Fall of the Left and Buddhadeb

During a press briefing in May 2006, CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose made a prophetic comment. While speaking on the role of media which was then projecting chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as the poster boy of reforms, Bose remarked bluntly: “The media has taken the Brand Buddha line. But it can spell trouble for him.” (Source) The outspoken CPI(M) state secretary was expressing his worry that the same media which is making a superhero out of him, was equally capable of abruptly changing color, chameleon-like, and start smearing the chief minister’s image. Biman Bose’s comment came at a time when the political influence and reputation of Buddhadeb was at its peak. He had just won the 2006 state assembly elections with a colossal majority and was hailed as a new-age leader, a “capitalist communist” who was expected to steer Bengal to glory. The industrial lobby, the neo-liberal media and large sections of the urban middle class was praising him animatedly for his single-point industrialization agenda. He was been credited for bringing back hope to a state marred by “despair”. Neo-liberalism advocate The Economist went gaga to extol him for his “reputation for probity,” for being “modest and engaging” on topics from agri-business to consumerism and Indian poetry. From Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Azim Premji of Wipro, many big-shots were lauding him as India’s best chief minister. Unfortunately for him, it took just a year after the famous victory for the Brand Buddha bubble to burst. Within a couple of years the monolithic edifice of the CPI(M) came tumbling down when the people of Bengal delivered a real kick in the teeth to sweep out the Left Front from thirty-four long years of uninterrupted power.

Media hyperbole and Bengal assembly elections

If we go through the standard news reports, analysis, editorials and opinion pieces been published daily in the national and local mainstream media concerning the ongoing assembly elections of Bengal, there can be little doubt in our minds about whom the voters would prefer to see in the next government. According to the obvious trends and predictions reflecting in the media, the people of Bengal have already “decided” to reject the worn out Left Front and embrace the impressive Trinamool Congress (TMC)-Indian National Congress (INC) opposition alliance. Experienced pollsters have concluded that in all probability, this grand alliance under the sagacious leadership of our famed railways minister Mamata Banerjee is heading for a clean sweep. Passionate supporters of the Left might still go on arguing that a sheer anti-Left bias in the print and television coverage during any election campaign is nothing new in Bengal. The spectrum of debate that gets released on various media forums during the election season has seldom been objective. They are also trying to point out that for a long time independent media organizations in the state have been completely polarized along political lines. But not many people are listening to them. The coming Bengal election results are therefore, as one thin on top editor recently wrote, “the easiest to predict in our electoral history in a very long time.”

Ayodhya verdict & our secular conscience: Part Two

The three members Bench of Justice D.V. Sharma, Justice S.U. Khan and Justice S. Agarwal has ruled by a 2-1 majority that all the parties in the title suit, i.e. Bhagwan Shree Ram Lalla represented by his sakha (close friend) Triloki Nath Pandey, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Sunni Waqf Board will have one third equal share each of the disputed property and declared the litigants joint title-holders. Justice Sharma has disagreed with the decision of the majority that one-third of the disputed land should be given to Muslims for construction of a mosque. Dismissing the suit filed by the Sunni Waqf Board for a declaration and possession of the site so that Muslims can rebuild the demolished mosque on the same spot, the Bench has allotted the portion right below the central dome of the demolished Babri Masjid to Bhagwan Shree Ram Lalla Virajman with a caution that the defendants should not obstruct or interfere the area in any manner. The areas covered by the structures of Ram Chabutra, Sita Rasoi and Bhandar in the outer courtyard were allotted to the Nirmohi Akhara. The two Hindu litigants will share the remaining unbuilt area within the outer courtyard “since it has been generally used by the Hindu people for worship at both places.” The Bench has allotted the rest of the area where the Babri Masjid stood, including part of the inner courtyard and if necessary also some part of the outer courtyard to the Waqf Board stating that “the share of Muslim parties shall not be less than one third (1/3) of the total area of the premises”. To alleviate the progress of such a three-way division, the Bench has advised to use some parts around the disputed land presently under acquisition of the Government of India. The judges also ordered that the prevailing status quo which is currently under state control shall be maintained for a period of three months.

Ayodhya verdict & our secular conscience: Part One

In a large and diverse country like India, there is never a dearth of issues that stimulate the citizens to talk, argue and fight. But the credulous public mind, overexposed and debilitated by artificial trends and a plethora of confusing information are often been hypnotized by the shining pendant of a forged present and a delusional future. Moreover, a vague vision of history compels them to acquire comfort by mirroring a general trend of forgetfulness. In this spurious atmosphere, even a detrimental agenda can easily capture public imagination and receive popular support. Incapable to ponder much of its gravity, people tend to offer themselves as cannon fodder in socio-political conflicts waged against their own interests. The six-decade-old Ayodhya dispute over the ownership of 2.77 acres of “holy” land is such a thorny issue that has sharply polarized a devout Indian society along quasi-religious lines. Flaring up from time to time, the dispute has instilled a stream of dangerous ideas deep inside the country’s psyche. Acknowledged as one of India’s most divisive and contentious issues, the dispute with its high hegemonic potential has shaken the very foundation of the country’s collective identity as a nation and gradually grown into a symbol of subjectivity. Looking into the chronology of events including the wide network of relations and sectoral interests in and by which the dispute is situated and sustained for such a long time will provide us a necessary linkage to the Ayodhya verdict which was recently delivered by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court.

Kanu Sanyal: the last Naxalbari legend

Journalists who has reported the death of Krishna Kumar Sanyal, popularly known as Kanu Sanyal, couldn’t fail to describe two things. That he lived in a thatched two-room mud hut at Hatighisa village in Naxalbari where a worn out reed mattress and some plain rugs lay on the floor. His only other possessions were few books, clothes and utensils. The other thing they have noticed are the framed black and white portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao that hung on the mud wall. This description is given to confirm the simple yet ideologically dedicated lifestyle of the legendary Naxal leader who has committed suicide on 23 March. For the last one year, the undisputed leader of the Naxalbari uprising was ailing after a brain hemorrhage and had become too feeble to move outside his home. But even so, he refused treatment from any government hospital in Kolkata. How could he approach the State when he is fighting it? – Kanubabu used to argue. “I was popular once,” he bitterly stated in one of his last interviews, “I have lost my popularity. I am unwell. That is the reason I cannot organize the masses anymore.” Former comrade-in-arms Azizul Haque believes that his suicide is symbolical – a protest against “the slaughter of innocent people in the villages in the name of Maoism and its counter-measures”. Kanubabu was known to be severely critical about the Maoists who often torture and kill poor and innocent villagers for refusing to join their movement or for turning against it. “In this respect, I do not approve of today’s Naxals,” was his sharp and clear remark. The reason behind his suicide remains an enigma. Did he take the extreme step because he could not bear the pain of his diseases anymore? Was he depressed and frustrated by the current form of revolutionary extremism in the country? We can speculate whatever we like but the real truth will never be known.

Charu Mazumdar, Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal were the three famous leaders of the Naxalite rebellion that sparked off at Naxalbari on March 1967 when sharecroppers armed with conventional weapons rose in revolt against the local jotedars (landowners) and forcefully occupied farmland. On May 23, when a police force raided a troubled village in the area, armed peasants attacked them and killed a police Inspector. The police hit back two days later, by firing upon a crowd of villagers killing ten, including six women and two children. This event became a flashpoint and soon the movement spread like wildfire all over the land. Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal were the grass-root leaders who practically led the Naxalbari peasant uprising. While the two were involved with the day-to-day struggle, trying to spread the movement among the peasants and mobilizing them, the 49-year old Charu Mazumdar who was basically an ideologue was providing the theoretical guidelines. At some point during the incidence, the idea of capturing State power through an armed struggle was born in Mazumdar’s mind as he perceived that “there was an excellent revolutionary situation in the country with all the classical symptoms”.

Mazumdar had even predicted that Indian people will complete “the great epic of liberation” by the end of 1975. How did he predict this specific time limit? In a speech published as “March Onward, Day of Victory is near” in the September-December, 1970 issue of the Naxalite mouthpiece Liberation, Mazumdar explicates: if the idea of armed struggle that had originated in his “revolutionary consciousness” in 1967 could seep into the minds of ten million people by 1970, “why is it impossible then for those 10 millions to rouse and mobilize 500 million people of India in a surging war by 1975?” A brilliant prediction indeed! Mazumdar’s argument sounds infantile and awful today but during those days his fiery clarion call to “Make the 70s the Decade of Revolution” found wide response among the youth, especially among college and university students from affluent families. Ignited by the “romanticism” of an armed revolution, they jumped into the revolutionary fray to pursue Charu Mazumdar’s mistaken dream. In May 1969, on the hundredth birth anniversary of Lenin, Kanu Sanyal formally announced the formation of CPI(ML) at a rally in Kolkata’s Shahid Minar.

In a 2007 interview, Mazumdar’s erstwhile lieutenant Kanu Sanyal passed a caustic remark to strongly counter the popular belief that Charu Mazumdar was instrumental in initiating the Naxalbari movement. “Charu Mazumdar was never directly attached to the Naxalbari Movement. When the Naxalbari uprising took place, Charuda was bedridden at his Siliguri home, with a severe heart ailment,” Kanubabu bluntly declared in that interview. He further went on to affirm that Mazumdar’s “role was limited to providing the philosophical base for the Naxalbari uprising”. (Source) According to Kanubabu, while all the grass-root leaders of the uprising including him were underground, the radical minded people who became excited by the news of the uprising and wanted to join the movement was only able to approach Charu Mazumdar since he lived in the adjoining town Siliguri and was easily accessible. Mazumdar’s infectious, unequivocal and sharp rhetoric promptly induced and convinced the radicals to fight for the great cause of liberation.

