by
palashbiswas
@ 2007-12-16 - 19:17:01
On The Significance Of Nandigram
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
On The Significance Of Nandigram
By Ramsey Clark
15 December, 2007
Countercurrents.org
(Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General, anti-imperialist campaigner and President of the US-based International Action Center, was in Kolkata to attend the Anti-Imperialist International Conference and rally organised by the All India Anti-Imperialist Forum from 27th to 29th November. On 29th November, he visited Nandigram for a first-hand experience of the situation there. Returning to the closing session of the Conference, he made the following brief speech on the significance of Nandigram.)
I had an extremely moving and enlightening experience at Nandigram today. What happened in Nandigram reveals most aspects of the crisis facing all people in the planet today, something that is not quite understood by merely reading about it. People who have lived on the lands of their ancestors going back 1500 years, a beautiful people, attacked by their own Government, killed, injured, their homes burnt- 119 homes in one part of Nandigram, we saw the homes and talked to the survivors, their property taken or destroyed, many still missing. I saw a boy hit by a bullet in the front forehead, I could also see the exit wound. He was able to stand up, but was unable to talk. The death toll is far greater than what we are told. In one small area that we visited, people were sure of a hundred.
Why? Why is the Government doing this to its people? It is doing it so that powerful foreign interests can come on to the lands of the Indian people to exploit not only people of India, but people of the whole world. In the SEZ they are planning, you will find chemical companies, perhaps Dow Chemicals again. Can you imagine Dow Chemicals returning to India after Bhopal? That's exactly what's being planned, to pollute life, to exploit resources. One plan is to manufacture munitions there. To kill Iraqis, perhaps? What nations will be assaulted with these munitions?
We have to be united if we hope to stop the march of imperialism. The concentration of power that comes from imperialism becomes so dramatically clear in Nandigram. People utterly impoverished have lost all they had, their loved ones, their homes, so that wealth can come in, poison the environment there, exploit the rest of the country, concentrating wealth in fewer hands, while the masses get poorer and poorer.
How incredibly courageous the movement has been! As of this moment, they have successfully defied enormous power, at tragic cost to themselves. They say they can't make it without our help. We can't make it without the help of each other and without reaching out to more and more people. During our civil rights movement in the US, the oppressed African-Americans said, `Power to the people'. They had it wrong. Power is in the people. The people must have the will and the intelligence to exercise that power. Who can defy the people? In the winter of 1978, I was in Teheran. The people shut down the city- the factories, markets, transport, colleges – the people were out on the streets, 4 to 5 million of them, marching. The Shah of Iran had 68 million dollars worth of arms from the US, the Shah had more tanks than the British Army. But with all his power, his soldiers, his tanks, he could kill only 48,000 people, he could not kill all the people. So as the people shut down the whole country, the Shah finally got up and left on his plane.
I am not sure we will find a better battle cry today that brings
everything together than Nandigram- a struggle against power that destroys people and places for its own enrichment while impoverishing others. I hope we can carry the banner of these people, not just to help them, but to save ourselves from the march of imperialism which is at its most dangerous today... I am sure we will find ways to unite our action and our energies, and we then shall overcome.
http://www.countercurrents.org/clark151207.htm
Bhattacharya stresses on industralisation
Joydeep Sengupta
Sunday, December 16, 2007 (Kolkata)
West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya on Sunday reiterated the ruling CPI-M's stand on the growing need for industralisation in the state.
Speaking at a district-level party conference at Dankuni on the outskirts of Kolkata, Bhattacharya said though the government had backed out from creating a chemical hub at Nandigram due to mounting pressure from the Opposition.
The government remains committed to industrialisation in view of the changing world, he said.
''We have failed in Nandigram because the Opposition has misled the people. That is why, we don't want to go to Nandigram anymore. But, can we let go of petrochemicals?,'' Bhattacharya said.
''Especially, when the whole world is keen on the petrochemical industry. Indian Oil Company will make a refinery. It will lead to a slew of downstream projects like polymer, rubber and pharmaceuticals - we are weak at all these industries,'' he added.
Bhattacharya gave the example of Haldia, which was a remote fishermen's village about 30 years ago. ''Now, Haldia has emerged as a prominent industrial hub. Did we make a mistake by wanting to create another Haldia at Nandigram?,'' he asserted.
Bhattacharya alleged that the Opposition didn't allow his government to do so.
