Land Acquisition and Women's Resistance
22 February, 2007
Tebhaga Comes Alive in Singur
A report by the Women's Movement Team-
16th to
Labels: Fact finding report, Singur
posted by Resistance 22.2.07,
,
Singur: 4 months that reduced CPM to a ‘minority'
12 February, 2007
Ishwardaha, Feb. 11: Four months — that is all it took a CPM stronghold to turn against the party and force its leaders into hiding.
“In November, Trinamul leaders formed the Baastu Krishi Jomi Banchao Committee cashing in on rumours of land acquisition. They capitalised on the farmer’s love for land. Most of our voters and many of our leaders have moved over to Trinamul since,” said Narayan Patra, a CPM supporter and husband of panchayat member Chandana.
The Patras returned to the village, 130 km from Calcutta, on Friday after several days in hiding because of the raging anti-acquisition movement.
They admit that the situation worsened because of the large-scale defection by the CPM’s grassroots members.
A villager said only 30-odd families out of the 1,500 at Ishwardaha supported Trinamul before the agitation began.
Bablu Laiya, once a CPM whole-timer, is among the many to have bolstered the Trinamul ranks since.
Shankar Kar, then the DYFI local committee secretary, is a leader of the committee now.
“After these leaders were brainwashed, they also took our supporters with them. Very soon, we panchayat members and our families became a minority,” said Anil Gayunia, who had won 70 per cent votes in the 2003 panchayat polls.
Observers said small farmers such as bargadars and pattadars, who do not have land of their own but till that of others, have been the driving force of the movement here.
Land records show that marginal farmers and a large number of bargadars, both recorded and unrecorded, primarily inhabit the 791-acre Ishwardaha mouza.
There are some 3,500 registered bargadars in Ishwardaha, a mouza with only 2,035 plots.
Over half the village — around 400 acres — is on the acquisition list for a multi-product special economic zone.
“The average size of holdings here is 40 decimels (about 26.6 cottahs). There are many who till others’ land but do not figure on government records. There are also those who till government land (pattadars) along the banks of the Haldi,” said an officer.
Over 75 per cent of Ishwardaha is single-crop, but the land is dear to its residents. “My husband and I till a four-bigha plot that belongs to another family. We grow khesari (a kind of pulses) in the season and do menial jobs the rest of the year. But the crop is important to us. We get 50 to 60 kg of dal,” said Basanti Gendi, wife of an unregistered bargadar.
Link
posted by Resistance 12.2.07,
,
Policeman killed, Twenty hurt in clashes over Singur
07 February, 2007
KOLKATA (Reuters) - Twenty people were injured on Wednesday in clashes between police and activists opposed to a proposed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the communist-ruled state of West Bengal.
Four policemen, including an officer, were among the injured near Nandigram, about 150 km south of the state capital, Kolkata, where the SEZ is being planned.
Meanwhile, a police intelligence official was reported missing from the area and is suspected to have been killed in the clashes, Raj Kanojia, a senior police official said.
Protesters dug up roads and attacked police with iron rods and stones.
The Nandigram SEZ project has become a flashpoint between the state's long-ruling communists and farmers who say their prime agriculture land is being taken away. Six people have died and about 100 hurt in protests over the project in recent weeks.
In the meantime, farmers opposed to a controversial car factory near Kolkata broke part of a fence around the site on Wednesday. Two police jeeps were also damaged near the site at Singur. Police fired teargas shells to disperse the farmers.
Tata Motors started work to build its factory in Singur last month to make what the company claims will be the world's cheapest car for 100,000 rupees.
But the project, which has become a test case for the communists, has been mired in trouble with some farmers saying the government took their land against their wills. The government says it has compensated most of the affected farmers.
There have been regular protests in Singur for the past few weeks.On Wednesday, tens of thousands of Muslims belonging to the Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind group, headed towards a village near Singur, planning to hold a rally against the project later in the day.
A large police contingent was deployed but activists said they were undeterred. "This is just the beginning of (a) huge protest against the communist government's police," Siddiqullah Chowdhury, general secretary of the group, said.
Cop killed
Reports say the policeman, a district intelligence official, was beaten up, and his body dragged away by the protesters. Police have launched a massive hunt for his body.
Four other policemen, including the officer in charge of he Bhowanipur station, have been injured and are now in the hospital.
The protesters resisting land acquisition have categorically said that they would not stop protesting till the government assures them that there will be no SEZ in Nandigram
Link
Labels: Bengal, News, Pictures, Singur
posted by Bimal 7.2.07,
,
Singur on boil again, protesters teargassed
Police fire tear gas in Singur
Singur (WB), Feb 7: The police today fired tear gas shells to chase away activists of Trinamool Congress-led Krishi Jami Raksha Committee (Save Farmland Committee) who entered the fenced off area at the Tata Motors small car project site and uprooted 14 fencing posts.Around 100 people of the Committee entered the fenced off area at Bajemelia in Singur bloc early this morning to uproot the posts.
Policemen immediately launched into action firing tear gas shells to drive away the disruptors.
No arrest has been made in this connection, Sub- Divisional Police Officer Kalyan Mukherjee said, adding police fired 14 tear gas shells.
A huge police force has been deployed at Chanditola, roughly 10 km from here, in view of today's scheduled march to Singur by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind opposing land take-over for setting up industry.
