People's Democracy

B Prasant

ADDRESSING a press conference at Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan on January 25 evening, CPI(M) leader and former Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu described the upcoming assembly polls as a part of the "larger political struggle" that lies ahead. Basu urged upon the state unit of the CPI(M) and of the Left Front to shun every kind of complacency and devote all efforts to ensure another big win for the Left Front.

The Left Front, said Basu, must win the polls for "we cannot let down the mass of the people of the state and the country who look upon the Left Front as a beacon of hope amidst the barren and vapid political scenario that faces them at the national level."

The upcoming polls would be a tough proposition, reminded Basu, describing how reactionary forces of every kind "have been out to destabilise the political situation of Bengal by every means available to them, nationally and internationally."

While stressing that no political-ideological divergence affected the Bengal unit of the CPI(M) at its Thiruvananthapuram special conference, Basu pointed out that the supreme importance of fighting out the electoral challenge ahead cannot be gainsaid.

Earlier, addressing a big rally in the southern suburb of Kolkata near the eastern metropolitan bypass, Basu said that if a desperate Trinamul Congress connives with its senior NDA partner, the BJP, to clamp down article 356 on Bengal, the people will rise to prevent any attempt at sabotaging the process of democracy that had taken firm roots in this state over the past two decades.

Jyoti Basu described the Left Front as a political weapon that "has been forged with a great deal of sacrifice and through wide-ranging pro-people struggles." Describing the trust of the masses in the Left Front as the principal political device that strengthened the front over years, Basu said the innately pro-people, especially pro-poor, initiatives must be firmly pursued as "we struggle towards the bigger task of building a society where exploitation of man by man is conspicuous by its absence."

People must realise, Basu continued, that the BJP regime at the centre would not hesitate to enlarge the area of its incompetence for the sake of pleasing the big bourgeoisie and landlords even if that incompetence means burgeoning misery for the people who are already groaning in poverty.

The economic sovereignty of the nation is being auctioned to foreign corporate capital in the midst of the bustle called "liberalisation of the economy." State sector is being continuously downsized, and quarries and mines closed down with impunity. The Indian kisan is witness to a sharp fall in the prices of his produce while agricultural products are being imported in ever larger quantities. The enterprising railway minister concentrates on pulling the shutters down on the wagon-making factories of her home state. In the general economic chaos that overwhelms the national economy, commented Basu, the promise of creating one crore jobs a year has been suitably glossed over, in a betrayal of the people’s expectations.

Nothing much can be changed in the country unless "we get to defeat the BJP-run union government, and for this to be a viable political proposition, the task of carrying out political initiatives in and outside of the parliament and assemblies assumes a great deal of urgency." The emergence of a third alternative, Basu noted, assumes a big political importance in this context.

In the short run, the task before the Left Front "is to ensure that even if such an amorphous alliance as that of the Pradesh Congress with the BJP-Trinamul combine gets off the ground, the opposition receives a fitting reply in the polls, and a win of the Left Front with a greater margin of victory than in the last assembly elections is ensured."

Concluding, Basu issued a note of warning that if any setback occurs either in Kerala or in Bengal, not only would the prospect of a third alternative receive a setback, the larger popular cause itself would get belied.

Inaugurating the SFI’s Burdwan district conference at Durgapur steel township same day, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya sharply criticised the BJP-run NDA government for coming up with a paltry flood relief of Rs 103.25 crore. The Left Front government had demanded a relief package of Rs 1487 crore from the National Calamity Fund while it had itself budgeted an amount of Rs 600 crore despite the stringent financial limitations in which it was working.

(Speaking to the media at the Writers Buildings, state finance minister Asim Dasgupta said that with the central flood relief assistance falling way below the amount asked for by the Left Front government, the rehabilitation and reconstruction work would get hampered. However, he assured that the antithetical attitude of the union government towards Bengal would in no manner detract the state administration from its intention to make budgetary allocations with whatever funds it could mobilise for the ongoing post-flood relief work.)

