killing is part of the mindset that one chooses to support and justify, we may only wonder at the ‘democratic’ sentiments expressed by you in having been liberal enough to publish my commentary.
3. CPI (M) has stated that in the fracas that took place, rural poor were involved as the scions of the ruling classes enjoyed the spectacle of women and children being forced at gunpoint to confront the police while the Trinamul Congress-Naxalite ‘braves’ took pot shots at the police from behind.
4. If you choose to draw a line of distinction between the rural poor (who are mostly kisans and khet mazdoors) and peasants, then the problem, a serious one at that, lies somewhere else, and goes beyond semantic details. Certainly we hold that a section of the rural poor was manipulated and then forced to toe the opportunistic line of the right-ultra left who are basically out to ‘finish off’ the Left Front government as one particularly irate and self-styled singer-activist has recently blustered.
5. CPI (M) does hold that when the rural poor is made to believe through invoking atavistic and religious sentiments to stand opposed to the pro-people, and pro-poor Left Front government, then the issue at stake concerns manipulation of the mind of rural masses for the sake of petty, sectarian interests. The ‘logic’, cruel and twisted, seems to be ‘organise provocation and then carry on more violence as action justified.’
6. We are never surprised that you and the website we both have written in, would not speak a single line about the plight of the thousands of the rural poor who are ousted from their hearth-and-home and are even driven out at the point of guns from the relief camps where they have been put up. Perhaps you, in your innate hatred of the Communists would not count them as important enough for a mention because they stood opposed to the destructive politics of the Bengal opposition.
B Prasant
7 reyaz Mar 23rd, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Sunday, March 18, 2007कामरेड ! तुम्हारी पक्षधरता क्या है?
सुनील/रेयाज़-उल-हक
नंदीग्राम : बदरंग लाल की आभालोग कितनी आसानी से मार दिये जाते हैं!हालांकि उनकी चीख तब भी निकलती है और दूर तक पहुंचती है. नंदीग्राम में गैर सरकारी स्रोत बताते हैं कि डेढ़ सौ से ज़्यादा लोग मारे गये. लाशें नदी में बहा दी गयीं. दो सौ लोग अब भी लापता हैं. महिलाऒं के साथ बलात्कार हुए हैं और पत्रकारों को अभी भी वहां नहीं जाने दिया जा रहा है.तो क्या हम लोकतंत्र में रह रहे हैं? 1947 के बाद संभवत: यह अकेली बडी़ घटना है, जिसमें एक पूरे गांवं को घेर कर उसे इस तरह कुचल दिया गया हो. और यह सब कौन कर रहा है? वही सीपीएम सरकार जो गरीबों-किसानों की पक्षधरता के दावे करती नहीं थकती. आप उसके नेताओं के चेहरों को देखिए-वे फक पडे़ हुए हैं, मगर कह रहे हैं-हत्याएं सही थीं.