Link
posted by Bimal 7.2.07,
,
Singur: Guerrilla warfare’ continues
06 February, 2007
Mamata Banerjee wags her finger at a policeman on being stopped on her way to Chinsurah. Picture by Amit Datta
Singur/Calcutta, Feb. 5: Section 144 returned to Singur today as villagers fought police again and sawed off fencing posts around a portion of the Tata Motors plot.
Save Farmland Committee members snatched away six comrades who had been detained by police and set fire to one of their vehicles.
They placed concrete sleepers on the railway track at Kamarkundu, 2 km from the Tata site, disrupting services on the Howrah-Burdwan cord line for an hour. In the Seoraphuli-Tarakeswar section, trains were disrupted till evening.
Mamata Banerjee, who was supposed to go to Singur this afternoon, cancelled her trip after being told that the police would not let her hold a meeting there.
In Mamata’s absence, Trinamul Congress MLA Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay tried to hold the meeting defying the prohibitory orders clamped last midnight.
Police used lathis to disperse the mob and fired teargas shells. At least 25 people, including media personnel and policemen, were injured amid allegations of brutality.
“I will inquire into the alleged atrocities,” said the Hooghly police chief.
At Beraberi, however, wives of farmers severely beat up two policemen with sticks, brooms and rods when they went looking for drinking water.
Trinamul supporters sawed off about 30 fence posts in Bajemelia and set half a dozen on fire. That is merely 0.1 per cent of the 30,000-odd sal posts used to fence off the site for the small-car plant.
Home secretary Prasad Ranjan Ray said at Writers’ Buildings the prohibitory orders would be in force till the midnight of February 14.
The chief minister is slated to address a public meeting in Singur the following day.
Trinamul and the Jamait Ulema-i-Hind had planned rallies on February 10 and 7.
“Let us see who stops us. The promulgation of section 144 is illegal, unconstitutional and political,” Mamata said after she was halted on her way to Chinsurah, where the injured have been hospitalised.
Asked to react to the incidents of violence, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said: “Shob thik hoyey jaabey (Everything will be all right).”
Trinamul will bring out rallies and block roads tomorrow in protest against today’s “police excesses”.
Party leaders attributed the sudden escalation in agitation to a plan chalked out at a meeting on January 29.
“The Singur agitation is still alive… there will be protests and not all of them would be announced in advance,” Mamata said.
A senior leader added that the “guerrilla warfare” around Singur will continue.
Stopped on her Chinsurah trip, a furious Mamata called up Priya Ranjan Das Munshi in Delhi and urged him to take the matter up with Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
“Our democratic rights are being curbed. Priyada assured me that he would speak to (home minister) Shivraj Patil,” Mamata said.
Link
posted by Bimal 6.2.07,
,
Prohibitory orders in Singur till Feb 14
05 February, 2007
KOLKATA: Amidst heightened tension at Singur after Sunday's violence between the police and villagers, the Hoogly district administration on Monday reimposed prohibitory orders under Section 144 barely hours before Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee is scheduled to visit the area.
"Prohibitory orders have been reimposed at Singur on Monday morning," IGP (Law and Order) Raj Kanojia said.
Claiming that the situation at Singur was normal and peaceful, Kanojia said the measure was taken for administrative convenience.
Asked whether the reimposition of the prohibitory order at Singur, rocked by Sunday's clash between the villagers and police over uprooting of posts at the fenced off area of Tata Motors small car project site, was a pre-emptive action, he said "It is your presumption."
At Singur IG (Western Range) Arun Gupta and said the prohibitory order would continue till February 14.
Asked about the reason, he said it had been seen that whenever prohibitory orders are withdrawn there have been incidents of violence "as different political parties are competing with each other to create trouble in the area."
Link
posted by Bimal 5.2.07,
,
Battlefield Singur erupts yet again
SINGUR/KOLKATA: In a fresh spurt of violence, Naxalites and SUCI members, backed by a group of villagers including women, torched five and uprooted more than 30 posts surrounding the Tata Motors' small-car factory site in Singur on Sunday.
They clashed with the police, in intervals that continued till late Sunday evening at Bajemelia, against the Buddhadeb government's land acquisition drive. The police fired tear-gas shells and also used rubber bullets to disperse the mob that took shelter in the villages only to come back a little later with household articles and kerosene.
Trouble broke out at 11 in the morning when a motley crowd headed towards the fencing from three different points. Paschimbanga Ganatantrik Mahila Khetmajoor Samity president Anuradha Talwar led a group of 75-100 protesting villagers.
Naxal leader Amitava Bhattacharya was leading a rally, while Becharam Manna, convener of the Singur Krishi Jami Raksha Committee organised another rally at Bajemelia. CPI(M-L) activists were also with him. The policemen on duty were few in numbers. And before a huge police force from the Durgapur Expressway camp could reach the spot, the protesters led by women clashed with the police with brickbats and started torching the posts along the fencing and uprooted many of them.
"The government can't take away our lands at gunpoint," one of the protesters said. Eight cops were injured in the clash, Hooghly SP Supratim Sarkar said. The protesters had sneaked into the villages on Saturday late night and held a secret meeting with the villagers, apparently without the knowledge of the district administration.
