People's Democracy

AP Congress Lie-Campaign Against Bengal Exposed

Mridul De

ALMOST 60 years have passed since the country gained its independence. In this period, the Left Front government has been in office in Bengal for 30 years. If we disregard the few months of governance of the two United Fronts, the Congress has been ruling the roost at Writers’ Buildings for close to three decades. There was also a series of Congress regimes at the centre during this period.

The Congress or the Trinamul Congress can hardly have the right to cry about deprivation or resistance from the central government during the Congress rule in Bengal. The authoritarian and unopposed Congress regimes in Bengal were violent, tainted, and hated. The people of Bengal made them turn into a decaying power. The support for the Left Front has gained rapidly over the past 30 years.

While in the opposition, the Congress misused the central authority to bring down the two United Front governments, brought about a barbaric reign of terror during 1971 – 1977, turned the 1972 elections into a vast exercise of rigging and malpractice marked by unprecedented terror. In the opposition during the Left Front governance, the Congress and Trinamul Congress have tried their worst to huddle together with the central government to fabricate conspiracies and create anarchy and disorder, over the past 30 years.

DEMONIC REACTION

The Congressites appear to be a tad bashful on at least one issue. They are the implacable enemies of the Left Front but for fear of mass condemnation, they cannot ever say in public that the 30 years of Congress regime was in any manner better than the 30 years of pro-people governance of the Left Front. In other states, where the Congress or the BJP are in office, they shamelessly focus attention of the people there to untruths and lies about the Bengal Left Front government. Recently, the state government of Andhra Pradesh has shamelessly started to ‘prove’ that the Congress regime in Bengal was better than the Left Front governance. Focus is especially made of the demonic reaction of the Bengal opposition on the issue of Nandigram taking full advantage of the democratic ambience prevailing in Bengal.

According to reports published in some English newspapers, Kiran Kumar Reddy, the chief whip of the Congress at the AP assembly came to Bengal with a large entourage at a great cost for three days. On going back to AP, they have started a campaign on the ‘glory’ of the Congress rule and the ‘inglorious’ Left Front governance. The AP Congress is busy campaigning on issues that the Bengal Congress has not dared touch like land reforms in Bengal was the work of the Congress as were the tasks of supply of drinking water, power, sewerage and drainage, housing, and even agriculture! The basis of this great punditry is palpably weak and indeed unreliable. They had taken an interview of a single youth of a village in south 24 Parganas to justify their lies. They have asked about agricultural production from the owner of a posh garments shop in Lindsay Street in downtown Kolkata! They have spoken to a SUCI leader. They have also publicised the words of Mahasweta Devi who is close to the Naxalites-Trinamul Congress, and quoted her that the ‘rural infrastructure in Bengal has broken down, there are no systems of potable drinking water, roads, electricity, and primary healthcare system.’ These are the four chief features of Bengal according to them.

LAND REFORMS RECORD OF CONGRESS RAJ

The beginning of the land reform programme was witnessed through the efforts of the then two UF governments to vest illegal land parcels in the state government, and redistribute among the landless and the rural poor. A glorious movement of the peasants in tandem with the United Front (UF) government that sided bravely with the kisan struggles made possible for the first time the implementation of land reforms of the redistributive kind. The Congress had echoed the cry from the bleeding hearts of the jotdars that everything was being ruined. During the period 1971 – 1977, the Congress used the help of the police to wrest back very many land parcels from the poor. Answering a question on the floor of the assembly on February 26, 1976, the then land reforms minister confessed that until 1975, 5,77,360 acres of land has been distributed amongst the landless. The figure took into account the land redistributed during the two UF governments as well. The amount of land redistributed until January 15, 2007 is 11.11 lakh acres.

Beneficiary families number 29.14 lakh at present. Rights of the bargadars have been properly recognised during the LF government. Operation Barga has benefited 15.08 lakh families. 5.35 lakh of joint pattas and 1.57 lakh of pattas for women have increased women’s empowerment. There are no such examples of this kind in either AP or in any other state. 30 thousand acres of land is being distributed this year. The Congress research would not be able to take note of such important a development.

PF scheme is in place from last year for the landless khet mazdoor with the state LF government paying 50 per cent of the funds The number of khet mazdoors benefited by this scheme stands at 9.42 lakh, and the figure will increase to 10.50 lakh this year.

A few government statistics will expose the kind of ‘glorious successes’ that the Congress regime in Bengal had managed to ‘achieve.’ In 1977, land under irrigation was 32 per cent of the total land. The figure now stands at 70 per cent. In 1977, the use of higher breed of improved seeds especially rice was confined to 28 per cent of the land and the figure is now 96 per cent and 83 per cent if we consider all sorts of crops. In the rate of increase of agricultural production, Bengal stands at the top of the list nationwide as per reports of the Planning Commission.