याद आ रहा है वह अमेरिकी अधिकारी, जिसने कुछ दिन पहले बीबीसी पर सीपीएम को विकास की ज़रूरत और अमेरिकी हितों को सबसे अच्छी तरह समझनेवाली पार्टी कहा था. इससे समझा जा सकता है कि सीपीएम सरकार के हित किसके साथ गुत्थमगुत्था हैं, और सीपीएम विकास की जो अवधारणा पेश कर रही है वह कहां बनी है. मगर सिंगुर और नंदीग्राम के लोगों को समझने के लिए किसी अमेरिकी अधिकारी के बयान की ज़रूरत नहीं है. वे दरअसल उस आतंक को भोग रहे हैं, जो यह सरकार उन पर कर कर रही है. नंदीग्राम के लोग इंडोनेशियाई कंपनी सालिम को नहीं आने देने की कीमत चुका रहे हैं. यह वही सालिम ग्रुप है, जो इंडोनेशिया में 1965 कम्युनिस्टों के कत्लेआम के बाद अमेरिकी संरक्षण में फला-फूला. इसे भ्रष्ट सुहार्तो शासन ने विकसित होने में मदद की. अब सुदूर भारत में इसे एक ज़बरदस्त मददगार मिल गया है-बुद्धदेव भट्टाचार्य.इधर बंगाल में कथित विकास की प्रक्रिया पर ध्यान दें, तो पायेंगे कि बडी़ सफ़ाई से आम किसानों, भूमिहीनों और मज़दूरों की कीमत पर शहरों का विस्तार किया ज रहा है. शापिंग माल और मल्टीप्लेक्स बनाये जा रहे हैं. कामरेड बुद्धा के विचार में यही विकास है, मगर वे जिस तरह के विकास की बात कर रहे हैं, वह लोगों को झांसा देने के लिए है. उनका कहना है कि वे राज्य को क्रिषि से उद्योग की तरफ़ ले जा रहे हैं. उनकी राय में विकास की यही प्रक्रिया है. मगर विकास की एक स्वाभाविक प्रक्रिया होती है. इसके लिए पहले क्रिषि को काफ़ी विकसित करना होता है, जिससे जमा अतिरिक्त संसाधन उद्योगों के विकास में लगाया जाता है. इससे आम आदमी की क्रयशक्ति भी बढ़ती है. इस प्रक्रिया में क्रिषि का अतिरिक्त श्रम उद्योगों के काम आता है. मगर भारत में क्रिषि का वैसा विकास नहीं हुआ है. इसके उलट क्रिषि संकट गहराता जा रहा है. इसलिए आज बेलगाम औद्योगिक विकास का सीधा मतलब किसानों को उजाड़ना है. नंदीग्राम के किसान इस उजड़ने से बचने के लिए संधर्ष कर रहे हैं. नंदीग्राम में हुई इस तरह की ज़ुल्म-ज़बर्दस्ती सिर्फ़ इसी का प्रमाण है कि यह सरकार किस हद तक अपने उद्देश्यों से दूर आ चुकी है और अपने लोगों के कितना खिलाफ़ जा सकती है. महाश्वेता देवी कहती हैं-’यही सीपीएम है.’ मतलब यही सीपीएम का असली रंग है. देश के एक बड़े तबके में अब यह सवाल उठने लगा है कि भारत में संसदीय वामपंथ कहां आ पहुंचा है.इस नरसंहार ने पूरे देश को झकझोर कर रख दिया है. गुरुवार को कोलकाता की जादवपुर युनिवर्सिटी में गुस्साये छात्रों ने कैंपस से खदेड़ दिया. देश भर में विरोध प्रदर्शन हो रहे हैं. नेट पर युवकों की एक बडी़ संख्या संसदीय वामपंथ के इस चेहरे पर अपने गुस्से का इजहार कर रही है.आखिर यह सवाल क्यों नहीं पूछा जाना चाहिए कि पुलिस के पांच हज़ार जवान किसलिए गांव में भेजे गये थे? हम कैसे समाज में रह रहे हैं? क्या हिंसा करना सत्ता का एकाधिकार है और जनता को, (क्या हम कह सकते हैं, निरीह जनता को?) हंसिये लहराने का भी अधिकार नहीं है? क्या वह रो भी नहीं सकती?नंदीग्राम ने पूरे देश को दो संदेश दिये हैं-एक तो यह कि भारतीय संसदीय पार्टियां अमेरिकी साम्राज्यवाद के हितों की रक्षा में किस हद तक जा सकती हैं. दूसरा संदेश यह है कि ऐसी बेलगाम बर्बरता के खिलाफ़ जनता को किस तरह उठ खड़े होना चाहिए.बांग्ला रंगकर्मी अर्पिता घोष का मानना है कि यह संघर्ष प्रकाश की रेखा है. वे कहती हैं-अगर हम इसके साथ नहीं हुए तो हम बच नहीं पायेंगे.
