Nandigram showing us the way

Hindol Bhattacharjee


It is not a matter of confusion now that CPM is not at all a Communist party, it has become a mass party and has every kind of notions of fascism which is being expressed in different incidents now. During the 30 years of ruling over the people of West Bengal, all their operations have come to a pinnacle where since their venture to invite the Multinational companies here following the GATT and Dunkle consignment on the patent rules, 1991, CPM has become a mass party whose main destination is to demolish the economy and conditions of our fellow citizens, villagers and on those poor people who are below the poverty line. It is to be noted that after the early nineties, this globalize economy has manifested a globalize culture, the main intention of which is only to destroy the structure of society, culture and economy of the third world.

The degeneration of Communist party is manufactured through different ways in this country. First of all we can site the example of the system of our constitution and parliamentary politics that deal with only the vote bank. In this perspective, CPM, the so-called mass communist party has little interest to establish the concept of class struggle. They are using the semi-colonial and semi-capitalist structure, not trying to change it, because of their destination to sustain in the parliamentary politics. Secondly we have already noted that a communist party like a party of a higher democratic country tries to strengthen their structure of pan-optic to maintain the madhouse of keeping people mum about any kind of political and economic affair. It is to be noted that everything in a third world country is being overdetermined and nothing we can measure up by a linear deduction. So fascism can be practised here with no sign of fascism. It was, indeed practised by different parties, mainly by BJP and CPM in their areas. We have faced the degenerated issues like Ram mandir Babri masjid etc. Besides we have also experienced the massacre happened in Gujarat. It was a direct religious fascism about which we have raised our voice.

But we should not forget that in a comparative progressive state, like West Bengal. The practice of fascism is easier. This fascism is more dangerous as it remains under the coat of progressiveness. Different areas, different states, different locations have faced these fascism either directly or indirectly. Mr. Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee about the matter of nandigram is enacting. It was a pre-initiated incident which has a direct link with making a chemical hub there and for that reason they tried their operations there, lied, attacked people in the disguise of police and killed more than hundreds of people there, raped more than hundreds, burnt houses, molested but the war by the people of Nandigram has proved that everything can be opposed by a unite people and they were successful to fight back. Afterwards the cadres and central and state committee of CPM with the help of their fascism and state terrorism continued terrors and after 30 th November without any disguise of police fore, the cadres attacked nandigram and burnt more than 500 houses, damaged hospitals, killed patients, raped again a lot, captured people, damaged ambulances and killed and killed like butchers there with the help of modernized automated ammunitions, hiring hooligans and forces of their own party from different areas, states. Tapon and Shukur and Selim are the instances. For the reason of this massacre they are manufacturing the ideas that there were several Maoists but it is a half truth and people of third stream politics though went their but it was hard for them to fight like this. To make protest the artists, painters, poets, singers, writers and commonplace people have made a big rally on 14 th of November at Kolkata where people participated spontaneously and it has shown a new genre of political movement here with the help of Civil Society Movement. But afterwards like a classical fascist party CPM continued to attack on the media and some of them made statements to destroy all the media. They have even crossed the decency of maintaining democratic rights.

To demean the civil society movement and to break the movement CPM along with some brute fundamentalists connected the movement with Taslima Nasrin issue and due to their anarchy Taslima was given the verdict by the state secretary of CPM, Mr. Biman Bose to quit Bengal. This proves that religious fascism is utilizing the political fascism and political fascism is utilizing the religious fascism. How can we say that this is the characteristics of a Communist Party!

Mr. Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee and sons are continuing their limitless fascist statements and from individual to individual they are attacking, terrifying people to stop the entire protesting attitude. The people who are keeping CDs of the massacre at nandigram and on Chemical Hub are being threatened and even are being killed. An instance is Ajay Bagdi of Murshidabad, who for keeping CDs on these matters has been killed by the W.B Police force. This is continuing. They are trying to demean the movements taking place against these fascism and the persons like Medha Patkor, Joy Goswami, Kobir Suman, Prosun Bhowmik, Hindol Bhattacharjee among which excluding Medha all of them are poets of this age.

Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee is only a part of the system, but a fascist is a fascist. The whole system is originating in a fascist way. This is not a communist party and now the civil society movement can only show us the way of how to move.

Not being deviated by the conventionalist way we should introspect that what is the root behind this fascism after a long days of what our country is facing brutally. The BJP, led by Narendra Modi and CPM, led by Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee and Biman Bose are the reflections of this fascism. It is a clear but notorious sign that if we still remain silent about this and deviate from our new risen civil society movement, then a more dangerous fascism will make our democracy a phase of our dream. To strengthen our democracy in a newer form, we should continue our movement, more intelligently in this age of manufacturing consent beside managing relief for restitutes and people suffered due to the massacre.

We are arranging theoretical sessions and interactive sessions on different issues and if you are interested to take part please contact at:

Prosun Bhowmik,9830015598
Hindol Bhattacharjee 9830751535
Biswanath Dasgupta 9433517114
Torsha Bannerji 9830063848

A new East Asian focus on India

P.S. Suryanarayana
The Hindu, 26 November

The atmospherics of the East Asia Summit last week propelled India to the regional centre stage again.

Is India really central to the East Asia Summit (EAS) — an exclusive regional forum which is expected to play a key role in shaping the next big theatre in world politics? Surely, the latest EAS meeting in Singapore, which brought India and China, as also Japan, into sharp focus, was not designed to provide clues to such a long-term proposition. However, the atmospherics of the third annual summit of the EAS last week propelled India to the centre stage of Greater Ea st Asia in several ways.

The larger geopolitical region covers all the 10 countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Australia, and New Zealand. The United States, for long the dominant military power in this wider region, is not a member of the two-year-old EAS, which remains wary of letting the Americans on to its diversified but rather very Asian stage.

Interestingly, it was in an overarching cultural setting that the importance of being India in Greater East Asia was dramatically illustrated. The occasion was the dedication of an exhibition, titled “On the Nalanda Trail,” as an EAS project. The exhibition — tracing the trail of Buddhism in India, China, and Southeast Asia — is being organised by Singapore at the Asian Civilisations Museum in the City-State. The unusual show is aimed at promoting the establishment of an international university, through a multilateral treaty, at the old Nalanda site in India. The proposed university will offer a number of courses, including peace and security studies.

India’s centrality to the current process of inter-state engagement in Greater East Asia was best put across by EAS Chairman and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. At a reception hosted by him for the EAS leaders, Mr. Lee said: “The ancient university in Nalanda was not just devoted to Buddhist studies. It was also a first-class educational institution and the most global university of its time. ... The new Nalanda (university) should strive to perform a role consistent with this original ethos and vision. It should be a great intellectual centre, an icon of the (current) Asian renaissance. ... It should also be a centre of civilisational dialogue and inter-faith understanding as the original Nalanda once was. In this way, the (EAS) Nalanda project can be an inspiration for the future of Asia.”

Piloting the EAS and other ASEAN-related summits with diplomatic skill, clear from the way he warded off a Myanmar-related crisis that could have affected these events, Mr. Lee saw India’s relevance to planet-issues as well.

The East Asia Summit is the only pan-regional platform, as different from sub-regional groups, where India and China share the high table. Significantly, China had earlier joined Japan, the global eco-guru, and the U.S., a reluctant “leader” on green issues, in issuing a declaration on climate change. The occasion was the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum’s summit in Sydney in September. The APEC had then endorsed a set of “aspirational goals” as non-binding commitments to reduce the worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases. So, a general expectation ahead of last week’s EAS meeting was that India, not an APEC member, could perhaps now be brought into this emerging circle of key state-players as eco-friendly protagonists of economic growth.

Greenhouse gas emissions

What happened at the EAS was a different story though. Japan, taking off from its earlier platform of “Cool Earth 50,” now proposed a new package of measures to ensure “a sustainable East Asia.” The idea was that Japan could help its other East Asian partners in adopting eco-friendly but growth-protective technologies to ensure the reduction of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases by half by 2050. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s EAS partners did not reject his offer. However, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India would be willing to place a “cap” on greenhouse gas emissions at a level equivalent only to the “cap” that the developed bloc might be ready to apply to itself. And, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made common cause with Dr. Singh in emphasising how growth would remain a priority for both their countries and how they could consider eco-targets only within the ambit of priorities. In the event, while the APEC consensus was not repudiated, the EAS could not create any fresh consensus that might have covered India as yet another example for the U.S. to follow.

If Mr. Wen and Dr. Singh were able to advance the cause of the developing countries, through their mutually reinforcing presentations at the EAS meeting, there was a political reason too for their bonhomie. Shortly before the EAS convened, they met for the first time after a political crisis rocked New Delhi over India’s civil nuclear energy deal with the U.S. Even as that crisis spiralled, it was seen in the U.S.-friendly circles in East Asia as a new reality check for assessing, over time, India’s credibility as a serious negotiator in sensitive matters. Against this background, it is understood, on good authority, that Mr. Wen was willing to consider cooperation with India on matters relating to peaceful uses of atomic energy within an overall framework of non-proliferation. Later, the Indian side even went public with a formulation that Mr. Wen was “forthcoming and supportive of international civil nuclear energy cooperation with India.”

This China-India meeting and the coincidental commencement of talks between New Delhi and the International Atomic Energy Agency set the stage for the EAS deliberations. And, Mr. Lee’s commendation of India and China for their “eloquent presentations” on their shared concerns about economic growth as “a priority” virtually put India back on the East Asian stage as a serious player.

Chikungunya: Where did the virus really come from?

N. Gopal Raj
The Hindu, 27 November

The disease is believed to have originated in Africa where forest-dwelling mosquitoes circulate the virus among wild non-human primates.

In the space of two years, chikungunya has gone from being a disease known principally to medical specialists to becoming a much-dreaded pestilence that, even if it doesn’t kill, leaves sufferers often enduring months of crippling pain.

Starting in early 2005, this disease, which is caused by a virus spread by mosquitoes, swept through the islands of Comoros, Mayotte, Seychelles, Reunion and Mauritius that lie in the south-western Indian Ocean, not far from the coast of Africa. The epidemic continued into 2006.

From late 2005 onwards, hospitals in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra found themselves swamped with patients complaining of fever and joint pain, which turned out to be chikungunya. Large numbers of people fell victim to the virus in these States during 2006, and the disease spread to other parts of the country as well. The statistics on the website of the Union Government’s National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme show that some 1.4 million people in the country may have contracted the disease in 2006.

From Kerala to Italy

Kerala continued to reel from the disease this year as well, and cases of chikungunya have been reported from West Bengal and Orissa too. A few months ago, Italy discovered, to its alarm, that a returning resident, who picked up the infection in Kerala, set off a chain of transmission with local mosquitoes in two neighbouring villages in the north-east of the country. There are now fears that viral transmission could resume when mosquito numbers increase again in the spring of 2008. As a result, chikungunya might spread further in Italy and perhaps to other parts of Europe as well.

Chikungunya is believed to have originated in Africa where forest-dwelling mosquitoes circulate the virus among wild non-human primates. “In South Africa, chikungunya is transmitted between African Grey Vervet monkeys and also between baboons by mosquitoes belonging to the Aedes furcifer/cordellieri complex,” according to Peter Jupp, a medical entomologist formerly with the country’s National Institute for Viology (NIV) and National Institute of Communicable Diseases. “The same mosquitoes feed on man and infect him when he is present in the same areas where the monkey-mosquito cycle is occurring,” he told this correspondent in an e-mail. However, the virus was not thought to be endemic in South Africa itself, but could be entering the country from neighbouring Zimbabwe and Mozambique, he added.

The chikungunya virus was first isolated from the blood serum of a patient during a dengue-like epidemic that broke out in Tanzania in 1953. Since then, many outbreaks of the disease have been documented in Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia.

In India, the first recorded outbreak happened in Kolkata in 1963, followed by epidemics along the the east coast and elsewhere during 1964 and 1965. Nearly four lakh cases were reported in Chennai alone in 1964. Then there was an outbreak in the small town of Barsi in Maharashtra in 1973.

“After that [the Barsi outbreak], there was silence,” remarked Vidya Arankalle, senior deputy director of the NIV in Pune, in the course of a talk she gave during the recent annual meeting of the Indian Academy of Sciences in Thiruvananthapuram. In view of the long absence of chikungunya epidemics, it was postulated that the virus had disappeared from India and South-East Asia, she observed in a paper published along her colleagues in the Journal of General Virology earlier this year.

The virus then re-emerged with a bang. “The scope of the 2005-2007 outbreaks is certainly of unprecedented magnitude,” noted Ann Powers and Christopher Logue of the Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a review paper published this year.

Using the latest tools at their disposal, including the ability to sequence and scrutinise the viral genes, scientists are trying to understand how the strain that set off the 2005-2007 outbreaks might have emerged and what makes this virus so virulent.

Based on their genetic similarities, chikungunya viral strains fall into three groups. Two of these groups are primarily Africa-based: the strains of the West African type form one cluster while those from East, Central and South Africa (ECSA) form a separate one. The third group comprises of strains found in Asia.

A team of French scientists sequenced almost the entire genome of six viral samples and partially sequenced a single gene of another 127 viral samples from the Indian Ocean island outbreaks. The study published last year by Isabelle Shuffenecker and fellow scientists at the Institut Pasteur in France in collaboration with clinicians and virologists showed that the same strain had caused those outbreaks and that it belonged to the ECSA grouping.

