CHAVEZ VISITS CHANDPUR GRAM PANCHAYAT

ON his second day in Kolkata, the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez visited the Chandpur Gram Panchayat near Rajarhat in north 24 Parganas, to see, in his words, “participatory democracy in action.”  He was scheduled to stay in the village for 20 minutes: the 20 minutes easily stretched into a couple of hours.

The villagers at first were a little bemused and taken aback at the long convoy of cars entering the hamlet in a whirlwind of noise and dust.  President Chávez took not a moment to put the village folk, especially the children, at their ease by waving aside the cordon of security men and going straight ahead to mingle with the people.  The villagers, coming out of the daze, shouted, ‘Viva Chávez,’ and ‘Viva socialism!’  Children went curiously up to the red-shirted figure, and touched him.

Chávez started off by moving about the village.  Striding right ahead of his retinue, he went straight into the green paddy fields, pressed the stalks of the plants on his cheeks, smiled to himself, and then stood beside the banana plantation and exclaimed how “exactly similar” the ambience of the village was to the hamlet in which he had grown up far away from the bustle of Caracas. He gave a great photo-op to the international press that had followed him from Caracas and Delhi, when he first hugged and then hoisted aloft a huge ripe pumpkin.

Chávez then visited the Bagu lower primary school and surprised everyone by taking up bucketfuls of boiled rice and lentil, and proceeding to ladle the food on to the shiny metal plates of the children of the school who thus received their mid-day meal that day from the hands of the Venezuelan president. 

And no, he did not make any symbolic gesture here.  He distributed food to all 150 children, squatting down before each child, pinching cheeks, tousling hair, and speaking to them in a soft singsong voice.  The language barrier melted away and the children were simply delighted, and so were the villagers who watched everything wide-eyed.

Chávez, addressing the villagers as hermanos y hermanas (‘brothers and sisters’), said that “our children of the world represented the future of our beautiful green planet.” A nuevo mundo or a new world must be constructed while struggling against poverty, misery, and inequality, for, “our children deserve a new world.”  He iterated that the 21st century belonged to the mass of the people of the world.

Chávez later enjoyed a brief cultural interlude as the children of the village presented a song-and-dance programme before the dignitaries.  At the end of the programme, Chavez clapped lustily and lifted up some of the younger children, twirled them round, and kissed them, to their squealing delight.

Chávez then visited the local community hall, and although in a sweat in the damp heat of the Bengal summer, attentively listened to the dynamics of working of the women’s self help groups. He then walked along the village roads, dusty but full of  vim and vigour, and looked closely into the details of the patta documentation.

The Venezuelan leader also visited flower bowers, nurseries, looked into irrigation facilities, asked a myriad questions about the functioning of the rural panchayat system, quite exhausting his official interpreter, and ended by saying that he would communicate to the world about the new path of pro-people village development as depicted in the Bengal panchayat system.  His parting words to the crowd milling round him were: ‘be good, my children, I leave my heart with you.’

 JOINT ENDEAVOUR WITH VENEZUELA

On the morning of March 6, Chávez met and discussed various issues regarding industrial development, education, land reforms, and decentralisation of power with the Bengal CPI(M) leadership. He also met the leadership for political discussions.

Polit Bureau member of the CPI(M), Prakash Karat remained present during the discussions where Chávez was an animated talker as well as an attentive listener.   Present were Polit Bureau members of the CPI(M), Biman Basu, Anil Biswas, and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.  Joint endeavours with Venezuela were discussed, and the union government would be moved soon for accordance.

Later, Buddhadeb told newspersons that the Venezuelan president had agreed to building up joint ventures with the Bengal Left Front government on such sectors as leather goods, agricultural produce, marine food processing, and petroleum.  The state LF government is already on the job and producing an extensive note that would be sent to the union government for approval.

Chávez later left Kolkata en route for Bangalore, leaving behind a rush of unforgettable memories.