State and Party Terrorism In Bengal
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: alashchandrabiswas@gmail.com">palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com
Thirty years of Left Front Rule is an undisclosed story of State and Party sponsered terrorism. Marichjhapi massacre hinted the heralding State Terrorism. Jyoti Basu managed it very well. Then , the government and dominent partner Cpim played havoc against other left partners in Kultali. Basu managed this also. Nanur, Keshpur, Chhota Angria and other cases were never solved. Jyoti basu was quite succesful to dismiss whatsoever ressistance came in the way. As he enjoyed the support of Rural Bengal thanks to land reforms and Panchayati raj.
The scenerio began to change in Singur. Then , Tapasi Malik was raped and murdered!
And Brand Buddha emerged with Capitalist Development and Eviction for Industrialisation and Urbanisation agenda.
What did you see?
Naked aggression and lawless action committed by the government agencies and the party cadres and their cohorts were utterly repulsive and abhorrent. It shook the conscience of a large number of otherwise apolitical men and women who felt the urge to protest against state terrorism unleashed on unarmed and peaceful peasants who wanted nothing more than being left alone to pursue their own avocations in their own way.
CPI-M patriarch Jyoti Basu refused to comment on the 'sub judice' matter. But asked if he would call it a political conspiracy, he said: 'Our party men think so.'CPI-M leaders said the CBI was also involved in the conspiracy to tarnish the image of the party.
Now truth come into light ,I hope more truth will come day by day and as a result all offices of CPM of all over India will close down day by day. Prof Sanjib Bhattacharya writes.
Party and government once again look for Basu who is quite expert to dilute any crisis! It is rightchice, of course! CPI-M patriarch Jyoti Basu on Friday endorsed his party's line that a "political conspiracy" has been hatched to stop the Tata Motors' small car project in Singur and to malign the West Bengal government by trying to implicate a party official in the alleged murder of a girl.The Buddhadeb Bhattacharya government in West Bengal has come under fire once again after a CPM leader was arrested for his role in the murder of an 18-year-old girl who was a voice against land acquisition in Singur.
"The matter is under judicial review. Yet it is definitely a political conspiracy as it cannot be explained otherwise how Tapasi Malik's body could be dumped in our area (the Tata Motors project site)," Basu told reporters after the CPI-M's state secretariat meeting in Kolkata.
The arrest of CPI-M leader Surhid Dutta and party worker Debu Malik has struck a sordid note to the chants of industrialisation by the communists in West Bengal.Dutta and Malik were remanded in CBI custody by the Chandannagore court of Hooghly district for their alleged role in the killing of Tapasi Malik, who along with her family was in the forefront of the anti-land acquisition movement in Singur.Her charred body was recovered Dec 18 from a rectangular grave inside the area fenced off for the upcoming Tata Motors plant in Singur, 40 km from here, in Hooghly district.
CBI insiders claimed that Suhrid had hatched the plan to eliminate Tapasi as she was gaining popularity in Singur for her campaign against the land takeover.Under his orders, Debu and four others had raped Tapasi and set her on fire, the CBI sources added. The claims have to be repeated on paper without the cover of anonymity for courts to take cognisance of them. Suhrid will be produced in court tomorrow.The CBI had sent Debu to Delhi on June 18 for a polygraph test, which he failed. A few days later, he was arrested.CBI officials said Debu had not only admitted his role in the murder but also mentioned the names of a few others, including that of his mentor Suhrid.
Do relise the situation!
A leader of West Bengal's ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and a party supporter were remanded in Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) custody Friday for the alleged rape and murder of an 18-year-old girl at the Tata Motors site in Singur.An embarrassed CPI-M has termed it a 'conspiracy' while there was jubilation in the opposition Trinamool Congress camp as party chief Mamata Banerjee rushed to Singur to express solidarity with the victim's family.Dutta, the Singur Zonal Committee secretary of the CPI-M, was arrested Thursday evening by the CBI.The main accused is Malik, who was in charge of the night guards at the Tata Motors site during the rape and murder. He was arrested in New Delhi and brought to Kolkata Wednesday night by the CBI.
While Dutta would be produced in court again on July 12, Debu Malik was given CBI custody till July 7.