“Although, to our knowledge, no outbreak was reported recently in East Africa, this scenario is compatible with the human population exchanges between East Africa and Comoros [island], where the outbreak is believed to have started,” observed the scientists in their PLoS Medicine paper. But the possibility of the epidemic strain having been produced by the evolution of a hitherto animal virus could not be excluded, they added.

When NIV scientists sequenced viruses involved in outbreaks in five Indian States during 2006, they discovered that these too belonged to the ECSA group. Hitherto, the viral strains that caused previous outbreaks of chikungunya in the country had been of the Asian type. Moreover, the 99.9 per cent genome sequence similarity between the strains found in the Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean and in India “implies circulation of the same strains in both countries,” concluded the NIV scientists in their journal paper. “It also indicates a possibility of spread of the current strain from Indian Ocean islands to India, leading to an explosive epidemic of the ECSA genotype and not the Asian genotype that circulated earlier,” they added.

But there is another possible origin for the epidemic strain. In 2000, the chikungunya virus had been isolated from a mosquito found in the town of Yawat in Maharastra, although no cases were reported among humans at the time. “This strain has suddenly become very important for us,” remarked Dr. Arankalle in her talk at Thiruvananthapuram. When the genome of this virus was sequenced, it too was found to belong to the ECSA group and not the Asian variety. “That means we had the African genotype in India before ... the epidemic came in 2005,” she pointed out.

So might the Yawat strain have continued to circulate quietly in India since 2000, accumulating mutations till finally it turned into a form that spread with devastating rapidity and virulence among humans?

NIV scientists have been re-analysing their samples going back to 2001, taken from patients with dengue-like symptoms but who tested negative for dengue. They found that sporadic cases of chikungunya had indeed occurred in India between 2001 and 2004. “Right now what we are trying to do is to get [the] virus out of these cases,” said Dr. Arankalle in Thiruvananthapuram. “If we can get [the] virus from one of these cases, then we will be able to sort out as to why the Yawat virus did not produce the disease and what happened subsequently till 2005 when we had such a bad epidemic.”

However, in a brief piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine this year, Sylvain Brisse, Isabelle Iteman and Dr. Schuffenecker of the Institut Pasteur took the view that the strain that caused the outbreak in India was not the same as the one responsible for the disease on the Indian Ocean islands. Their analysis was based on comparing the genetic sequences among different strains for the viral gene that codes for one particular protein (E1). They also argued against “a direct link” between the Yawat strain and the strain implicated in the 2005-2006 Indian outbreak. But the fact that the Indian and Indian Ocean isolates shared two changes in their E1 gene sequence indicated a common ancestry for both, they stated.

Twist in the tale

There is, however, a further twist in the tale. E. Sreekumar and his team at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in Thiruvananthapuram have been examining viral samples from chikungunya cases in Kerala during 2006 and 2007. They found that the E1 gene sequence of four viral samples from Kerala this year showed an extraordinary level of resemblence to that of the Reunion Island strain. One possibility was that the virus circulating in the State had mutated, observed Dr. Sreekumar. The alternative explanation would be that a strain that originated in the Indian Ocean islands had a hand in this year’s epidemic in the State. “We need to do more analysis to answer that question,” he told The Hindu.

Maharashtra ’s head-in-the-sand syndrome

P. Sainath
The Hindu, November 27

Vilasrao Deshmukh clearly believes he has been merciful towards those committing the ‘crime’ of suicide. Thanks to his government’s generosity, close to 32,000 farmers who have taken their lives in his State since 1995 have gone scot-free.

“Committing suicide is an offence under the Indian Penal Code. But did we book any farmer for this offence? Have you reported that?” — Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on farm suicides in Vidharbha.

That is the Chief Minister’s response to media questions on the ongoing farm suicides in Vidharbha. He has gone on record with that statement in an interview. (The Hindustan Times, October 31.) Leave aside for the moment this incorrect reading of the law. Mr. Deshmukh clearly believes he has been merciful towards those committing the ‘crime’ of suicide. Thanks to his government’s generosity, close to 32,000 farmers in his State wh o have taken their lives since 1995 go scot-free. Imagine what would happen should he decide to book them for their ‘crime.’ For the record, on average, one farmer committed suicide every three hours in Maharashtra between 1997 and 2005. Since 2002, that has worsened to one such suicide every two-and-a-quarter hours. Those numbers emerge from official data. This could be the State’s worst tragedy in living memory.

Of course, the question arises: who would he punish if he decides to enforce what he believes is the law? And how would he do so? Would their ashes be disinterred from wherever to face the consequences of their actions? Would the awful majesty of the law be visited upon their survivors to teach them never to stray from the path of righteous conduct? Or — more likely — would his government set up yet another commission to look into the matter?

Under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, attempting suicide is a crime. A suicide effort that succeeds places the victim beyond Mr. Deshmukh’s reach anyway. Beyond anything for that matter. As one of India’s foremost legal minds says: “the odd thing about suicide in India is that failing to commit it is a crime. One who succeeds in it is obviously beyond punishment. But the one who fails in his attempt to commit it could be in trouble. You could then be booked for ‘attempted suicide,’ an offence punishable by fine and even imprisonment.”

Abetment to suicide (Section 306) is also a crime. One that places Mr. Deshmukh’s government in the dock if we persist with this logic of ‘punishment.’ His Ministry has been widely criticised on the farm suicides in this State. Many point to the rash of suicides that occurred soon after the government withdrew the ‘advance bonus’ of Rs.500 per quintal of cotton in 2005. A move that tanked cotton prices and brought disaster to lakhs of farmers in the State.

Worse, his is a government which came to power that very year on a promise of giving cotton farmers a price of Rs.2700 a quintal. At the time, they were getting a mere Rs.2200 a quintal. A sum the government conceded was quite uneconomical. Further, neither the State nor the Central government took any steps at all to counter the distortion of global cotton prices. Prices crashed as both the United States and the European Union piled on subsidies worth billions of dollars to boost their cotton sectors.

To top it all, the Deshmukh government withdrew the ‘advance bonus’ soon after coming to power. That brought the price down to just over Rs.1700 a quintal. And the Centre did not raise import duties on cotton despite desperate pleas for such an action. This allowed the large scale dumping of U.S. cotton on this country, further crushing the farmers here. No, Section 306 is not something Mr. Deshmukh’s government would want to look into too closely.

But to be fair to Mr. Deshmukh, he is neither unique nor alone in this mindset. There is something wrong with a society where suicide data are put together by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The idea is in-built: suicide is a crime. From that flows Mr. Deshmukh’s simple notion of punishment. But he did not author the idea. He simply took it to unknown levels of insensitivity. With this statement, the Chief Minister outdid his previous effort when he made remarks about Vidharbha’s farmers that caused a furore. Remarks that suggested that they were both lazy and less than honest. Of course, he soon rallied to say he had been “quoted out of context.” (The Hindu, September 15, 2007). So maybe he will do so this time, too.

But he has certainly got the law out of context. What does Section 309 of the IPC really say? It states that “whoever attempts to commit suicide and does any act towards the commission of such an offence shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year or with a fine or with both.”

Fact: even the British Raj seems never to have used Section 309 against Mahatma Gandhi or other fasting leaders. And they had the excuse to do so when faced with, for instance, fasts unto death. This surely had less to do with humane behaviour than the hope that leaders like Gandhi would succeed in their fast unto death and rid the empire of a menace. Still the fact is: they did not resort to Section 309.

Mr. Deshmukh’s words suggest that he is holding himself back with much effort. If governments do start enforcing Section 309, the damage would be huge. For every farm suicide that occurs, there are a fairly large number of attempts that fail. Mostly, the police do not press the issue too hard. Even they see the ill logic of oppressing someone in misery who tries, but fails, to take his or her own life. (Such pressures have in a few cases, triggered a second — successful — attempt at suicide.) Following the ‘punishment’ logic would make life a living hell for those already in despair.


Decriminalising attempted suicide


For decades, social and legal workers and activists have struggled to decriminalise attempted suicide. One of them is Dr. Lakshmi Vijay Kumar, a consultant with the World Health Organisation on suicide research and prevention. As she puts it: “It’s a crazy law. One which only a handful of nations still retain. Most others have withdrawn it years ago. Apart from us, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Singapore seem to still have this kind of law. Sri Lanka too did but withdrew it in 1998. It’s a law that punishes those most in need of help. A move to repeal it went through the Rajya Sabha in 1974. The bill was also introduced in the Lok Sabha but that house was dissolved before it could see it through.” The Section was even struck down by a Supreme Court ruling in 1994. However, it was later reinstated by a full bench.

As we write, the Maharashtra Assembly is in session. In the tiny Assembly session ahead, the question of farm suicides is sure to crop up. Why is Maharashtra, with more dollar billionaires and millionaires than any other State in the country, home to the largest number of farmers’ suicides in India? Why is it that farm suicides in this State trebled between 1995 and 2005? Why did they go up so massively in a State where suicides amongst non-farmers fell marginally in the same period?

All the data on farm suicides carried in The Hindu (Nov.12-15) are from the National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. They are not the data of this newspaper. Nor of Professor K. Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) who authored the study reported in the paper. They are government data. So if Mr. Deshmukh’s outfit has different numbers for the State Assembly, it could be in danger of committing contempt of the house.

Maybe someone in the house will raise other questions too. Queries that go, as they should, way beyond the suicides. The suicides are, after all, a tragic window to a much larger agrarian crisis. They are a symptom of massive rural distress, not the process. A consequence of misery, not its cause. How many more commissions will the government appoint to tell itself what it wants to hear? When will it address the problems of price, credit and input costs, for instance? When will it, if at all, reflect on the role of cash crops in the crisis? When will it push Delhi to set up a Centre-State price stabilisation fund? When will it dig its head out of the sand?

SO NEAR, YET SO FAR - Development in the Northeast still awaits targeted planning

KRISHNAN SRINIVASAN
The Telegraph, 28 November

The Indian Northeast region, comprising about 5 per cent of the land area and 8 per cent of the population of the country, is one of the most complex in Asia, with about 200 ethnic groups, languages and dialects. These societies have lived in isolation not only from the rest of the country but also from each other, and both legal and illegal migrations have created new fault-lines in traditional societies. The whole area, where parochialism transcends nationalism or even regionalism, is in painful transition, trying to learn tolerance of other ethnic groups and adjust to the concept of planned development.

There is a tendency to assert that the Northeast is not ‘integrated’ with the rest of India because of ethnicity and insurgency, but this is only partly true; Arunachal Pradesh, which has the biggest number of tribes, is peaceful, while Manipur, which is prey to secessionist groups, is otherwise well integrated in terms of arts, culture and sports. Nagaland is the only state where militants are not reconciled to their tribal space being part of the Indian Union, though even there many people see benefits when compared to neighbours like Myanmar and Bangladesh.

There is another aspect to human integration: 90 journalists from Assam alone work in Delhi, 10 per cent of the information technology sector people in Bangalore are from the Northeast, hospitality sectors all over India look for and employ young people from the Northeast because they speak good English. Five thousand young persons from the region each year go to other states to find employment.

The Northeast comprises eight states with only 1 per cent bordering India — the rest of the borders are with Myanmar, China, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. India’s trade with the countries bordering the Northeast has gone up five times, but no impact is seen in that region because this commerce is through the seaports. The five-nation Bimstec was supposed to help the Northeast, but there is a lack of connectivity that precludes the opportunities leading to results.

Our import substitution economy after 1947 deprived the North-east of its natural markets, as did the 1971 Bangladesh war. There are massive imports into the region, and Chinese consumer goods are to be seen in every marketplace. The exchange rate is unreasonably low for Chinese imports and these goods have obviously not come through established channels. Illegal trade and smuggling exist because there is no trade facilitation.

There are three points for border trade with China at places where there is no dispute regarding the boundary; Lipulekh in Uttaranchal opened in 1993 and Shipkila in Himachal Pradesh in 1994. I led the Indian delegation to Beijing in 1994 that proposed the opening of Nathu-la to the Chinese. It then took nine years for the memorandum to be signed, and a further three for the border point to be opened for trade.

For 58 years after the Younghusband expedition of 1904, Nathu-la had been the main artery between India and China and made possible 80 per cent of the trade between the two countries. The expectation was that by 2010 trade at Nathu-la would represent 10 per cent of the total Indo-Chinese trade, namely $1 billion. Why 2010? Because the Border Roads Organization said it would take as long as that for the one-track road to be made into two lanes. Considering that India and China are among the two fastest growing world economies, and with Tibet itself growing at 12 per cent, Nathu-la should improve prospects for the whole Northeast, which has been left behind at about half of India’s growth rate.

However, the optimistic prospects envisaged for Nathu-la trade and its beneficial effects have not materialized, and do not look as if they ever will. If the Northeast opens up, would it be primarily for our exports or only for imports of cheaper Chinese goods? This question seems to obsess the decision-makers in New Delhi, who always want to play safe.

Progress in the Northeast depends on the creation of assets in power, infrastructure and opportunities. India may be looking East but evidently not to our own Northeast. The shocking fact is that 97 per cent of the natural resources in the Northeast, such as hydroelectricity, biodiversity and minerals, is not exploited. There is practically no private sector involvement. The entrepreneur does not need tax breaks and incentives from the state. What he looks for first are raw material sources, the potential market and logistics.

