Thirty vs 235 !
Carefully handled, the happenings at Singur, Nandigram and Bhangar can force the CPI-M to loosen its stranglehold on West Bengal. This is not to say the party is going to lose at the next panchayat election or that it may not acquire the land it targets. On the contrary, it means if the opposition parties fail to take advantage of the discontent welling up they can lose whatever credibility they still have. The CPI-M is not a mere political party: it’s a political industry. The conglomerate has a hardcore membership of 266,000. Each one of its front organisations is a self-sufficient unit, with its own rigorously controlled hierarchical set-up, responsible to the parent body. Some of the figures given in Dr Amiya Choudhury’s Coalition Politics in West Bengal are: Kishan Sabha (members 1 crore 33 lakh), Ganatantrik Mahila Samity (43 lakh), youth wing DYFI (71 lakh) and student wing SFI (13.5 lakh). The enrolments, together with those of the front organisations, work out at more or less 2 crore out of the state’s total population of 80221171. Compare this with the hardcore membership of 25,000 in 1977.
No choice
The Left Front government is backed by the union government on top of it, the Congress having become its stooge. So the opposition parties have no choice but to make a dent in the CPI-M’s own fort. This seems possible now more than ever before. At no time in the past 30 years have so many opposition parties been forced to carry on together an anti-CPM campaign for long seven months. Arraigned against the CPI-M now are not only the opposition parties but also the major partners of the LF and a number of non-partisan groups who will never seek election nor join a political party. They can be a formidable force, only if they pull together, though. The national and the international media, for which West Bengal had hardly counted so far, have begun to take notice.
Compact discs depicting police atrocities have circulated world-wide. The world knows now that the CPI-M pins its future on capital intensive jobless development, the LF government, nominally leftist, stands by the Tatas, which have spent $12.1 billion on the acquisition of Corus. Naturally, to them the assured cash from the “upfront infrastructural assistance” package is a nice cake. The package, according to The Statesman report (20 January, 2007), includes a “virtual gift of 650 acres of prime land to the Tata Housing Development Company in Rajarhat, New Town and in the adjoining Bhangar-Rajarhat Area Development Authority”. The Tatas are going to build an IT and residential township on it. The cross subsidy, which remains one of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Nirupam Sen’s closely guarded “trade secrets”, will enable them to market its “first series of 100,000 cars” for Rs 1 lakh each.
In addition, Buddhadeb and Nirupam are compensating some Rs 124 crore for the 997 acres of land being acquired. Tax-payers have no choice but to shell out this money ~ for “we are 235,” says the chief minister, “and they’re (opposition) only 30.” Nevertheless, the farmers who are going to be landless are subsidising the Tatas most. The LF government has invoked an act (1894) inherited from the British which allows acquisition for public purposes as opposed to private gains. Tata Motors Limited is a private company. The government circumvents the law by making WBIDC, a “premier agency of the State’s commerce and industry department”, to stand in for it.
The experience of 30 years in power by dint of selective torture has led the party to try out its mass duplication now. Take the case of Anwar Ali, whose photograph the Afternoon edition of The Statesman front-paged on February 7 and reported how the well-off young man had been rendered feckless. At Nandigram recently, Lakshman Seth, best known as a gang lord, handed out a list of areas where land would be acquired. A party cadre jumped on to the dais and said: ‘You promised to acquire no land here. Why are you going back upon your word?’ ‘Didn’t I?’ Lakshman blurted out, says my informant. ‘Of course I didn’t, because I didn’t want to. Well, I want it now. I dare you to say No to my face?’ Shooting, allegedly by the CPI-M, began shortly thereafter. And for the first time in 30 years it seared into the cadres’ consciousness that an anti-people policy left nobody unharmed. The party that didn’t care for the people at Singur would not care for them either.
Sk Akbar of Jaalpai, Nandigram, is an example. Dainik Statesman reports that, facing camera, Akbar confessed that Dipak Sarkar, a top CPI-M leader of West Midnapur, drafted “handpicked cadres and sent them out to Keshpur in 10 vehicles on Rs 5000 per diem to fight out the Trinamulis”. They were plied with expensive food and drinks. The constables on duty let their vehicles, marked “Police”, pass. Akbar confessed to having earned a lot of money by rigging ballots in a municipal poll at Haldia. ”Now I’m expiating the sins,” said Akbar, ”by taking part in the movement to save my land.”
Since 1977 when it took power the CPI-M has captured civil society by taming writers, teachers, lawyers, bureaucrats, actors and actresses, painters, film-makers and what have you. But the mass uprising at Singur and Nandigram against the atrocities committed by the police and CPI-M cadres are beginning to draw the intellectuals out. Some noted personalities have either joined marchers or addressed public meetings ~ or done both. Amlan Datta, economist and social philosopher, called on Mamata Banerjee when she was on hunger strike. So did Mahasweta Debi, Santosh Bhattacharjee, and Debabrata Bandyopadhyay. All of them have since addressed street meetings.
The CPI-M cadres teamed up immediately with non-CPI-M and anti-CPI-M farmers to save their land, homestead, school, temple, mosque and so on ~ in a word their livelihood and culture. They tore down parts of the bridges and set up roadblocks to keep cadres and policemen out of harm’s length. Mahasweta Debi and Medha Patkar’s public hearing at Singur, buttressed by Mamata Banerjee’s 26-day-fast, sparked off a people’s movement. The SUCI, a better organised left party, albeit small, keeps clear of Mamata but has gathered together left-leaning intellectuals as also masses of farmers. Groups of students from New Delhi and elsewhere joined numerous local students, particularly of Presidency College and Jadavpur University, in marching against land acquisition.
A fact-finding team formed “a group of concerned citizens with a Left orientation”, covered large areas of Singur and Nandigram and talked with not just the affected people but also all the political parties involved.
Damning report
In a damning report they have said: “We found powerful movements, determined to press on. Large segments of erstwhile CPM members and supporters are deeply alienated, against the party and the government. Muslims are terribly offended about misinformed aspersions cast on them… We concluded that the apprehensions of peasants are fully justified as industries these days do not produce large numbers of jobs … Much peasant land has already been acquired for the new Rajarhat Town creating environmental damage and dispossession of the poor. But it is earmarked for entirely non-developmental purposes to satisfy the demands of the very rich for their luxurious lifestyle.”
Now, even as the CPI-M is becoming increasingly ruthless, a number of ‘non-partisan’ groups are coming up ~ which is a sign of the revival of civil effort. So far so good! But this also indicates the people’s distrust of not just the CPI-M but also of the opposition parties. Hence the people’s movement, which naturally welcomes help from all sides. Chances are, should their movement fail, they will blame particularly the opposition parties for not putting up a united front against the LF.
Sunanda Sanyal
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