'This is a conspiracy,' said CPI-M peasant leader Binoy Konar.
The arrest has come as a major setback to the Left Front government's industrialisation policy and the means adopted to pursue it. Meanwhile, the CBI is interrogating at least four others, including some CPI-M members, in connection with the case. Some more arrests are expected shortly.
Some 997 acres in Singur have been chosen by Tata Motors for its small car project. The issue has triggered a violent face-off between the government and farmers led by civil society groups and parties like the Trinamool.
The Singur arrests couldn’t have been more ill-timed for the CPM, which was planning to hardsell industry minister Nirupam Sen’s “lukewarm” rehab package for the landlosers.Moreover, the Opposition has got an emotive brush to tar industrialisation – which is already nursing a black eye from the Nandigram backlash – further.One factor that the party is hoping to drive home is that the CBI probe was ordered by chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on his own. The party will contend that the central agency would not have been brought in if the government or the CPM leadership had anything to hide.In public, the CPM went on the offensive, alleging a conspiracy to derail industrialisation and describing the rape and murder as “low-level” crime.It accused the CBI of “political motivation” – a charge that will be difficult to establish as the agency’s current political masters at the Centre are at the mercy of the CPM.
“Dutta’s residence was 9km away from the place where Tapasi’s body was found. Despite that he was framed. It is clear now that the CBI arrested him out of political motivation,” said senior leader Benoy Konar, now acting as state party secretary in the absence of Biman Bose who is in the US. “It’s part of the conspiracy to derail the Tata Motors unit in Singur.”
Both Bose and Konar had dismissed Debu as “one of the party’s lakhs of voters and supporters”.
Konar today insisted that Tapasi’s murder was “not a political conspiracy but a low-level crime” and tried to add a twist to the tale.
“Debu was Tapasi’s relative. They might have fallen in love and the crime was committed on the spur of the moment. He was one of those who had voted for us. However, we are not sure whether he had maintained a secret relation also with the Krishi Jami Bachao committee,’’ he said.
Konar said he feared that another influential local CPM leader, Dibakar Das, “might be arrested” following his interrogation by the CBI.
Trinamool Congress, Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters have demanded capital punishment for the two men.
Mamata Banerjee, who visited the parents of the victim, said: 'I would not comment on the CBI probe at this juncture but we all want punishment of the culprits. An innocent girl had to pay with her life for protesting land acquisition.'
Asserting that the proposed chemical hub would not be allowed to come up even outside Nandigram, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee today said she would continue to resist acquisition of land from the people.Announcing that her party would take out 'bhookha' processions in Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram respectively on July 2 and 7 to highlight the plight of farmers of Singur and Nandigram, she alleged that the Left Front Government was trying to grab land of the common people in the name of industrialisation.
Miss Banerjee Thursday accused the chief minister of lying to the people regarding selection of site for the proposed mega chemical hub. Even as the Government had to abandon the plan for setting up the hub at Nandigram following violent resistance from the local people, the Chief Minister said the project would come up elsewhere, preferably in its vicinity. He also sought opinions from different political parties for reaching a consensus on the issue.
“Its a blatant lie when Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee says that the land for the mega hub has not yet been selected. In the same breath he says the centre has cleared the project. The clearance cannot be given by Centre till the state government categorically specifies the land on which the project should come up,’’ Miss Banerjee said. She quoted from the SEZ Act 2007 to justify her point that the state government had already earmarked 25,000 acres of land for proposed chemical hub.
She said the chief minister is biding time till the Haldia municipal election. Once the election is over, the state government will once again go for land acquisition.
She also said after the arrest of Debu Malik, who was given shelter by a CPI-M leader, the chief minister said at Writers’ Buildings that offenders should be brought to book. If he is so serious then CID should have arrested Malik after Tapasi was raped and murdered in December.
“Why has the chief minister failed to take adequate steps against those who tried to destroy evidence in the Tapasi Malik case?’’ she asked. She also said four months have passed but victims of Nandigram are yet to receive justice.
“In the name of globalisation and industrialisation CPI-M is misleading people and the state government is forcefully acquiring land either for private parties or individuals. This cannot be the role of any government,’’ Trinamul Congress chief said.