Tourism could transform the Northeast. Ethnologically and linguistically, the Northeast has historic links with south-west China and the Mon-Khmer peoples in Myanmar and Thailand. The structures for tourism are poor, but infrastructure is equally poor in south-west China, Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan, which are all also landlocked. Yet those countries and regions attract manifold numbers of tourists; Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet and Myanmar surpass by far the tourist numbers to the Northeast. There has been no use made of specialized promotion, such as adventure, veterans of World War II, wildlife, spiritual or other nostalgia (for tea planters and missionaries) or eco-tourism. Air connectivity to the neighbouring countries does not exist, and in the permit raj of inner line, restricted area, and protected area, permits are a serious obstacle.

The North Eastern Council was set up as long ago as 1971 and has been revamped many times since. Health and education are identified as priorities, along with employment, good governance and food security. The public’s interest in participating in development is high. But while multiple recommendations are drawn up, little or nothing is seen on the ground.

The Centre’s response has characteristically been, as in Kashmir, to throw money at the problem with no consideration of outcomes or accountability. In addition to the allocations in the state plans, there are funds from the NEC, and Central ministries since 1998 have allocated a non-lapsable 10 per cent of their budgets for the Northeast. There is reimbursement of expenditure incurred by northeastern states on security-related issues, funds for the modernization of the police, border areas development grants and other sources of funding too numerous to mention. Yet the minimum identified needs have not been met despite the massive funds poured into the region. With this cornucopia of funds, there has been great seepage and massive corruption. Effective measures to prevent this have neither been devised nor executed. Pumping in funds leads to distortions in the economy unless there are investments in real assets. The shift from agriculture to industry and services is going at a snail’s pace even compared to the rest of India.

There are legitimate fears of loss of identity — and the demand by various ethnic groups for increasingly more autonomy continues and has to be addressed. The need to protect the socio-cultural and religious practices of the various ethnic groups and to give them an effective say in running their own institutions has often been underlined. But there is no adequate devolution to the minority tribes in the autonomous areas and funds are not released directly to the autonomous councils.

The various ethnic fractures prevent cooperation in anti-militancy drives. The Union government has to deal with combating the 30-odd active militant groups both because of the states’ reluctance to get involved owing to the alleged lack of financial and human resources, and the Centre’s suspicion of the state governments’ ability to keep intelligence reports confidential. Even to resist illegal migration, HIV-AIDS and drug trafficking, there is little cooperation between the states. In other words, there is a lack of trust and faith all round.

This is the reason that so many aspects of governance in the region have been left to the supervision of the army, and the prolonged deployment of the military, which is unfamiliar with the local terrain, language, culture and social ethos, has led to serious recriminations and alienates the local people. After 50 years of existence in the Northeast, the armed forces act is viewed as tyrannical and it inspires hatred.

The Union government might want to look East but most of its bureaucrats in the region look West. Admittedly, life is difficult, and education facilities are limited. There are restrictions on the acquisition of property by ‘outsiders’. The result is that there is no long-term commitment on the part of the civil service. An administrative and police service for the region composed exclusively of officers from the Northeast is long overdue.

The author is former foreign secretary of India

Dignity devoured, by pack of wolves

The Telegraph, 28 November

Assam author Mamoni Raisom Goswami spoke to the girl who was stripped and chased in Guwahati on Saturday and recounts the victim’s trauma

One moment of wickedness, one act of animalistic action has pushed Assam back to the medieval age. Shocked? Numbed? For once, these strong words seem to have suddenly lost their sting. I feel indescribable pain as I try to put on paper the emotions that swirl in my heart. Just think, what must have been the physical and mental trauma of the young girl who was stripped naked on a Guwahati street, in front of the whole world, on Senseless Saturday?

I spoke to her on the phone this morning. It is a very cruel way of comforting someone who has been hurt. But despite my strong desire to travel all the way to Biswanath Chariali to meet her, I could not go because of my health. But to my surprise, I found myself speaking to a very strong girl. She is bruised and battered, in body and heart, but her spirit has not been broken.

She choked on her words as she spoke, recollecting the nightmarish moments of that day.

For a young girl who is just starting to look at life and the world in all their wonderful colours, there could not have been a more brutal manner to kill her dreams.

But I could sense that she has woken up to reality. She now knows that the world is not as simple as it seems.

She told me about her passions — music and dance. The daughter of a simple farmer, she will be sitting for the matric examination in a few months.

As a young girl growing up in the countryside, she had never seen Guwahati. It was the land of her dreams — with big buildings, fast cars and fashionable people.

So, the moment she was invited to join the rally organised by the All Adivasi Students’ Association of Assam, she readily agreed. But unlike many of the rallyists, who did not even know why they were coming to Guwahati, she is very much aware of the burning issues confronting the community.

But she had no idea that the fairytale land of hers would be full of monsters. She does not remember — or know — the exact moment when the violence started. All she remembers is the moment she saw her fellow rallyists being attacked. She started running, too, but found herself in the midst of a large group of people. A pack of wolves, I would say.

She told me how their eyes lit up on seeking a nubile young girl in their grasp and how they abused her with filthy language. She could still hear their shrill and wicked laughter ringing in her ears.

As she stood trembling there, like a deer amidst a pack of hungry wolves, the blows and slaps started raining. She tried to save herself, twisting and turning to avoid the blows.

Then they attacked her churidar-kurta; the chunni was first to be pulled away. She saw a knife being brandished by one of the attackers and then the unmistakable sound of clothes being ripped.

She panicked. Begged for mercy. Pleaded with folded hands.

But the “monsters” only laughed. One by one, they ripped off her clothes, till she somehow managed to wriggle out of their grasp and started running. Even as she ran, the last piece of cloth was ripped off from her body.

It was like a nightmare, she recalled. She wished the earth would part and gulp her, ending her misery.

She remembers running down the street and asking for help. But, horror of horrors, nobody came forward. She begged for a piece of cloth to hide her modesty. At last, an elderly man came to her, took off his shirt and gave it to her.

She ran again for help and entered Basistha police station, where she met some other Adivasi activists detained by the police. She was taken to the hospital for first aid and released the next day.

When she reached home on Sunday, it was nearly 10pm.

She told me that she can still feel the pain in her body, a reminder of the assault on her. Those will heal. What will remain is the pain in her heart.

HC hauls up CPM trio for contempt

Legal Correspondent
The Statesman, 28 November

KOLKATA, Nov. 27: The Division Bench of Chief Justice Mr SS Nijjar and Mr Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose of Calcutta High Court today issued a criminal contempt notice against the CPI-M state secretary, Mr Biman Bose, and the party’s central committee members, Mr Benoy Konar and Mr Shyamal Chakravarty (photographs on the right), for the allegedly derogatory remarks they made against the judiciary after the High Court had delivered judgment in the Nandigram carnage case, saying that the police firing in Nandigram on 14 March was wholly unconstitutional and unjustified.
Addressing a party rally, Mr Bose had said that democracy was threatened when one of its pillars, the judiciary, crossed its limits.

“If the court decided everything what was the use of the executive or the legislature in a democracy ? A democracy could not be run like that.” It was Mr Bose’s second brush with the judiciary. On an earlier occasion when he wasn’t the party state secretary, he had incurred the displeasure of the judiciary by making derogatory remarks on Mr Justice Amitabha Lala for his curbs on processions. However, Mr Bose then pleaded that his remarks weren’t directed against the judge, but the judgment.

Mr Shyamal Chakravarty asked if there was any point in ordering a CBI inquiry into the Nandigram firing after the High Court had made up its mind and held that the firing was unjustified. He found it strange that the plight of the CPI-M supporters from Nandigram, compelled to flee their homes, could elicit no sympathy from the Governor but the CPI-M's recapture of Nandigram happened to be abhorrent enough to dampen the ardour of Deepabali for Mr Gopalkrishna Gandhi. The Governor's heart did not bleed when 27 of the CPI-M activists were killed over the past 11 months in Nandigram.

Mr Chakravarty quoted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: “I can endure your brutality, not your hypocrisy.” Commenting on the police firing, Mr Konar said it was not the job of the police to paint or act. The honourable judge must be aware that policemen escorting him carried revolvers too. It was part of their job. Mr Konar called the Governor the Trinamul's flag-bearer. He asked the Governor to openly act like a politician if that was what he really wanted to do. He was a free citizen and he could carry the flag of the Trinamul Congress.

The Division Bench issued the contempt notice on the applications of the High Court Bar Association, Bar Library Club and the Incorporated Law Society. Mr Sakti Nath Mukherjee appeared for the Bar Association and Mr Jayanta Mitra appeared for the Bar Library Club.

The matter will come up for hearing after Christmas vacation.

The future is here

ND Batra
The Statesman, 28 November

The recent breakthrough in stem cell research carried out independently in Japan and the USA, by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and James A Thomson with his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, shows another path to human rejuvenation, including a cure for many incurable diseases.

By reprogramming a human skin cell, the researchers have been able to bring it back to its original pure embryonic stage, a pluripotent stage from where the cell could be coaxed to become any of the 220 specialised human cells, for example, heart, lungs, brain, muscle cells, which could be used for customised therapeutic healing. A brain-injured person could live a full, healthy life again. That is the future, perhaps.
The awesome beauty of this discovery is that the process of reversion of a skin cell to its de novo embryonic stage does not involve the destruction of embryos, which many pro-life people from President George W Bush to the late Pope John Paul II condemned as immoral. President Bush has steadfastly denied the use of federal funds “to promote science that destroys life to save life,” despite the fact that most Americans have never been with him on this issue.

Dr Bill Frist, a heart-lung transplant surgeon by training, who was Senate majority leader (2003-2007), for example, spoke for most Americans, when he said: “I am pro-life, I believe human life begins at conception. I also believe that embryonic stem cell research should be encouraged and supported.” Former First Lady Nancy Reagan said: “Embryonic stem cell research has the potential to alleviate so much suffering. Surely, by working together we can harness its life-giving potential.” Her husband, President Ronald Reagan, spent the last years of his life in Alzheimer’s limbo.

President Bush, nonetheless, repeatedly said, "my way or the highway". You see the power of presidential leadership; and also its limitations because he could not stop the private funding of embryonic stem cell research by states, biotechnology companies, and private universities who have been pursuing the research regardless of the opposition. For example, in 2004 California voters approved a $3-billion bond to promote research in the state.

Since last year, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute has been doing research using the Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer process to create specific cell lines from cloned human embryos, which again raised hopes for millions of people suffering from incurable diseases. Harvard research is said to be diseases specific; for example, the nucleus of a skin cell of a diabetic patient is inserted into an unfertilised donor egg, from which the nucleus has been removed. The newly engineered composite egg is nurtured in a Petri dish to develop into an early embryo from which embryonic stem cell lines is developed and guided into becoming healthy insulin producing pancreatic islet cells to replace the diseased ones, for example, in a child suffering from juvenile diabetes.

It is painful to imagine how much a child with juvenile diabetes suffers; or how much the family members endure as they see the wasting away of their loved one with the knowledge that one day if the stem cell research continued there might be hope for a most emaciating human illness. Anytime an older person forgets the name of his own children, you wonder if this could be the beginning of a slow end.

In the USA, people look to science and medicine for salvation. They know embryonic stem cells could be the beginning of a new life for persons suffering from fatal ailments. Stem cells that are derived from aborted and discarded embryos could be potentially directed to grow into any kind of specialised cells to repair damaged human parts and trigger a self-regenerative process in the human body. It is an example of how killing life can save lives. Choosing life over potential life is practical ethics at its best, it has been argued.

Though many people favour embryonic stem cell research, pro-lifers argue that research in regenerative and therapeutic medicine and technology should not be left to the marketplace because somewhere in the process life begins. The late pope John Paul II urged that a “free and virtuous society, which the USA aspires to be, must reject practices that devalue and violate human life at any stage from conception until natural death.”

The Pope was afflicted with Parkinson’s, one of the millions of sufferers of the debilitating disease but he never wavered, and warned “how a tragic coarsening of consciences accompanies the assault on innocent human life in the womb, leading to accommodation and acquiescence in the face of other related evils such as euthanasia, infanticide…”

That’s why many Americans could not ignore the late Pope’s warning that the destruction of embryos to extract stem cells, even when the purpose is to fight diseases and reduce human suffering, would dehumanise us. Stem cell revolution is as momentous as was the smashing of an atom; therefore, it needs safeguards to harness its benefits without the coarsening of our conscience.

The recent development of reprogramming skin cells into embryonic stages offers scientists an equally fertile method of developing cell therapy, which will make destruction of embryos unnecessary. Science has solved its own ethical dilemmas.

The discovery also illustrates the concept of “equifinality” in general systems theory, according to which a dynamic system, if challenged, could reach the same goal by other means. There is always an alternative. And thereby hangs another question: Is human body nothing but an information system that could be reprogrammed cell by cell? We will talk about human soul some other time.

(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University. The author of Digital Freedom, he is working on a new book, This is the American Way.)

Reciprocal truancy

A K Ghosh
The Statesman, 28 November

A report in The Statesman dated 26-10-2007 says: "Mid-day meals, an instrument designed to boost attendance in government schools, has brought in a role reversal of sorts with teachers devising ways to ensure enough money is sanctioned for the schools for the mid-day meal, while the mid-day meal organisers are somehow managing classes."