Interestingly, the district intelligence branch and West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation officials had warned the district administration of a fresh confrontation. Mamata will go to Singur on Monday and Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind's Sidiquallah Chowdhury is planning a stir in Singur on February 7, the CPM is planning a gathering on February 10.
Link
posted by Bimal 5.2.07,
,
Buddhadeb denies landgrab bias
Statesman News Service KRISHNAGAR, Feb. 4: The chief minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, came down heavily today on sections that have allegedly accused him of forcibly acquiring land belonging to Muslims.
Mr Bhattacharjee was speaking at a rally organised by the CPI-M in Nadia district. Without mentioning any name but referring to his accusers, Mr Bhattacherjee said: “Will they teach us secularism? Is it true that we are acquiring only land belonging to Muslims for industrialisation? They are inciting the spirit of communalism among the masses.”
A major section of Muslims in Nadia reportedly boycotted the chief minister’s meeting and preferred to stay in their villages despite alleged threats from the CPI-M cadres today to attend the meet. Like the Jamait-e-Ulama-i-Hind two days ago, the CPI-M leaders tried hard to bring people from the rural fringes only to show their strength.
Mr Tozammel Sheikh of Karimpur, who attended the rally, said that he came here after being instructed to do so by CPI-M leaders. When asked about the Jamait-Ulema-e-Hind, he said: “The Jamait had held a meeting ten days ago in my village. If they invite me I will attend their meeting.
In my village, about 75 per cent Muslims are with the Jamait-e-Ulama-i-Hind.” Mr Nasirudding Mondol, who came from Kalyandaha in Chapra, said: “In Chapra about 50 per cent Muslims support the Jamait.” Coming down heavily on Naxalite groups, Mr Bhattacherjee said: “Their only objective is to kill policemen.
They have joined hands with the BJP and Trinamul Congress to fight against us. They are against industrialisation. When Maoists in Nepal have left their old ideologies and have come forward to join the development process, these Naxalites are trying to arrest development.”
Moving onto the subject of Singur, Mr Bhattacharjee said: “We have not victimised the landowners, bargadars and labourers in Singur. We have allotted adequate compensation to the landowners and bargadars.”
Link
Labels: Bengal, Nandigram, Singur
posted by Bimal 5.2.07,
,
Salvaging Singur, Slowly but surely
The protests forced the Buddha government to look beyond the feedback from local comrades. It realised that things weren’t as simple as they were made out to be — it wasn’t just a case of desperate politicians trying to whip up a storm in a teacup Singur: It is the day after Basant Panchami which is celebrated as Saraswati Puja in West Bengal.
Tarun Sangha, a youth club of Bajebelia, a village hugging the southern fringes of the land fenced off for Tata’s small-car project, has organised a puja with a difference. Apart from the devi’s idol that has been taken away for immersion in the morning, there is a photo exhibition in an adjacent enclosure — an exhibition on government ‘atrocities’ in Singur.
It does not take too long to go through the exhibits: grainy newspaper photos, photographs of Gandhi and Lenin, some excerpts of their speeches and a few fiery slogans like ‘We will give blood, but not our land’ in Bengali. Outside there’s a placard in English: ‘‘Oh, Goddess of Learning, Buddha and Tata have snatched everything. Please illuminate us with all your blessings to fight back.’’ If a TV camera were to pan on this exhibition and then on to the faces of slogan-shouting boys attracted by television, the images reaching your drawing-rooms would be one of fierce opposition to the Singur project. But that would be misleading.
For, when you go there minus the pull of TV cameras, the picture looks more sedate and nuanced. The angry boys are missing. Barring a lone dog stretched out in the sun next to the flowerpot adorning the middle of the exhibition, there’s no one else. In the background, you hear an over-used tape recorder warbling Dhoom 2 numbers.
You look up to see the green spread of a young potato crop, beyond that the factory fence, and on the blue winter sky a trail of white left by a streaking jet. It’s an uncanny juxtaposition of the rural with the modern, but not exactly a violent one. At the heart of the happenings in Singur, which has come to be the symbol of a countrywide passionate debate on land acquisition for industry, are three questions. Who are the people being dislocated by it?
Who among the locals are opposed to the project? And who are in its favour? To take the last question first, three categories of people readily agreed to give their land for the project. One, the absentee landlords, who owned land in Singur but lived in cities like Kolkata; two, the share-croppers (bargadars) whose names are registered in government records; and three, cultivators who stood to lose only a part of their land.
For the absentee landlords, their Singur property was giving scant returns — perhaps a sack of rice or potato a year if the bargadar felt like giving anything at all. A sum of Rs 20-30 lakh or more, depending on the size of their land, that the acquisition would give them was a windfall, a tempting opportunity to be encashed. Not surprisingly, they were the first to queue up to give their consent. Registered bargadars followed soon after.
For them, too, a compensation of Rs 2-3 lakh was an unexpected gain. While they worked on the land and earned a livelihood from it, they did not own it. They had the security of a designated tract of land to work on. That would go now, but they would suddenly possess a sum of money that they had never thought they would. And, they still had their labour to sell.
Overall, it was a win-win proposition for them. The third category to give their consent were landowners who risked losing only a part of their land, as only a portion of their holding fell within the notified factory area of 997.11 acres. Most of them reasoned that as they could retain a part of their land, they did not risk losing their agrarian way of life.