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20070036106&ch=12/16/2007%207:31:00%20PM
Special Article
‘WARLORDS’ IN STATES
The Parties Of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee And Narendra Modi Have Rejected The Democratic System
By AMULYA GANGULI
The recent events in West Bengal and Gujarat can provide some idea of how undemocratic India still is compared to the advanced societies of Europe and North America. India may well be the world's largest democracy, but it continues to harbour elements in the political system who unashamedly subscribe to the totalitarian culture. For instance, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee may have offered a belated apology for his “eye for an eye” endorsement of the CPI-M’s atrocities in Nandigram, but no one knows whether it was genuine repentance or a tactical retreat. Is there any guarantee that the cadres will not be sent on a similar mission of rape and arson elsewhere in the near or distant future ?
Like his communist counterpart, Gujarat's Narendra Modi, too, has retracted his chilling comments on fake encounters by saying that he does not approve of them. Again, it is difficult to be certain whether the 'fascist' chief minister is really against the cold-blooded killing of the accused by policemen or is merely trying to evade chastisement by the judiciary and the Election Commission.
Whatever may be their innermost thoughts, the past actions of these two chief ministers show that they acted more or less like the warlords of the badlands of Afghanistan in harbouring murderous gangs and using them against their opponents.
Bhattacharjee and Modi are not the only ones to blame. It isn't any secret that all political parties today have criminals in their ranks, both as legislators and as footsoldiers. The latter's task is to engage their political adversaries in battle, especially at the time of elections. There are even parties, such as the Shiv Sena, which mostly seem to comprise the footsoldiers, commanded by a godfather, and are involved more often than not in browbeating their opponents and keeping the ordinary people half-terrorised. Such is the influence of these outfits under their respective warlords that local courts cannot always be trusted to deliver justice.
As a result, cases have to be transferred elsewhere. The most celebrated example is the Best Bakery case, which had to be tried in Maharashtra and not Gujarat, the scene of the massacre. Similarly, the Supreme Court favoured the transfer of a case of murder involving the Tamil Nadu chief minister, MK Karunanidhi's eldest son, MK Azhagiri, from Madurai since one of the witnesses complained that a fair trial could not be held in the town, where Azhagiri wielded considerable influence. Incidentally, the dead was a DMK politician who was close to Karunanidhi's favourite son and heir apparent, MK Stalin, whose relations with his elder brother is not of the best.
What these episodes underline is the disdain on the part of the ruling politicians (and their wayward children) for the law of the land since they give full rein to the hoods working for them. A part of this attitude stems from the still prevailing feudal culture where the lord and master sets the law instead of following it. The ever expanding list of dignitaries who will no longer be frisked at airports, and the howling of sirens as they drive through town, after cordoning off roads for long periods, are symptomatic of this undemocratic mentality. But there are also those who go beyond feudalism to flaunt an ideology which rejects the democratic set-up itself.
The parties of Bhattacharjee and Modi belong to this category. The communists, of course, have no time for the “bourgeois” system. In fact, their original purpose, which has become muted over the years, was to enter the system via elections only to wreck it from within. And there are groups, like the Naxalites, who are admittedly more honest in the matter of adhering to their ideology, who have purposefully kept aloof and try to wreck the system from outside. However, those who are inside, like the Left Front parties, devote their energies to strengthen their hold on every aspect of life ~ in the city mohallas and villages, in the professions, such as teaching, and in the trade unions in colleges, hospitals and industrial establishments.
What is more, they use their muscle power in these organisations with the government’s backing to eliminate all rivals since the communist temperament brooks no competitors. An adversary simply has to be crushed. Nandigram was only the latest example of this mindset, which was also reflected in Bhattacharjee’s original tit-for-tat comment on the subject. In addition, the criticism of the judiciary by Prakash Karat at the national level and Biman Bose at the state level underlines the refusal of the commissars to accept institutional authority since autonomous bodies of this nature are unthinkable in their cherished people’s democracy.
Like the communists, the fascists, too, are unhappy with institutional restraints. Hence, Modi’s insistence in the run-up to the 2002 elections to utter Chief Election Commissioner James Michael Lyngdoh's full name during the campaign to send a message to the voters that a Christian cannot be trusted to do justice in a putative Hindu rashtra. If the bourgeoisie are unpersons in the Orwellian sense to the communists, the non-Hindus constitute a similar group in the Hindu rashtra. Both communities are beyond the pale to the comrades and the proponents of Hindutva. Inevitably, if certain sections are identified by the powers that be as untermenschen, as the Jews were in Nazi Germany, then the authorities can let the police and the storm- troopers loose on them. This is what happened in Nandigram and during the Gujarat riots.