After 60 years of Independence, Indian children have little to celebrate: about 13.5 million of them in the age group of 6-13 years are still out of school. This, despite a constitutional directive urging all states to provide "free and compulsory education for all children until they complete 14 years". The Constitution envisaged fulfilling this objective by 1960. Yet, if the trend continues, our country will be far from reaching the goal.
It might be a misnomer to assume that poverty keeps children out of school; that they are forced to work to support their families, instead of opting for education. There is often a positive resistance to schooling on the part of the "whining schoolboy creeping unwilling to school", as Shakespeare in his Seven Ages of Man would have us believe. This should induce the removal of anomalies from the school system. Many children reject school because of the teachers' harsh attitude, corporal punishment employed for underachievers and first-generation learners. There are also drop-outs because, as a recent report of Unesco's International Institute for Education Planning says, 25 per cent of primary school teachers in India are absent from their workplace.
Truancy among teachers has assumed an alarming proportion. Many schools in rural areas remain without a teacher. The method of teaching is uninspiring and encourages learning by rote, despite clear directives in the National Policy on Education. The World Bank's mid-term appraisal of the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan also reveals that teacher absenteeism in India is substantially higher, against the average of 18 per cent in such developing countries as Zambia, Peru, Bangladesh and Ecuador.

If the PROBE survey, a few years ago, is any indication, teachers spend little time in active teaching, even when they are present at school. Coming late and leaving early is an accepted practice. Teaching aids are seldom available. Many schools have received new teaching aids through Operation Blackboard but the old traditional stick remains the choice. The teachers are disciplinarians who only try to control the students. They punish them, so the children end up not going to school. Most of the tiny tots stay away mainly because schooling for them is boring and irrelevant.

School drop-outs are often exposed to drugs and gambling. One can see them almost everywhere ~ ragpicking at street comers, shining shoes, as porters, selling newspapers at the traffic lights ~ half-naked, undernourished. Recently, the Border Security Force started considering ways to encourage drop-out children who were used as "carriers" to smuggle out goods along the India-Bangladesh international border to return to school. Schools often lack everything ~ adequate infrastructure, teaching faculties, et al. Children are too tiny to know their right to education. Sometimes governments are encouraged to open schools in good numbers to increase their votebanks.

In some cases, the building is used by the teachers for residential purposes; the premises are used as a store, as a cattleshed or even a public toilet. In 1993, 65 per cent of all schools had a pucca building, 4 per cent were run in open space, 3 per cent in thatched huts, and 0.3 per cent in tents. Fifty-six per cent of schools had no drinking water facilities and 70 per cent no toilets. The Sixth All India Education Survey also shows that in 1993, about 20 per cent of primary schools were single-teacher schools and 0.8 per cent had no teachers.

The Assembly Standing Committee on education, information and cultural affairs in its 10th report last year, recorded that 20,468 primary schools in West Bengal do not have toilets.

Also, 9,316 primary and 522 upper primary schools do not have drinking water facilities. As many as 3,046 schools have one teacher, while 10,094 primary schools have only one classroom. Even in Kolkata, as per the findings of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (2003-04), nearly 200 primary schools have only one classroom.

More than 350 primary schools and 17 upper primary schools in the city do not have any drinking water facilities. More than a dozen do not even have blackboards. To top it all, only 22 per cent of them have toilets for girls. While free education is a constitutional right, primary education in our country is not that free. The PROBE survey found that on an average the expenditure on fees, books, slates and uniforms for a child was Rs 318 a year. This financial liability has a particularly harmful effect on the schooling of girls.

Most girls in India, especially in rural areas, are conservative, and therefore hesitant to attend schools. Bogged down by household chores, girls may not have the time or the inclination to educated themselves. Economic pressure on families for basic survival sometimes force girls to share the burden.

Traditional families also view being taught by male teachers with suspicion. Also, a sense of insecurity prevents many adolescent girls from continuing with their education. A study conducted in rural areas reveals that barely 40 adolescent girls of every 100 make it to Class V. The drop-out rate is found to be much higher among tribes and castes that are patriarchal by nature.

Early marriage and shortage of women teachers are also factors leading parents to pull their daughters out of schools. In many cases, girls and boys suffer frequent bouts of illness due to malnutrition which force them to drop out of school.

If the report of 2006, released by the DFID, the British government's aid agency, mentioning largescale absenteeism of teachers, hostile attitude towards disadvantaged children and lack of accountability in the system, is to be believed, it is easier to understand why so many children dropout of schools despite a high-level of parental interest in their education.
What seems to be most disquieting, however, is that the guardians of education do still find it easy to suggest that the major factor behind the high drop-out rate is the consistently meagre financial provision for primary education.

(The author is Reader, Department of English, Gurudas College, Kolkata.)

Boundless brutality - 12 killed in Guwahati violence

(Second lead: Guwahati violence)

By ANI
Saturday November 24, 08:02 PM

Guwahati, Nov 24 (ANI): At least 12 people were killed on Saturday after a rally of Adivasi Students Union (ASU) turned violent here.

Another 100 people have been injured in the incident. According to State Principal Secretary (Home) Subhas Das, 60 of the injured were hospitalised.

Indefinite curfew has been imposed in parts of Guwahati and army has been deployed.

ASU members demanding the Scheduled Tribe status after holding a rally at Beltola, tried to march towards the State Assembly at Dispur. On being stopped by the police, the students turned violent and attacked and injured a magistrate.

Thousands of students, armed with bows and arrows, destroyed private property and set several vehicles on fire.

According to eyewitnesses, the area from Dispur to Bashista was turned into "battleground".

The locals furious at their property being attacked, also clashed with the students resulting in several being injured from both sides, officials said.

"We were pulling down the shutters of our shop when they came and attacked us. They even clashed with the police and damaged police vehicles," said Subhojit, an eyewitness.

Newspersons were not being allowed to get near to the troubled areas.

(ANI)


Statesman News Service

GUWAHATI, Nov 24: More than a dozen people are feared dead, most of them savagely beaten to death in the presence of policemen and in full public view, and more than 250 injured when participants in a protest rally organised by the All Assam Adivasi Students’ Union demanding Scheduled Tribe status for Santhals (most of whom work as tea plantation labourers) clashed with locals today. The official toll is one dead and 10 “critically injured”. An indefinite curfew has been imposed on the district and the government has ordered an administrative probe into the violence. Earlier, the rally had turned violent as the participants had gone on the rampage, prompting the residents of Beltola Last Gate and Survey areas of the city to take them on.

Eyewitnesses, who put the toll as high as 20, told The Statesman that trouble erupted between 12 noon and 12.15 p.m, when rallyists started pelting cars and vehicles with stones and ransacking shops, offices and business establishments in the area, triggering a barbaric retaliation from locals, which resulted in a free for all. Such was the brutality and barbarity of the clashes that even those who lay on the streets were not spared. Most of the injured persons are leaders of Aaasu. The eyewitnesses said that the number of policemen deployed to preempt violence had been inadequate. And that they had been mute spectators of the gruesome tragedy that was being enacted on the streets of the city. So much so, that the locals were seen hitting and kicking those who lay on the ground with whatever objects they had with them in full view of policemen stationed there. When things went out of control, Central Reserve Police Force jawans were called in who resorted to blank firing.

At the time of filing of this report, streets were littered with bodies and the injured persons were being rushed to Guwahati Medical College and Hospital. A majority of the rallyists are now protected by the CRPF at Beltola High School playground. Soon after the incidents, shops and business establishments in the nearby areas and along GS Road were shut down.

Assam DGP Mr RN Mathur told reporters that a detailed investigation had been ordered into the incident. The Santhal Adivasis are one of the earliest inhabitants of modern Assam who were brought to the State by British planters to work in the tea gardens in the middle of the 19th century. They have, for years, been demanding ST status which they enjoy in the rest of the country.

City SSP Mr Surendra Kumar said the Adivasis had no permission to rally, and were supposed to confine themselves to the ground on which they had converged. Police fired tear gas shells when they had tried to break into the Dispur Capital Complex, the administrative headquarters of the Assam government.

“When they (the Adivasis) were running helter-skelter for cover, some of them got agitated and resorted to violence,” he said. He confirmed that the curfew was indefinite. When asked about the negligible presence of police at the site of the rally, he said that “numbers were always relative”, and refused to concede that not enough policemen had been around. Kamrup (Metro) DC Mr Abinash Joshi said more than 250 persons had been injured, 10 of them critically, and that one person had been killed. He said a few arrests had been been made and that Adivasis had been escorted back to their homes under police protection. A red alert has been sounded across the state.

CM talks peace over tea

GUWAHATI, Nov. 24: As Guwahati erupted in barbarity, Assam chief minister Mr Tarun Gogoi was addressing, for the second time in three days, the India International Tea Convention (IITC) 2007, which concluded today, close to the site of the gruesome tragedy. Unaware of the brutality on the city streets, he was harping on the state of “peace in Assam” in company of his Congress colleague and Union commerce minister Mr Kamal Nath.

Though Mr Gogoi wasn’t exactly fiddling like the much-maligned Roman emperor Nero, the Assam chief minister was busy trying to appease the tea barons who had been upset with an acerbic speech delivered by the Union minister of state for commerce Mr Jairam Ramesh on the opening day of IITC 2007.
SNS


The Sentinel

Security personnel resorting to lathicharge and tear gas shelling to disperse Adivasi students near Dispur on Saturday when the students turned violent. (Right) Local people beating up the processionists. (Sentinel)


Violence: It’s Government’s failure

Red alert sounded in State; curfew from Dispur Last Gate to Bashistha Chariali .

According to eyewitness accounts, Adivasi people, mostly tea workers, started to gather at Dakshin Beltola High School from 10 am, and the number rose to about 10,000, but the police personnel on duty at the rally were below 10. It was at around 12 noon that a procession of about 5,000 Adivasi activists started from the Dakshin Beltola High School ground towards Dispur. At 12.30 pm, some of the processionists went berserk and started to damage vehicles, shops and residential houses along the road, with the police failing to control the mob. When they were about to reach Dispur Last Gate at around 1.30 pm, they were pushed back by the security forces. When the processionists started to run helter-skelter, the local people retaliated, while the police personnel remained mute spectators to the open battlefield, eyewitnesses said.

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Nov 24: One person was killed and about 230 others injured after the public retaliated against a procession taken out by the All Adivasi Students’ Association (AASA) near Dispur Last Gate here today, leading to imposition of an indefinite curfew from Dispur Last Gate to Beltola. The public retaliation came after the AASA activists vandalized shops, vehicles and residential houses along their way to Dispur where they were supposed to assemble to press for their demand for ST status for the Adivasi community. AASA vice president Rafel Kuzur, however, put the death toll at 20.

A red alert has been sounded in the entire State asking the police to remain alert so that such incidents do not occur anywhere in the State. The State Government instituted a one-man inquiry commission with Additional Chief Secretary PP Verma as the chairman to inquire into the incident.

The trouble broke out between Dispur Last Gate and Basishta, when over 5,000 Adivasis were marching towards the State Assembly after holding a rally at the Dakshin Beltola High School ground demanding ST status for the community. The Adivasi activists vandalized shops, vehicles and residential houses on their way to Dispur, with the police failing to control the processionists. About 100 vehicles, including that of MLA TP Das, were damaged. Magistrate SG Hilali and SDO (Sadar) CK Bhuyan were also roughed up by the processionists when the two officials made their abortive attempt to prevent the processionists from marching ahead. When they (the processionists) were pushed back by security forces by using tear gas shells near Dispur Last Gate, and started to flee, the public broke down on them mercilessly leaving one dead and over 230 injured, 20 of them critically. The police utterly failed to prevent the situation from turning worse. According to eyewitness accounts, had an adequate number of policemen been deployed in the area, the situation would not spiralled out of control.

According to eyewitness accounts, about 50 of the processionists were lying on the road and the chances of their survival were remote.

A high-level official meeting was held here this evening to review the situation. The State Government has announced ex gratia of Rs 50,000 for each of seriously injured and Rs 10,000 for each of those with minor injuries, while the next of the kin of the dead AASA activist will get Rs 3 lakh. All the injured will get medical treatment free of cost.

Government’s press handout(1) All Adivasi Students’ Association (AASA) requested for permission to hold a rally today at Dakhin Beltola High School field. No permission was granted to hold the rally at Guwahati.
(2) But about 3,000 people gathered at the site.
(3) After the gathering, they wanted to take out a procession to Dispur in support of their demand to declare the Tea Tribes as Scheduled Tribes.
(4) They were not given permission by the Magistrate on duty, where upon 500 to 700 persons broke away forcefully and entered the Beltola Dispur Road and indulged in vandalism and destruction of shops and cars along the route. This resulted in clashes between the resident shopkeepers and the agitators.
(5) The situation was brought under control within an hour and curfew was imposed in the affected areas, i.e. Basistha Road.
(6) All the injured were shifted to GMC (210) and MMC (30) hospitals.
(7) Total number of injured persons is 240, out of which 10 are seriously injured, while one person has succumbed to his injuries in the GMC Hospital.
(8) The situation is normal now, and under close watch.
(9) All arrangements are being made to send to the persons with minor injuries to their respective districts.

Congress behind crackdown: AASA
By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Nov 24: All Adivasi Students’ Union (AASA) president Justin Lakra today said that the Congress was behind the crackdown on Adivasi processionists in the city. He said Congress goons, who were among the processionists, went berserk and damaged shops, vehicles and residential houses. Meanwhile, the AASA has called a 36-hour Assam bandh from November 26 in protest against the killing of its activists.