8 Aditya Nigam Mar 23rd, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Prasant: Just to set the record straight, I am constrained to respond to some of your points here.1. Once again, the point that is being made by ALL independent fact-finding groups without exception is that the ‘mayhem and killing’ was CPM-sponsored - not that there was none nor that ‘we’ (whoever that may refer to in your dictionary) condone violence. You know it as well as Prakash Karat - and yet you indulge in this deliberate sleight of hand.2. ‘We’ do think we are ‘liberal’ or democratic enough to publish your commentary, so that your opinion is also there for all to see - so patently absurd though it may be. We do believe that ideas - even yours - have to be confronted in open contest; they cannot be banished simply by the writ of the Politburo as some people seem to still believe. Please remember that the Soviet Union did not fall because of a Right-Ultra Left conspiracy (nor an imperialist conspiracy) but simply because people started actively disbelieving what the official media told them. If, one accepts for arguments sake, that it was because of soem external conspiracy, even in that case, one must wonder at how truly fragile that totalitarian structure was. This is, in a microcosm, Nandigram today - the Biman Basus and Buddhadebs simply so many little fascists.3. The rural poor are of course involved and at the receiving end of the CPM sponsored violence. The question here is this: Till May 2006 (at least) these rural areas were ‘impregnable’ (pardon this term) fortresses of the CPM/LF. And why Midnapore? Nowhere in Bengal was it possible for any party to make any headway in any rural area largely due to the support that the CPM/LF enjoyed (sprinkled of course, with a judicious use of an economy of terror). What happened suddenly that CPM became the helpless target of some strange creature called the Opposition - so much so that they were being hounded out? The CPM may not have an answer but let me end with an apocryphal story:It is said that the precise moment at which the (Islamic) revolution against the Shah of Iran took shape was when a pedestrian walking the road refused to follow the command of the policeman on the street. Immediately the act of defiance communicated itself - everybody was defying authority. This is how sudden changes often are - especially because they are invisible to power till they burst forth on the stage. Except for those in power, others of course, share every bit of this knowledge; it is never invisble to them.
4. Finally, please for heaven’s sake do not conflate CPM with communism. CPM is only the carrier of the worst legacies associated with communism in the twentieth century but as my friend Shuddhabrata has pointed out in an earlier comment here, the communist legacy is far richer and liberating than what stalinists can even imagine.
9 B Prasant Mar 25th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Dear Aditya Nigam,
1. Thank you for your responding to the urge of ‘setting the record straight.’
2. When one adopts a partisan outlook against the Communists in particular, the most obvious syndrome is to be selective about facts of history—whether at Nandigram or in the former Soviet Union. The basic urge of this form of verbal and written discourse is not to analyse facts but to set up a hypothesis and instead of testing it dialectically, find, even invent, ‘facts’ to fit into the hypothesis, and thus come out with a happy, comfortable, and a grossly one-sided and tyrannous structure of arguments.
3. Rather than bother you with a reminder that all the ‘independent’ ‘fact-finding’ groups at Nandigram and Singur started with an anti-Communist, specifically anti-CPI (M), mindset (and here they have had happy meetings of the mind with the right-reactionary Trinamul Congress, the ultra left, and the religious fundamentalists of both persuasions), we would simply point out that the truth is sometimes too dangerous to be confronted by votaries of anarchism and disorder: the plight of the thousands of men, women, and children forced to leave their hutments nor the brutal instances of killing and rape of helpless victims all because they would not toe the line of the right-ultra left groups, finds no mention in the ‘facts’ found by the ‘independent groups.’
4. Several of the self-styled votaries of ‘kisans’ rights’ have of late declared a war against the CPI (M). They have called for the rolling of heads of CPI (M) workers, and the public hanging of the local CPI (M) MP, in open if smallish gatherings. They have taken for granted, and quite literally, we suppose, the dictum that truth should be made the first casualty.
5. We certainly hold and all facts point to our conclusion that there is a right-ultra left conspiracy to respond fiercely and with an armed might against the attempts by the Communists to change the correlation of class forces in the rural stretches of Bengal through redistributive land reforms and the setting in motion of the Panchayat system, and then following the process up through building up of employment-intense industries on the strong agricultural and agrarian base.
6. We appreciate and understand the desperation of the scions of the ruling classes to back to the hilt, the efforts of the right reactionaries, the anarchists, and the religious fundamentalists of both persuasions to try to embarrass the CPI (M) with organised mayhem and murder, preceded and followed by hate campaigns of disinformation and calumny. We are a little disconcerted at witnessing the ‘independent groups’ bent on finding / fabricating ‘facts’ of a certain kind eagerly joining the bandwagon.