The presence of such lawless rulers invariably vitiates the entire system, for the IAS and IPS officers realise that whatever they may have learnt during their training period about administrative procedures and legal safeguards have no meaning in real life.
So, when Bhattacharjee and Modi asked the police officers not to interfere when their party cadres and saffron activists went about their grim business in Nandigram this year and in Gujarat five years ago, the men in uniform simply had to salute and indicate their acquiescence. Thus, we saw how the West Bengal home secretary could acknowledge that Nandigram had become a “war zone” without letting it be known what official steps were being taken to restore peace. Everyone knows, of course, about the efficacy of the unofficial measures.
While the politicians can be expected to be true to their crude, cynical selves, what is astonishing is the support to such lawlessness from a section of Left-leaning individuals like film star Soumitra Chatterjee, who said that the CPI-M had the right to recover their lost land in Nandigram by hook or by crook (chhaley, boley, kaushalay), and academics like Irfan Habib, Prabhat Patnaik and others who said that 'in the absence of intervention by the state machinery … and unwillingness for a political dialogue by the opposition … is it surprising that the displaced CPI-M sympathisers made their own moves to return to their homes ?'
When the Babari Masjid was pulled down, the Hindutva brigade had similarly said that in the absence of judicial intervention, the anger of the Hindus could not be contained.
The writer is a former Assistant Editor, The Statesman
Special Article
‘WARLORDS’ IN STATES
The Parties Of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee And Narendra Modi Have Rejected The Democratic System
By AMULYA GANGULI
The recent events in West Bengal and Gujarat can provide some idea of how undemocratic India still is compared to the advanced societies of Europe and North America. India may well be the world's largest democracy, but it continues to harbour elements in the political system who unashamedly subscribe to the totalitarian culture. For instance, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee may have offered a belated apology for his “eye for an eye” endorsement of the CPI-M’s atrocities in Nandigram, but no one knows whether it was genuine repentance or a tactical retreat. Is there any guarantee that the cadres will not be sent on a similar mission of rape and arson elsewhere in the near or distant future ?
Like his communist counterpart, Gujarat's Narendra Modi, too, has retracted his chilling comments on fake encounters by saying that he does not approve of them. Again, it is difficult to be certain whether the 'fascist' chief minister is really against the cold-blooded killing of the accused by policemen or is merely trying to evade chastisement by the judiciary and the Election Commission.
Whatever may be their innermost thoughts, the past actions of these two chief ministers show that they acted more or less like the warlords of the badlands of Afghanistan in harbouring murderous gangs and using them against their opponents.
Bhattacharjee and Modi are not the only ones to blame. It isn't any secret that all political parties today have criminals in their ranks, both as legislators and as footsoldiers. The latter's task is to engage their political adversaries in battle, especially at the time of elections. There are even parties, such as the Shiv Sena, which mostly seem to comprise the footsoldiers, commanded by a godfather, and are involved more often than not in browbeating their opponents and keeping the ordinary people half-terrorised. Such is the influence of these outfits under their respective warlords that local courts cannot always be trusted to deliver justice.
As a result, cases have to be transferred elsewhere. The most celebrated example is the Best Bakery case, which had to be tried in Maharashtra and not Gujarat, the scene of the massacre. Similarly, the Supreme Court favoured the transfer of a case of murder involving the Tamil Nadu chief minister, MK Karunanidhi's eldest son, MK Azhagiri, from Madurai since one of the witnesses complained that a fair trial could not be held in the town, where Azhagiri wielded considerable influence. Incidentally, the dead was a DMK politician who was close to Karunanidhi's favourite son and heir apparent, MK Stalin, whose relations with his elder brother is not of the best.
What these episodes underline is the disdain on the part of the ruling politicians (and their wayward children) for the law of the land since they give full rein to the hoods working for them. A part of this attitude stems from the still prevailing feudal culture where the lord and master sets the law instead of following it. The ever expanding list of dignitaries who will no longer be frisked at airports, and the howling of sirens as they drive through town, after cordoning off roads for long periods, are symptomatic of this undemocratic mentality. But there are also those who go beyond feudalism to flaunt an ideology which rejects the democratic set-up itself.