DISMAL ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

A glance at the governor’s speech of 1976 on the floor of the Bengal Assembly would have saved the AP Congress leadership the expenses of travelling to a remote village in Bengal or strolling along shopping malls. The target production of rice in 1976 was 52 lakh tonnes. In 2006 it is 1.44 crore tonnes. In 1976 it was said that target figure for food crop production was 74 lakh tonnes. In 2007, the figure is 1.71 crore tonnes.

81 per cent of the rural settlements in Bengal have supply of potable drinking water — the figure shall reach 100 per cent over the next five years. 70 per cent of the people of Bengal take advantage of the state health system. The rate of mortality in Bengal (6.4) is less than the all-India figure. In case of child mortality, the figure for Bengal per thousand is 38, the all-India figure is 58, and the figure is much higher in AP.

The Assembly proceedings of the last year of the Congress rule in 1976 contain such precious facts for the AP Congress leaders like rationing of electricity from 1974, lack of law-and-order, mass copying in examination, drinking water shortage, food shortage, blocks that are bereft of roads, deterioration of the health system, mass lay off, closures etc.

The 1976-77 Economic Survey states that Bengal lags behind all other states in the production of electricity, industry, and agriculture. The Congress budget even speaks about the deprivation meted out to the Bengal government by the union government. This was also subsequently taken to the level of a struggle and a movement by the successive Left Front governments and it has climbed to the top of the country’s economy despite impediments of the union government. The then state Congress government’s budget speaks of industrial barrenness, huge inflationary pressure, economic depression, spiralling unemployment, lack of infrastructure etc.

LF GOVT LOOKS AHEAD

Looking to the future, the Left Front government has been thinking in terms of attaching importance to taking large masses of people from agriculture to the service-sector industries for improving their standards of living. 30 years back, the Congress budget spoke of the same thing. They lamented that this was however not a possibility without a large-scale success in agricultural development. When after 30 years of agricultural success the Left Front is engaged in the task of taking kisans out of their limited circle of development onto the arena of non-agricultural sector, Congressites of various hues have stood against the process. They speak of strengthening and modernising the agrarian sector but they would not do a single bit for land reforms. Land reforms are essential for the development of agricultural production and improvement of the conditions of the kisans.

Even the present UPA government at the centre led by the Congress behaves just as the BJP-led government at the centre did. It ruthlessly deprives rural India of public investment in agriculture; it dismantles the pubic distribution system; it perpetuates the rural crisis all over the country. Is the AP ‘fact finding’ committee proud of these ‘achievements?’

The national sample survey speaks of the purchasing capacity of rural Bengal to the extent of Rs 20,062 crore per annum to buy industrial goods. The last one-and-a-half decade has seen industrial investment to the extent of Rs 32,000 crore with concomitant improvement of infrastructure and services. The 1976 Congress budget does mention that even a modicum of infrastructure in the backward areas did not exist. After mentioning the refugee problem, and the settlement in Bengal of the poorer sections of the people from neighbouring state, the budget states that the assistance per capita of the central government is the lowest for Bengal in the fourth five year plan. If the same party was in charge both at the centre and in Bengal, then why there was this deprivation? What would the Congress leaders of AP say?

WEAKENING CONGRESS

By utilising misinformation, slandering, and outright lying, the Congress in AP as in the rest of the country has become weaker and weaker still. The Congress-led union government persists with its ruinous economic policy. The Congress and Trinamul Congress units of Bengal may feel gratified at this. Nevertheless, the fact is this: this has made Congress to plumb to the very bottom of the popularity scale while becoming more and more isolated from the masses of the people. The AP Congress has spread the canard that over the past 30 years in Bengal more than 30,000 people were killed and of them 12,000 were Congressmen. Can they cite a single name? Is the unleashing of semi-fascist terror in Bengal by the Congress in the 1970s something that makes the AP Congress inordinately proud?

The AP Congress alleges that 1000 to 3000 tea plantation workers have died of starvation while in fact there has been not a single death by starvation. The Bengal Congress is discrete. They know that among others, the problems that have piled up at the closed Vernobari tea estate at Kalchini in the Jalpaiguri district. The estate has a Congress-run union; the local gram panchayat is controlled by the Congress as well and they have efficiently squandered funds provided by the state government with not a bit of guilt feeling for the poor tea plantation workers. We would like to remind them also that as per the Plantation Act, it is the responsibility of the union government to intervene and open the closed tea estates. The closed tea estates include Vernobari, Raimatang, Kalchini, and Chinchura. According to the AP Congress, all newspapers in Bengal are under the thumb of the Left Front government! It will be easier for the people to gauge the height of insane hatred when they go through these examples of lie campaign that the AP Congress has chosen to launch against the Bengal Left Front government, indeed against the mass of the people Bengal themselves.