People's Democracy

An Eminent And Expected Triumph In Bengal

B Prasant

THE all-India general strike called by the Sponsoring Committee of Trade Unions was an eminent and expected triumph in Bengal.  The workers-employees and the Left kisan, students’, youth, and women’s organisations came out in their lakhs to make the strike action a complete success.

The Left TU’s as well as the Bengal unit of the NPMO have congratulated the people of Bengal for making the strike a big victory of the working people. The strike day remained peaceful barring two isolated incidents, in neither of which anyone was injured.

From early in the morning, the workers took out processions, as did the democratic organisations of the mass of the people.  The overwhelmingly high level of electricity throughout the state was a sure indication that factories as well as shops and establishments had closed gates and downed shutters across Bengal.

An encouraging sign over the past decades in Bengal has been the manner more and more people have come out supporting a strike action called by the TUs’, and by NPMO against polices that went against the grain of the interests of the masses. September 29, 2005 was no exception.

As usual, from the tea gardens up in the cool of the north Bengal down to the sweltering heat of the fishing bheris and agricultural fields in the south, work came to a standstill as the mass of the people registered their protests against the anti-people and especially anti-poor policy decisions of the union government.

State president of the CITU, Shyamal Chakraborty said that a sizeable percentage of the workers-employees came out to make the strike action a great success.  Chakraborty was critical of the union government’s decision to deploy the armed forces in the airports.

The armed forces, said Chakraborty, were better utilised to ensure that the defence of the nation was not breached; they really should never be allowed to be pitted against peaceful strike action by the workers and employees, a strike that received support of a wide nature from the mass of the people.

In Bengal, there were four additional demands to the 16-point charter of demands of the Sponsoring Committee at the national level.  Right from the beginning of the first week of August, the TU’s and the Left mass organisations were engaged in conducting an intense campaign-movement throughout Bengal to appraise the people about the necessity of the strike action.

On seeing that the strike would be a successful working class action, a section of the corporate media was found to have become hyperactive in denouncing the strike as ‘fruitless’ and ‘of loss to the daily wage earner,’ veritably an old and out-of-tune refrain.

Describing the calculated outburst of the corporate media against the strike as ‘crocodile tears for the working class,’ Shyamal Chakraborty pointed out that the policy of liberalisation pursued by the union government would continue to add to the great misery that the working class and the mass of the people were made to suffer from unless protests were registered; the strike was such a protest action. 

The CITU leader condemned the two isolated incidents that took place in Bengal over the strike call.  He denied that the opportunistic handiwork of a few lumpens should never be sought to be transferred on to the shoulders of the working class by any quarters of the vested interests.