The parties of Bhattacharjee and Modi belong to this category. The communists, of course, have no time for the “bourgeois” system. In fact, their original purpose, which has become muted over the years, was to enter the system via elections only to wreck it from within. And there are groups, like the Naxalites, who are admittedly more honest in the matter of adhering to their ideology, who have purposefully kept aloof and try to wreck the system from outside. However, those who are inside, like the Left Front parties, devote their energies to strengthen their hold on every aspect of life ~ in the city mohallas and villages, in the professions, such as teaching, and in the trade unions in colleges, hospitals and industrial establishments.
What is more, they use their muscle power in these organisations with the government’s backing to eliminate all rivals since the communist temperament brooks no competitors. An adversary simply has to be crushed. Nandigram was only the latest example of this mindset, which was also reflected in Bhattacharjee’s original tit-for-tat comment on the subject. In addition, the criticism of the judiciary by Prakash Karat at the national level and Biman Bose at the state level underlines the refusal of the commissars to accept institutional authority since autonomous bodies of this nature are unthinkable in their cherished people’s democracy.
Like the communists, the fascists, too, are unhappy with institutional restraints. Hence, Modi’s insistence in the run-up to the 2002 elections to utter Chief Election Commissioner James Michael Lyngdoh's full name during the campaign to send a message to the voters that a Christian cannot be trusted to do justice in a putative Hindu rashtra. If the bourgeoisie are unpersons in the Orwellian sense to the communists, the non-Hindus constitute a similar group in the Hindu rashtra. Both communities are beyond the pale to the comrades and the proponents of Hindutva. Inevitably, if certain sections are identified by the powers that be as untermenschen, as the Jews were in Nazi Germany, then the authorities can let the police and the storm- troopers loose on them. This is what happened in Nandigram and during the Gujarat riots.
The presence of such lawless rulers invariably vitiates the entire system, for the IAS and IPS officers realise that whatever they may have learnt during their training period about administrative procedures and legal safeguards have no meaning in real life.
So, when Bhattacharjee and Modi asked the police officers not to interfere when their party cadres and saffron activists went about their grim business in Nandigram this year and in Gujarat five years ago, the men in uniform simply had to salute and indicate their acquiescence. Thus, we saw how the West Bengal home secretary could acknowledge that Nandigram had become a “war zone” without letting it be known what official steps were being taken to restore peace. Everyone knows, of course, about the efficacy of the unofficial measures.
While the politicians can be expected to be true to their crude, cynical selves, what is astonishing is the support to such lawlessness from a section of Left-leaning individuals like film star Soumitra Chatterjee, who said that the CPI-M had the right to recover their lost land in Nandigram by hook or by crook (chhaley, boley, kaushalay), and academics like Irfan Habib, Prabhat Patnaik and others who said that 'in the absence of intervention by the state machinery … and unwillingness for a political dialogue by the opposition … is it surprising that the displaced CPI-M sympathisers made their own moves to return to their homes ?'
When the Babari Masjid was pulled down, the Hindutva brigade had similarly said that in the absence of judicial intervention, the anger of the Hindus could not be contained.
The writer is a former Assistant Editor, The Statesman
Special Article
‘WARLORDS’ IN STATES
The Parties Of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee And Narendra Modi Have Rejected The Democratic System
By AMULYA GANGULI
The recent events in West Bengal and Gujarat can provide some idea of how undemocratic India still is compared to the advanced societies of Europe and North America. India may well be the world's largest democracy, but it continues to harbour elements in the political system who unashamedly subscribe to the totalitarian culture. For instance, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee may have offered a belated apology for his “eye for an eye” endorsement of the CPI-M’s atrocities in Nandigram, but no one knows whether it was genuine repentance or a tactical retreat. Is there any guarantee that the cadres will not be sent on a similar mission of rape and arson elsewhere in the near or distant future ?
Like his communist counterpart, Gujarat's Narendra Modi, too, has retracted his chilling comments on fake encounters by saying that he does not approve of them. Again, it is difficult to be certain whether the 'fascist' chief minister is really against the cold-blooded killing of the accused by policemen or is merely trying to evade chastisement by the judiciary and the Election Commission.
Whatever may be their innermost thoughts, the past actions of these two chief ministers show that they acted more or less like the warlords of the badlands of Afghanistan in harbouring murderous gangs and using them against their opponents.