7. The rural people of Bengal have remained with the CPI (M) and the Left Front. Land is a sensitive issue. Yet the constant lie campaign about and organised violence against ‘land being taken over without compensation’ (a brutal lie) has failed and miserably at Singur where an automotive factory is coming up: the resistance of the anti-Communist ‘braves’ there are restricted to tugging feebly at a few wooden stakes and setting up small fires around a brick wall.
8. Rumour-mongering, and a campaign of untruth, is being utilised by the right-left opposition to organise a cleansing of Nandigram of the Communists. A section of the kisans may have been led ashtray, but they have started to come back to the fold, and the vast bulk of them at any rate, has chosen to remain with the Communists. Popularity and depth of the mass base is hardly judged by the sporadic and intense of violence led and unleashed by anarchists determined to isolate the Communists and the Left Front government. Such attempts, you may not like to recall, have happened in the past, and have ended in complete failures. This time, too, the anarchists will fail and fail comprehensively.
9. Finally, I am a little surprised at the clean chit you have given to the imperialists and declared that there was no imperialist conspiracy against the Soviet Union. Is this the new line of the little Trotskyites? If it is, then we are relieved that you have chosen in your unseemly haste to write off the Communists, to show yourself in true colours.
10 Aditya Nigam Mar 25th, 2007 at 1:47 am
True colours indeed, Mr Prasant. Just one thing, for your ruminations when you confront yourself in solitude: NO ONE was really fooled about what was happening in the Soviet Union (neither the people inside USSR nor those in the wide world outside) except communist cadre - who were led to believe the nonsense that their leadership dished out; just as you do now. Let me tell you an inside story.This was in 1990. An all India students’ fraction committee (CPM fraction within the SFI - for those who do not know the CPM jargon), was meeting at the central committee office at 14 Ashoka Road. M Basavapunnaiah was present as the Politburo member in charge of the student front. An agitated member from Assam was asking Basavapunnaiah about Sitaram’s article in People’s Democracy, written shortly after his return from Romania, after attending the Romanian Party Congress. Sitaram had claimed that the unanimous re-election of the entire leadership by the Party Congress reflected the faith of the Romanian people in the Ceaucescu leadership. The assumption of course, was that Party delegates were popular representatives, whereas events very soon showed that they had no clue to the popular mood. Within a month of that article appearing, ’socialist Romania’ had vanished from the map of the world. The Assam comrade was demanding an explanation for this. At this Sitaram - I wonder whether his memory still serves him right on this - somewhat aggressively challenged him, “so you’re saying I lied to the party”? Good old Basavapunnaiah caught Sitaram’s arm and said: “Sit down Sitaram. Neither you lied to the party; nor did the Romanian party lie to you. It was the Romanian people who lied to their party.”Mr Prasant - Please do not commit yourself to more than you might be able to defend.
11 B Prasant Mar 25th, 2007 at 3:05 am
Dear Aditya Nigam,
1. We see and appreciate where you have to refer to the international scene of some years past to bolster your weak-kneed and blustering thesis on Nandigram.
2. We are not aware of whether you are aware of crucibles called time-and-place, situational reality, and their inter se dynamics.
3. Anti-Communist hatred of a pathological kind would appear to make one quite desperate as your referential rejoinder clearly shows, bringing in Romania to prove your point (or the lack of it) in Nandigram in Bengal where a democratically-elected Left Front government is in office.
12 Aditya Nigam Mar 25th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
रियाज़ भाई, आपकी टिप्पणी ‘छापने’ में देर हुई इसके लिए माफ़ी चाहते हैं। यूनिकोड हर मशीन पर अभी मौजूद नहीं है, इसीलिए देर हुई। लिखते रहिएगा।
13 radha upadhya Mar 25th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Hey Aditya and Prasant, i guess you guys write from Bengal. Let me tell you what the CPI(M) is doing in Karnataka. They were once a force of Movement?? Then their trade union leaders began to grow corrupt, built big offices and houses and swindled with funds. Eventually the workers decided to drive them out. So also their students’ wing SFI joined some united movements with other organisations and tried to boss over them, but could not succeed. Their cadre use foul language, get aggressively violent, are intolerant of any criticism or question and will go to any extent to justify themselves. As a result they are now bwing rejected by the people and in many places they have begun to live on Government funds by taking up some Literacy campaigns. Their contact with the masses is little or none at all. They combine with all kinds of elements here and are distanced from the people’s reality. BUT THOSE OF US WHO HAVE SEEN THEM FROM CLOSE QUARTERS know what their culture is (IS THERE ANY?? There is nothing about them which speaks of communist ideals, neither in their speech nor in their behaviour. OUr ordinary farmers and workers here will tell you what they are and what they must have done in Nandigram.