Lapses during the rally
By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Nov 24: Who is responsible for the ugly incident that took place on the Beltola-Bashistha Road in the city today? Were not the police and the district administration alert when they had prior information of the All Adivasi Students’ Association (AASA) rally in support the Adivasi community’s long-standing demand for ST status?

It is worth mentioning here that the AASA had resorted to vandalism during a rally at Khanapara in 2003. A number of cars and vehicles were damaged in the 2003 AASA rally, and that experience should have been enough for the police and the district administration to remain alert during the AASA rally today.

According to eyewitness accounts, Adivasi people, mostly tea workers, started to gather at Dakshin Beltola High School from 10 am, and the number rose to about 10,000, but the police personnel on duty at the rally were below 10. On the other hand, police presence at the India International Tea Convention at Sarusajai, where Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had a programme, was very dense.

It was at around 12 noon that a procession of about 5,000 Adivasi activists started from the Dakshin Beltola High School ground towards Dispur. At 12.30 pm, some of the processionists went berserk and started to damage vehicles, shops and residential houses along the road, with the police failing to control the mob. When they were about to reach Dispur Last Gate at around 1.30 pm, they were pushed back by the security forces. When the processionists started to run helter-skelter, the local people retaliated, while the police personnel remained mute spectators to the open battlefield, eyewitnesses said.

EXIT THE AUTHOR

The system of thirty years’ standing has cowed in the face of fantastic, fanatical fury. The moral defeat is the state’s.

ARINDAM GHOSH-DASTIDAR
The Statesman, 25 November

I have no place to go. India is my home and I would like to keep living in this country until I die. ~ Taslima Nasreen

There is a sense of stark irony in Taslima Nasreen’s shift to Jaipur. Just as the Bengal Left had sheltered Qutbuddin Ansari, the Gujarat tailor who had become the icon of the 2002 pogrom, so too did the Rajasthan Right provide refuge to an almost permanently aggrieved feminist writer from Bangladesh. Virtually on landing did the Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, assure her of round-the-clock security, emerging as a saviour in the process. But after one night in Jaipur, the government has been unnerved by the purported threat of further violence. Taslima’s predicament deepens as she is now reduced to a nowhere person in what they call the National Capital Region.

It is the Communist Party of India (Marxist) that has once again suffered a battering under a state secretary whose foot-in-the-mouth ailment has assumed near-chronic proportions. A day after the fundamentalist fury, Taslima was packed off to Jaipur. Even 48 hours later, there has been no official version on the move. Well may both the party and government ~ rather smugly ~ rest assured that the vote-bank has not been rocked. But the party has decidedly emerged as a bundle of contradictions. Having declared at the height of Wednesday’s violence that Taslima should leave West Bengal “if her continued stay disturbs the state’s peace”, it took Mr Biman Bose barely 12 hours to effect a swingback and plead that “I revise my earlier statement”. In attempting to justify the flip-flop, he could have spared us the knowledge that “the state government doesn’t have the authority to grant or cancel visa and that only the Centre can do this”. His initial bow in the direction of the fundamentalists has doubtless been reinforced by the manner and alacrity with which she has now been shown the door. Despite Mr Bose's somersault, there is little doubt that the government has accorded precedence to the minority card over freedom of speech and expression.

It isn’t exactly clear whether the West Bengal government has acted at the prodding of the Centre. The Chief Minister has been tightlipped since Wednesday as he invariably is in the wake of a controversy. Yet both he and the Centre need to come upfront on a matter of tremendous public import. The authorities would hate to admit as much, but it is pretty much obvious that the government has buckled under fundamentalist pressure. It would be no exaggeration to suggest that the administration has virtually surrendered to the demand of the Islamic fringe who think the Taliban and Al Qaida are jolly good chaps. And who are potentially lethal enough to bring Kolkata to its knees in a couple of hours. Even the assembly Speaker, Mr Hashim Abdul Halim, has gone on record with the statement that Taslima’s stay in the city had “created problems”. Still more alarming are the facts exposed by the Dainik Statesman in the piece titled Byapika Bidai (23 November 2007). A section of the police brass, including the previous Police Commissioner, had reportedly told her to her face that she had become a “security threat” and ought to leave the city. She was even threatened with withdrawal of security. The compulsion is only too perceptible: ahead of the panchayat elections, the government can hardly afford to alienate the minorities further, given the twin disasters over Rizwanur Rehman and Nandigram with a predominantly Muslim peasantry. In a sense, Taslima was in thrall of a bullying police.

The feedback of the Special Branch couldn’t have been so inadequate, after all. Of course, it had erred on the scale and intensity, but the provocation wasn’t wholly unexpected. The Centre’s refusal to renew her visa only served to lend the spark. This is confirmed, if confirmation were needed, by the assertion of the president of the All-India Minority Forum that the “protest” ~ a breathtaking expression of understatement ~ was against Taslima’s prolonged stay in Kolkata. In the manner of Biman Bose, Idris Ali has also effected a turnaround, stoutly denying that the violence was no less a reaction to the Nandigram issue. Double-think runs wild from moment to moment. Both Taslima and Nandigram were very much on the streetfighters' agenda on Wednesday and it has taken the Forum 24 hours to realise the thoughtlessly reckless disconnect.

To an extent, the violence was arguably an offshoot of the intra-community struggle for prominence, notably between Ali and Sidiqullah Chaudhry of the Jamait Ulema-e-Bengal, the former shrilling for Taslima’s exit and the latter buttressing the interests of the Nandigram peasant. This becomes fairly obvious from the appeal issued by at least one imam to both sides not to merge the two wholly unrelated issues. The mayhem was centred around an address in that amorphous locality referred to as south of Park Street, not for the cause of the landless or/and homeless in the backwaters of Purba Medinipur.

The sponsors of the demonstration must have known that they were playing with fire for dubious political ends. And the possibility of Ali ~ who represents the Congress with his own brand of machismo ~ facing party action is substantial. Secularism or religious tolerance or for that matter literary dissent does not mean putting up with calculated irresponsibility. It is fervently to be hoped that sense

will yet prevail upon men and organisations who place politics above humanity.
The lumpen vandalism, therefore, falls into a pattern confirming the government’s perception that an individual had become a security threat. Indubitably was the violence a siren call for action against Taslima, and for the government to be decisive. In effect the system has been cowed. Verily has it served to hasten her exit.

That forced exit in burqa and without police escort is arguably a logical corollary of the Marxist government's earlier ban on her book, Dwikhandito. The army may have restored order over a four kilometre radius, a fairly routine task one should imagine for the police but which proved to be hopelessly beyond its wherewithal. Eloquent protestations on the freedom of expression and liberal thought will now ring hollow. As must be the liberal pretensions of Kolkata and the state’s culturally virile Chief Minister. Taslima's novel was banned by his dispensation, after all.

The city owes a collective salute to Johnny Gurkha for having come to its rescue. Nonetheless, the system of thirty years’ standing has cowed in the face of fantastic, fanatical fury. The moral defeat is the state’s as it is for Taslima Nasreen.

The writer is Assistant Editor, The Statesman

REFLECTIONS ON A RALLY - November 14 threw up important questions

Rudrangshu Mukherjee
The Telegraph, 25 November

Calcutta is a city famous, or notorious, for its rallies. People who live in the city have become tired and jaded by demonstrations that stop traffic and disrupt normal life. Yet there was something novel about the procession that wended its way down College Street via Wellington Square to Esplanade on November 14.

For one thing it was silent. For another it had no political banners. Most importantly, it had not been called or organized by any particular group or organization. Different people, drawn from different walks of life and belonging to varied groups, came together. Word-of-mouth and text messages had brought them to congregate near College Square and then to walk silently to Esplanade. They were united in their protest against the atrocities of the CPI(M) in Nandigram and the irresponsible statements made about them by no less a person than the chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

In the rally walked people who would all broadly identify themselves as belonging to the Left. There were quite a few who had invested a lifetime in the communist movement as workers in the cultural front, as writers and intellectuals who, without actually being members of a communist party, had worked in various ways to help the CPI and the CPI(M). There were others who, as former members or supporters of the CPI(M-L), had once advocated the use of violence to attain political ends but now marched for peace. There was a huge and amorphous mass of people who, in elections, had voted for Left candidates. It will be no exaggeration to say that it was a Left rally against the Left.

The last statement may appear to be something of a contradiction. To explain the contradiction, one has to take the sting out of the statement: it was a Left rally against the established Left in West Bengal, that is, the CPI(M). People of the Left were expressing their utter disapproval of and disenchantment with the CPI(M), the way it functions, its arrogance, its authoritarianism and complete lack of any sense of responsibility. It will not be simplistic to describe those who walked (excluding perhaps the students) as being members of the intelligentsia.

Since the Thirties, across the world, the communist movement and the intelligentsia have had a very close relationship. The palpable reality of poverty and inequality in society, which capitalism seemed unable to solve but in fact aggravated, and the emergence of the Soviet Union as a viable alternative to capitalism and fascism, drew innumerable intellectuals, writers and artists to the communist movement. Some joined the communist parties and others remained at the fringes but were loyal to the cause. In India, especially under the leadership of P.C. Joshi, the best and the brightest came under the banner of the Communist Party of India. The intelligentsia has always had a Leftward, pro-communist tilt.

In Western Europe, the innocence did not last for too long. By the Fifties, as the true nature of the Soviet regime became apparent — especially with the Soviet invasion of Hungary — the intelligentsia began to move away from the communist parties. They did not abandon the vision of communism, but they declared their loss of faith in the established communist movements and communist regimes.

A further fall from innocence was to come with the complete collapse of communism across Europe. There was thus a sharp division in Europe between the intelligentsia and the communist movement, and there has been an ongoing process there to re-examine the entire tradition of Marx and what happened to the practice of Marxism under Lenin, Stalin and Mao. In India, this division, except through a few stray voices, has not occurred. And most emphatically, no reexamination of the Marxist intellectual apparatus has even begun. I would venture to suggest that such a re-examination is considered a sacrilegious act.

In West Bengal, thanks to 30 years of Left rule, the relationship between the intelligentsia and the CPI(M) and its government has been particularly cosy. This is why the rally of November 14 is significant. It marks a break, whether permanent or not only time will tell.

Since it was a rally of the intelligentsia, it can be assumed that the people who walked — or at least most of them — are still reflecting on why they walked, the implications of their actions, about what lies in the future and their roles in shaping that future. It is entirely possible that there will not be one answer to these questions. But the intellectual and political churning is important. I want to add to the churning by raising some uncomfortable issues that I think the Left intelligentsia needs to address.

Nandigram is by no means the only instance of the CPI(M)’s use of terror. Keshpur comes immediately to mind; there are many other instances, big and small, stretching over three decades. Violence has been a part of communist politics, and not just the CPI(M)’s. The Naxalites, much idolized and romanticized in West Bengal, openly advocated that political power flows from the barrel of a gun and made it their business to butcher whoever they thought was a “class enemy”. During all these events, the Left intelligentsia’s conscience was asleep. In election after election, they voted for the communists, justifying their actions with the plea that the alternative would be even worse. Are members of the intelligentsia willing to admit that they erred in not opposing earlier instances of terror, not only those perpetrated by the CPI(M) but also by others — say, the Trinamul Congress in Nandigram and in an earlier era by the Naxalites?

Is the present protest only about the CPI(M)’s terror, or is it also about the coming of capitalism to West Bengal and the social and economic changes that come in the train of such a process? If it is, then an alternative plan about the economic development of West Bengal needs to be presented and the idea that economic growth is possible via agriculture needs to be debated. It may also be the case that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was seen as the agent of change — not just of economic change but also change of political culture — and the protest is in part a response to what is perceived as a betrayal.

The point needs to be pushed further. There has to be a recognition on the part of the Left intelligentsia that their faith in the Leninist model was a delusion, that terror is inherent in the practice of communism. The CPI(M) is only another example that supports the generalization. Isn’t it time that there was a move away from the Cold War polarities of communism versus capitalism? In an era in which communism is dead, it might be realistic to look at means to humanize capitalism.

There are important questions that the Left intelligentsia have to face and answers to some of them might actually force them to abandon the epithet Left altogether. But it is important to face these questions since, without renegotiating the past, it is impossible to shape the present and to visualize the future. How open is the intelligentsia?

**********

I want to end this with a disclaimer. It will be easy to dismiss this as a critique of the rally and all that it represented. It emphatically is not. I believe that West Bengal is poised to change. The rally to my mind was one very important face of that change. But this change will never be meaningful without reflection and dialogue. More importantly, there has to be a clear admission that nothing can ever be achieved through violence.

THE SPLIT IN CIVIL SOCIETY IN WEST BENGAL AND THE CHOMSKY LETTER

See CHOMSKY LETTER right below

Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri, 23.10.07.

Civil society in West Bengal has split. International luminaries, including Noam
Chomsky, want the gap to be bridged and have signed a letter to this effect.

Let us examine the split.

The basis for the split lies in

(1) the recent change in CPI(M) policy, identifying big investments by
multinationals and domestic big capital as 'industrialisation' by the CPI(M) led
government of West Bengal (this is a recent change of policy),

(2) the fascist onslaught of gunmen of the CPI(M) and the police on people affected adversely by this onslaught of big capital.