Bhattacharjee and Modi are not the only ones to blame. It isn't any secret that all political parties today have criminals in their ranks, both as legislators and as footsoldiers. The latter's task is to engage their political adversaries in battle, especially at the time of elections. There are even parties, such as the Shiv Sena, which mostly seem to comprise the footsoldiers, commanded by a godfather, and are involved more often than not in browbeating their opponents and keeping the ordinary people half-terrorised. Such is the influence of these outfits under their respective warlords that local courts cannot always be trusted to deliver justice.
As a result, cases have to be transferred elsewhere. The most celebrated example is the Best Bakery case, which had to be tried in Maharashtra and not Gujarat, the scene of the massacre. Similarly, the Supreme Court favoured the transfer of a case of murder involving the Tamil Nadu chief minister, MK Karunanidhi's eldest son, MK Azhagiri, from Madurai since one of the witnesses complained that a fair trial could not be held in the town, where Azhagiri wielded considerable influence. Incidentally, the dead was a DMK politician who was close to Karunanidhi's favourite son and heir apparent, MK Stalin, whose relations with his elder brother is not of the best.
What these episodes underline is the disdain on the part of the ruling politicians (and their wayward children) for the law of the land since they give full rein to the hoods working for them. A part of this attitude stems from the still prevailing feudal culture where the lord and master sets the law instead of following it. The ever expanding list of dignitaries who will no longer be frisked at airports, and the howling of sirens as they drive through town, after cordoning off roads for long periods, are symptomatic of this undemocratic mentality. But there are also those who go beyond feudalism to flaunt an ideology which rejects the democratic set-up itself.
The parties of Bhattacharjee and Modi belong to this category. The communists, of course, have no time for the “bourgeois” system. In fact, their original purpose, which has become muted over the years, was to enter the system via elections only to wreck it from within. And there are groups, like the Naxalites, who are admittedly more honest in the matter of adhering to their ideology, who have purposefully kept aloof and try to wreck the system from outside. However, those who are inside, like the Left Front parties, devote their energies to strengthen their hold on every aspect of life ~ in the city mohallas and villages, in the professions, such as teaching, and in the trade unions in colleges, hospitals and industrial establishments.
What is more, they use their muscle power in these organisations with the government’s backing to eliminate all rivals since the communist temperament brooks no competitors. An adversary simply has to be crushed. Nandigram was only the latest example of this mindset, which was also reflected in Bhattacharjee’s original tit-for-tat comment on the subject. In addition, the criticism of the judiciary by Prakash Karat at the national level and Biman Bose at the state level underlines the refusal of the commissars to accept institutional authority since autonomous bodies of this nature are unthinkable in their cherished people’s democracy.
Like the communists, the fascists, too, are unhappy with institutional restraints. Hence, Modi’s insistence in the run-up to the 2002 elections to utter Chief Election Commissioner James Michael Lyngdoh's full name during the campaign to send a message to the voters that a Christian cannot be trusted to do justice in a putative Hindu rashtra. If the bourgeoisie are unpersons in the Orwellian sense to the communists, the non-Hindus constitute a similar group in the Hindu rashtra. Both communities are beyond the pale to the comrades and the proponents of Hindutva. Inevitably, if certain sections are identified by the powers that be as untermenschen, as the Jews were in Nazi Germany, then the authorities can let the police and the storm- troopers loose on them. This is what happened in Nandigram and during the Gujarat riots.
The presence of such lawless rulers invariably vitiates the entire system, for the IAS and IPS officers realise that whatever they may have learnt during their training period about administrative procedures and legal safeguards have no meaning in real life.
So, when Bhattacharjee and Modi asked the police officers not to interfere when their party cadres and saffron activists went about their grim business in Nandigram this year and in Gujarat five years ago, the men in uniform simply had to salute and indicate their acquiescence. Thus, we saw how the West Bengal home secretary could acknowledge that Nandigram had become a “war zone” without letting it be known what official steps were being taken to restore peace. Everyone knows, of course, about the efficacy of the unofficial measures.
While the politicians can be expected to be true to their crude, cynical selves, what is astonishing is the support to such lawlessness from a section of Left-leaning individuals like film star Soumitra Chatterjee, who said that the CPI-M had the right to recover their lost land in Nandigram by hook or by crook (chhaley, boley, kaushalay), and academics like Irfan Habib, Prabhat Patnaik and others who said that 'in the absence of intervention by the state machinery … and unwillingness for a political dialogue by the opposition … is it surprising that the displaced CPI-M sympathisers made their own moves to return to their homes ?'