There was serious difference of opinion among the leaders on the strategy of armed struggle from the initial stage of the movement. Mazumdar propagated for instant armed struggle by forming small and mobile guerrilla units which will annihilate individual “class enemies” and take over the lands. Completely ignoring the need of mass movements or mass organizations to build up popular support, Mazumdar announced that “guerrilla struggle is the only form of class struggle” and annihilation was its “higher form”. He thought that the “actions” will instantaneously lit fire among the masses and awaken them to revolt against the system. Though leaders like Kanu Sanyal too believed in armed struggle, yet they stressed on building up mass movement involving the entire working class and peasantry as the primary task before forcefully taking possession of farmlands owned by big landlords. Deploring Mazumdar’s treatise of individual killing, Kanubabu later sarcastically said, “Charuda never missed the opportunity to preach his line of ‘individual terrorism’, labeling it as the spirit of the Naxalbari Movement.” He further argued that, “In a people’s movement, individual feeling, individual anger must first become crystallized for a people’s movement to succeed.” Armed revolution cannot be forced on the people if the objective conditions are not present.

Charu Mazumdar who coined the slogan “China’s Chairman is our Chairman” had even gone to the extent to proclaim that, “He who had not dipped his hand in the hands of class enemies can hardly be called a Communist”. Infatuated by Mazumdar’s incendiary ideas, the Naxalites went ahead to accomplish India’s liberation and started killing landowners, their associates and agents, money lenders, petty businessman and police informers. Initially, the strategy had borne some fruits. Due to the fear of getting killed by the Naxals, many from the oppressor class in the remote villages either fled or knelt down before them creating a power vacuum in the areas to fill by the “revolutionaries”. The Naxals loved to call those areas as “liberated zones”. In numerous cases individual murders were perpetrated by local criminal and lumpen elements those who had silently infiltrated among the Naxalite rank and file. The top Naxal leadership soon started to access the revolutionary triumph and its spread by the number of class enemies killed by them. Jubilant by this initial “success” in some small pockets of a vast country, Charu Mazumdar and his followers started exaggerating their so-called revolutionary achievement, completely underestimating the mighty State power and also the imminent white terror backlash perpetrated by armed goons of the Congress Party.

Mazumdar committed another serious blunder when he granting full sway to the Naxal action squads to plan and execute their own programmes. The squads started to function independently without any coordination between each other which intensified reckless violence and more bloodshed. Instead of creating confidence among the masses, Mazumdar’s erroneous strategy of revolutionary terror largely alienated the masses from the movement. Soon the State forces swung into aggressive action. Kanu Sanyal was captured along with 37 comrades by the police from his northern Bengal jungle hideout on August 1970. Charu Mazumdar was arrested in Kolkata on 16 July 1972. Twelve days later he died in police custody. The movement collapsed into shambles after being brutally crushed by a massive State repression called “Operation Steeplechase”.

Charu Mazumdar desired for an instant revolution – he was literally in too much hurry. His deteriorating health condition could be the vital reasons why the man became so frenetic to achieve the liberation of Indian masses by 1975. Whatever might be the reason, his ultra left-adventurism and revolutionary romanticism was primarily responsible for the heavy losses of precious lives within and outside the movement. Making a pointed attack on Charu Mazumdar’s tactical eccentricity, Kanubabu had stated, “…with arms in hand, youths tend to believe they can bring about a revolution by using bullets alone. But the reality is, they simply can’t. Without a solid mass base, all efforts will be futile.” In his later years, Kanubabu became an unabashed critic of the common perception that gun-culture is the ultimate identity of a communist revolutionary and continued to say that acts of terror can only damage popular movements and alienates the masses.

After his release from Visakhapatnam jail where he was imprisoned for seven years, Kanubabu took the initiative to form the Organizing Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (OCCR) to assimilate splinter Naxal groups. In May 1985, OCCR merged with the Communist Organization of India (Marxist-Leninist). In June 2003 he formed a new CPI(ML) and kept his political activities confined in north Bengal region. Taking up local issues, he continued working quietly among the peasants and tea garden trade unions. Kanubabu was a severe critic of the Left Front government’s industrialization policy as he felt that the policy will only benefit the imperialists. He had also firmly voiced his opposition to the land acquisition methods in Singur and Nandigram. At the same time he was very much skeptical about Mamata Banerjee and the rainbow alliance led by her party, the Trinamool Congress. He had no doubt in his mind that the alliance “lacks the political will to work for the common people”. On a June 2009 interview Kanubabu had also spoken about his disapproval of the Lalgarh agitation. He considered the Lalgarh agitation “strictly an ethnic insurrection by the Adivasi community”. Condemning the Maoists for exploiting the Adivasis to carry forward their agenda of individual terrorism, he had thundered that, “Lalgarh is certainly not a Communist uprising”. (Source)

Since he had openly repudiated the ruthless violence of the neo-Naxals, popularly known as the Maoists, it is quite natural that their backers will consider Kanu Sanyal’s viewpoint as stale and redundant. A soft and lenient Kanubabu was indeed a disappointment for them in comparison to the fire eater Maoists. While Kanubabu lived and died inconspicuously in a remote north Bengal village and has certainly failed to develop into a “collector’s item”, the smart, crafty and “successful” Maoists have attracted the glossy attention of mainstream Indian media and ensured a high-profile, luxury position in it. The Maoist leadership and the neo-liberal media are equally comfortable when the image of a half-naked sexy model is presented next to the stunning image of a gun wielding grim faced Maoist women. For the Maoist leadership, it is free propaganda. For the media, both the images are sensational and thus a highly saleable commodity.

Highbrow intellectuals and celebrity activists who are singing the same tune to sanctify the Maoists and propagate their cause believes like Arundhati Roy that the noteworthy rebels are keeping “hope alive for us all” by creating “the possibilities for an alternative”. In a recent essay-cum-travelogue of her sponsored journey into the Maoists' hotbed Dantewada, Arundhati Roy writes, “Charu Mazumdar was a visionary in much of what he wrote and said. The party he founded (and its many splinter groups) has kept the dream of revolution real and present in India. Imagine a society without that dream. For that alone, we cannot judge him too harshly.” She wonders if Charu Mazumdar could have ever imagined that the tribals turned Maoist cadres of Dantewada are “the ones on whose shoulders his dreams would come to rest”. Roy is fascinated by the “superbly organised, hugely motivated” Maoist guerrilla fighting force and its members, those who always carry “a weapon and a smile”. She writes emotionally about one Comrade Kamla who told her that she likes watching “Sirf ambush video (Only ambush videos).”

Roy even endorses a Maoists' version of tribal history and shares it with her readers since in her warped “outlook” she measures the tribal people’s struggle for rights and the deceiving politics of the Maoists' as equivalent. Her opposition to the government’s anti-Maoist offensive “Operation Green Hunt” leads her to bizarrely eulogize the total militarization of everyday tribal life, the killing of a village panchayat president because he was a “Tata’s man” and the Maoists' Jan Adalat (kangaroo court) where they regularly try and execute their adversaries. Lionizing the ultra left movement, the believer Roy gets prompted to write, “Each time, they have re-emerged, more organised, more determined and more influential than ever”. (Source)

Kanu Sanyal was counted out long before his mortal death; today’s neo-Naxals do not need a Charu Mazumdar either. And possibly they never really needed Mao! They just want apostles like Roy to spread their blood thirsty politics under the disguise of a noble intention.

History appears first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. It seems that an over-enthusiastic and obsessive Roy has completely forgotten this basic lesson.

Image Courtesy: hindu.com

Jyoti Basu and his ‘respectful’ detractors

Jyoti Basu, the nonagenarian patriarch of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was seriously ill for the last few months. He was also too old. So, the news of his death initially did not arouse much shock but a profound sadness. This sadness will gradually creep dip by dip into the minds of the masses, from the poor countryside to affluent cities, those who have admired and respected the man and repeatedly brought him and the Left Front back to power. With every passing day, the reality of his absence will be felt more and more among his admirers as well as his critics. Beginning from the early 40’s till the recent times, the towering persona of this legendary leader of the Communist movement in India has marked an enduring imprint on the socio-political life of the nation in many significant ways, particularly in the collective psyche of an entire generation of post independence Bengal. However, he had strongly dismissed the view that he had played any special role from an individual capacity and affirmed that, “What I was and what I am is because of the party. The CPM leadership had assigned a role to me which I carried out with help from innumerable comrades.” (Source) He was a true Marxist committed to the ideology. Like a true communist he had tirelessly served his people symbolizing their aspirations, struggles and sacrifices for six decades till his last breath. Even after his death he continued to serve them by donating his eyes and body for the benefit of patients and medical science. He had learned from Lenin that democracy is indispensable to socialism and genuinely believed that “it is people, and people alone, who creates history”. He was the last living icon of a spectacular era. Now with his demise, the era has permanently come to its end. Comrade Jyoti Basu has become history himself.

The subject of this post is not about Comrade Basu or his legacy. This blogger is too minuscule to write anything about the impressive feats of this illustrious life. This post will only present the undulating media extravaganza which has followed from his final illness till his death. The post is arranged by eclectically picking up gems from the “respectful” media “homage” offered to this extraordinary man.

On one hand, a wide spectrum of the mighty Indian press has pursued its standard populist agenda by sensationalizing the persona of Jyoti Basu, flattering him as a colossus, a stalwart, an astute but bhadralok (gentleman) politician and what not? Did they hold a similar attitude for Jyoti Basu when he was at the helm of the government? It must be noted with some conviction that during his tenure, the dominant section of the Bengal press, Bengali as well as English, left no stone unturned to regularly disparage him, his government and his party by distorted or twisted news and views. Jyoti Basu was made the prime target of this hostile and contemptuous criticism that has many times gone beyond all limits of journalistic decorum towards plain impropriety. Before every election in Bengal, Chief Minister Basu and the Left Front were written off by these mischief-makers and an aura of ‘hope’ use to be propagated in favor of the opposition. This tendency became a commonplace phenomenon in Bengal just like the winning streak of the Left Front. To them, as Ashok Mitra has recently written, the communist party was a nuisance and Jyoti Basu was an integral part of that nuisance. Even when he had voluntarily retired from office, he was not spared and was subjected to ill-concealed acrimony.