Just ask Prakash Karat who funded their Suryanaryan Rao memorial building in Bangalore and what connections they have with Jindal Steel Vijayanagar!!
One will not be surprised to see them floating stories about Nandigram. They have been trained by GOEBBELS. Any site will tell you what they are. Let Prakash Brinda Sitaram etc go to Nandigram or Singur or even Siliguri now unescorted and talk to the people in the absence of police and CPIM cadres. Then they will know what it is.
For argument sake even if it is true that the ruling party in power found its cadres and police helpless against ‘outside ‘forces, they were unfit to rule ya. You think anyone will believe it. They commit murders in Kerala over student union elections, attack women from other parties in many southern states. I am sure they are at their worst in Bengal. So there is no need to defend the party which is serving capitalists. So why not call it Capitalists’ Party of India (Mercenary) instead?Radha UpadhyaBangalore
14 Aditya Nigam Mar 26th, 2007 at 2:28 am
Hi Radha, The dude writes from inside the machine - AK Gopalan Bhavan, New Delhi. I too write from Delhi, not Bengal - but our experience matches with yours, perfectly.
15 Gangamitra Baidyanathan Apr 1st, 2007 at 10:39 am
Hey Aditya, Radha, Prasant and Monobina,
In a civilised society nobody or no group is expected to act in a repressive way to stand by their claim. In a civilised society there are registered means of staking claim and that’s why the judiciary and the legal framework do exist. Byepassing that is uncivilised and the Govt. administration is framed to curb down only such show of uncivilisation.The people of Nandigram have every right to oppose and protest land takeover. There are ample means and avenues. But when they exhibit uncivilisation it is the duty of govt. to intervene in order to save the society from it.A handful section of Nandigram, the powerful ones off course, initiated repressive measures to the persons and families who were not in tune with them. The lawnessness started that time. They created it a “Muktanchal” only to freely continue their acts of repression. The evidences are :– More than 1000 families were driven out– Some of them brutally murdered– They housewives were gang-raped– Even a meritorious school student like Sumita was gangraped and killed by hanging in open daylight– A muslim girl wasn’t allowed to go for treatment in hospital and she died.– Hundreds of children are thrown out of their homes, not to talk about their studies.All these were continuing for last two months. Hey Aditya, Monobina - why are you so partisan in nature not to acknowledge this? Are you Brainwashed?
And the clashes by the two fronts continued for two months.
WE, the people of Bengal, the rational ones, irrespective of colours, wanted an end to it and wanted Govt. to intervene, enter into the villages and dis-arm the hooligans. The Govt. did it. The objective wasn’t to supress the villagers, the objective was to drive out the hoologans and resore peace and normalcy. Objectivewise the Govt. is at no fault.
What happened is definitely to condemn and it happened due to callousness and irresponsibility on the part of the police and administration. They should have aborted their move and retreat when they found women and children at the front. The Govt. must take the person on charge to task.
Some may say that the people of Nandigram paid for their sins of rape, murder and torture only. But it is also an irresponsible statement. The ones died or injured are poor villagers, apart from some who were outsiders. At more news are coming up in the media, it is apparant that they were misled by the group of hooligans and some of them were forced to join in the anti-police front. Ultimately it is a loss for the poor people on either side.
So who gained? Off course Mamta. She was being described a finished force. She needed some radical events and got it on the deadbodies. But Aditya, Monobina - if you too follow the same languges of that sinister joker, people of Bengal will simply spit on your face. I am telling this with full confidence and full understanding of peoples’ mood in Bengal. The people here now want development, not petty bickering.