Yet, they could make some good money, on which they could earn interest or use it on a daughter’s marriage, repair of their homestead or on their children’s education. All in all, it looked an attractive opportunity. That left those who are opposed to the project. They, too, can be divided into three broad categories. First, the non-registered bargadars, who over the years have been unable to get their names recorded by the state land reforms department.
So far their bargadar rights were not threatened; but they never imagined something like the Singur car project would pop up and threaten their livelihoods. This is exactly what happened when an impersonal bureaucracy, on the orders of the Left Front government, fresh from a thumping election victory that probably bred arrogance, reached Singur with its compensation package on the basis of government records on landowners and bargadars.
The package itself was not bad: for landowners, Rs 9 lakh an acre for mono-crop land, Rs 13.5 lakh an acre for multi-crop land, and for bargadars 25% of the land value, which would be at least Rs 2.25 lakh an acre. About 15-20% of the factory area is multi-crop land, the rest mono crop. Clearly, the problem was not with compensation, it was with the way it was being doled out, leaving out many people who have been equally dependent on the land and eked out their living from it.
These were the large number of unrecorded bargadars. And a small number of primarily daily-wage labourers: bullock-cart drivers or rickshaw pullers, small-time plumbers and mechanics who serviced the farmers as well as landless labourers who helped them during sowing or harvesting. They were left high and dry.
A few small landowners whose entire holding fell in the notified factory area also felt similarly dispossessed, even though they were eligible for compensation. For this category of cultivator-landowners, a way of life seemed to be coming to an end. While the acquisition took away from them the resource that gave them a living they were familiar with, they did not have the skills to take to alternate employment like trade or service.
The money coming their way also looked little to give them the lifelong security that land did. It is their children who articulated the fear of total dislocation of life with slogans like ‘We will give blood, but not our land’ at the Tarun Sangha Saraswati Puja. It was ostensibly to uphold the cause of these three categories of people that Mamata Banerjee, Rajnath Singh, P R Dasmunsi, SUCI and a few Jadavpur University-bred Naxalities moved in.
While the debate centred on Mamata & Co’s political motivation, on whether industrialisation could ever happen in India with such ‘short-sighted, anti-industry’ groups, there was no getting away from the fact that a large number of people were getting a raw deal in Singur. The greatness of democracy lies in the fact that it forces governments to look at the real reason behind protests.
The Singur protests did precisely that by forcing Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and the Left Front government to look beyond the feedback from the local comrades. They soon realised that things were not as simple as they were being made out to be; it was not just a case of desperate politicians trying to whip up a storm in a teacup.
A wiser CPM soon handed the job of salvaging Singur to a different lot of local leaders. At the same time, the state government took a step that has gone a long way in taking the sting out of the protest — it directed its land reforms department to identify and register all non-recorded bargadars. They were promised the same compensation as the recorded bargadars: at least Rs 2.25 lakh an acre.
There was also the promise of jobs. Last week, 700 locals were inducted as guards for the Singur factory by the state industrial development corporation (WBIDC). Another 2,792 names have been registered as daily-wage labourers for civil work at the factory. A couple of rudimentary workshops have been set up at the Bajebelia high school to train women in sewing (they will stitch uniforms for the workers) and men in elementary machine work. The upshot of all this has been a huge mood change.
Non-recorded bargadars, easily the largest single category of disgruntled locals, have been not only neutralised, but have been given a vested interest in the project. From utter despondency, they are now beginning to see a future: one with the security of a corpus of money and, in addition, maybe a reasonable job.
It was hardly surprising, therefore, that when the Trinamul Congress held a protest rally in Singur on Wednesday, hardly any villagers joined it. This is because numerically, the two remaining aggrieved sections — landowners whose entire holding falls in the factory area and the assorted labourers — are small. The fact that the state government has, as of this week, received the consent for the acquisition of 960 acres out of a total of 997 acres indicates the way the wind is blowing in Singur.
This does not, however, take away from the fact that these two categories are getting a raw deal. It only shows they are in a hopeless minority. Often the test of a humane government lies in the way it deals with its minority interest groups. And to that extent, the state government should perhaps address the panic of these two categories, even if it is not legally required to. There is, in fact, talk in Singur of the government giving its ‘vested land’ — or the land owned by it — to landowners who will lose their entire landholding. There is no talk yet of how to rehabilitate the assorted labourers.
On the whole though, the hump seems to have been crossed in Singur, thanks to a (belated) sensible approach and painstaking fieldwork. The Singur story, in many ways, represents a microcosm of the complexities involved in land acquisition and the resultant dislocation of people.
In this context, the expected denouement of Singur, and the lessons learnt from it, could go beyond the possibility of West Bengal’s industrial rebirth — which the Tata project will probably usher in — and provide vital inputs for building a model for land acquisition elsewhere in the country. After all, over 600 special economic zones, billed to trigger a surge in industrialisation in the country, are currently held up over the issue of land acquisition.