All the praise and admiration that has been promoted after his death are therefore nothing but sheer duplicity. The way in which the tributes and honors are published displays an inherent design beneath. It is actually designed to ridicule the present Left leaders, particularly Prakash Karat. Corporate media loves to hate the CPI(M) general secretary. The intention is to show them as dwarfs by comparing them with the “pragmatic communist” who was free from the ‘muddle of ideology’. The ignominious tone of this media ‘homage’ is evident from the high pitch exposition of the so called ‘historic blunder’ when the “upstart” leaders of CPI(M) Polit Bureau and Central Committee opposed him to lead a coalition government in 1996. Though, the stateliness in which he had accepted his party’s decision is obviously downplayed. It looks as if Jyoti Basu as the Prime Minister of India was a much anticipated desire of these superficial media folks.

On the other side, a wide range of reproach has been planned through contract analysts and senior political pundits to bash the man from all possible angles, by any means. We find a hoard of elite ex-Kolkata denizens lamenting about their ex-Kolkata “paradise” that was turned into a hell – “a place time forgot” due to the politics exercised by Jyoti Basu and his party. Speaking on behalf of the “entire generations of educated middle-class Bengalis” who were “forced to seek refuge in other States or migrate to America” these detractors grieve for the genius Bengalis who became a prey of the “Stalinist rule” of Jyoti Basu regime and became “refugees from Bengal” due to “a contraction of opportunities, educational and economic, and a closing of the Bengali mind”. (Source) Besides, who are these well-wisher crooks who are purposely wheedling about their Kolkata days before the communists came to power and shedding crocodile tears for the “brainy” Kolkata middle-class diaspora from safer and cozy distance? They are essentially representatives of the Indian affluent class promoting its odious anti-Left values. They surely feel grateful, pleased and satisfied to be able to join the creamy section of Indian society. In their tapered vision, Kolkata embody the whole of Bengal.

From both the sides the intentions behind the tributes are similar. A candid statement like “the present history of Bengal is largely the story of Jyoti Basu” is fundamentally contemptuous. The comment is intended not really to glorify him but as a deliberate attempt to get nearer to the real point of attack – to ascertain that the story of Jyoti Basu is actually “a story of unmitigated disaster,” the story of Bengal’s pathetic “decline and decay” from “a hub of industrial and intellectual activity” into an “economic and professional backwater”. To validate their point, established analysts of the neo-liberal media have thus unambiguously relied on the phony findings of Bibek Debroy & Laveesh Bhandari, the “duty bound” economist duo infamous for their dubious study Transforming West Bengal – Changing the Agenda for an Agenda for Change. This bogus and ostensible “study” was commissioned and funded by Dinesh Trivedi, then Rajya Sabha MP from the Trinamul Congress. It was a purposeful effort on the eve of 2009 Lok Sabha polls to illustrate Bengal’s “pathetic decline” caused by “overall governance failure”. Putting the purpose behind the study into perspective, Economic Policy Editor Vivan Fernandes of CNBC-TV18 has uncovered that “the Business Standard and Economic Times quoted it as if it were an independent study. By tracing West Bengal’s decline from the 1960s, than from 1977, when the Left Front assumed power, by comparing it selectively with peers Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu and by ignoring achievements in agriculture, the authors seem anxious to prove that West Bengal is indeed, as they say, the most miserable state in India.” (Emphasis added) Fernandes found that the study was “deliberately provocative when it asserts the Left Front government is like Gangrene. It cannot be cured, and must be excised out.” (Source)

Like the above stated iniquitous report, Jyoti Basu’s death has brought out the savage teeth and nail of a variety of editors, commentators and experts who are principally anti-Left. Some among them are rather clever to present their contentions under a politesse veil. According to their sarcastic depiction, Jyoti Basu was just “a member of Calcutta’s privileged,” who wanted to “do something for the downtrodden”. A bhadralok who wore “glistening white” clothes and “invariably polished” shoes, who was fond of “good food and the sundowner” and whose only memorable contribution was to spearhead agitational politics that “resulted in the flight of capital, a complete erosion of work culture and irresponsible trade unionism.” (Source) Some among them have also tried to suggest how the persona of Jyoti Basu, previously committed to his party and the ideology, began to change “once he became firmly entrenched in power” and “acquiesced in the loot of state sources” along with party functionaries. (Source) There are also others, intensively raw and crude, those who have virtually crossed every limits of civility while lambasting Basu. Their calumny is decorated with abusive language and based on imaginary stories, fabricated reminisces, street gossips and unadorned lies. It also includes malicious personal attack by putting imaginary dialogues into selective mouths. (Source) Their style is fairly similar to the despicable approach popularized by the Trinamool chieftain Mamata Banerjee who while expressing her doubt upon Basu’s retirement had commented, “He will never retire till he expire.”

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. But can these so call experts be dubbed as fools when they cunningly avoid mentioning the stride in the Bengal countryside achieved under Jyoti Basu’s leadership? The pathbreaking achievements of Operation Barga – the land reforms and redistribution program initiated by the Left Front government is either completely ignored or referred in a diminutive and inconsequential way while assessing his contribution in the obituaries,. This example is sufficient to expose the precise objective of these deceitful pundits. How can they establish their points if they focus on the unmatched achievements of Jyoti Basu government’s panchayat program that has decentralized power to the grassroot and greatly empowered the rural peasantry? Since Independence, Bengal has accounted for 22.6 per cent of the total land distributed in India as a whole, and 54.5 per cent of the total number of gainers from land distribution programmes in the entire country. Land reforms and redistribution is the single most important contributor to rural poverty reduction and in this regard Bengal’s performance is the best among any state in the country. These policies occupied the centrestage of the Left Front government’s pro-people administrative initiatives and thus have significantly improved the status of the poor, giving them a sense of social dignity. Even in recent years, as V.K. Ramachandran has observed, “the extent of agricultural land distributed under land reform in West Bengal as a proportion of land distributed in the country as a whole is 22.6 per cent.” Ramachandran has also observed that “the total number of gainers from land distribution programmes in the country, more than half – a full 54.5 per cent – are from West Bengal.” (Source) But as Paranjoy Guha Thakurta has pointed out, “Historians have selective memories. Who cares today about Operation Barga or the empowerment of panchayats?” (Source)

By delicately applying their biases and prejudices, the pundits talk about Bengal’s poor growth compared to the rest of India. These pundits will never draw attention toward Bengal’s phenomenal agricultural growth which has grown at an annual rate of 2.7 per cent – double the national rate. Instead, they prefer to vociferously babble on the ‘gherao culture’ as the foundation of industrial stagnation in Bengal but never utter that Bengal’s industrial turn down was primarily caused by the central government policies of freight equalization and industrial licensing. Doesn’t it astonish us today that it took 13 years for the Congress government at the center to clear the flagship Haldia Petrochemicals project? Since the days when the license-permit raj were lifted and liberalization opened new possibilities, from 1990s Bengal was one of the fastest growing states in India. The pundits also endlessly emphasize on the worst condition of poverty and hunger in rural Bengal compared to most other states. But the planning commission figures show an entirely different picture. Percentage of persons below poverty line in rural Bengal has declined from 73.2 per cent in 1973-74 to 28.6 per cent in 2004-05 compared to the national average of 56.4 per cent in 1973-74 to 28.3 per cent in 2004-05. Urban poverty in Bengal is 14.8 per cent compared to the national average of 25.7 per cent – the performance is even better than fast-growing states like Maharashtra and Gujarat. The Eleventh Plan document has noted that Bengal is one of the five major states that have succeeded in reducing the absolute number of the poor in rural areas over the three decades from 1973 to 2004-05.

Protecting the rights and privileges of the poor, creating the possibility for a better socio-economic condition and achieving it to some reasonable extent are certainly the most significant contributions of Jyoti Basu’s rule. There are also other social sectors where Bengal has performed well. The state has registered the lowest death rate and maternal mortality rates among all the major states and has achieved notable reductions in fertility rate. It is the first state to lower the voting age to 18, first to introduce reservation for women in elected bodies. Jyoti Basu must also be credited for his firm commitment to secularism that has established an unwavering atmosphere of communal harmony and secularism in the state.

However, responding to the new aspirations and popular demands that has emerged from the successful agrarian reforms is a far more difficult and time-consuming task. It is a fact that the Left Front government’s response in this aspect was relatively slow. The government has also somewhat failed to achieve success in areas like education, infrastructural developments and the state of the economy. Long stint in power have also developed bureaucratic habits among a section of the Left Front leadership and detached them from the people. Jyoti Basu was quite aware about these shortcomings and negative developments. He had persistently spoken about the necessity of going to the people, listening to them, explaining the reasons behind the shortcomings and sincerely admitting the mistakes. Jyoti Basu himself has done it all through his life.

All his positive achievements, and there were many, is overshadowed or ignored by the bombastic and dismissive media rhetoric which is more engrossed to focus on the “egregious blemishes” of Jyoti Basu and his tenure. Viewed objectively, most of them will turn into plain deception. Jyoti Basu’s death has once more proved the myth of media objectivity and manifested an emergent trend of corporate journalism in India. A depressing trend that deceives millions of people and indoctrinates them by promoting personal bias towards the Left in the name of “balanced reporting”. It is a dangerous trend that encourages flak criticism to disgrace an exemplary politician – one of the country’s most illustrious leaders and statesmen.