Sorry to say, unlike Aditya or Prasant I do live inside Bengal since birth.
regards
16 Panini Pothoharvi Apr 3rd, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Good to read this predicable but nonetheless hilarious ‘insider’s’ account of what transpired in a fractional meeting of the SFI where Com Basavpunniah rose to a credulous defence of a callow Com Yechuri on how the Romanian people had ‘lied’ to the party. I remember as a gullible undergrad being coaxed into attending a ‘study circle’ addressed by none other than but Com Aditya Nigam himself. You came across intellectually more refined and credible than, say, someone like Com Sohail Hashmi who most of us then agreed was severely short on ideas and seemed more often than not to rely upon either obsolete cliches or daring misinformation. However, my impression of you as of others of your commissarian ilk then was that you people functioned more like charged up robots completely bereft of human emotions and sensuousness. Your anger was not credible. Your show of compassion was motivated by ‘strategic’ needs. Your need to forge contacts was conveniently persistent and not a little suspicious. Your fractional cadre was out there to catch us young. Where else could hapless but sensitive souls, which I make bold to say we were, go but the leftist students’ outfit. For, we instinctively realized how utterly unacceptable the BJP and the CONGI would be to people with an iota of self-regard and self-respect.
But how different were SFIs, the AISFs and the AISAs?
I’m afraid the space within such ideologically driven straitjackets – mass manufactured designer’s outfit – was pretty repressive. The higher ups were at best uneasily tolerant of the lower cadres – you must agree or else… – but their normal behaviour betrayed unending distrust, plots and conspiracies. There were no genuine friendships possible. In order to be friendly you needed human resonance and that was in such appalling short supply. You often met up each other ravenously over evening dinners discussing in monotones the theoretical tedium you had left unfinished in the morning or simply which was quite frequently nothing more than inspired gossip. You could not make friends with people beyond the fold and the fold itself was so unfriendly. You were supposed to like shoddy Latin American cinema of the ‘El Salvador – another Vietnam’ kind what with the lady militant carrying a bazooka on her manly shoulders sending illibidinal comrades into visual ecstasies. No genuine debate was possible. It was severely and even sternly discouraged. One was not expected to raise questions about what the proponents of prolutkult did to the Meyerholds and Eisenstein, how the Zhdanovian thugs hounded out tens of thousands of cultural activists of Moscow and Leningrad into the consumption causing icicles of Siberia. You were supposed to reverentially attend lectures by the Patnaik’s and imbibe not only what they said but the very style and manner of their language and speech till you all began to sound the standardized same. Mauryas and Mazumdars were your cultural theorists who burned the midnight oil in academic vain trying to fix the postmodernist deviations – till they started slyly espousing the very thoughts that they once attacked so vehemently – and explaining the myriad shifts in Lukacsian positions. In order to rise in party hierarchy, you needed to be an appropriately well-connected Brahmin or a Kaayasth. The family fiefdom was also visible in full flagrant flow: the Yechuris and the Mazumdars, the Hashmis and the Karats, the Maurya, Bhattis and the Kovacs… You needed convent education to see yourself within the sorority of the select. If you happened to be a woman, you needed the ‘look’, the elan and the aural charm of a star to succeed. A plain Jane, no matter how intellectually dynamic, found absolutely no space…
The way, for instance, you put up a dogged defense of Comrade Josef Stalin was beyond the pale of hilarious. It was simply sinister. I must say though that your smile was more convincing and more childlike and therefore more humane. For, others could hardly ever afford this luxury in the ‘public sphere’. They could be heard laughing out aloud now and then and the their laughter would be triggered by coarse chauvinist remarks made by the highly regarded ‘insiders’. Jokes about regions, communities, women and gays and lesbians…
Much as I admire your writing, I cannot help wondering how someone like you could stay so long within such an outfit?
17 radha upadhya Apr 4th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Hey i know that inside the SFI and the CPM there is no democracy they claim, also they do not remain consistent to what they term their ideology. Whenever it suits them they misinterpret or misquote Lenin as Konar did in the Nandigram issue. And if the CPIm wants development why does it not reopen the 56000 industries that have been closed down? What about the fallow lands available? That woul dbe useful too. ALso if they need space facilities etc, why not use the infrastructure of the industries which have been shut down?? No but Prince Salim would n ot be happy. So one needs to butcher people. You think those who are fighting genuinely will rape women?? Ha ha ha. The CPIm has been trained in all kinds of unimaginable manipulations- they kill their own cadres who differ with them, they kill the women with whom their leaders have close relations (YES),they even try to kill their own people, if it means they will gain and then put the blame on others. If they are not involved in all this in Nandigram why did they dump the bodies in the rivers where fishermen dread to go now, because they find only human bodies and crocodiles?? If they did not do anything, then why wre the undergarments etc of school girls found with blood stains near their leader’s bungalow, why were women’s breasts cut off after gangrapes? Why do the doctors in the government hospitals treating the victims refusing to examine them for rape??