Link
posted by Bimal 5.2.07,
,
Singur fact finding report
03 February, 2007
Survey report on Singur was prepared by 'Sanhati Udyog'. 'Sanhati Udyog' is a forum of people’s organisations, citizen’s rights organisations, cultural organisations, little magazines and concerned citizens in support of the farmers’ movement to save farmland in Singur. Download Fact finding report
Labels: Bengal, Fact finding report, Singur
posted by Bimal 3.2.07,
,
Left experts pick holes in Singur claims
NEW DELHI: A fact-finding team of intellectuals led by historian Sumit Sarkar, which visited Nandigram and Singur recently, said on Friday that people of both the places were not consulted on the land acquisition.
Maintaining that he and the entire team have been Leftists for as long as they remember and would remain so, Sarkar said: "The people there had not been consulted at any stage, nor had any elected body (panchayats or gram sansads) been called to discuss the issue.
Instead, protest is being met with violence." He said the Left is making a series of "terrible mistakes through West Bengal government which would cost it dear".Sarkar and the team met a cross-section of people in both places including politicians.
In Delhi, the team is trying to meet CPM general secretary Prakash Karat. Sarkar said what is happening is a united movement of villagers and is akin to the peasant movement.
"Most of the farmers are life-long supporters of Left, especially CPM, but do not want to part with their land," he said. The fact-finding team also studied the claims of the West Bengal government that the Tata project and Special Economic Zones (SEZ) would create job opportunities.
"People are totally sceptical about industries providing uneducated people like them with jobs. Moreover, several other such projects at Haldia and Jellingham have failed to do anything for displaced people," a member of the team, Tanika Sarkar said.
She said people in Singur have refused to accept the compensation given by the government for their land as they felt the amount was well below the actual land price.
Sumit Chakravarty, editor of Mainstream, and a member of the team said repeated queries to the state government about the number of jobs that would be created in Tata's new car plant yielded the reply, "We don't know."
posted by Bimal 3.2.07,
,
Slum dwellers to go to Singur
31 January, 2007
New Delhi, January 30: Slum dwellers from Delhi are scheduled to travel to Singur in West Bengal to participate in a play against the land acquisition by the West Bengal Government. The slum dwellers are part of the Delhi Shramik Sangathan, a member organisation of the Federation of Theatre of the Oppressed.
“The federation is a collective of cultural groups and people’s organisations from 12 states and involves people affected by eviction,” says Ramendra from the Delhi Shramik Sangathan.
“The oppressed bring forth their problems by means of theatre to mobilise people,” says Sanjoy Ganguly from Jana Sanskriti. Ganguly adds, “development taking place by way of eviction is not development, it is displacement and we want to fight this trend with the means of theatre.”
“Ever since the relocation of slum dwellers they have faced several problems, including a corrupt public distribution system, because of which subsidised ration was being black-marketed. Yet when the slum dwellers turned artists and staged plays on the issue, it mobilised the entire population. It forced the administration to introduce a norm by which a committee was constituted by the Food Supply Officer comprising of people from the slum to keep a day to day check on the sale at each shop,” says Ramendra.
Ganguly adds that art is a social metaphor and through such plays, an actor inside the theatre becomes an activist outside the theatre. The team is scheduled to travel to Singur in the last week of February.
Link
posted by Bimal 31.1.07,
,
Prachanda’s lessons from Singur
30 January, 2007
The Maoists of Nepal have made history. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and particularly its two leaders Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury helped them make it, most of the help coming in at the final stages of the transition from monarchy.
However, it would be a big mistake for the Maoists to take any further guidance from Indian leftists, whose ideological confusion has landed them in controversies such as over Singur in West Bengal. Armed revolutionaries have achieved a peaceful transfer of power and proved willing to take part in multi-party democracy.
This is the fist time something like this has happened in the history of the communist movement across the world and that is the significance of the Nepalese Maoists’ feat. Of course, that ‘peaceful’ has to be qualified. Much blood had been shed by the king’s armed forces and by the Maoists, before the king was finally forced to hand over power to the people. Only the final regime change was accomplished without bloodshed.
For the Maoists to depart from the traditional communist mould, it mattered that the regime change took place in a historical context where democracy rather than single-party dictatorship has gained acceptance as relatively the most participative and sustainable form of government.
It also mattered that Nepal’s powerful neighbour India, while capable of cooperating with entrenched non-democratic regimes, as in Myanmar, would have found it difficult to help found a non-democratic alternative to the crumbling monarchy of Nepal.
The UPA government’s dependence on the CPI(M) for its parliamentary majority helped it appreciate, ignoring American and related opinion, the need to include the Maoists as full-fledged partners in the successor regime to the tottering monarchy.
In any case, the tired, old, in-bred groupings that pass themselves off as political parties in Nepal would have hardly inspired popular confidence, if they had not joined hands with the actively insurgent Maoists.
Given the seeming clout that the Indian Left has in New Delhi and, given, also, its electoral success in West Bengal and Kerala, it is tempting for the Maoists of Nepal, when they begin to wade into the untested waters of democratic politics, to try and seek further help from the Indian Left.
The temptation could prove fatal. To see why, the Maoists just need to look at the controversy over acquisition of farm-land in Left-ruled West Bengal for industrial purposes. The CPI(M) is finding it difficult to explain why the Left, traditional champions of the displaced and the dispossessed, have turned dispossessor on behalf of big capital — the Tatas and Indonesia’s Salim group.
Why does the party, whose cadre and followers routinely shout themselves hoarse demanding the downfall of capitalism and popular resistance to globalisation now behave like the henchmen and middlemen of unabashed global capitalists?