Image Courtesy: aajkaal.net

Debating the Maoist challenge

In the public domain, a frequent argument is taking place to find out whether the extremism of Indian Maoists is an act of terrorism or not. In fact, there is a very thin line which divides the Maoists extremism from other typical forms of terrorism. Mindless mass killing, brutal extermination of detractors and critics, destruction of state property are among the many common features of the terrorist doctrine that fits well with the Maoists ‘revolutionary’ strategy. Maoists, like the terrorist groups cling to a fanatic socio-political and cultural belief, prefer supreme loyalty from their cadres and favor absolute totalitarianism. Both have trained themselves to use sophisticated weaponry and have grown more adapted these days to pathological killing. Both believe in oppositional terror and try to achieve it by intense violence. Where religious terrorism is inspired by religious dogma, Maoist political terror is inspired by a rigid form of political dogma. Both have practiced mastery to cunningly utilize rival mainstream political groups against one another to pursue their goal while the mainstream political groups stupidly think the reverse. Both have grown to be a lucrative media catch and perfected the art to make use of the extreme double standards of the fourth estate. Reluctant to renounce violence from a deliberate choice of applying terror tactics to force political concessions, Maoism in India is incessantly getting synonymous with terrorism.

The gun-cult

To neutralize the strengths of conventional law enforcement forces and capture areas from political parties who have the potential to raise an unyielding challenge to them, Maoists are frequently applying tested terrorist methods of macabre violence. The Maoist guerrilla squads perpetrate ambushes on security force convoys, kidnap and gruesomely assassinate individuals from poorly protected police stations in remote regions, plant booby traps of homemade improvised explosive devices or chic landmines, carry out a programme of individual annihilation of grass-root workers, supporters and sympathizers of rival political parties after terming them ‘class enemies’ or ‘renegades’. Most of their victims, notably, belong to the poor section of the society.

Their petty-bourgeois cheer-leaders and intellectual sympathizers believe that there is nothing wrong in this gun-cult as it is only a ‘consequence of mass anger’ and so cannot be labeled as ‘premeditated terroristic attack’. They consider this politics of terror as a socio-economic phenomenon, created impulsively as a response to a particular social and economic situation. To them, this risky belief seems to be convenient at the moment. However as Bob Dylan has once said “People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.”

Democracy at Gun point

A lot has been said about the ‘admirable’ development works that the Maoists have put up in the forests of south Bastar's Dantewada in Chhattisgarh where they are running a parallel government — the Janathana Sarkar (People’s Democratic State). Here, the Maoists have gone all out with their experiment to build a model classless society. The Janathana Sarkar is an elected body but ‘Landlords, anti people hierarchs, stooges of exploiting government and anti revolutionary forces are disqualified to participate in elections.’ As we learn from the lofty Maoist document ‘Policy programe of Janathana Sarkar’ (Source) the People’s Democratic governments have deployed a robust revenue collection system to run their expenses, distributed lands confiscated from landlords to poor and landless peasants. It has formed a forest protection committee to protect the natural livelihood of the tribals, running schools to raise political consciousness and scientific knowledge among the masses. To deliver summary justice to the oppressed masses, people’s courts reinforced with ‘new principles of justice, class line and mass line’ often tries and punishes ‘landlords, hierarchs, heads of the ruling class parties, exploiting government officers, police, paramilitary, military forces, goondas, anarchists, thieves, deceivers, conspirators, police agents’. To successfully control every aspect of the lives and livelihood of the tribal inhabitants and to maintain its absolute authority, the Janathana Sarkars has built up a considerable guerrilla base equipped with sophisticated arms and ammunition.

Elite bleeding-heart Maoist sympathizers have been provided enough space in the liberal bourgeois media to continuously drum on their admiration and paint a romantic picture of the ‘constructive programmes’ of this illegal Maoist governments which is run by the ‘principles of democracy’ where ‘individuals shall be committed to the government, minority to the majority’. They are ecstatic about how the Maoist governance has made the oppressed tribals feel proud of their identity and has brought back their self-respect. How the Maoist gunmen have protected them from the exploitation and harassment by local feudal lords, village chiefs, forest and police personnel, businessman and contractors. How the Maoists have empowered the marginal tribal farmers by teaching them agricultural skill, affiliated tribal families into cooperative farming, organized them to volunteer for digging tanks for irrigating land and breeding fish and has provided primary education and health care facilities to fight illiteracy and endemic diseases like malaria and diarrheoa. Above all, the sympathizers are delighted to describe how the Maoists have reignited the tribals against state sponsored atrocities and endowed them with guns — the ultimate symbol of power. The tribal voice under the Janathana Sarkars, they exclaim, is the real voice of people’s power. Here the voice grows out, literally, from the barrel of gun.

Are the Maoists really interested about the genuine problems of the tribal inhabitants of these regions or they are using the tribals as a pawn in their game? Do the Maoists represent the entire tribal population of these regions? These remain pungent questions which does not have an easy answer. The tribal heartland of India was not really selected by the Maoists because they had any special affection and empathy for the underprivileged tribals. It was a strategic choice for its geographical advantages. To build up a safe base and getting prepared for their so called revolutionary war, the Maoists required a secured hideout for themselves which will be inaccessible to the state security forces. There could be no argument at all that the tribals have remained the most neglected people in India and has encountered endless state apathy during both pre-independence and post-independence time. The tribal regions are among some of the most backward regions of the country. The Maoists have simply exploited the situation by seducing a major section of the inhabitants to achieve their own gory interests. Improvement of tribal life has little significance in the broader context of the Maoist strategy. The secluded tribal lands are important for them as self-sufficient base areas, for consolidating their strength to later expand and unleash ‘protracted People’s War’ against the Indian state and subsequently overthrow it.

What is actually going on inside these jungles? How do we, who live outside the ‘liberated zones’, learn about the effectiveness of these ‘classless’ Maoist governance when much of their functioning inside the jungle hideouts is invisible? Fortunately, we have two important sources of information.

The ‘stinking’ dissenters

“The Central task of the Indian revolution … is the seizure of political power. To accomplish this Central task, the Indian people will have to be organized in the people’s army and will have to wipe out the armed forces of the counterrevolutionary Indian state through war and will have to establish, in its place, their own state - the People’s Democratic State” – from the CPI (Maoist) document: Strategy & Tactics of the Indian Revolution.

The first unambiguous source of information is the several fact-finding reports by civil liberties groups and accounts of social activists and NGO organizations mostly comprising the liberal and radical left. This is a special mix of ‘aware and awake’ people who essentially believes that ‘people have a right to defend themselves against state violence’ and certifies Maoist violence as ‘the very last option of a desperate people pushed to the very brink of existence’. These are the people who validate the killing spree of Maoists by citing that ‘Hindu mobs led by the Bajrang Dal and the VHP had killed more people than the Maoists’ and unquestionably believes that the Maoists ‘don’t kill without a good reason’. They feel that the Maoists cannot lay down arms as it will only allow the State to crush them. These are the people who believe that the people's courts of the Maoists ‘only existed because India's courts are out of the reach of ordinary people’ and love to talk persistently about ‘police repression, the arrests, the torture, the killing, the corruption’. These are the people who inform us about how state governments, from an absolute paranoia of the Maoist specter, are branding every dissenter as Maoists and thus pushing activists as well as ordinary people ‘to take up arms and join the Maoists’. These are the aware people who knows about ‘the dangers of trying to extract a simple morality out of individual incidents of heinous violence’. These are the sensitive and concerned citizens of India who turn blind when the Maoists carry out cold blooded murder of CPI(M) activists in Bengal or behead police inspector Francis Induwar in Jharkhand. These are the people who get extremely angry when the Vanvasi Chetana Ashram in Dantewada was demolished by the state forces because this ‘neutral outpost’ had virtually became the base camp of city-bred outsiders to exchange useful information and support with the Maoists but do not get angry at all when the Maoists blow up schools. These are the same group of people who talks about human rights violation during every action of state security forces but maintain absolute silence when the Maoist and their frontal organizations unleash mindless violence on common people.

These Indian dissenters are the champions of the oppressed, who couldn't help looking (and smelling) cheap! These are the people among whom Arundhati Roy has found that ‘a humane heart still beats’. (Source)

‘Maoists are part of the story’

The second source is the reports and features produced by the neo-liberal Indian corporate media. Duty bound daring scribes frequenting into the Maoist heartland bring out titillating news stories. Account of the ascending life of a once timid tribal and now a fearless Maoist guerrilla is described in those stories in graphic detail. During every crisis period in their movement, the Maoist leadership has invited the ‘dear pressmen & TV channel hoisters’ from the ‘democratic and free’ Indian print and electronic media into their ‘liberated zones’. The numerous investigating reports that the journalists carry out later, serves both the Maoists and the media bosses. The Maoists get free publicity which they think elevates their public image. The media gets steady readership that facilitate the manufacturing of public consent. These reports highlight why tribal youths want to join the PGA (People’s Guerrilla Army) and fight against the police. Why the tribal populace think that the Maoists are their only savior. It also helps to generate the myth of the Maoist style ‘development’. It creates a thriller effect in the mind of the readers and viewers as the concept of dissent is always attractive to the petty-bourgeois conscience. A section of the media has developed a generic habit of romanticizing the Maoists. There is a definite reason behind this romanticism. It is not to display their love for the Maoists but principally directed against the mainstream Left, to lower their significance in people’s mind. Thus, the compassionate media puts top Maoist leader couple Kobad and Anuradha Ghandy on a pedestal and asks in a melodramatic voice: how did the daughter of a high profile lawyer of Bombay High Court or the son of a top Glaxo executive come to choose a life of struggle and hardship? (Source) If we accept the media stories as true, we will discover that every Maoist leader was a first-rate student and at the same time ‘extremely aware of what was happening around’. They automatically get radicalized while studying in elite colleges and learn to shed tears for the poor. Responding to the righteous call to fight for the oppressed, they soon become gun carrying revolutionaries.