Criticising the continuous attempts being made by the Trinamul-BJP alliance in the state to create anarchy and violence, Bhattacharya pointed out that the opposition groups had adopted the ploy here to orchestrate a blow to the ongoing industrial development in Bengal.

Of late considerable investment has been made in modern industrial schemes in Bengal and the political stability in the state under the Left Front government was one of the principal points of attraction to every potential investor.

This is something that has kept the opposition groups in fear that with a not-considerable aggregation of agricultural achievements to its credit, the fast-emerging industrial scene in the state will make it doubly difficult for them to eject the Left Front government from office. Hence the carefully planned orgy of violence in a state where the Left has a massive popular base and where the lack of prospect of an opposition victory has driven the reactionary elements to adopt terror and intimidation tactics.

"We stand for all kinds of debates over political and ideological issues while the right reactionary forces would recklessly resort to a spate of violence, having very little positive thought to offer to the people," said Bhattacharya. Resort to violence was the Trinamul-BJP’s measure of desperation at the prospect of losing out to the Left Front in Bengal, concluded the chief minister. Yet, he called for continued vigil on part of the CPI(M), the Left-led mass organisations and the Left Front in the run-up to the elections, and widening of mass contact everywhere in the state, not allowing the reactionary forces to mislead the people.

WITHIN 24 hours of the killing of Comrade Suranjan Mondol, former panchayat pradhan and CPI(M) leader, Comrade Samser Hussein was done to death by assassins in the pay of the Trinamul-BJP alliance at Palitbagia under Kaligunge police station in Nadia district.

While on his way to the block development officer to take up issues relating to land development in the locality, Comrade Samser was set upon by a gang of armed men in a lonely stretch of land near Lohata crossing. He was pulled down from the bicycle he was travelling on, hit on the head and neck with blunt weapons, and dragged behind a clump of bushes. While Comrade Samser was struggling to free himself from the grip of the thugs, he was struck repeatedly with scimitars till he died from massive neck and chest wounds. The whole episode was over in a very short period of time and the assassins made good their escape.

There was a terrible outburst of anger among the people of the area when Comrade Samser’s lifeless body was discovered by some pedestrians. The zonal leaders of the CPI(M) rushed to the spot and managed to keep the mounting popular fury in check.

Soon after Comrade Samser’s burial, a large procession was taken out by CPI(M) units in the locality. A meeting was held on January 26 morning to mourn his murder and to renew the pledge to carry forward the pro-people initiative he had been engaged in.

INN recalls that around the same time last year, a CPI(M) functionary Comrade Parimal Biswas was murdered by the goon squad of the Trinamul-BJP combine. In the meantime, the police have arrested the main suspect behind the murder of Comrade Suranjan Mondol. The assassin’s association with the BJP is well known. The police are on the lookout for taking into custody the killer’s henchmen.

In Midnapore, the hoods of the People’s War Group are reported to be still holed up in the cluster of small villages near the confluence of the Silabati and Ketia rivers at Garbeta and Midnapore. They are heavily armed with automatic weapons and trying to survive in the area following their murderous attack on Comrade Ramjan Mullick, a CPI(M) worker.

IN a letter written to Somnath Chatterjee, CPI(M) MP, the secretary to the National human Rights Commission (NHRC) has regretted the comments made by its two representatives visiting Bengal. These NHRC representatives had stated that there was "proof of killings" taking place at Chhoto Anguria in Garbeta.

After Chatterjee lodged protest with the NHRC over this premeditated commentary, the commission wrote to apologise for the comment and said its representatives had not done the right thing by speaking to the media on the issue.

Asked to comment on the development, state CPI(M) secretary said the NHRC representatives could have been more fruitfully sent out to the states like Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan where Human Rights Commissions were yet to be set up, than to Bengal which has been the first state to set up such a commission and where that commission functions in an autonomous manner as laid down in the Protection of Human Rights Act