The problem lies in the CPI(M)’s programmatic blindness to the reality of vibrant capitalism in its current phase of globalisation. The party and the movement it leads still blindly oppose capitalist development.
The problem really goes back to a sleight of hand practised by the erstwhile communist party of the Soviet Union in the glory days of Sputnik, Vietnam and the Socialist counterweight to imperialist over-reach. Read More>>
posted by Bimal 30.1.07,
,
Red alert for the CPI(M)
29 January, 2007
Aloke Banerjee
Singur and Nandigram have put the CPI(M) in a tight spot — not only in West Bengal but at the national level as well. Allegations that the party is maintaining double standards is haunting it everywhere.
When Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee acquires land for industries, it is good as it is for ‘employment generation’. But then does it make sense when the CPI(M) resists Congress or BJP governments doing the same in their own states?
The CPI(M) meet in New Delhi in early 2005 had identified the main weakness of the party as its failure to grow out of the boundaries of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. The strategy was to oppose the Centre’s economic policies and intensify class struggle in other states, particularly in the villages.
The CPI(M) meet in New Delhi in early 2005 had identified the main weakness of the party as its failure to grow out of the boundaries of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. The strategy was to oppose the Centre’s economic policies and intensify class struggle in other states, particularly in the villages.
Accordingly, the CPI(M) sharpened its criticism of the Congress-led UPA government. But strangely, ever since Bhattacharjee came to power for the second time in West Bengal in 2006, the CPI(M)’s sting against the Centre lost much of its venom.
In the 2005 assembly elections in Hissar, Haryana, the CPI(M) had fielded the state secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (Citu) against the Congress candidate, Sajjan Jindal’s brother.
In the 2005 assembly elections in Hissar, Haryana, the CPI(M) had fielded the state secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (Citu) against the Congress candidate, Sajjan Jindal’s brother.
The CPI(M)’s main slogan was: Jindals flout labour laws in their factories. Will the CPI(M) be able to raise such slogans any more after Bhattacharjee gave a red carpet welcome to the Jindal group to bag its steel plant project in the state?
In 2002, the CPI(M) had bitterly criticised the Tata’s acquisition of 25 per cent share of the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL). Will it be able to raise even a muffled voice after the Tata Motors controversy in Singur?
In Dadri, the CPI has joined hands with V.P. Singh against the acquisition of land by the Uttar Pradesh government for the Ambanis. But the CPI(M) has not joined the fight. Is it because Bhattacharjee is eagerly pursuing the Ambanis for getting investment in the state?
If capitalism can cure unemployment, what is the utility of a Communist Party like the CPI(M)? The party will have to seek acceptable answers to such questions.
The strength of the CPI(M) in states other than West Bengal, Bihar and Tripura is abysmal. In Assam, the CPI(M) has only two MLAs. In Bihar it has one. In Jharkhand, the MLA strength is nil. In Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan it has an MLA each. In Maharashtra, the party has three MLAs, while in UP it has only two.
One Nandigram is giving enough trouble to the CPI(M) in West Bengal. Several more Nandigrams are waiting to happen. The government has plans to acquire 5,000 acres for the Salim Group at Kukrahati near Nandigram for a residential-cum-commercial complex. Two other ‘Salim townships’ are to come up at the Magrahat-Baruipur area and the Canning-Bhangore zone.
If capitalism can cure unemployment, what is the utility of a Communist Party like the CPI(M)? The party will have to seek acceptable answers to such questions.
The strength of the CPI(M) in states other than West Bengal, Bihar and Tripura is abysmal. In Assam, the CPI(M) has only two MLAs. In Bihar it has one. In Jharkhand, the MLA strength is nil. In Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan it has an MLA each. In Maharashtra, the party has three MLAs, while in UP it has only two.
One Nandigram is giving enough trouble to the CPI(M) in West Bengal. Several more Nandigrams are waiting to happen. The government has plans to acquire 5,000 acres for the Salim Group at Kukrahati near Nandigram for a residential-cum-commercial complex. Two other ‘Salim townships’ are to come up at the Magrahat-Baruipur area and the Canning-Bhangore zone.
Another 3,000 acres of land will be required to build the 100 km Eastern Link Highway. Several commercial blocks will be set up along the highway that will require another 1,000 acres of land.
Several industrial estates will also come up over 400 acres of land. The Bhumi Uchhed Protirodh Committee, an umbrella organisation of all the Opposition parties, have already spread out to all these places and more to gear up for another round of ‘bloody resistance’.
For all the 42 years of its existence, the CPI(M) has been able to maintain its monolithic, disciplined structure. It is this belief that has so far helped the party to overcome serious differences. But the new generation of cadres is being exposed to a different ideology. They are growing up in an atmosphere vastly different from what their predecessors were exposed to.
All the veteran leaders had been jailed, beaten up by police for their struggle against capitalism. But for the new generation, red-carpet welcomes to industrialists, setting up shopping malls and expressways, travelling in cars are all acceptable.
For all the 42 years of its existence, the CPI(M) has been able to maintain its monolithic, disciplined structure. It is this belief that has so far helped the party to overcome serious differences. But the new generation of cadres is being exposed to a different ideology. They are growing up in an atmosphere vastly different from what their predecessors were exposed to.