Miss Banerjee also said that her party would not join the all party meeting called by the DM Burdwan regarding land acquisition at Salanpur for the proposed steel plant by an industrial group.
Statesman News Service reports:
After offering an olive branch to the Opposition by announcing that it will observe Nandigram Peace Day on Bidhan Chandra Roy’s birthday as a mark of respect to the former chief minister, the CPI-M today took a complete U-turn and exposed the divisions in its ranks on this issue.
“It’s merely a coincidence that 1 July happens to be Bidhan Roy’s birthday. Why should we observe it? The Congress shouldn’t have reason to believe we selected this day with a motive”, CPI-M peasants front leader Mr Benoy Konar said today contradicting the party’s state secretary Mr Biman Bose who is now in the USA. Mr Konar is acting as the state secretary in his absence.
“Nandigram did not happen during Roy’s tenure. He was never recognised as a man sympathetic to Left democratic movement. It’s true that he took some initiative to set up new industries in Bengal which was not done since Independence. But we never say his tenure witnessed a flood of industrial projects (the exact term Mr Bose used last week)”, Mr Konar said. Criticising Roy for not taking enough initiative to keep the industrial process going, Mr Konar said: “With the kind of personality he had, Roy could have easily contested the Centre’s decision to impose the licence raj and freight equalisation. Durgapur, Haldia and Kalyani came up during his tenure. But after that there was a lull in industry.”
PWD Minister Kshiti Goswami today said the CBI inquiry into the Tapashi Malik murder case would not affect the state's industrialisation policy.
" The law must take its own course in the Singur issue and the CPI(M)'s allegation of political conspiracy should not be ruled out, and a thorough investigation is necessary, " Mr Goswami told newsmen here.
He said the CBI was inquiring the case and if any political conspiracy was found, the conspirators should be meted out a harsh punishment.
" I think CPI(M) central committee member Binoy Konar's allegation of political conspiracy will not affect the government's industrialisation policy, " the Minister replied to a query.
Pl see these websites to understand the Marxist mechanism of repression and expertis of Jyoti Basu!
Naxalite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe term comes from Naxalbari, a small village in West Bengal, where a section of Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) led by Charu Majumdar and Kanu ...
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goverment contact list: Blogs, Photos, Videos and more on TechnoratiRemembering Marichjhapi Massacre Palash Biswas Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. ...
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Recall that the year 2006 had begun with the shooting down in cold blood by the police of twelve tribals in Kalinga Nagar, Orissa, when they resisted their land being handed over to the Tatas for mining. The year is about to end as the Marxist chief minister in neighbouring west Bengal is prepared to unleash state terror on behalf of the Tatas. The Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas or PESA Act of 1996 requires Gram Sabhas to be consulted for land acquisition. And yet, in Jharkhand, in Orissa this has either been been ignored systematically or, as a recent field report documents, the police surrounds threateningly the ordinary members in the Gram Sabha meetings , forcing them to agree to the proposals of giving up their lands at throw away prices( Down to Earth, 31 October, 2006). Land acquisition in Singur in west Bengal for the Tatas, or for Anil Ambani in Dadri in UP repeat a pattern that is becoming menacingly familiar. We are told ‘trade secrets’ about land use can not be revealed to the public under the right to information act. Yet a local TV channel reported, uncontested so far by the government, that west Bengal government gave Rs.140 crores in compensation, while the the Tatass will give only 20 crores after five years for the land according to the deal, without stamp duty and with provision of free water. The fact that public money worth 120 crore or more is handed over to a corporation must indeed remain a trade secret. Another report claims on May 31, 2006 the west Bengal state cabinet gave the nod for acquisition of 36,325 acre of land for various similar national and multinational corporate led projects. With more proposals coming in, the figure might have crossed 70,000 acres with Howrah marked for the Salem group, and Barasat also to be handed over to the same group for Barasat Raichowk Express Way.
Intellectuals protest arrival of US carrier. But they do not realise the corelation of US military and the Global order. Visit of Nimitz and Sunita`sSpace travel do have something in common with Singur and Nandigram! Market forces do represent US interests worldwide. They want to make this globe a colony for unipolar zionist US Imperialism with which the Brahminical Hindutva forces have alligned. Indo US nuclear deal making External affairs minister happens to be the best advocate of indiscriminate land acquisition in West Bengal.