The section of civil society linked to the ruling CPI(M) party is supporting this
onslaught of big capital, offering 'industrialisation' as the excuse.

The other section is supporting the adversely affected people, wherever and
whenever they are attacked.

Is the gap bridgeable?

A fact or two regarding the sham 'industrialisation'.

The recent Tata automobile factory at Singur, which saw the first determined
resistance against land grab on behalf of big capital, is supposed to provide 10,000 jobs, including jobs in downstream industries, as claimed by supporters of Tata. Apart from landowners who received compensation (of disputed adequacy), estimates of those who lost their livelihood, without compensation or resettlement, reaches 10,000 (even the figures quoted by the CPI(M) politbureau leader Vrinda Karat support this estimate). Net result=zero rise in employment.

In any case, even a high school student can appreciate the hopelessness of
employment generation in thousands, when the West Bengal finance minister
himself admits to an unemployment figure of 3.34 million in 2004-05. What is
needed is a new policy, not a fascist imposition of neoliberal trash.

The people affected by this 'industrialsation' offer resistance because they know well that the 'industrialisation' will not spread in the surrounding countryside. The huge US $ 2.2 billion investment in Haldia Petrochemicals (HPCL) and its downstream industries generated 4000 jobs in HPCL and 10,000 jobs downstream. 90% of the downstream units and 80% of the jobs were created not in the district of Midnapore (to which Haldia belongs) but in the Kolkata municipal area. The bankruptcy of this 'industrialisation' and the need for a new policy are underlined by the fact that every year 80,000 people are added to the 15-59 age bracket in Midnapore. (for sources see author's article on Haldia in sanhati.com).

A fact or two regarding the convergence of this 'industrialisation' with penetration of international big capital, including US big capital.

In 1996, there was no FDI to speak of in West Bengal. By 2003, the cumulative FDI flow reached US $ 1.346 billion ('Public Private Partnerships in India',01.04.07, Ministry of Finance, GOI), an amount equal to the contribution of the entire registered manufacturing sector to West Bengal's SDP in 2004-05.

Now, the US has smiled on West Bengal. Although US FDI amounted to $ 48
million between January 2000 and March 2006 (as estimated by the American
Consul General in Kolkata on 07.03.07), the situation is about to see dramatic
changes. US giant GE will invest US $ 8 billion in India over the next three years, of which a 'substantial amount' is earmarked for West Bengal. GE Equipment Services has already acquired a 15% equity worth US $ 37.5 million in the West Bengal railway wagon company Titagarh Wagons Ltd. (tdctrade.com. 07.011.07, Hong Kong Trade Development Council).

Noam Chomsky wants unity. Does he really want a civil society united in support of US big capital and its allies? Or, should the signatories have followed the golden rule of "No investigation, no right to speak"?

Towards participatory democracy

Amitabha Bhattacharyya
The Statesman, 25 November

The Right to Information Act has been in operation for a couple of years now. One of the fundamental requirements of successful implementation of the Act is the existence of a high degree of public awareness about the legislation. Unless citizens are aware that the Act has furnished them with a weapon to expose the proverbial skeletons in the cupboard, it will continue to exist like many another piece of well-intended but sterile addition to the statutes.

The right to information is defined by the Act as follows: (1) Right to inspect works, documents, records; (2) right to take notes, extracts or certified copies of documents or records; (3) right to take certified samples of material; (4) right to obtain information in the form of diskettes, floppies, tapes, video cassettes or in any other electronic mode or through printouts where such information is stored in a computer or in any other device.

Secondly, information means any material in any form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, Press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law for the time being in force. While the concept of “public authority” does not require any elaboration as such, it includes even NGOs financed by government funds, directly or indirectly.

In terms of the Act, any public authority is required to have a public information officer to whom a citizen can make a request for providing information pertaining to the operation of the said organisation. Such requests should be accompanied by a fee of Rs 10 either in cash or by demand draft or banker’s cheque, payable to the accounts officer of the public authority. In addition, the applicant will be required to pay a fee to the public authority at the following rates: (a) Rs 2 for each page (in A-4 or A-3 size paper) created or copied; (b) actual charge or cost price of a copy in larger size paper; (c) actual cost or price for samples or models; and (d) for inspection of records, no fee for the first hour; and a fee of Rs 5 for each subsequent hour (or, fraction thereof) thereafter.

However, the RTI Act exempts certain areas from general disclosure in public interest: (a) Information, disclosure of which would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the state, relation with foreign state or lead to incitement of an offence; (b) information which has been expressly forbidden to be published by any court of law or tribunal or the disclosure of which may constitute contempt of court; (c) information including commercial confidence, trade secrets or intellectual property, the disclosure of which would harm the competitive position of a third party, unless the competent authority is satisfied that larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information; (d) information available to a person in his fiduciary relationship, unless the competent authority is satisfied that the larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information; and (e) information, the disclosure of which would endanger the life or physical safety of any person or identify the source of information or assistance given in confidence for law enforcement or security purposes.

On receipt of a request for information, the public information officer (PIO) is required to furnish it as expeditiously as possible and in any case within 30 days from the date of receipt of the request. In case the public information officer rejects the request for any of the reasons specified in the Act under “Exemption from Disclosure of Information”, the applicant is required to be advised accordingly within the above timeframe. If the PIO fails to give a decision on the request within the period specified, he shall be deemed to have refused the request.

If a person does not get an answer in time, there is a provision for appeal. A public sector organisation is required to appoint an officer designated as appellate authority for the purpose of receiving such appeals. The Act provides a timeframe of a maximum of 30 days for the disposal of such appeals.

If the first appeal fails to yield any results, the applicant has a further right of appeal to the chief information commissioner, office of the Central Information Commission at August Kranti Bhavan, Bhikaji Cama Place, New Delhi.

One of the most notable features of the Act is the provision whereby the chief information commissioner is empowered to award an appropriate financial penalty on the delinquent authority of the organisation in question.

Here are a couple of instances of the operation of the Act:

The Supreme Court was approached for various data concerning the awarding of a death sentence. The initial response of the Central Public Information Officer of the Supreme Court was that no subject-wise record was maintained in the SC registry. On submission of the first appeal by the applicant, it was held by the first appellate authority that there must be a record with the SC where the full name and address of the person who was awarded the death sentence would be available and the record would also contain the names of the counsel as also duration of hearing.

It was thereupon stated by the CPIO that the compilation of the data would require voluminous paper work and there was no sufficient staff strength for the purpose. Thereupon, a further appeal was preferred and the appellate authority decided as follows:

(i) That how people are awarded death sentence is something which the common man must know. (ii) Death sentence is awarded only in the rarest of rare cases. Consequently, the importance of information ought to be seen vis-a-vis the amount of work involved. (iii) The three bodies, that is the executive, judiciary and the legislature are supposed to be equal; but in truth, the legislature, being the representative of the people, is supreme. The courts are to follow the law and not lay down the law, the only exception being where they find something violative of the Constitution or of fundamental rights. When the representative of the popular will confers a specific right to people, the judiciary ought not to deny such right on the excuse of there being shortage of manpower. (Shri Manish Kumar Khanna vs Supreme Court of India).

In the second instance, the Union Public Service Commission declined to disclose the proceedings of the departmental promotion committee on the ground of confidentiality. On a second appeal, the chief information commissioner directed the UPSC to submit a statement within 10 days specifying the reasons why the information must be kept sealed and, by keeping this information confidential, how does the protected interest outweigh the public interest in the context of S 8(2) of the RTI Act. (Ms Jyoti Legha vs Union Public Service Commission)

The RTI Act augurs well for the future of participatory democracy in the country. It has posed the most timely challenge to the vintage Official Secrets Act 1923, which is the last resort of a complacent bureaucracy.

(The author, working in a public sector undertaking, is a freelance contributor)

Friends of Bengal Lauding the Ruling Left

The following letter, as the appended list of signatures will testify, has been written by a group of thinkers, most of whose names are very familiar in leftist and democratic intellectual circles. The next letter, written by Kunal Chattopadhyay, is a rejoinder. I think that both of them will interest the readers of this blog.

Santanu Chacraverti

To Our Friends in Bengal.

News travels to us that events in West Bengal have overtaken the optimism
that some of us have experienced during trips to the state. We are concerned
about the rancor that has divided the public space, created what appear to
be unbridgeable gaps between people who share similar values. It is this
that distresses us. We hear from people on both sides of this chasm, and we
are trying to make some sense of the events and the dynamics. Obviously, our
distance prevents us from saying anything definitive. We continue to trust
that the people of Bengal will not allow their differences on some issues to
tear apart the important experiments undertaken in the state (land reforms,
local self-government).

We send our fullest solidarity to the peasants who have been forcibly
dispossessed. We understand that the government has promised not to build a
chemical hub in the area around Nandigram. We understand that those who had
been dispossessed by the violence are now being allowed back to their homes,
without recrimination. We understand that there is now talk of
reconciliation. This is what we favor.

The balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to
split the left. We are faced with a world power that has demolished one
state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran). This is not the time for
division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist.

Noam Chomsky, author, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assult on
Democracy.

Tariq Ali, author, Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope and editor, New
Left Review.

Howard Zinn, author, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.

Susan George, author, Another World is Possible if, and Fellow,
Transnational Institute.

Victoria Brittain, co-author, Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim's Journey to
Guantanamo and Back, former editor, Guardian.

Walden Bello, author, Dilemmas of Domination. The Unmaking of the American
Empire, and Chair, Akbayan, the fastest growing party in the Philippines.

Mahmood Mamdani, author, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War and
the Roots of Terror.

Akeel Bilgrami, author, Politics and the Moral Psychology of Identity.

Richard Falk, author, The Costs of War: International Law, the UN and World
Order After Iraq.

Jean Bricmont, author, Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell
War.

Michael Albert, author, Parecon: Life After Capitalism, and editor, ZNET.

Stephen Shalom, author, Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing US Intervention After
the Cold War.

Charles Derber, author, People Before Profit. The New Globalization in an
Age of Terror, Big Money and Economic Crisis.

Vijay Prashad, author, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third
World.

An Open Letter to Tariq Ali

Dear Tariq,

When I was a very young radical, still a Maoist rather than a Trotskyist, it was your name, rather than that of Ernest Mandel, or of anyone else, that we came across, here in our part of India. There are still older comrades in West Bengal, who talk about a certain period of Fourth International history, in terms of “in those days of Tariq Ali”. This is why, a statement, even though signed by Chomsky, Zinn and others, along with the man who seems to have carried out the coup, a gentleman named Vijay Prashad, becomes most painful because you are among the signatories. As you once wrote in one of your wonderful books, about another comrade of yours, ‘there was fire in his belly in those days’. Perhaps we have all grown older, but some of us have refused to grow “wiser”.

I read, and re-read, with a growing sense of wonder, shame and above all anger, the statement that some of you have signed. If you are uninformed, what gave you the authority to issue a pompous statement based on that lack of information? I write to you, because I consider you a comrade who has committed a mistake in signing this statement.

Right at the beginning, you write:

News travels to us that events in West Bengal have overtaken the optimism
that some of us have experienced during trips to the state. We are concerned
about the rancor that has divided the public space, created what appear to
be unbridgeable gaps between people who share similar values.

Who are these people who share similar values? Just what do you know about the values shared by those in governmental authority in West Bengal? You, and those others amongst you, who made trips here, met some of the CPI(M)’s intellectuals, who put on a special face for foreign delegations. But as someone who has known Marxism for longer than I have, you know well that it is never possible to judge people solely by what they say about themselves. When someone uses words like democracy, even socialism, anti-imperialism, unless you know the context, unless you know exactly what their political practice is, you cannot assume that they say those words in the same way that you, or someone else does.

So let us begin by looking at values. Just a small example of values. When the Singur –Nandigram issues began blowing up, Medha Patkar, who happens to be one of India’s most respected social movement activists, someone who has therefore been vilified by parties and governments across India, extended her solidarity for the militant people. CPI(M) leaders took umbrage. CPI(M) State Secretariat member (and Central Committee member) Benoy Konar, in a speech, called on women to show Medha Patkar their buttocks. When Medha tried to go to Nandigram, her car was blockaded, and some people, supporters of the CPI(M), indeed followed Konar’s advice and showed Medha their buttocks. I could quote dozens of newspaper and television reports, but most clippings I have are in Bengali, so I give you the url of Medha’s own report. http://www.kafila.org/2007/03/15/medha-patkar-on-civil-war-in-nandigram/

I dare you, or any of your co-signatories, with the exception of Mr. Vijay Prashad, to come forward and assert that you share similar values as these people.

I am sure, that once this open letter is circulated, it will also be trivialized by the murders who are posing as leftists and persuading you to sign on behalf of them. So let me say that this is not the only issue I am talking about when we say values. I will be talking about political outlook and values in other ways. But Tariq, in the most extreme days of the IMT line, when talking about guerilla warfare, did you ever call on your comrades to do unto political opponents, that which Benoy Konar suggested and that which his followers obliged by doing?

If by values you mean left wing values, you would have to define more precisely what sort of leftism you are talking about. CPI(M) leaders and their government here in West Bengal are deeply wedded to a very authoritarian form of bourgeois democracy. I will be able to mention only a few cases below. But perhaps the clearest evidence is this – despite the fact that in the period 1971-1977, the Congress in power used utmost brutality, had people illegally arrested, tortured, many actually killed, in three decades in power, the CPI(M) led government has failed to carry though the prosecution of a single police officer of that era.

