The Struggle For Pro-People Development

Is Part Of The Class Struggle

B Prasant

THE struggle for achieving pro-people developmental goals is part of the class struggle. There is no wall separating the two processes.  Secretary of the Bengal unit of the CPI(M), Anil Biswas, commented thus while speaking to the media on September 16 at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan in Kolkata.

Anil Biswas pointed out that the CPI(M) was engaged in organising struggles and movements to consolidate the successes of the redistributive land reforms and the growth of agricultural production, and it was going in for achieving developmental goals that lay ahead.  (Industries minister of the Bengal Left Front government Nirupam Sen has recently pointed out that the struggle for industrial development can never be a success without the people’s participation.)

Citing the 21st state conference of the Bengal CPI(M), Anil Biswas argued that class struggle could take and assume different forms during different episodes of time. The Communist Party looks after and safeguards the interests of the working class since they represent the working class. 

“The Bengal Left Front government,” said Biswas, “has not captured power through revolution: it has assumed office through massive successive electoral mandates: and in 28 years, it has organised developmental initiatives with very conscious class direction while being aware all the time that in the present set up it is not possible for the state government to resolve basic and fundamental issues.”

Yet, the Bengal Left Front government, pointed out the CPI(M) leader, “could strike hard and in an effective manner against the bastion of the semi-feudal system prevailing in the rural areas, and chalk up an exemplary progress in the realm of redistributive land reforms.”  It was under no illusion that a complete land reforms programme was not a possibility in the present set up.

Remarkable changes have been wrought in the countryside of Bengal, said Biswas. A large percentage of the rural populace lived a life that is easier and more comfortable than it ever had been. In the cities and townships, the rights of workers, middle class people including employees have had a widening base. The sons and daughters of the kisan families are in the midst of utilising opportunities afforded to them by the Left Front government to go in for higher education and for jobs that are different from the traditional life of an agriculturist.

The need is thus to create more jobs and to spread education. The traditional industries of Bengal like jute and engineering are restricted in terms of creation of large number of perennial jobs. Keeping with the state-of-the-art in scientific knowledge, the Bengal state LF government has consciously and as a policy decision stressed on the growth of knowledge-based industries, bio-technology, chemical industries etc.

To generate employment, one needs to set up industries. In the traumatic nature of the economy due to the travails of globalisation, said Anil Biswas, a state government is not able to muster enough capital to set up modern industries.  Thus, the Bengal Left Front government has chosen to go in for national and international private investments. 

This is not just a question of governmental policy.  It has to do with carrying out developmental programmes keeping the class outlook firmly in place. “It is the communists,” concluded Anil Biswas, “who can stand by the side of the poor and the working people in the quest for survival and growth, as the forces of globalisation unleash their onslaught on the national economy.”

Later, reacting to Mamata Banerjee’s recent tantramous claim that the Left Front government had moved away from land reforms, Anil Biswas said that the process of redistributive land reforms was going on, and that contrary to what the Trinamul Congress chieftain would have her supporters believe, every year on an average six thousand hectares land was being redistributed among the rural poor and the landless in Bengal.

Assailing Mamata and her lackeys for the disinformation they were engaged in to try to defame the Left Front government on the score of land reforms and industrialisation, Anil Biswas counter-argued that it was only after the Left Front government had assumed office in Bengal that the process of land reforms got underway.  The programme has since won national and international acclaim. 

Disputing Mamata Banerjee’s claim about the percentage of irrigated land in Bengal, Anil Biswas said that during the last years of the Congress raj in Bengal in 1977, the percentage of irrigated land was 37 per cent.  Under Left Front, it rose to stand at more than 68 per cent in 2004-2005.  Land under improved seeds was 28 per cent then, 93 per cent now, and the figure will soon reach 100 per cent.

Bengal tops the list in land reforms in the country.  Citing this, Anil Biswas pointed out that until February 15, 2005, the total amount of ceiling-surplus land redistributed stood at 10.95-lakh acre.  This has benefited no fewer than 28.04 lakh families.  Of the beneficiaries, 56 per cent belong to scheduled tribes and scheduled castes.  There are 11.5 lakh of recorded sharecroppers (bargadars) with rights in Bengal.  With 6 per cent of the total amount of agricultural land of the country, Bengal can lay claim to 20 per cent of the land redistributed nationwide via land reforms.