All the veteran leaders had been jailed, beaten up by police for their struggle against capitalism. But for the new generation, red-carpet welcomes to industrialists, setting up shopping malls and expressways, travelling in cars are all acceptable.
Even Left Front Chairman Biman Bose had to recently observe that if the agitation continues further and if the ideological moorings are allowed to be loosened even more, the CPI(M) could be doomed forever.
posted by Bimal 29.1.07,
,
Uneasy calm returns to Singur, Nandigram
27 January, 2007
Singur/ Nandigram/ Kolkata, Jan 27 (ANI): A string of protests and arrests of Naxal activists in and around Singur and Nandigram on Saturday has brought back uneasy calm in the southern districts of West Bengal that witnessed violence over the land acquisition row for TATA's factory and a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) respectively.
Today as Jamat-e-Ulema-Hind, a Muslim organisation, held a huge protest rally in Kolkata against the acquisition of land by the State Government in Nandigram, hundreds of people marched towards Singur, where prohibitory order is already in force.
"One lakh and twenty-five thousand acres of land and 700 villages are at stake. We cannot tolerate this catastrophe in Bengal, said Maulana Siddiqulla Chowdhury of Jamat-e-Ulema-Hind.
The Naxal dominated areas of Singur and Nandigram are witnessing resurgence of Naxal movement that rocked the State in late sixties. While 990 acres of land acquisition for TATA's one-lakh rupee car factory has been the bone of contention in Singur, in Nandigram land for POSCO's SEZ has turned into a violent controversy.
The CPI (ML-Liberation) leaders Kartick Pal and Sajal Adhikari led a protest march today, and tried to enter Singur, but were taken into custody by the police near the Kamarkundu police station.Trinamool Congress have said that their protest against setting up of TATA factory would be intensified from Sunday as their party workers would block roads leading to Durgapur and Singur.
On Friday, farmers set fire to fence posts at the TATA car plant site, as the construction work for the factory began. The villagers are continuously attempting to burn the post by throwing kerosene soaked jute bags to the poles.
In Nandigram too the injured victims of the recent violence are demanding a permanent moratorium on land acquisition.
The calm returned in the area after Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had admitted that the State government acted in a 'hasty manner' over the SEZ establishment in Nandigram and said that he was ready to discuss over the compensation in the Singur land acquisition row.
Link
Labels: Bengal, Nandigram, News, Singur
posted by Bimal 27.1.07,
,
Singur fence posts set on fire
26 January, 2007
Singur (Hooghly), Jan. 25: Farmers opposed to land acquisition in Singur twice set fire to fence posts at the Tata car plant site early this morning.
One of the burnt posts.
Around 5.30 am, a group of villagers wrapped jute bags soaked in kerosene around 10 wooden posts and set them on fire at Beraberi, about 50 km from Calcutta. Police arrived about half an hour later and doused the flames.
An hour later, a group of women came to the site and set fire to the posts again. The police gave chase but could not catch anybody.
A police team later raided two clubs in adjoining Bajemelia in search of the culprits but did not arrest anyone.
This is the third time that villagers have set fire to the fence posts since January 21, when the Tata Motors authorities performed bhoomi puja.
In Calcutta, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee reviewed the situation with chief secretary Amit Kiran Deb, industries secretary Sabyasachi Sen and other officers.
Link
Labels: Bengal, Displacement, News, Pictures, Singur
posted by Bimal 26.1.07,
,
Protest against Tata
16 January, 2007
Bonnet brigade strikes, Tata team escapes
Singur/Calcutta, Jan. 15: A team of Tata and government officials was forced to leave Singur through an unplanned route today after being confronted by a group of people who thumped the bonnets of their cars and threatened to pull them out on their way to the city.
All doors of the two cars were locked and the panes rolled up. The hoodlums could not get hold of the officials.
Before the situation could spin out of control, the cars — escorted by a police jeep — backed away, took another route and left the place where the Tatas plan to set up their “dream project”.
In Calcutta, home secretary Prasad Ranjan Ray said the incident was not serious. “The protesters had surrounded their car and were trying to talk to them.”
Police said Suryavanshi Singh, a Tata official overseeing work on the Singur project, Apurba Banerjee of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation and S. Bhattacharya, a senior consultant, went to the Gopalnagar panchayat office today.
They were returning to Calcutta after a meeting with the panchayat chief over a Jamshedpur trip by members of the rural body when a bunch of Save Farmland Committee members led by social activist Anuradha Talwar tried to block their way.
Kalyani Pal, the panchayat pradhan, said: “They are taking panchayat members to Tatanagar to show us their project and community development programmes. We are scheduled to leave tomorrow and the officials came here for a final word with us.”
Talwar and the members of the Save Farmland Committee were holding a meeting at Sanapara More when Becharam Manna, its convener, spotted two cars and a police jeep approaching the Durgapur Expressway. “Suddenly they became furious and ran in front of the cars. They first thumped the bonnet of the Ambassador in which Banerjee and Bhattacharjee were travelling,” said Asit Pal, the Hooghly additional superintendent of police.
“Another section of people led by Manna ran towards Singh’s Tata Indigo, which was behind the Ambassador. They started pulling the doors to drag out Singh when four policemen got off their jeep and took them on,” Pal added.