Vincent Brossel, head of the Asia desk of Reporters Without Borders (RWB) has defended the role of the ‘free’ media concerning the Maoists by saying, “When you have a civil war on terror groups it is the right of the press to cover both sides. The Maoists are part of the story.” (Source) RWB is an international NGO that advocates freedom of the press. The group is reputed for having ‘strong links with Western intelligence agencies and has focussed its energies on countries such as Cuba and Venezuela.’ (Source) RWB is also alleged to be on the payroll of the U.S. State Department. (Source)

There is a lucid pattern in which these stories are woven and planted. In fact, the corporate media serves its own agenda when it purposely turns into a Maoists mouthpiece. The transformation obscures the genuine democratic struggles that are going on in the fields and factories all over India. Mainstream Left parties have always criticized left extremism for dismantling of democratic movements. In this aspect they are absolutely right. The Maoists and the corporate media work hand in glove and share a common understanding to actually demolish the scope of democratic resistance.

To acquire a true picture of alternative system of the Maoists governance, should we then rely on these sources as credible and truthful?

'To live outside the law you must be honest'

At present, these self-styled protectors who boast about safeguarding tribal wealth from ‘capitalist development’ and ‘corporate expansion’ have absolutely monopolized their control over mineral and other natural wealth in the regions they control. They are involved in illegal harvesting like growing poppy crop and smuggling of minerals and forest products through criminal syndicates of the timber and mine mafias. The revenue collection system, disguised as ‘taxes and donations from the people and fines from the anti people elements’, is their main source of income that comes from extorting huge amounts of royalty from the traders, contractors, mining corporates and big industries operating in those regions. While indoctrinating the tribal people against the Indian State, the Maoists at the same time had successfully built up dubious relationships and deceitful understandings with mainstream political parties. In Andhra Pradesh, local politicians have found them handy to secure electoral gains. The same nexus was evident during the Jharkhand assembly election in 2005. Recently in Bengal, the Maoists are working as second fiddle to Mamata Banerjee and her cohorts.

On the eve of Operation Green Hunt — the Indian State’s massive counteroffensive plan against them, the Maoists are feeling the urgent need to forge a strong support base ‘at every level possible’ which includes their ‘honorable’ sympathizers from the intelligentsia as well as mainstream political parties. Their offensive against the ‘brutal’ state forces needs to be carried out ‘in close coordination with, and in support of’ these mainstream sections of the Indian society. The Maoist leaders are definitely not fools but have cunning political brains. They know that to take up ‘wide propaganda exposing state terror and state-sponsored terror’ and evoke sympathy among the broader masses, the help and support from the babble mouth elite sympathizers, the ‘liberal’ media and petty-bourgeois radicals will give them the necessary propaganda mileage. By lending opportunistic ‘tactical’ support to petty-minded political groups to influence petty politics, by inciting an anarchic situation through their murderous politics, they want to divert attention from their surreptitious activities. Bengal is a paradigm case where reactionary political forces like the ‘useful idiots’ of the Trinamool Congress has volunteered to help the Maoists just to pathologically oppose the principal partner of the ruling Left Front — the CPI(M). So, it is not a surprise when we hear the shrewd CPI-Maoist politbureau member Koteshwar Rao a.k.a. Kishanji openly declaring Mamata Banerjee as the next Chief Minister of Bengal! This friendship will immensely help the Maoists to keep an escape corridor open for their ‘brave’ guerrillas to turn their tails and flee from the imminent State offensive.

During the show of might between state forces and the Maoists, the hapless tribals will be caught in the crossfire and left to bear the maximum brunt. Their already wretched life will further get shattered. This is going to be the most disturbing part of the event.

Web Resources:

1. Ajai Sahni: ‘Naxalism’- The Retreat of Civil Governance

2. Debasish Chakraborty: Who Are The Maoists Working For?

3. Nirmalangshu Mukherjee: Open Letter to Noam Chomsky

4. V Balachandran: An ideological adversary

Cyclone Aila, its aftermath and a biased discussion about an ‘unbiased’ media

Sitting distanced from Bengal and following the sui generis coverage of the Cyclone Aila after effects in the Bengali TV channels is a fascinating experience. The tragic incidence has emerged as the prime media story of the moment, promptly filling the void created by the just concluded Lok Sabha polls. The cyclone that hit the Bengal coast on Monday, 25th of May has left a massive trail of destruction in different parts of the state. The scale of destruction and the suffering of the effected people were unprecedented. As per official reports, 137 people have lost their lives in the catastrophe. Nearly two lakh others were left homeless. While the worst hit districts were South and North 24-Paraganas in South Bengal, Cyclone Aila has also left its disastrous impact in the North Bengal districts particularly in Darjeeling Hills where at least 28 people have lost their lives. In Kolkata, three people were killed when huge trees fell on buses, cars and auto-rickshaws, roads were blocked, many electric poles were keeled over snapping overhead wires. In several parts of the city, power and water supply were severely disrupted.

The days after

In the Sunderbans delta zone, gigantic waves caused by the cyclone have destroyed around 400 kilometers of embankments in Sagar, Pathapratima, Basanti, Gosaba, Sandeshkhali and Hingalgunj, flooding hundreds of the villages. 54 major and smaller islands and the lives of over 40 lakh of its inhabitants were severely affected in these areas. The floods has razed or damaged countless houses, washed away seeds and killed the livestock. Brackish water entering farmlands has ruined crops and wiped out all stocks of freshwater fish and shrimp. Village after village lay submerged. Affected people are living with acute shortage of drinking water, food and shelter. Fears of an outbreak of waterborne enteric diseases loomed large as rotten carcasses of farm animals were floating in the surrounding rivers and creeks. According to experts, Sunderbans has never been hit by such a destructive storm in the last three decades.

The world's largest independent conservation organization World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) was working in Mousuni Island of the Sunderbans for quite some time in partnership with WWF (Netherlands), Hewlett Packard and GTZ to increase the adaptive capacities of the inhabitants from cyclones and tidal surges. By taking up climate adaptation strategies and infrastructural facilities to protect the island's inhabitants, WWF (India) had also set up a Climate Adaptation Centre here, with an electronic Early Warning System to warn villagers of oncoming disasters. Cyclone Aila’s wrath has washed away the entire work done by WWF (India) in Mousuni.

Apart from the human tragedy, the cyclone and subsequent floods has badly affected the mangrove forests of Sunderbans and presumably caused a sizable damage to its animal life by sweeping away a large number of highly endangered Bengal tigers, crocodiles, wild boars and spotted deer. It will take several weeks to assess the actual extent of the damage only after the water level recedes from the area. Alarm bells are ringed by environmental activist groups. A Greenpeace spokesperson has expressed caution that “the destruction caused by Aila was in consonance with the predictions made by scientists, who had warned that storms would become more frequent and more damaging due to climate change.” The spokesperson has also said that, “…domestically, India must take ambitious action to curtail emissions of carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas which is causing climate change), by adopting mandatory, ambitious energy efficiency and renewable energy targets, and creating fiscal incentives for the same”. (Source)

The response

The Bengal government’s response to the cyclone devastation was gradual. To gear up the relief and rehabilitation work, chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee immediately deployed five ministers in the affected areas. Relief operations delayed to start as local communication systems were found to be paralyzed and many areas inaccessible by the impact of the cyclone. The army and Border Security Force personals were called in for carrying out rescue operations and air dropping of food packets in the inaccessible terrains. The government set up over 100 relief camps to temporarily shelter 50,000 effected people. While at the ground level rescue and relief efforts gradually gathered its momentum, it was almost inevitable that there will be administrative shortcomings in reaching adequate relief to certain remote areas as the scale of the disaster was massive and the numbers of victims were countless. The administrative loopholes in relief distribution remained a matter of grave concern to the government and have swelled harsh criticism from different quarters. Even as the state finance ministry sanctioned 61 crore rupees for relief operations, the funds available with the state government were grossly inadequate to cope up with the situation. Stressing the need for a centre-state joint effort to tackle the damage, the state government has urged for 1,000 crore rupees central assistance from the Natural Calamity Contingency Fund and also has demanded for declaring the disaster as a national calamity. The chief minister has also appealed to all political parties to rise above narrow politics and work hand in hand to provide relief to the distressed people.

But where the main opposition party is Trinamool Congress and the main opposition leader is no other but the ‘famous lady’, the country’s newly appointed Railway minister, the lofty call was expected to fall on deaf ears. How can her party work along with the CPI(M), the obnoxious ‘Stalinist’ party she had recently thrashed in the polls and won 19 parliament seats from the state? And who’s Buddhadev Bhattacharjee anyway? Didn’t the poll verdict confirm that the people have wholeheartedly supported her adamant approach of going up against everything the present government does? Eyeing the 2011 assembly polls, she has immediately tapped the popular grievances to blast off the state government for ‘nonexistence’ of any disaster management system throughout the 32 years of ‘misrule’. As if elsewhere in India, disaster management systems are working splendidly. She seemed, or pretended, to be unaware that the term Disaster Management System was introduced into the country’s administrative terminology barely seventeen years ago; fifteen years after Left Front came to power in Bengal.

Alleging the state government for careless utilization of central funds, she has demanded that the centre should not assist the Bengal government in relief and rehabilitation. On the pretext that no relief was reaching the affected people, she floated her alternative ‘PM to DM’ proposal: central relief should be directly handed over to the Panchayats bypassing the state government. As the Panchayats in most of the affected areas of South Bengal are advantageously under Trinamool’s control, the raison d'être behind her alternative proposal was targeted to reap maximum political advantage through relief distribution. Quite naturally she was upset when central finance minister Pranab Mukherjee met Buddhadev Bhattacharjee to discuss on the cyclone relief issue. As her alternative proposal was annulled by the central ministry, her party leaders and workers remained by and large aloof from any relief work. Instead, local Trinamool leaders were more interested and active to create obstacles in the ongoing relief and rehabilitation work and together with the friendly journalists were busy plotting effective plans to disrepute the government. Only after relief materials reached the affected areas from the Railway ministry, Trinamool leaders have jumped into their business.