When the Babari Masjid was pulled down, the Hindutva brigade had similarly said that in the absence of judicial intervention, the anger of the Hindus could not be contained.
The writer is a former Assistant Editor, The Statesman
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=3&theme=&usrsess=1&id=180770
Depts fight for industrialisation spoils
Anindita Chowdhury
KOLKATA, Dec. 15: First, industrialisation at any cost. Then a scuffle for the spoils. The state animal resources development (ARD) department has locked horns with the land and land reforms department, demanding a share of the selami (money advanced) by the Jindal group for a plot of land in Salboni where the steel major is planning a project.
The ARD department had to part with nearly 864 acres of farmland in Salboni to enable the state government to make good on its promise to the Jindal group to make land available for its Rs 35,000-crore project. The department had to let go of the land despite promising it to a private company for setting up a meat processing centre there.
The principal secretary of the ARD department had written to his counterpart in the land and land reforms department, asking for a share of the Rs 75.23 crore that the Jindal group had advanced to the state government for 4,200 acres. But the land and land reforms department did not respond favourably. The department pointed out to the ARD department instead that land records showed that the plot was in the name of the collector of West Midnapore district.
The ARD department is keen to get a share of the amount advanced by the Jindals so that it can plough back the same into its own cash-strapped projects, notably, the Himalayan Milk Producers’ Cooperative Union Limited (Himul). It has again sent a requisition to the land and land reforms department and has decided not to let go of any other land in its possession without getting a share of the sales proceeds. It also plans to make a similar demand for a 200 acre-plot it will hand over to the IT department for an IT park in Kalyani.
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=1&theme=&usrsess=1&id=180746
CPI gives merit cards to Buddha, Basu
Statesman News Service
KHANDRA (Burdwan), Dec. 15: The CPI is still with the Left Front because such veteran and responsible mass leaders of the CPI-M as Mr Jyoti Basu or Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee have never maligned the allies.
That is something party leaders like Mr Binoy Konar and Mr Biman Bose have made routine. This was stated by Mr Nandagopal Bhattacharya, state water investigation minister and central committee leader of the CPI, here today. He was here at this colliery village to address the opening session of the 23rd district conference of his party. Mr Bhattacharya said: “Many other leaders have insulted the allies, daring to ask the junior partners to desert the front if they were unable to adjust. “They called us parasites. Still we walk together because veteran mass leaders have never approved of such comments. Mr Basu has always insisted that the CPI-M wins elections because it is heading the Left Front combine.”
The minister said: “I challenge the CPI-M to win elections without our support and cooperation. I know it is impossible for them.” He advised the Forward Bloc to withdraw its decision to contest the panchayat polls alone. He said: “It is a wrong policy. We must stay together, just like the way we have been handling different situations for the past 30 years. I urge the All India Forward Bloc to reconsider the decision.” He added: “We have differences of opinion with the CPI-M and we are fighting it out with a discipline as prescribed by the Left Front guidelines.”
Asked whether the CPI has become a power monger and its ministers don’t dare to open up like what the RSP leader Mr Kshiti Goswami did few days ago, threatening to step down from the Cabinet, Mr Bhattacharya flared up and said: “What has Kshiti babu done? He stayed away barely a month and finally surrendered. We don’t support such things. We don’t interfere in what other parties do. We don’t want to break the Left Front protocol.”
Left Front does a Tollywood
Deepak Razdan
NEW DELHI, Dec. 15: The Forward Bloc, a key component of West Bengal’s ruling Left Front, says Singur and Nandigram took place only because the Left Front tried to follow liberal economic policies, which it opposed in Delhi.
By giving leeway to industrialists and SEZs in West Bengal, the Left Front government has been emulating the Centre’s actions, just as films that Tollywood churns out appear to be flicks from Bollywood.
Forward Bloc general secretary Mr Debabrata Biswas told The Statesman that instead of fulfilling its promise of presenting “an alternative model of governance”, the Left Front was presiding over a “baburaj” that had turned people “subordinate to a bureaucratic system”.
A new “zamindari” of bureaucrats from the government, party and private sector was today running West Bengal, and a Left Front built for “collective rule” was captive to leaders of a single party, Mr Biswas said.
However, he said, it was not time for him to quit the Left Front. He has given a call for a rectification movement within the Left Front, and a “march to Nandigram” from different parts of