About those driven out- why do you hide that the CPIm goons put up camps around Nandigram all entry points, came at night and attacked them and continue to bomb them to create fear even now?? How come not a single police man was reported dead or injured by bullets in the incident?? What we see of CPIm police misbehaving with women who are fighting during Bandhs on TV - are they real of just computer generated images?? Why do they always defend themselves when their own cadre questions them? Also why did they come down so heavily in Nandigram which is their own area of influence??? Why were the people kept in the dark about the land acquisition? why were the left front partners not taken into confidence over use of the 1894 land act?? And what was the need for such a large police force to counter women and children in uniform even carrying household implements (weapons!!) and the men too. All the firearms used came from the direction of the police. Ok even if there wree outsiders in there, why did the police beat women who were running away- we have seen it on TV repeatedly?? WhY do they prevent fact finding teams and journalists who want to enter the area even now?? What was the meaning of the local Bundh soon after the incident (not the Bundh calld by the people on 16th but 15th by CPIM, if not to remove all possible evidence of their crimes, particularly murders and killings>> and after all thsi, if the common masses do not get angry and violent enough to burn their offices they would be saints!! Perhaps all of you are aware that the BUPC has an important constituent called SUCI whose volunteers promised to save the police at risk to their own lives on the day they dissuaded the police from coming near the memorial rally which had victims and was 15 km long as described in the press>>> Hey Proshanto, do not lose your cool , but remember we from outside can see and read many things.
18 Panini Pothoharvi Apr 5th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Not just the SFI but also AISF and AISAs - I have seen them all already, seen them all!
19 Sagar Apr 7th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Panini, that’s quite a journey to make from SFI to AISF to AISA. Would be interested to know what other such organisations you have been seeing lately.
20 Panini Pothoharvi Apr 8th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Mimicry is the last resort of you know who! When you want to be crude you lapse into literal readings - quibbling and nitpicking a lot like Com Basavpuniah. I have never been associated with any of these organisations except the SFI very very briefly before opting out for very obvious reasons. But I have a fairly good idea how the other two organisations work.
21 Panini Pothoharvi Apr 8th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
If you know a bit of literature, you would immediately know from where the verse “I have seen them all already seen them all” comes from. I admire intelligent sarcasm. But literal mimicry? I’m not too sure!
22 Sagar Apr 8th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
I don’t know much literature (quite obviously) but admit the sarcasm was probably needless (but a lot of fun!). I was provoked by the fact that organisations of any kind- from the church to the communist party- are such sitting ducks for scathing critique by anyone who still has a head on his/her shoulder and a heart in the right place. The problem occurs when you realize that all organizations are ultimately the collective expression of the individuals who make them up (some more than others, of course) and their failings are actually those of the kind of society we are and the general culture we represent as a people. What should also be considered is that individuals are themselves mini-organisations on their own, complete with their visible or invisible little flags, national anthems, border police and weapons of mass destruction. Whether you are formally part of any organisation or not is immaterial. If you have any ‘belongings’ you already ‘belong’ to the Party of Those Who Have. Once in a while the barrel of the gun should point inwards to see what the battle brings. Personally I am petrified of doing anything of this sort but my lack of courage should not stop anyone else from doing some introspection along with their inspection.
23 Panini Pothoharvi Apr 9th, 2007 at 12:26 am
I agree! Wholeheartedly! Kudos!