The ugly media circus

Cyclone Aila has once again uncovered the ruthless anti-CPI(M) face of the mainstream media establishment in general, and the Anandabazar Patrika group (ABP) in particular. Setting a new low in journalistic sensationalism, the ABP group reporters are full of activity to spread disinformation based on half-truth evidences, primarily targeted against Buddhadev Bhattacharjee and his party. The carefully manufactured news items were selective in nature but regardless of validity, were supported by facts that cannot be easily separated from the fabrications and were presented in a ‘hit and run’ way – by making a brief attack and then dashing off from it without answering the subsequent response. To associate disinformation with authority and point up its trustworthiness, the news channels continuously ‘inventing’ exciting news and presenting them through the lingo of their own ‘experts’. Star Ananda, the ABP group’s ‘unbiased’ 24 hour news channel is an undisputed leader in this aspect. Brushing aside all journalistic ethics (if such a thing really exists), the channel has even started name calling and ridiculing rival news channel 24 Ghanta which do not follow their prescribed line of reporting. After all, 24 Ghanta is the ‘CPM’s channel’ stupid!

During Buddhadev Bhattacharjee’s visit in Aila hit Basanti, ABP group journalists had manufactured the sensational ‘imprisonment’ story. A group of local relief distribution workers were shown as ‘forcibly caged’ into a shed ‘against their wish’ for nearly two hours by overactive police and administration who had considered them as a ‘threat to Mr. Bhattacharjee’s safety’. An editorial in ABP group’s English daily The Telegraph had further articulated that the actual reason behind the imprisonment was to prevent them from “…confronting Mr. Bhattacharjee with their version of the truth of how relief operations were being mishandled in the area.” (Source) Star Ananda made it a major piece, uninterruptedly telecasted the ‘cage’ image for hours and promptly arranged a lengthy discussion on the topic. Surprisingly, the ‘cage’ was so tightly locked and guarded that the channel’s cameramen were allowed to enter inside and shoot this sensational footage of captivity for the viewers!

When the chief minister visited the cyclone effected Hingalgunj of North 24 Paraganas, he had to face ‘the wrath of the victims’ who had also ‘heckled and jeered’ him for inadequate supply of relief. The ‘hungry and angry cyclone victims’ shouted at the chief minister, “You are an inefficient chief minister. You deserve a garland of shoes. What have you done for the development of the Sunderbans in the last five years?” The angry ‘villagers’ asked the chief minister during an interactive session why a poor country like Bangladesh can build concrete embankments and the state government had failed to do so despite enjoying uninterrupted power for more than three decades. What the ‘angry villagers’ didn’t know was that ‘concrete embankments’ had feebly failed to protect Bangladesh from the devastating wrath of Aila. In fact, the condition of the Bangladesh Aila victims was so bad that Heather Blackwell, the NGO group Oxfam's Bangladesh representative called it a ‘humanitarian crisis’.

The ‘furious cyclone victims’ then heckled and abused the 75 years old local CPI(M) legislator Gopal Gayen at the Madanmohan Vidyapith relief camp and smeared his face with mud. The next day, the mud spattered face of the legislator was published in newspapers all over the country decorated by an incredible caption: ‘How does it feel?’ Not a single line were published anywhere by the worshippers of democracy condemning the attack on a senior legislator whose own house, situated in one of the worst affected areas was lying submerged for days. (Source)

Inspired by their homemade propaganda, a columnist of The Telegraph wrote, “The people were angry with not just the administration’s rather casual response to the human suffering, but also with the long years of official indifference to their plight.” (Emphasis added) The columnist continued, “Such anger erupting in the Sunderbans and in the chief minister’s presence can only mean how it is extending beyond ideological or partisan confines.” (Emphasis added) The columnist finally delivers his real message, “But the change in Bengal is noticeable…Bhattacharjee and the CPM are now less popular with the rural masses…” (Emphasis added) (Source) Buddhadev Bhattacharjee’s visit was termed by Star Ananda as a ‘VIP Picnic’. The media brotherhood roared in accordance: if the security of a chief minister becomes more important than relief distribution, if distribution workers are kept caged, then there is no need for the chief minister to visit the affected areas. Let him sit home. His visits are hindering the relief process. Amazingly, enlightenment struck the ABP group to raise the ‘VIP Picnic’ issue only after the ‘famous lady’ and three Trinamool central ministers had finished their respective visits to the cyclone hit areas. When the ‘conscience keeper’ Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi later visited the humble victims of Sandeshkhali, the same media reported about an ‘altogether different public mood’. Cyclone victims who has lost all that they possessed gave the Bengal Governor a ‘warm welcome’, little girls strewed flower petals before him. A shaken Governor was seen to amiably ask a woman in tears ‘if the child in her lap had eaten’. The reporting has turned Sandeshkhali into an almost surreal land, inhabited by surreal people who in the midst of agony can magnanimously strew flowers on their illustrious guest!

There is an alternative version of this rousing incident that came from Ganashakti, the CPI(M) mouthpiece. (Source: June 4, 2009 Issue) According to Ganashakti, the basic plan to heckle the chief minister was hatched by the ABP reporters. Blessed by their management, the reporters joined with local Trinamool leaders in a neighborhood club ‘Tarun Sangha’ in the early hours of that eventful day and fine-tuned their plan. Hingalgunj became their perfect executing ground as the area is considered to be a Trinamool Congress stronghold. The Trinamool leaders were taught how to stage a ‘media friendly’ demonstration in front of the chief minister, in the crudest way possible, involving women armed with brooms and shoes. The news and images will then be publicized as ‘public fury against the chief minister’. The Trinamool leaders perfectly acted according to the ABP authored script and helped to manufacture the breaking news: ‘Struck by Aila, survivors jeer Buddha, call him inefficient CM’.

The CPI(M) mouthpiece’s version could have been easily dismissed as a cliché CPM style defense under severe media criticism. But this time the daily has struck directly to produce an authoritative proof to support their claim. Ganashakti published an image of the chief minister’s interactive session in the Madanmohan Vidyapith relief camp and convincingly identified five ‘cyclone victim villagers’ – all of them were local Trinamool leaders. Throughout the incident, this gang of five was the most invective protesters who had flung ‘hard questions’ before the chief minister. None of them were cyclone victims; none of them were living in relief camp, none of them were hungry. The attack on CPI(M) legislator Gopal Gayen was also perpetrated by the same group. But no matter what evidence or logical arguments are offered, it is CPM manufactured news after all. A piece of news is considered 'credible' only when it appears in the ‘unbiased’ media.

Why the ABP group has gone berserk to involve itself into such a depraved act? In their own words, the initiative was undertaken to ‘provoke a widespread eruption of popular rage’ against the ‘impotent’ state government administration. (Source) The key intention behind this media circus was to act as proxy to the ‘famous lady’ who was away from the epicenter to attend her ministerial obligations in New Delhi. While the Trinamool chieftain and her henchmen were too busy celebrating their portfolios, their media friends has taken up the task to counteract the positive impact of the chief minister’s visit by any means. It was therefore their moral obligation to establish that the chief minister was sternly discarded by the cyclone affected people. They have realized that this out of the blue situation has provided them a wonderful chance to intensely exploit public resentment against the ruling Left Front and the CPI(M). Systematically they are trying to build-up an atmosphere of discontent and sustain it till 2011, for the final assault. Beating the Stalinists in Bengal is no more a pipedream. In any case, the Stalinists are in the verge of losing their power and the glory!

A concealed truth

The all out media surge against the Left, particularly against the CPI(M) obviously lead to the suspicion that the media might be working hand in glove for a much greater plan designed by their imperialist bosses. Remember the former US Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker’s testimony about how the Central Intelligence Agency had carried out a clandestine operation to topple the democratically elected Communist government in Kerala? Howard B Schaffer, the author of Bunker’s biography Ellsworth Bunker: Global Troubleshooter, Vietnam Hawk, has disclosed in the book that, “…the election results rang alarm bells in Washington. This apparently involved agency funding for political demonstrations organized by the Congress party and other opposition groups that were designed to create a law and order situation.” Sounds familiar? Former US ambassador to India Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s autobiography A Dangerous Place has further revealed how agency funds were poured in to help the Congress Party in Kerala and Bengal to cut off the communists who were clear favorites in the elections.

Successive US governments have a long history of extensively using the CIA to interfere in the internal political matters of various countries if considered detrimental to the US interests. Do we have to believe that the continuous eruptions of mayhem, lawlessness and violence in Bengal are spontaneous events? In the current global state of affairs, it is impossible for the US to remain impassive about a strategically important country like India. Only a stupid will believe that the US has signed the Indo-US nuclear deal to solve India’s power crisis! In their notorious intelligence game, one of the most efficient devices is the journalists who can serve the US interests under an institutional cover – the Fourth Estate.

Former Washington Post reporter, the legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein had exposed in his Rolling Stone cover story ‘The CIA and the Media’ how journalists had secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency. Bernstein wrote, “Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services – from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters … who found that their association with the Agency helped their work… and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.” (Source)

Do the journalists go on working for the CIA on their own? According to Bernstein, “…contrary to the notion that the CIA insidiously infiltrated the journalistic community, there is ample evidence that America’s leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services.” What about the ‘opinion maker’ columnists? Bernstein writes, “…a dozen well known columnists and broadcast commentators whose relationships with the CIA go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources. They are referred to at the Agency as ‘known assets’ and can be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks.”