In your statement, you present a euphemistic comment, saying that you are concerned about the rancor that has divided the public space. The “rancor” that you talk about is the result of a long period of violation of civil liberties, of brutal repression of political opposition and massive use of party cadres as thugs. The most respected Civil Liberties organization in West Bengal , the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights, has recently been targeted by the chief minister, who claimed that the APDR is a Maoist outfit. The crime of the APDR was that it has consistently argued that everyone has political and civil rights, and these cannot be circumscribed without threatening all of us. Let me again give some illustration. Attacks on the Maoists, especially the organizations CPI(ML) Peoples’ War, the Maoist Communist Centre, and after they merged, the CPI(Maoist) have been massive. Anyone suspected of being a Maoist has been arrested, even without real charges. And why is someone suspected? In Medinipur district, an activist of the APDR was arrested as a suspected Maoist, on the strength of material found in his possession. Such material included a copy of George Thompson’s From Marx to Mao-tse Tung. I still have a copy at home, and I am wondering when it will be my turn to be arrested. In Kolkata, a man was arrested on suspicion of being a Maoist, and he was so traumatized by police action, that he committed suicide. (Ananda Bazar patrika, 9.7.2002). Four days after Ananda Bazar Patrika wrote about this, the CPI(M) daily newspaper, Ganashakti, reported that Benoy Konar told journalists, in reply to a question on whether the police had overstepped the boundaries of human rights, that it is difficult to determine the boundaries of human rights. In addition, Konar treated the media to the homily that the baton of the police is used as a repressive apparatus. (Ganashakti, 11.7,02). In 2002, the Chief Minister said that the KLO in North Bengal or the Maoists elsewhere were holding up development. So the priority for development was used to justify violence on them. The Home Minister’s budget speech for 2002-2003 seeking additional funds for the police highlighted the commitment of the state to modernisation of the police for counter-insurgency; at a time when the government’s debt burden had risen to 7500 billion rupees. (Amit Bhattacharya, ‘Duhsomoy: Ganatantra, Manabadhikar O Paschimbanger ‘Sangbedanshil’ Sarkar’, in Bartaman Lokayatik, 2002-2003, Nos. 3-4 and 1-2, pp. 238-270 . See especially pp. 245-7; and also Ananda Bazar Patrika, 7.8.2002) . There has been a long, very long trail of state and party sponsored violence. The APDR has regularly listed cases. Two comrades, members of the Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha (Forum Against Oppression of Women, Kolkata), Mira Roy and Soma Marik, have written a booklet, Women Under the left Front rule: Expectations Betrayed, where violence on women have been discussed extensively. Not all are cases of political violence. In many cases, we have seen how rapists have been defended by leaders of the ruling party. For example, in August 1991, a young woman had been arrested from a hotel in Kanthi, where she had registered with a male friend. She was then raped by the police. Virtually defending the police, Acting Chief Minister Benoy Chowdhury told the West Bengal Assembly that she had registered under an assumed name with a male friend. In other words, since she was a presumably unmarried woman “gone bad” it was fair enough if the police had a little fun with her. Values I share with them? No thanks.

Violence over Singur and Nandigram are not unrelated to the foregoing. At one level, they reflect the culture of violence supported by the ruling party. At another level, they reflect the submission to neo-liberal globalization, even while a huge rhetoric is floated abroad for the consumption of international left-wing intellectuals. After all, we boast of an intellectual chief minister capable of quoting noted poets as part of his political spiels. So he needs the endorsement of intellectuals.

You write, “We continue to trust that the people of Bengal will not allow their differences on some issues to tear apart the important experiments undertaken in the state (land reforms, local self-government).” Since the signature is mostly of leftwing persons, and since in particular I am writing to you, a well-known Marxist, I trust the signatories, and especially you, know that there is no unified and homogeneous people. I am sorry if I have to spell out such truisms. But in these days of triumph of neo-liberalism, this kind of woolly-woolly, non-class language is being resorted to, even by those whom I have always treated as charter members of the class struggle camp. West Bengal is part of India, and India is a bourgeois state with an economy where extremes coexist. From the latest in Information Technology in Sector V of Salt Lake, it will take you just about two and a half hours by car to get to Nandigram, where you have plenty of poor peasants eking out a living much as their grandparents did. Not that there has been no change, no development, but that has been limited development in a backward capitalist economy. Since the current conflicts seem minor to you, compared to the “important experiments”, let us look at those experiments briefly. As I am not writing a treatise, I do not intend to write for long pages, nor to provide extensive footnotes. It is however necessary to question fundamentally the false claims of the West Bengal Government, that you seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker.

Some years back, when the PRC had just started its trek back to class collaborationist politics, a comrade in the PRC named Franco Grisolia wrote to two of us, asking for a note on the CPI(M) led government, as well as CPI(M)’s support to the UPA at the center, because this model was being held up by supporters of Bertinotti to justify their turn to the right. So Soma Marik and I wrote a longish essay, The Left Front and the United Progressive Alliance, one version of which was published in Italian, and another version, in English, was put up in the website of our comrades of Socialist Democracy, Irish supporters of the Fourth International.

Just one paragraph from that essay will reveal an interesting story: “The key issue of land distribution, in fact, tells an interesting story. In 1967, and again in 1969, two short-lived United Front governments had been formed. There had been a mass upsurge, and huge land seizures and distribution. OF ALL the ceiling-surplus land vested with the state since 1953 (when the West Bengal Estate Acquisition Act was passed) and the year 2000, as much as 44 per cent of this land (6 lakh acres) was obtained in the five-year period between 1967 and 1972, thanks to the energetic initiatives of the two United Fronts; another 26% (3.5 lakh acres) had been acquired earlier. In the last 20 years of Left Front rule only 1.53 lakh acres were acquired, which amounts to almost a quarter of what was achieved during the very short UF regime and almost a half of what was obtained during the 14 years (1953-1967) of Congress rule.” The two United Front governments saw an active left, and one moreover facing a serious challenge from the emerging Maoist forces who eventually became the CPI (ML). Land reform at that time was based on popular initiative, not bureaucratic measures. The collapse of the governments clearly taught the CPI (M) a lesson – to wit, do not rock the boat of the bourgeoisie and their partners if you want a long stint.

As for the important local self government experiments that you talk about, what, really, is significant? The three tier panchayat system has been in operation in other provinces as well. Digvijay Singh, the Congress chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, took measures to extend it to the level of the individual village. Despite much talk about panchayats being organs of self-rule of peasants, rich peasants and teachers formed the bulk. And given the fact that the poorer classes seldom were able to let their children finish secondary education, let alone college, teachers came from rich peasant families, or from non-agricultural families. A survey in one of the districts, Purulia, further showed that real help was received from the government’s developmental projects by a significant part of the rural rich, using their positions in the panchayats. (Prabir Bhattacharyya, ed, Anva Artha 19: Bamfront Sarkar—Ekti Mulyayan, Calcutta, May 1985, pp.11-14.)

You next write: “We send our fullest solidarity to the peasants who have been forcibly
dispossessed. We understand that the government has promised not to build a
chemical hub in the area around Nandigram. We understand that those who had
been dispossessed by the violence are now being allowed back to their homes,
without recrimination. We understand that there is now talk of
reconciliation. This is what we favor.”

This paragraph was drafted by/ is based on arguments by someone who is a dab hand at creating confusions that eventually aid exploiters, but is at the same time able to pull the wool over the eyes of leftists who are a little away from the scene. “We send our fullest solidarity to the peasants who have been forcibly dispossessed.” Exactly which groups are you talking about? Evidently not those of Singur, since the next sentence clearly talks about Nandigram. In Singur, a colonial era law was used to dispossess peasants, to hand over land to one of India’s major capitalist concerns, the Tatas. Even if we accept, (as I do not, as I hope you still do not), the logic of the “free market”, why should a supposedly progressive government use a colonial law to dispossess peasants for the benefit of a capitalist group that is so rich that it can bid for and win in a battle to control a First World company? Why did the government not tell the Tatas to go and negotiate directly with the peasants so that they could get whatever benefits they were able to wrest? Moreover, perhaps your informants forgot to tell you, that there were vast numbers of share croppers, agricultural labourers, as well as people in various industries and transportation sectors in and around Singur, for whom the rich agricultural land of singur mattered. Thus, people in the potato industry (for Singur grows potato) lost out. People transporting potato lost out. Wage labourers lost out. And these, the proletarian sections, have received what compensation? The answer, dear Tariq, is zilch.

So let us pass on to Nandigram. There, your statement is extraordinarily damaging. If it had come from comparable intellectuals in India, I would have used stronger language. I suppose that ignorance lets you partially off the hook. What is sad is that you think it perfectly legitimate to issue a statement even though you are ignorant about the details.

There have been two charges of being dispossessed. On 6^th January, 2007, CPI(M) thugs attacked peasants, and the retaliatory violence drove out a number of them. A further lot left of their own, fearful of the situation. They all stayed in a place called Khejuri. The CVPI(M) has claimed high figures – sometimes mentioning 1500, sometimes 3000. No independent investigation has proved this. Several of us went to Nandigram after the CPI(M) attack of 14 March, when 14 persons, at least, were murdered, and at least four women were raped. At that time, our investigations suggested that tht total number of CPI(M) supporters forced to leave Nandigram were around 300. The APDR twice sent teams to Khejuri, and suggested a figure of around 350. Out of these, some 35 had cleasrly been identified by peasants in Nandigram as active elements in the so-called cadre force of CPI(M) , i.e., the gun toting criminals who eventually carried out the November attacks to “reconquer” Nandigram. Now, in the first days, tens of thousands fled. Over the last few days they have trickled back, after having pledged loyalty to the CPI(M). So there is no recrimination, provided you have the 100% support for the CPI(M).

You write that you understand that the government has promised not to build a chemical hub around Nandigram. This specific reference comes as a surprise. Because it is actually once again a case of your walking into a trap. First, the chemical hub, and a number of similar proposals, are all of the same type – calls to build SEZs. If SEZs are built, who will they benefit? They will not follow even India’s far from excellent labour laws. Secondly, the chemical hub, wherever built, is going to be an environmental disaster. Finally, and most crucially, the West Bengal government never formally promised not to build the chemical hub in Nandigram. What they said was that it will not be built in Nandigram if the people do not want it. Now, after the CPI(M) conquest,( for that is what it was, it was not even the state apparatus going in, but armed forces of the major party of the Left Front), what if people are compelled to say that yes, they do want the chemical hub? Let me remind you, that the CPI(M) is among the world’s largest surviving parties of Stalinist origin, and while the Moscow tie is long gone , the Moscow style has been retained -- but in the service of capitalism. Today’s (21^st November) newspapers already carry a news about how peasants have been forced to give written apologies to the CPI(M) in order to go and work in their fields.

You talk of reconciliation. Between whom do you wish for reconciliation? Now that the CPI(M) has actually conquered the territory by force, would a humble acquiescence, given the inability to do anything else, be treated as reconciliation? Perhaps a little more detail about who the cadres were and how they fought the peasants would come in handy. Cadres — local criminals mostly involved in robbery cases — for the operation were drawn from Chandrakona and Garbeta zonal committees. Also, cadres were sent from Narayangarh and Keshiary areas. Another group of around 250 armed CPM supporters and criminals came from the villages of Punishol at Onda and Rajpur, Taldangra in Bankura.

Sources said criminals were given money in advance and given a free-hand to bring whatever they could from the empty homes once the operation is complete. Sources said one such group that has returned to Onda came with motorcycles.

The Bankura group reached Nandigram after travelling by train and then road. The group boarded trains and allegedly got off at Balichak, four stations after Kharagpur, and then headed towards Nandigram via Khejuri in the guise of daily wage earners. They take the same disguise when they go to Bihar and Jharkhand to collect arms, sources said.

Most of these people are suspected to be running arms smuggling rackets. The arms used in the recapture operation are believed to have been supplied from these suppliers.

Another cache of arms came from Purulia where party workers had received arms to combat Maoists. It is also suspected that the arms gone missing after the Purulia arms drop are with CPM supporters and were smuggled to Nandigram.

The coal mafia from Burdwan is also believed to have played a key role in the operation. The money from the mafia is believed to have supplied funds for the operation, helped in procuring ammunition and hire vehicles that carried the armed men to the interior areas as the attack progressed.

In your final paragraph, written in bold type in the version I received, you write:

“The balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to
split the left. We are faced with a world power that has demolished one
state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran). This is not the time for
division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist.”

So here we get the motivation that led you to write the letter. You do not wish for a split in the left in the face of resurgent US imperialism. Let me go back several years. As you are aware, the Fourth International had been great supporters of the Nicaraguan Revolution, and we, here in locally, tried our best to campaign for Nicaragua. At one stage, when Halima Lopez Sarkar was appointed the Nicaraguan ambassador to India, the CPI(M) decided to take up the campaign for Nicaragua. Of c ourse, with their incomparably bigger force, they could do much more. But when I had a talk with a Sandinista comrade who came here, he accused us of being sectarian to the CPI(M). I pointed out that our problem was simple – the CPI(M) would not even let us do any united front work while retaining our independent political stance. So even if we accept, as you obviously do, that the CPI(M) is a legitimate part of the left, how would we be able to avoid a split? In emails where what passes for debates, CPI(M) supporters are not only abusive towards us, but even to RSP or forward Bloc, partners of the CPI(M) in the Left Front who have been critical about Nandigram as well as the CPI(M)’s sudden volte face over the Nuclear Deal.

