People's Democracy

Foil The Anti-People Conspiracies Through People’s Unity

Biman Basu addressing the huge rally in Ranibandh, Purulia district

BIMAN Basu, secretary of the Bengal unit of the CPI(M) called for a stronger unity of the people, especially of the poor, to thwart the clutch of conspiracies hatched against the democratically-elected Left Front government of Bengal. He was addressing a big rally at Ranibandh in Purulia recently. The conspiracies, Biman Basu pointed out, included the attacks on the rural poor at Nandigram and the attempts to disrupt the ration system. The call for a bandh by the SUCI on these issues would be ignored by the people of the state, Biman Basu declared.

Decrying the assaults being mounted against the rural poor at Nandigram, Biman Basu said that these attacks were organised long after the Bengal LF government had announced that no fresh industrial initiative would be taken at Nandigram against the wishes of the people and that a chemical hub would come up elsewhere, at Nayachar, a strip of grassy sandbar at the mouth of the river Ganges. The attacks clearly represented the frustration of the worthies of the Bengal opposition with the kind of development that Bengal was witness to in recent times in particular.

A key motive of the opposition is to break the unity of the poor people in Bengal. Both the Nandigram imbroglio and the attack on the ration system were the results of implementation of that agendum. To counter the move, the unity of the people across the state must be further augmented and a message sent to the opposition that the people stood united as always in defence of democracy and development in Bengal.

Ranibandh is familiar with the opposition’s violent counter-democratic ways. CPI(M) workers like Comrades Rampada Majhi, Raghunath Murmu, Bablu Murmu, and Gatilal Tudu were killed by the combined forces of the Trinamul Congress, the Jharkhandis, and the Maoists.

Critical of the Congress-run UPA government’s stand on the ration system, Biman Basu lambasted the union government for cutting down the state’s allocation of wheat from 2,29,000 MT to just 7700 MT of late.

There might well be instances of isolated ration shop owners being unscrupulous; but that cannot be held as the excuse to try to ruin the ration system of Bengal as the opposition parties were seeking to do. Such anti-people moves must be resisted by strengthening the unity of the people in rural and urban areas.

Biman Basu concluded by taking note of the role of the CPI(M) in the inclusion of the Santhali language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution and said that unlike what Jharkhandis claimed, creating a separate state for people of tribal origin would not bring any light of hope and sustenance for the tribals themselves as the Jharkhand state itself was witness to over the years now. (B P)