Bernstein continues, “In the field, journalists were used to help recruit and handle foreigners as agents; to acquire and evaluate information, and to plant false information with officials of foreign governments.” Bernstein further elaborates, “…During the past twenty-five years, the Agency has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers – both English and foreign language – which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives.” (Emphasis added) The CIA is believed to have directly owned of subsidized “…more than fifty newspapers, news services, radio stations, periodicals and other communications facilities, most of them overseas. These were used for propaganda efforts, or even as cover for operations. Another dozen foreign news organizations were infiltrated by paid CIA agents.”

However, in response to public disclosure of CIA’s use of journalists in undercover operations, the agency has scaled down the program but continued “to ‘welcome’ the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists”.

Daniel Brandt, founder of NameBase, the web-based cross-indexed database of names that focuses on individuals involved in the international intelligence community once asked, “How can one distinguish between news and propaganda when the overlaps and interlocks are so pervasive?” According to Brandt, “…the collapse of socialism and the centralization of domestic and transnational media, suggest that the CIA now has everything well in hand”

We wrap up the section with a wise Daniel Brandt comment: “…the larger problem is that the media is owned by the ruling class. With the increased media centralization of the last twenty years, their lock on the masses is now so complete that when they maintain an appearance of objectivity, it's only out of habit.” (Source)

Disaster Management: the Indian way

Any policy is best judged by how well it is implemented on ground. The Government of India had incepted the Natural Disaster Management Program (NDMP) in 1992-93 following the devastating Latur earthquake to suggest a long-term strategy for managing natural disasters in the country. As a guideline the NDMP had also provided a long list of necessary institutional and legislative measures for the national, state and district levels to follow. In 1999, soon after the devastating cyclone in Orissa, another high powered committee on disaster management plans was constituted to prepare a comprehensive model for management of disasters. But the 2001 Gujarat earthquake has brought out in open several inadequacies in the country’s disaster management system. The 2004 tsunami catastrophe has proved again that the system in fact does not exist beyond the government files. As a consequence of the tsunami, on 11 January 2005, another high power committee was constituted by the central government to draft the Disaster Management Bill to start a multi dimensional endeavour involving various scientific, engineering and social processes. The draft bill became the National Disaster Management Act after being passed by Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and signed by the President of India on 23 December 2005. The Cabinet Committee on Management of Natural calamities and The National Disaster Response force was constituted on the same year. The 2008 Kosi floods in Bihar once more exposed the serious weaknesses in the government machinery and confirmed that disaster management system in India has turned into a disaster by itself. Neither the central nor the state governments have any clue on how the system is supposed to work.

Disaster Management Programs require multi-disciplinary and pro-active approach involving a number of departments and agencies spanning across all sectors. After every disaster strikes, limitations of the government machinery, its top-down approach and lack of determination to mitigate the impact of natural calamities comes into open. Our governments have learned little from experiences of the past disasters. Neither have they realized that costs of disaster mitigation are far more economical than spending crores on relief and rehabilitation.

Conclusion

It is beyond any doubt that in a natural disaster of extreme magnitude, where properties and lives of countless people are devastated, anger against the government administration is nothing unusual. If the Aila affected people in Bengal are demonstrating their anger against the authorities, they have enough reasons to do so. But it is also true that in a country like India, timely and evenly supplying relief material to each and every effected area or person is virtually impossible. Even a utopian administration cannot succeed in this task. There will be certain places where supply of relief will fall short to satisfy the real need. Therefore it is quite easy to find out stories of anger, frustration and deprivation in a situation like this. We are not saying this to cover up some of the genuine administrative lapses of the Bengal government’s but trying to view the situation from a realistic point of view. The point is – what are then the alternatives? Running a parallel administration while ignoring a democratically elected government? Purposefully defaming a sincere and concerned chief minister by questioning his motives and blowing the opposition leader out of proportion? Bringing out cliché allegations based on minor matter or element of the facts, focusing on side issues and fabricating them to an absurd level? Claiming every effort of the Bengal government as irrelevant and demanding for the impossible? Insisting on immediate disaster management solutions in a country where political cynicism, bureaucratic lassitude and corruption formidably rule the roost?

None of the above alternatives have any ability to bring smile on the face of the Cyclone Aila victims. It can only reinforce the farce of Indian democracy once more. Judicious preventive measures with community initiatives are the real answer to the problem, not the post-disaster relief and rehabilitation.

Image Courtesy:
daylife.com, westbengalnews.blogspot.com

The politics of ‘Ruddhasangeet’

Bratyajoner Ruddhasangeet (Stifled Song of an Outcast) is the autobiography of Debabrata (George) Biswas, a legend in the world of Rabindranath Tagore’s Bengali songs, a form commonly known as Rabindra Sangeet. The musical career of Biswas started way back in the early forties. During the sixties he had already grown into a phenomenon, gripping the ardent Rabindra Sangeet followers with his deep, non-crooning and passionate voice. Biswas had a unique style of singing. Gleamed with enunciated pronunciation and sensitive modulation his performances could bring in life and vivacity into the songs. To many of his fans the sound of his voice resembled the voice of black American singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. However, from 1964 onwards, the ostensive purists of the Vishwabharati Sangeet Board had started raising objections about his presentation style on the ground that Biswas was altering the conventional tune-notations with melodic excesses and wrong tempo. He was also accused for overusing western instruments in the prelude and interlude section of the songs. As the copyright owners of Tagore’s works, the Vishwabharati Sangeet Board was authoritatively controlling all Rabindra Sangeet recordings at that time. It was compulsory for every artist to get their sanction before commercially producing any Rabindra Sangeet record. Deeply hurt by the dictates, an uncompromising Biswas was reluctant to bow down before the so-called exponents and experts of this puritan establishment. Initially he had braced himself to fight with the Board but later decided on his own to stop recording any more songs. The detailed story of this famous conflict was unfolded in his fascinating autobiography published in 1979. The following year on August 18, Debabrata Biswas was dead.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee: tale of two manifestos

ABP group’s English daily The Telegraph has done a ‘psychological analysis’ between Mamata Banerjee and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya based on their recent appearance in two separate Bengali television channels. (Source) According to the newspaper, the ‘down to earth’ Mamata Banerjee was looking energetic, domineering and aggressive compared to the ‘teacher-like’ Buddhadeb Bhattacharya who looked tired. It also stated that “…there was no denying one thing – the Mamata show brought alive her old image as the girl next door.” This familiar bazaar style of analysis is nothing new before any election in Bengal. But this time, Mamata Banerjee has put ABP group think-tanks into a dilemma because according to them she has ‘inclined towards left’ to become ‘Comrade Mamata’. The ABP group is particularly upset with Mamata Banerjee because her bombastic political language in showing many similarities with the distinctive Leftist language that ABP group greatly dislikes. The group therefore has crafted an apparently ambiguous policy to keep a fine balance between criticizing Mamata Banerjee and simultaneously allocating full-time marathon publicity to her. Keeping in mind the immediate consequences of the general elections, ABP group is more worried about the rising role of the Left particularly the CPI(M) in central politics.

There should be no doubt about Mamata Banerjee’s tenacious anti-CPI(M) stance. This is her one and only eternal agenda that has elevated her as the chief opposition voice in Bengal. Her inceptive attempt to wrestle the mighty Marxists of Bengal as a Congress (INC) leader had failed to bloom due to the party’s chronic and acute factionalism. To protest the INC’s ‘secret deals with the Marxists’ she had even gone to the extent to stage a suicide drama by wrapping a shawl around her neck in full public view. For her fanatical rebellion against friends and foes alike she had earned the media nickname ‘rebel without a pause’. (Source)

Alleging the INC as CPI(M)’s B-team, in 1997 she finally split the party and formed Trinamool Congress (TMC). Without any delay, TMC allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and paved the way for the Hindu communalists to spread its root in Bengal. Though in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections TMC unexpectedly won 8 seats but the party could not sustain this euphoric success as well as their bonhomie with the BJP for long. Mamata Banerjee’s habitual autocratic style of functioning and her intention to directly deal with the BJP central leadership while ignoring the State leaders has largely irked the State BJP unit. Within a short period of time Mamata Banerjee also started getting feedbacks about the benefits her party was actually reaping from hobnobbing with the BJP compelled her to worry about her political future. As a consequence of this anxiety, TMC allied with the INC in 2001 assembly polls and after facing electoral thrashing from the Left Front, raised good tantrum against the State Congress leadership and returned back into the BJP fold. From this time onwards Mamata Banerjee’s political graph displayed a steady decline. In the 2004 Lok Sabha polls she was the only winning TMC candidate and in the 2006 assembly polls her party faced another devastating electoral defeat and lost more than half of its sitting legislators.

Mamata Banerjee’s fascistic mindset and her obstinate anti-CPI(M) agenda has made her the darling of the reactionary elements active in Bengal society from the early days of her political career. The chronicle of her ascending and descending political career is populated with many predictable and unpredictable bedfellows. She has embraced almost all the opportunist possibilities aimed to trounce the Marxists and attain supreme political power in Bengal but has miserably failed to succeed till date. Thanks to their inept handling of the twin issues of Singur & Nandigram, the Left Front government and the CPI(M) has tremendously helped her to stumble upon a wonderful option previously unexplored by her trial and error method of politics – the option to take cover under a red cloak, impersonating the bona fide Leftists.

