People's Democracy

Comrade Santi Ghatak

(1922-2002)

 A MEMBER OF THE CPI(M)’s West Bengal state committee, state CITU president, and former labour minister of the Left Front government, Comrade Santi Ghatak passed away at the SSKM hospital in Kolkata, on November 1. He has been ailing for some time with age-related complications.

 Paying fulsome tributes to the memory of the departed leader, Jyoti Basu said Comrade Ghatak was a pillar of strength as labour minister and a CITU leader. State CPI(M) secretary Anil Biswas and Left Front chairman Biman Basu recalled the notable role played by Comrade Santi Ghatak as a leader of the democratic movement. Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya described him as a front-ranking activist of the trade union movement and a relentless champion of the workers’ cause.

 Born at Faridpur in the then undivided Bengal, Comrade Ghatak was brought up at Ariadaha in North 24 Parganas district. After he was drawn to the students movement in his early youth, he became a wholetimer of the trade union movement in the early 1940s and won the Communist Party’s membership in 1943.

  in a wide industrial belt in South Bengal, Comrade Santi Ghatak was involved in organising workers at various production units situated in Alambazar, Kamarhati, Belghoria Bally, Khidirpur, and Mominpur. For a brief period, he was a teacher at a school in Ariadaha.

  Ghatak’s involvement in parliamentary work commenced with his role as the chief election agent of Jyoti Basu when the latter ran (and won) from the Baranagar constituency in 1952. Himself elected to the Vidhan Sabha from Dumdum seat in 1982, Comrade Ghatak served in the Left Front government initially as minister of state in the finance department, and later as the labour minister. 

 Equipped with a forceful personality and a rich baritone voice, Comrade Ghatak gathered accolades as an excellent speaker, in and out of Vidhan Sabha. His fluent and faithful simultaneous translation of the speeches by the CPI(M)’s central leaders at the party’s state conferences was always impressive. Comrade Ghatak, who avoided the footlights of publicity, led a simple life and remained in close touch with the masses.