And see:
New Delhi:A group of historians and intellectuals have expressed disappointment over India's decision to grant permission to the US aircraft carrier Nimitz to make a call at Chennai port for rest and recreation.In a joint statement issued Friday, the signatories, including novelist Arundhati Roy and historian Romilla Thapar, said the government's justification that the nuclear-powered ship was not known to be carrying nuclear weapons on board and did not violate India's well-established policy did not cut ice.
"This claim flies in the face of the US' well-reiterated policy to 'neither deny nor confirm' the presence of nuclear weapons on its warships under any circumstances, and its standing instructions to military personnel," said the statement.
"The fact that New Delhi has gratuitously granted this certificate to the US, when Washington itself does not do so, speaks poorly of our foreign and security policies."
The statement also pointed out that the decision marks a reversal of India's past policy opposing the transit of nuclear weapons in its neighbourhood and the US base at Diego Garcia and its demand for a zone of peace in the Indian Ocean.
"A visit to India of the Nimitz, one of two US aircraft carriers recently mobilised in the Persian Gulf to threaten Iran, will send out a negative international signal in the context of the destabilisation of West Asia caused by the US-led invasion of Iraq," the statement said.
"Such 'military interactions' point to an erosion of foreign policy independence and a departure from the United Progressive Alliance's promise to work for a balanced, multi-polar world free of nuclear weapons."
The signatories to the statement include historians Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar, novelist Mahashweta Devi, dramatist Habib Tanvir and economists Prabhat Patnaik, S.P. Shukla and Deepak Nayyar and former education secretary Sudeep Bannerjee.
The ship will drop anchor three km off Chennai July 1-5.
Fresh violence erupts at Nandigram
Nandigram (W
: After a lull of ten days, fresh violence erupted yesterday here this evening with one person being injured in firing between a anti-land acquisition group and the state's ruling CPI(M).The firing took place at Tekhalibazar, the same area where supporters of Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee (Anti Land Acquisition group) and CPI(M) had traded fire sporadically for three days from June 15.
East Midnapore district superintendent of police G A Srinivas said the firing between the two sides began at 7:00 pm and continued for an hour.He said one person was injured in the exchange of fire.He said 200 policemen were deployed in Nandigram and they intervened and brought the situation under control.
BUPC convenor Sheikh Suffian claimed the injured Nishi Kanta Pradhan was a Committee supporter.Suffian also claimed CPI(M) cadres had fired 30 rounds at Committee supporters at Tekhalibazar.
Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary of CPI-ML (Liberation), condemned the incident and said, “Nandigram, like Naxalbari, will be a turning point in the history of West Bengal and India. In the early 1970s, Charu Majumdar, along with several others, was killed by the CPI (M) and Siddharth Shankar Ray of the Congress to suppress the Naxalbari movement. Today the CPI (M) is killing innocent peasants in Nandigram, backed by a corporate government and multinational corporations, for land acquisition.” He also demanded that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, as chief minister of West Bengal, should take the responsibility and resign.
After her visit to Nandigram, social activist Medha Patkar roundly criticised the Left government: “State terrorism by the CPI(M) cadre and the police have to be opposed through non-violent struggle. The fight against the SEZs and forcible displacement of the people of West Bengal and others is because of neo-liberal globalisation. The prevailing situation in West Bengal is no different from the one in Gujarat where thousands of Muslims are being displaced and ghettoised by the state government. What happened is not right and the ruling party in the state is at fault. In this case, women were targeted. We never expected that the Left would behave in such a heartless manner. The police is not normalising the situation. Instead they are causing the disturbance in the area.”
Major mortality events linked to British opium-linked exploitation of India and China include the Great Bengal Famine (1769-1770; 10 million deaths), other 18th-19th century famines in India (tens of millions of victims); 25 million 19th century cholera deaths (due to cholera dissemination by British shipping, rail and canals); the 19th century China Opium Wars and the subsequent Tai Ping rebellion (20-100 million associated famine victims); extraordinary Indian population stasis between 1890 and 1930 (due to famine, malnutrition, cholera, plague and influenza); and finally the WW2 man-made Bengal Famine in WW2 British India (4 million victims; speculated in Colin Mason’s “A Short History of Asia” to have been a deliberate scorched earth policy to block Japanese invasion from Burma – and accordingly near-comprehensively deleted from British history).