Her fictitious Leftist stance became evident when she levitated the two conferred gifts of Singur & Nandigram. She announced that her fight is not against Left politics but particularly against the Communist Party of India (Marxist). To become more Leftist in the eyes of the Bengali populace, Mamata swiftly befriended the ultra-left groups including the Maoists and extended her lap towards expelled, renegade and ‘disillusioned’ political leaders and workers of the CPI(M) and other Left Front constituents. But her unexpected support came from a prominent section of the Bengali intelligentsia and cultural activists. Though most of the agitators were seemingly upset with the ‘pro-rightist, neo-liberal’ bend of the Marxist government and resentful about the ‘Stalinist arrogance’ of the CPI(M), there are sufficient and credible proofs to believe that a specific acrimonious group among the dissenting intelligentsia had other iniquitous motives in their heart. The two sides rapidly came closer with a ‘common cause’. From the early days of her anti-industrialization agitation, Mamata Banerjee drew maximum support from this section and successfully proliferated banal anti-CPI(M) hatred. During that period, a supportive media carefully triggered off anti-CPI(M) public opinion through disinformation and cosmetic allegations of atrocity which had helped to set the TMC euphoria against the absolute monolithic presence of CPI(M) in every nook and corner of the State. Tasting blood, heinous domestic and global quarters pounced into action and acted catalyst to this extraordinary alliance. These quarters felt enthralled to share the credit with Mamata Banerjee about TMC’s ‘considerable’ success in shaking the CPI(M) in Bengal.

To efficiently unnerve the ‘atrocious’ Left Front government, this particular intelligentsia group came out with a unique concept. With the help of ultra-left sympathizers, they brought the Maoists at Mamata Banerjee’s doorstep ‘to support her anti-CPI(M) crusade’. The Maoists became brother-in-arms of the TMC goon’s in Nandigram, Lalgarh and elsewhere in the State. In the last couple of months, the TMC-Maoist combine has killed at least 15 CPI(M) leaders and workers in different districts of Bengal and even targeted the convoy of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya in West Midnapur. Significantly, no other political party members of Bengal were targeted by the Maoists other than the CPI(M). Not a single one from the intellectual allies of Mamata Banerjee who habitually shed gallons of crocodile tears for the ‘poor people’ of Nandigram has ever condemned any attack on the ‘poor people’ of the CPI(M) and preferred to turn stone-deaf on this issue. Why count the dead who belongs to the CPI(M)? Reporting on the recent political killings in Bengal, The Indian Express though agreed that “CPI(M) workers (are) at the receiving end in most places”, but at the same time did not fail to declare that the killings reveal the “change in political alignment that is sweeping large parts of Bengal” and how “the Trinamool Congress is denting the rural base of the red brigade”. Change, in whatever form it might be is always welcome!

With meticulous and eclectic scheming, her new found friends renovated Mamata Banerjee as a ‘true Leftist’ icon. To generate a Leftist milieu around every TMC gathering, popular IPTA songs of communist mass movements of the past were replicated and performed regularly. Celebrity NGO friends Medha Patkar and Anuradha Talwar helped her to reach national and international ‘bleeding heart’ forums. Within days, the 'matured' Mamata Banerjee became a champion of the farmers cause, started chanting Leftist topics like disinvestment, privatization, foreign direct investment; globalization and big capital – all at one go. Now she certainly needs to light candles in memory of slain Palestinians in Gaza Strip and voice against Israeli aggression. Her friends are also working overtime to titivate her as the guardian of Bengali culture. Delighted by their terrific effort, Mamata Banerjee started bestowing gratuity – Kabir Suman was granted with a TMC ticket from Jadavpur Lok Sabha seat and Suvaprasanna received a huge amount of money from her MP fund to construct a Bangla Bhasa (Bengali Language) memorial in Kolkata.

According to media reports, Suvaprasanna has graciously refused Mamata Banerjee’s offer to contest the elections as he desires to be remembered by posterity ‘only as an artist’. Whether this infamous artist cum art guru will be remembered as an artist or not is debatable but he will definitely be remembered for playing the classy role of Rasputin in Mamata Banerjee’s theatre. Suvaprasanna is valued for his incredible and convincing track record of easily reaching out to ‘significant’ quarters of importance. Another prominent member from this intellectual assembly buzzing around Mamata Banerjee today is the ‘young and innocent’ playwright and actor Bratya Basu. His role is conceivable from an article he wrote for the Trinamool mouthpiece Jago Bangla. In this Bengali article ‘Telling you Comrades’, Bratya Basu wrote, “The renowned painter Suvaprasanna often tells me, ‘Without a change nothing is going to happen to this State’. I believe in these words…everyone knows about the wily ones, those who are earning their good fortune from the direct assistance of the government and CPM party….leaving aside these small number of brokers who are buzzing like flies around the honeycomb of power, there is a great number of people who are honest…I appeal to the genuine CPM. I appeal to you all Comrades that if you really care for your party; if you really want your party’s betterment, then for once remove them from power. … you know that the party is completely rotten now.” Bratya Basu is so accurate! Many of the flies buzzing around Mamata Banerjee’s honeycomb today were convincingly buzzing around the ‘honeycomb of power’ just a few years ago but sadly failed to accumulate honey. His call for ‘Flies of Bengal unite!’ therefore has many followers today. And who else has the sound ability to construct the perfect stage for them except Mamata Banerjee?

To put across a genuine Leftist face, Mamata Banerjee and friends has now attempted to hijack major issues from the CPI(M)’s program book. This move became evident in the recently released TMC election manifesto where Mamata Banerjee allowed her ultra-left friends to bloom. Her loyal supporter media conglomerates were terribly disappointed with the ‘sweet nothings’ of her manifesto and sad because many of the pertinent issues of the manifesto looks as if copied from documents of the CPI(M)’s 17th Party Congress! With striking similarity with the longstanding CPI(M) demand, the TMC manifesto also demands that the States must be allocated 50 per cent of the Central revenue. The manifesto echoed the CPI(M) line when it spoke against the entry of foreign capital in the retail sector, when it opposed disinvestment in the public sector and said that developing local resources and skills are more important than embracing globalization. When it comes to elaborate the industrialization policy of TMC, the manifesto writes: “Agriculture must not be sacrificed at the altar of industry. Both should grow like twins… The Trinamul Congress wants industry but not at the cost of poor farmers”. It also advocated to form a land bank for industrial purpose and declared that SEZs (special economic zones) are bad because it causes environment pollution.

It is doubtful how much Mamata Banerjee really can make out of these bombastic words printed in her party manifesto. Instead, she is more recognizable when she reveals her fantastic future vision concerning Bengal. The TMC chieftain has sung a mesmerizing lullaby for her voters: she will transform the East Midnapore coastal town Digha into Goa, North Bengal into Switzerland and Kolkata into London! Assuring the electorates she also said that “If Trinamool Congress comes to power, we’ll show what is called development”. Clarifying to the bewildered journalists who asked how can the TMC thinks of coming to power in the State when the elections are being held for the Lok Sabha, the ‘girl next door’ politician replied, “I know this is just a Lok Sabha election. But what I want to say is that in future, if Trinamool comes to power in the State we will give shape to this vision.” (Source) How Goa, Switzerland or London fits with her true Leftist scheme is a question that remained unanswered. To appease the Muslim voters, she has affirmed that her party will back a non-BJP government at the center and pronounced that, “… a secular government cannot be one by the Bharatiya Janata Party…I now have made things clear for you”.

Grouped under the pseudonym Swajan (also known as Susheel Samaj), Mamata Banerjee’s intellectual friends now have decided to publish their own ‘manifesto’ in April on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls. (Source) This ‘historic manifesto’ is cogently drafted by Bibhas Chakrabarty, the big name of Bengali theatre with an impressive track record of splitting numerous Kolkata theater groups. Corresponding with the TMC manifesto, the ‘Swajan manifesto’ will also appeal to people to vote for a change. The TMC manifesto is dedicated to the cause of ‘ma, mati, manush’ (mother, soil and people) and speaks ambiguously about industrialization without farmland acquisition. The ‘Swajan manifesto’ similarly is expected to articulate the same line, putting stress on the importance of industrialization in Bengal but not ‘… at the cost of the farmer’s livelihood and by forcibly grabbing land from peasants.’ Both are deceitfully trying to dilute local and national issues, to greatly confuse the people and grab maximum advantage from their pivotal issue of Singur-Nandigram. Though the ‘Swajan manifesto’ will not ask people to vote for or against a particular party, ample hints will be there for the readers to understand which political party this ‘awake and aware’ group is suggesting to vote for or against. It will manifest that ‘a party that has been at the helm of power for more than a decade … is not healthy for democracy’ and will ask the people to be ‘…brave and not get pressurized to vote for a particular political party’. Echoing the sentiment, Bratya Basu wrote in his Jago Bangla article, “… I want that every five year there should be a political change in my State. As a citizen I have a right to demand this change. I really do not think that this change will bring good for everyone or exploitation and oppression will be abolished. All this will continue but in a lesser amount, the common people might live a slight better life.”

But what if the exploited and oppressed, poor and ordinary masses still vote against the TMC? What if the ‘historic manifesto’ turns into a ‘historic blunder’? In spite of the scrupulously crafted anti-Left Front agitation-propaganda for two long years, in a ‘fertile’ terrain where ‘all the Front constituents have lost touch with the common people’, a large section of people has still kept their confidence on the ‘tottering’ Left Front parties in 13 out of 18 district Panchayats. Instead of entirely wiping out the ‘unnerved’ Left Front in the recent Civic polls, they have elected them back with a thumping victory in crucial centers like tribal-dominated Jhargram of West Midnapore and Kolkata’s twin city Howrah.

Elated about their predicted success in the coming Lok Sabha and the subsequent State Assembly polls, Mamata Banerjee and friends are presently not willing to give any credit to cynical thoughts. But in reality, reaching their ultimate goal is a Herculean task. After all, the poor people of Bengal, especially the minorities and the oppressed sections of the society are not entirely trustworthy!

Mamata Banerjee image courtesy: sify.com
Protest rally image courtesy: internationalpost.blogspot.com
Suvaprasanna image courtesy: indiatimes.com
Bratya Basu image courtesy: hindu.com