People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No.
15
April 11, 2010
|
Vol. XXXIV
No.
15 April 11, 2010 |
WORD is a powerful weapon.
Misused, it is self
deprecating and contrarian. Malused, it
is self-destructive. When home minister Chidambaram, smiling, informed
the
media with the words, �I have told [the] chief minister that the buck
stops
with you,� he was transgressing limits of decency, factually
misleading, and
adding insult to injury, for, it is known to everybody concerned, with
a
modicum of knowledge of the Indian Constitution, that law-and-order is
a state subject and that the state
government is headed by the chief
minister.
Rubbing and nonsensically,
something in, in public, was never in good taste. Addressing the media in the afternoon of
April 5, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee stated in his usual
low-pitched
mild tone, �mind your language, please.�
Buddhadeb went on to answer a barrage of
questions from the media and narrated the facts of the situation
concerning
what the home minister said, what he did, and what he left with as an
impression, as communicated to the media itself.
Buddhadeb started by reminding
the home minister that
he should mind his own business and look to the law-and-order situation
in the
country as a whole and consult with chief ministers as he considered
necessary,
rather than luxuriating in �stopping the buck� kind of mind set,
perhaps.
Buddhadeb said that he had prevailed upon the home minister to make the
opposition in
Buddhadeb noted that during the
one-on-one meeting
with Chidambaram, he has placed his observations and the union minister
had
placed his point(s) of view and, as
the minister later was to say to the media at Lalgarh, �there was
considerable
difference of opinion cropping up with the chief minister in this.�
This was not unexpected, we
hold, for the two
functionaries represented two opposing streams of political synergy. Nonetheless, that should
never have warranted the home minister indulging in a
show of �strength� and telling the media how he had told off the chief
minister
where the �buck stops,� or not. What
about what have been taking place in
e.g., Andhra Pradesh, in Chhattisgarh, and in Jharkhand where hundreds
of
heavily armed police personnel and paramilitaries are done to death
even as we
file this report? Where does the �buck
stops,� then, home minister?
Elsewhere, and earlier in the
day, central committee
member of the CPI(M) Md Salim told the media at the Muzaffar Ahmad
Bhavan that
Chidambaram should know that a cabinet colleague of his had been the
consistent
supporter of the �Maoists,� and that she and her outfit had been
raising
violent slogans and that the goons in the pay and protection of her
outfit had
been on the rampage against the CPI(M) leaders and workers as well as
Party
supporters. Salim recalled that prior to
Chidambaram�s visit to Lalgarh, the 'Maoists' and the Trinamulis had
jointly
organised a procession. Are there any
words on that from the home minister?
VISIT TO
LALGARH
The home minister then
helicoptered off next day, a
long convoy of police and para-military escorts preceding and following
him on
ground, to Lalgarh in Midnapore west.
The journey was uneventful. A
special helipad had to be built at Lalgarh for the bump-free landing of
the
home minister, at some considerable cost to the cash-strapped state
government;
well, one takes such VVIP visits in unfazed stride�and merely tightens
one�s
belt.
What did the home minister do
there, once he arrived
at Lalgarh? Well, he got out of the
helicopter, he cuddled a few babies in the best style of US
presidential
candidates on the campaign trail, had one or two good words of
greetings to say
to the villagers, even as temperatures soared, and as the dust arose
and the
swirl of wind added to the great discomfiture of the people who had
gathered
around more out of curiosity than anything else, had a smile on his
face even
when he listened to the villagers talking grimly on the torture
tactics, arson,
mayhem, kangaroos courts, and killing by sharp weapons of CPI(M)
leaders as
well as workers, and then he told the rural masses �not to romanticise
the �Maoists.�� Has that been a fact, home minister?
Chidambaram, we have little
doubt, had a political
agenda to go through and in order to do that he had to go through also
motions
of concordance, sympathy, and display a penchant for orderliness in the
law
enforcement agencies, perhaps letting it slip that most of the joint
forces
operating in eastern India including Bengal belong to the central
divisions of
the paras. By coming to
We were interested to note that
despite having called
for a �boycott� of the visitation, by the �Maoists,� the latter made no
efforts
to cause any discomfort or mental agony to the home minister. Unlike Buddhadeb�s visit to Salboni last
year, no mines were blown, no IED�s were exploded, no protest marches
ordered. Is the message clear
politically or what? However the
people came out and they would not be deterred by the �Maoist� call
for
boycott. They came out not to support
the Congress leader but to berate him publicly
about the �Maoists.� Let the wounded
�Kishanji,� nursing his wounds, physical and psychological, in cowardly
hiding,
ponder over this -- if he dares do so.
In the meanwhile, the killing
spree goes on, and the
latest victim of the �Maoists� has been SFI leader comrade Partha
Biswas at
Belpahari who was killed on the same day
home minister had gone to Lalgarh.