Globalisation is the context in which growth is taking place.the accompanying processes of economic liberalization and privatization are tilting the balance in favour of the market against the nation state. However, the game is no longer what it used to be. Nineteenth century capitalism developed through a complex process of conflict and cooperation between the state and the market. The state furthered the interest of the market, but at times also regulated it. For instance, it regulated the hours of work, abolished child labour or legalised trade unionism at different points in time. Karl Polyani, the perceptive commentator on the nineteenth century capitalism described this as a process of “great transformation” driven by the “double movement” of the market and the state, a process in which the rules for the market were set mostly by the state. When the state fails to play this role, the result is not a freer market and more freedom, but growing desperate rage of the poor,which must engulf all sooner or later.
It has become a cliché, even a politically correct cliché these days, to say that there are two Indias: the India that shines with its fancy apartments and houses in rich neighbourhoods, corporate houses of breath taking size, glittering shopping malls, and high-tech flyovers over which flows a procession of new model cars. These are the images from a globalized India on the verge of entering the first world. And then there is the other India. India of helpless peasants committing suicides, dalits lynched regularly in not- so- distant villages, tribals dispossessed of their forest land and livelihood, and children too small to walk properly, yet begging on the streets of shining cities. Something stalks the air.The rage of the poor from this other India is palpable; it has engulfed some 120-160 out of 607 districts of this country in the so called extremist Naxalite movements. The India of glitter and privilege, it seems is bent on turning its back, and seceding fast from the other India of despair, rage and inhuman poverty. This is not just a matter of growing relative inequality between the two Indias. A more brutal process is at work, with the connivance of governments at the Central and at the state level which is not only widening this divide between the two Indias, it is deepening consciously the absolute poverty and misery of poor India.
In the post-World War II period refugee problem emerged out to be one of the biggest problems before the international community. India has also experienced it at a large scale. Factors such as rise of religious nationalism, ethnicisation of politics, state terrorism, anarchic majoritarianism and above all state’s refusal to conform to norms set by the international refugee regime, rendered the refugees stateless and subjects for inhuman treatment. On the other hand, historical forces like religious, linguistic or ethnic nationalism and regional economic disparity continue to generate refugees in the eastern and north-eastern regions of India. Faced with unfriendly state, both in the country of origin and the country of adoption, the refugees struggle to find the ways and means for a healthy living, and wherever possible they make efforts to put up an organised movement for their ‘human rights’.
The unprecedented high economic growth on which privileged India prides itself is a measure of the high speed at which India of privilege is distancing itself from the India of crushing poverty. The higher the rate of economic growth along this pattern becomes, the greater would be the underdevelopment of India. We first need to understand this paradox which counter-poses growth against development, and challenge this dangerous obsession with growth.
The state power was seen in its most oppressive form during the Emergency (1975-1977) which was a watershed in Indian politics in many ways and had a great impact on the human rights scene. It is immediately after this period that various human rights groups established and consolidated themselves
The All India Federation of Organizations for Democratic Rights (AIFOFDR) is an example of a democratic rights organization. Its Declaration states that rights abuses in India stem from the fundamental conflict between the ruling classes and the exploited masses. The state is depicted as the agent of the ruling classes, and all efforts by the state to alleviate poverty and exploitation are viewed as a form of deception. When people realize this deception and struggle for improving their lot, the state lets loose repression upon them. The Declaration holds that throughout history people have won their rights only through their own struggles and organization, and that people must be mobilized to promote, assert and defend their democratic rights. Thus the right to struggle is the most fundamental democratic right. All other rights stem from this and are secondary.7 AIFOFDR declaration makes it clear that "the right to struggle" is more important than "social peace." It supports what it calls "democratic organizations . . . of rural poor," "peasant organizations," and "legitimate peasant movement" like the Mazdoor Kisan Sangram Sangathan (MKSS) and Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). AIFOFDR and other democratic rights organizations thus do not have much faith in the constitutionally guaranteed rights or the legal system of the country.8 They believe that a "radical transformation" of the society is required to guarantee rights to everybody, but specially the underprivileged and the exploited. This ideology/outlook sets them in constant conflict with the state/government.