24 Vrinda Karat yechuri Apr 14th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Its Corporate Communism Stupid!
25 radha upadhya Apr 15th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Hey you guys If CPIM wants development and industrialisation it is time they re read the communist manifesto and define development> of the majority or the minority capitalists? Also how does capital intensive industrialisation help create more jobs? If the industries are to be set up on fertile lands, what happens to the 80,000 people in Nandigram belt who will be affected. Is it necessary to please anti communist Salem to be served with land and blood of poor peasants on a platter deprive them of their land, home, schools, colleges, markets, temples, mosques etc that they have lived with? Where is the alternative space for them and the facilities?? Also how can unskilled farm labour get jobs in industries? They will only end up as cooks, domestic help, watchman, attender etc. Is that a job gurantee? And why hide that the real lawlessness will prevail inside the SEZ. So what is wrong if people decide that it is better they prevent it? CPIM should feel ashamed that its police and administration have lost all confidence and trust of the people due to which they do not want them to step in. As for the ousted CPIM guys, who stops them from return to their homes unless they have abetted violence even as they hid behind their willing leaders?? CPIM is good at lies, lies, lies lies lies…We have seen it over the years. Why do they also not admit that even withing their own party there is dissent on this issue but it is silenced by citing power in the state?
26 gangamitra baidyanathan May 12th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Hey Aditya, Radha, Prasant and Monobina,
You people seem to have perfectly acquired the FASCIST attiudes. Whenever you feel your argunments are getting defeated you term the other side as “Dudes”, “Party whole timer”, “AKG Bhavan residents” etc.In your heart you feel humiliated when even simple persons like us question your Inteliigence, Intension and Integrity and show vividly how wrong, biased and REGIMENTED you are. All your responses reveal that your can’t tolerate that humiliation but at the same time have no matter inside you to counter it. That time you bypass or avoid the issues and go in for marking others with Adjectives.This is typical behaviour of non-intelligent self-proclaimed intellegensia. In Bengali there was a drama name “Chokhe Angul Dada”. This was about a character who finds faults with everyone and boost high of himself but the opperunity was given to him to prove himself his failed miserably. You are all such “Chokhe Angul Dada”, who have no skill to create anything but resorting only to rhetorics to hide their shortcomings.Whatever REGIMENTED propagandas and FALSIFICATIONs you GOEBBELs do or continue, people of West Bengal are enough intelligent to understand those and won’t heed to you at all.Today’s issue in West Bengal is DEVELOPMENT vs DISTURBANCE. We know that people like you are extremly hurt to find WB developing in industries too, after it’s thumping success in agriculture. The same kind of oppositions were faced when this Left Front of WB initiated the Land reforms and Rural developments. The same is faced now. But future will tell why the moves of LF and it’s govt. is right. Just wait for it only. It is bound to happen irrespective of whetehr you and your associates, fellow-feelers howl back or not.Sorry to undermine your writings. But it’s better to make you realise that you are generating “good for nothing” thinking it “good something”.Regards.Warning: in_array() [function.in-array]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/.juilee/shivamv/kafila.org/wp-content/plugins/plugins/subscribe-to-comments.php on line 434
1 Aniruddha Dutta May 19th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
well, sorry to chip in so late but this is especially to gangamitra -even if aditya and prashant are simply “chokhe angul dadas” and unable to come to terms with the complex reality of nandigram, the situation at West Bengal can NOT be reduced to a simple binary of Development vs. Disturbance. the issue is not only what happened at Nnadigram, whose fault it was, who instigated who and so on and so forth. I think what is lost in such a narrow debate is the larger issue of ‘development’ itself - are SEZs and capital-intensive industries the right WAY to industrialisation and poverty-alleviation at all? as long as we don’t get to a democratic dialogue on development models, its no use blaming ‘disturbance’ on either the villagers or the CPM… the actual disease lies elsewhere! and such ‘disturbances’ will continue and the blame-game will also continue, unless such basic questions are faced and discussed in the larger public sphere, with all strata of people participating. or else, sections of people will undoubtedly feel left out/compromised and clashes will start again (so will the blame game).lastly, gangamitra is a bit too fast in drawing parallels between the land reforms and the current industrialisaton policy - there are actually contradictory. whereas the land reforms aimed to empower the ‘bargadars’ (or non-land owning class of farers), the present acqusition method relies on the land owning class and their willingness to part with land. it disempowers the bargadar, and does not draw such sections into a dialogue on ‘development’ models, or sustainable development alternatives.