People's Democracy

Massive Students-Youth Rally At Singur

B Prasant

ON August 9, the Left student-youth organisations held a march through Kolkata�s streets and lanes in their thousands to call for people�s resistance to all heinous attempts at creating anarchy in Singur and Nandigram as a ploy to foil the developmental policies of the popular Left Front government.

The next day August 10 saw more youth take part in a massive rally at Singur itself at the call of the Bengal unit of the DYFI with the clear message that industrialisation and growth should be pro-employment, and that nothing must come on the way of growth by any manner of anti-people impediment.

Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had declared long ago that �we are not interested in the colour, size, shape, or even the price of the small cars about to roll out of Singur. We are very much interested in the number of employment that the motor vehicles factory shall generate, directly, in the ancillary sector, and in the subsidiary realms of the mainstream production unit.� This was nearly a year back.

Since then the Trinamul Congress, after a lull before an onerous storm, waited for what they considered an �opportune moment,� and then launched a series of vicious attacks on the perimeter of the factory, destroying wire fencing, breaching solid brick walls with iron shovels and rods, physically harming the workers at the site, driving off the security guards at gunpoint, and then setting fire to parts of the perimeter structure, and declaring that not a single vehicle shall be allowed to roll out of the Singur factory. At the same time, the Trinamul chief organised secret parleys with the entrepreneur building the motor vehicles factory, but would not respond to Buddhadeb�s call for an �across-thee-table� discussion.

All this came out clearly and with force from the young voices who spoke at the rally, and the speakers included state DYFI leader and state committee member of the Bengal CPI(M) Avas Roychaudhury, DYFI leader Pratim Ghosh and the organisation�s district-level leadership.

�We want employment once we complete our education, and we want the Singur and other factories to come up,� said one of the thousands of banners adorning the rally, the exact manifestation reflective of the innate desires of the youth of Bengal. Would the Trinamulis be able to block up the flow that emanates from the hearts-and-minds of the youth of Bengal? Would the Trinamuli chieftain care to ponder the implications of her anti-development stance?