During the scuffle between the villagers and the police, the cars reversed and drove away.
Asked if all Tata teams visiting Singur were accompanied by police escorts, the home secretary said: “We give them police cover discreetly to ensure that such incidents don’t occur.”
A Singur police officer said that from the number of prot-esters, it did not look like a scheduled scheduled programme. “They saw the cars and decided to stop them.”
Banerjee has filed a complaint with the Singur police station against Anuradha.
Link
Labels: Bengal, Displacement, News, Singur
posted by Bimal 16.1.07,
,
Angry village women drove out Tata Motors team
15 January, 2007
Kolkata, Jan 15 :Angry village women Monday drove out a Tata Motors team when it visited Gopalnagar village in Singur, the focal point of protests against land acquisition for a car project in West Bengal.
Official sources in Singur, about 40 km from here in Hooghly district, confirmed the confrontation that took place in the afternoon though Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Raj Kanojia here said he had no information of any major incident in the area.
The farmers' body in Singur, emboldened by the resistance shown by Nandigram villagers to the state government's land acquisition policy, said they would not allow Tata Motors in their villages at any cost.
The Tata team, along with officials of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) and the local block development office (BDO), had gone to Singur, which is still under Section 144, to discuss the plan to take a group of villagers to steel city Jamshedpur to showcase community development initiatives by the Tatas.
"Some Tata officials, including one Mr. Suryabanshi, had gone to the panchayat office in Gopalnagar but our women resisted them. They even threw slippers at the officials and heckled them," Becharam Manna of the Singur Krishijami Raksha Committee (Save Singur Farmland Committee) told IANS.Tata Motors has not reacted officially to the incident yet.
"There is no reaction so far," said a representative of the firm's public relations wing."You killed Tapasi Malik (a village girl who was burnt to death inside the fenced off land), you," the villagers told the cops and the officials as women shouted: "Go back Tata".The angry reaction was a result of a rumour that the company was planning to lay the foundation stone for the project.
Social activist Anuradha Talwar was also present during the confrontation.The Trinamool Congress, whose leader Mamata Banerjee had undertaken a 25-day fast against land acquisition in Singur last month, has an agitation programme in the area Tuesday.
Link
posted by Bimal 15.1.07,
,
Singur: Medha Patkar freed, vows to go Singur again
12 January, 2007
Medha Patkar freed, vows to go Singur again
Kolkata, Jan 11 (IANS) Social activist Medha Patkar was released on bail Thursday following her arrest a day earlier for attempting to visit Singur in West Bengal. She immediately vowed to go the troubled village again.
'I have been released on unconditional bail,' Medha told reporters outside the Alipore court here where she was produced. Four others arrested with Medha were also released.
'I will go to Singur again,' she said after her release. 'We are moving the court and human rights commission against the state government to seek justice for our associates who are illegally detained.'
She demanded the withdrawal from Singur of orders prohibiting the gathering or four or more people at the village that has witnessed mass protests against the take over of farmland for a car project.
LInk
posted by Bimal 12.1.07,
,
Medha Patkar detained en route to Singur
10 January, 2007
Medha Patkar detained en route to Singur
KOLKATA: Social activist Medha Patkar was detained on Wednesday as she tried to leave for Singur, the focal point of mass protests against a Tata Motors project.
Patkar was whisked away to a youth hostel in Salt Lake, officials said, a day after West Bengal's ruling Left Front chairman Biman Bose apologised for linking her to the flare-up in Nandigram, which became another flashpoint between the government and villagers over land acquisition.
Policemen surrounded the house at Chingrighata on EM Bypass near Salt Lake in eastern Kolkata where Medha was staying in the morning after news spread that she would visit Singur again on Wednesday.
"Medha has been taken into preventive custody," Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Raj Kanojia said.
"There is no democracy in West Bengal," Patkar told reporters from the police van after she was detained. A nine-vehicle convoy took her to the Salt Lake Stadium.
Patkar was told that she could not be allowed to go to Singur as her presence there would incite people. She pleaded that she would visit only the border of Singur but was refused permission for that.
"We fear that we will be arrested the moment we step out," a member of the house in which Patkar was staying said, minutes before the police contingent took her away.
In the morning, journalist Aditi Chowdhury and her filmmaker husband Sumit Chowdhury, in whose house Patkar had stayed earlier, said the police arrived at their apartment compound in search of social activist Anuradha Talwar.
"Police enquired about her and wanted know if Anuradha was here," Sumit Chowdhury said.
"Anuradha has left for Singur in train. She cannot be prevented from going anywhere since she is a Supreme Court-appointed observer," he said.
However, reports said Talwar and her associates were prevented from entering Singur at Kamarkundu in Hooghly district.
On Tuesday night, Bose apologised to Patkar during a live television programme for his comment that indirectly indicted the social activist for the Nandigram flare-up.
"I am sorry for my statement. I apologise," he told her over the phone in a live programme of Kolkata TV.
"I am sorry for my statement. I am sorry if she is hurt. I said perhaps she visited the place and not made any definite comment," Bose said.
While the Singur issue has been escalating for several weeks, the Nandigram stir took off last week, leading to at least four people being killed in clashes between CPI(M) workers and villagers.
Link
posted by Bimal 10.1.07,
,