What we are witnessing is deliberate connivance on the part of the conventional Left in West Bengal with the interests of large corporations against the poor, perhaps in the hope that the corporations will bring about a miraculous transformation of the State, which they are incapable of doing with sate power. It is an abject surrender to the conventional wisdom of our time that There Is No Alternative to corporate led capitalism
POLITICS-INDIA: Left's Bengal Bastion Shaky After 30 Years in Power
By Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI, Jun 29 (IPS) - India's Left parties have just set an international record by completing 30 uninterrupted years of elected power in the major state of West Bengal.
Not only is this is an unprecedented achievement in India, where 80 percent of all ruling parties have lost elections to their rivals in the past three decades, it remains unparalleled anywhere in the world. Perhaps no other political party or coalition, from across the political spectrum, has surpassed this accomplishment in any other democracy.
India's Left Front (LF) -- which mainly comprises the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Forward Bloc, and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP)-- also wields enormous power at the centre as the key allies of the federally-ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Fifty years ago, a coalition led by communists had set another pioneering record by winning power in free and fair elections in India's southern state of Kerala -- the first communists to do so in any democratic country in the post-War world. That government was dismissed two years later by the then federal government. But the LF bounced back and presently holds power in Kerala.
Impressive as the LF's record is in West Bengal, it is not without its flaws and limitations. Even the state government's own "Human Development Report", released in 2004, admits the record is "mixed" -- "with some important successes and also some areas of inadequate achievement, as well as certain emerging problems."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38360
STABLE, YES, COMRADES,
BUT ARE YOU ALSO ABLE?
West Bengal must ponder why it has allowed the Left 30 years
CHANDAN MITRA
The Left in India, specifically the domineering Big Brother CPM, is currently busy congratulating itself for completing 30 years of uninterrupted rule in West Bengal. It would be churlish to deny them credit for a feat no political party has been able to achieve in India. In the erstwhile Soviet Union, the Communist Party ruled for just over 70 years; in China it has been in power for less than 60. By comparison, our own comrades have not done badly at all, considering this is the only place they have remained in power through free, multi-party elections. The CPM’s stranglehold over West Bengal cannot be explained away by rigged elections alone, especially after the closely supervised 2006 Assembly poll. That it has also shrewdly kept the Opposition divided, ensuring popular support for non-Left parties does not translate into seats, is yet another feather in the CPM’s cap. Many would be startled to learn that there was only a 0.8 percent difference in the votes polled between the Left Front and non-Left groups in the 2006 election, although the ruling alliance bagged nearly three-fourths of the seats in the Assembly.
But do we sense a growing discomfort within the Left Front in its 30th year in power? In fact, celebrations for the landmark anniversary are patently subdued. For the first time in three decades, the CPM has lost the moral and intellectual high ground following the violent uprisings first in Singur and then in Nandigram. Scores of Leftist intellectuals, academics, filmmakers, cultural personalities and writers are now at pains to distance themselves from the unacceptable face of a party that still worships Josef Stalin. As it transpires, it is not just a captive police and a cowering administration that is to blame for the simmering violence in Nandigram; the CPM has deployed its armed cadre in full strength to act as the vanguard of the forces of repression. Everybody in Bengal knows how dangerous it is to cross the CPM’s path. But, if one surrenders to the all-powerful “local committee”, not only is protection assured but even personal or business scores can be effortlessly settled. Despite all this, nearly 50 percent of Bengal’s voters have not been cowed into submission.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main31.asp?filename=op070707stable_yes.asp
Tales of eviction in Bengal
http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/jun/hrt-wbengal.htm
Free Bird Productions, a Kolkata-based documentary unit that makes cultural, ethnographic and documentary films, has made two of the more noteworthy films about the recent events in Singur and Nandigram. Shoma Chatterji notes the unanswered questions the films raise.
07 June 2007 - The term 'eviction' has become a familiar one during the past two decades, as millions of people have been driven away from their lands and homes, against their wishes. Even so, the direct involvement of the government of West Bengal and cadres of the ruling party in the forced evictions at Nandigram and Singur - to provide land for industrial projects there - struck a different chord. This was not the graden variety eviction of India; that this action by the government