Yet you are confident, that it is we who are impetuously causing the split. Tariq, the split is decades old. The CPI(M)’s idea of political hegemony is simple – bash everyone on the left till they genuflect before you. But according to you and your fellow signatories, the basis of divisions no longer appears to exist. If by this you mean that Nandigram’s resistance has been smashed, that armed terrorists of the CPI(M) have silenced the peasants, you are of course right. The basis however exists, because we have been unable to accept what was done.

Your argument, that in the face of the US, we must not fight the CPI(M), can be extended to every tin pot dictator who takes a formal anti-US stand. Meanwhile, the CPI(M) led government constantly strives to welcome multinationals, it fights tooth and nail in defence of globalization. In lieu of several more pages of details, I offer you the URL of Sanhati (Solidarity), an anti-globalization website -- http://www.sanhati.com/ . here you will find plenty of discussions about the Left front government and globalization.

Nonetheless, you will say, what about the Left and its ability to influence the Government of India, or its ability to bring out millions in demonstrations? Once more, even accepting your premise that when you say CPI(M) you still say Left (would you make the same concession for the right wing of the old Italian CP?) , why can we not oppose the CPI(M) on other issues? Or are you saying, that in the face of the US war threat, all class questions inside India disappear? Are you saying that those who are in government and are implementing World Bank-IMF dictated economic policies are such valiant fighters against imperialism that we must accept the loving pats they give us, even through their guns? Would demobilizing militant fighters be then the best road to militant anti-imperialism? I never learnt that from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg or Mandel.

Long years of defeat and retreat have made many of us cautious. I agree that the power of US imperialism is greater than it was. But I firmly believe that we can best contribute to the anti-imperialist struggles by consistent anti-capitalism at the point of our existence. When I joined the Trotskyist movement, nearly three decades back, this was clear to me. This was clear to me even before that, when I understood the meaning of Che’s call to create two, three, many Vietnams. And yes, on 14^th November, despite attempts to turn the protest demonstration into an “apolitical” show by some high profile figures, there were banners and posters, like the one that said, Nandigram is Bengal’s Vietnam, or the poster where Marx says, “Not in My name.” Don’t, please, call for a cession of the struggles of toilers in Marx’s name, and don’t claim that bourgeois reformism, like some land distribution, some registration of sharecroppers, or panchayat elections, make West Bengal a planet apart. Stand by those who have been murdered, and their comrades, and don’t call for a reconciliation between defenders of the ruling class who use sophisticated Marxist sounding jargon, and the crude, unsophisticated, but militant fighters who resist them.

With comradely greetings

Kunal Chattopadhyay

Professor of History

Jadavpur University

Fourth Internationalist since 1980

We loved them once - Upon the centenary of D.D. Kosambi and Hiren Mukherjee

Ashok Mitra
The Telegraph, 23 November

In this season of pragmatists and musclemen, thinkers are a distraction. It is therefore hardly surprising that centenaries of two outstanding ideologues — Damodar Dayananda Kosambi and Hirendra Nath Mukherjee — have passed almost unnoticed in the country: one or two tepid seminars, the rest is silence.

Kosambi was a mathematician who travelled to Marxism and stayed stuck. It was quite an extraordinary journey. Conferred a degree with summa cum laude from Harvard, Kosambi was a Phi Beta Kappa too. He could have opted for a comfortable existence in the United States of America, winning laurels after scholarly laurels, gaining great social eminence and rolling in wealth. Instead, he chose to return home to India, and spent years in research and teaching at the universities at both Benaras and Aligarh, perhaps to take a measure Everything for the cause Everything for the cause Everything for the cause Everything for the cause of orthodoxy and sectarianism of two different genres.

At some point in the late Thirties, he responded to the invitation from Pune’s Fergusson College where, under the tutelage of the Servants of India Society, the stress was on plain living and high thinking. Kosambi fitted snugly into the milieu and embarked on the most productive phase of his academic career. In 1942, Homi Bhabha invited him to join the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, which became Kosambi’s abode for the next 17 years. His services were rudely terminated in 1962 in the wake of the anti-communist frenzy sparked by the border clashes with China. One of the greatest mathematicians the nation has produced since Srinivas Ramanujan was sent packing on the ground that he was an ideologue and, what a horrid thing, a Marxist.

Curiosity does not die down though: how could a pure mathematician of Kosambi’s genre end up, in the course of a bare few years, in the turgid terrain of Marxism? Albert Einstein’s introductory essay, “Why Socialism”, which launched Paul Sweezy’s Monthly Review 60-odd years ago, perhaps provides part of the answer to the riddle. A mathematician is engaged all the while in tackling problems of symmetry and asymmetry, of linearity and non-linearity, of equations and non-equations. He deals with complex variables and the boulevards of statics and dynamics and, in the process, the laws of motion are at the centre of his scholarly concern. As he stares out of his window, he easily discovers in the real world the empirical correlates of the symbols, numbers and puzzles he has been cogitating over. The universe of mathematics has its prototype in the multiplex known as society. Are not integration and differentiation daily issues of human existence, and does not social structure eerily resemble a matrix which is the staple of algebra?

The cognitive aspect apart, Kosambi’s journey to ideology was the denouement of a step-by-step progression, from mathematics to statistics, statistics leading to worrying over a riddle in numismatics, numismatics prodding him on to archaeology — and what could be more natural than archaeological enquiry to evoke an interest in social history, from there the logical final point being the arcadia of ideology? In due course, Kosambi was bowled over by Marx’s law of motion of society, it was precise, logical, coherent, encapsulating history, economics, sociology, anthropology, biology, literature and much else. Kosambi ambled into Marxism much in the natural manner a child learns to walk. At the same time, he possessed much too original a mind to be a conformist. Those whom he used to playfully address as Official Marxists felt uneasy with his somewhat unorthodox analysis of the class structure of Indian society in ancient times. Kosambi was unconcerned. Marxism was a science, it is the burden of science to challenge orthodoxy.

While steadfast in his faith, Kosambi did not care to join the communist party. Hiren Mukherjee, on the other hand, was very much an organization man, always with the party, even in moments when his conscience was tortured by particular party decisions, such as during the Communist Party of India’s vocal support of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency.

A brilliant historian, Mukherjee imbibed the Marxist faith early in his youth, and from then on, dialectical materialism jammed every stream of his consciousness. His oratory, whether English or Bengali or Urdu or, for the matter, Sanskrit, would reach unbelievably great heights. He was a prolific writer as well, ceaselessly at work on behalf of the cause. Each of these was a secondary element in his metabolism; his outstanding attribute was his passion. This passion was, very nearly, a physical phenomenon. One could almost touch it. It would reverberate within the precincts of the Lok Sabha when he was speaking; it would pour out in waves of quivering expressions when he declaimed at public rallies, it would spill over and beyond sentences and paragraphs of the essays on diverse issues he wrote in English and Bengali.

This is where the two ideologues walked away from each other. Kosambi’s Marxism was a package of cool deduction, carefully argued, the harvest of intellection honed over long years. He considered the analysis of social asymmetries as belonging to the category of scientific investigation, historical determinism revealed itself in the course of such explorations. Hiren Mukherjee’s starting point was Damodar Kosambi’s point of rest. To Mukherjee, an ideologue has to be, very nearly, a religious person, a proselytiser in the noblest sense of the term. To disseminate most effectively the seeds of faith, one must, he was convinced, carry along a load of honest passion. Spreading the message of the communist millennium that is a-coming is the most rightful of all causes; to ensure the success of this mission, one must avail of all possible resources, including the armoury of passion. Mukherjee would proceed even further. He would sternly remind his callers that, where Marxism was concerned, passion was more than an accessory, it was the principal thing. Ideology is passion; sans passion, ideology is an inert heap, a heap of abstruse theorizing bound to go over the heads of those whom it is intended to bring into the fold.

Beside the issue of passion, there was that other gulf, already mentioned, separating the two ideologues. Kosambi shunned the party apparatus, Mukherjee was unflinching in his party loyalty. With one exception: he was with the CPI but refused to toe its line of denigration of Josef Stalin. He would extol Stalin as much as he would extol Gandhi and Nehru, defending his position with passion and yet in a manner which did not compromise his ideology. His party was embarrassed, but could do nothing about it.

The middle decades of the 20th century were a golden age for romantics on the Left. A mathematician, otherwise a fanatic for the rigours of science, could still take pride in the philosophy of dialectical materialism he had arrived at, thinking and toiling on his own. An historian, born in the same year as the mathematician, only six months the junior of the other, had voyaged along a different route; his alma mater too was not Harvard, but Oxford, and his forte was not logic but passion. The divergence in the two trajectories hardly mattered. They gave their everything for the cause. The luckier of the two bade adieu before the catastrophe that struck international socialism. The other one lived longer and raged passionately against the dying of the day till his very last moment.

Both these noble ideologues belong, at this juncture, to the category of the discarded. Their centenaries have passed almost unnoticed. The eternal verities, it would seem, remain the patent of classics; consider this couple of lines from the lips of a Marlovian character: “I loved her once, but that was in another country./ And besides, the wench is dead.”

‘No Left content left in CPI-M’

The Staesman, 17 November

Dipankar Bhattacharya succeeded Vinod Mishra as the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation in 1998.

Son of a railway employee, Mr Bhattacharya was born in Guwahati in December 1961. He talks excitedly about his early schooling at Alipurduar ~ “that is when everything was happening, it made me curious and my father with his Marxist inclination helped my understanding”. All the walls in the railway township were painted red with maps of India and the slogan,

“Turn the decade of seventies into the decade of liberation”. It triggered his curiosity and the question, “was not the country already liberated”, haunted him.

Mr Bhattacharya feels there was nothing “abrupt” in his switch to politics from his studies at the Indian Statistical Institute which he joined in 1979. His specialisation covered Indian agriculture, and in his own words: “This education also in a way helped me to understand the society and my formal and political education evolved together. Politics is a transition of knowledge put into practice.” He was given the degree only in 1985.

In 1986, he went underground in an working class area; a year later, he was with the Indian People’s Front (IPF) that was an over-ground affiliate of the party.

In an interview to Hemendra Narayan in the backdrop of the happenings at Nandigram in West Bengal and Naxalite killings in Jharkhand, Mr Bhattacharya discussed a wide spectrum of the Left and ultra-Left politics.

Excerpts:

How do you react to the killings in Jharkhand by the Communist Party (Maoists) cadres? Your party has a strong base in the area. Babulal Marandi is said to be campaigning against Maoists there. Are you losing out to the Maoists in Jharkhand?

I do not see any political logic in these killings. They (Maoists) are killing innocent people. The person they were targeting, Marandi’s brother, escaped. These killings are mindless and completely indefensible. We do not see much in Marandi’s activities. As chief minister, he had indulged in fake surrender of Maoists. There is not much evidence of Marandi countering Maoists and other leaders of the BJP were using Maoists against us.

No, we are certainly not losing out to the Maoists. By terror tactics, they have tried to prevent our supporters from voting our candidates in elections.

Maoist squads have targeted our workers and campaigners in the elections. This had no impact and people have seen through their game. In Chatra and Palamu, their supporters have been joining us.

But does the violence by them have an impact on your over-ground party participating in elections?

Maoist activity does give the state a handle (against us). It does become a handicap in the area where our identity is not well known. But in the area where we are known, it does not matter. We are not losing political space to the Maoists. There are cases where our offices have been targeted and the state aggression has been directed gainst us. We have been singled out for state suppression. This is not a case of mistaken identity, this is because of our identity ~ for we have been at the forefront of the militant assertion by the people. Action against Maoists has been a ploy to justify suppression of our activities.

How do look at the tactics of Naxalites ~ at times, your party has been their target?

After their military strategy in Andhra Pradesh, the pendulum shifted to talks. The government trapped them into talks. They are trying to make up for it by their action in Chhattisgrah and Jharkhand. The people have seen the futility of their activity and loss of initiative. The people are appreciating our point.

However, in spite of the fact that they have indulged in killing our comrades, we have avoided retaliation, and also we have never supported state repression against Maoists.

The two extreme Left groups ~ the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and the CPI (ML) People’s War ~ have merged to form the Communist Party (Maoists). What are the chances of merger of other extreme Left groups?

The two groups have yet to sort out all issues. They have no immediate political agenda. We are trying to unite people who do not subscribe to their anarchist policy. Also, in the Left spectrum there are people who are perturbed over the Right-wing shift of the CPI-M. We are trying to give this a shape. People from the CPI-M in Punjab were split on the ideological point.

Such shift has also taken place in Orissa. In West Bengal, serious Left forces, activists are looking up to us and joining us. The feeling is that sections of the CPI-M have become power seekers and power brokers without any Left content being left in them. People with roots in the ideology are turning towards CPI-(ML) Liberation.

What do you think of Nandigram and the CPI-M’s moves there?

The CPI-M’s calculation appears to be that a friendly Central government would help them assert themselves in Nandigram and recover respectability. The party has never been so discredited and isolated in West Bengal as it is now.
All democratic norms have been flouted with impunity.

After 30 years in power, the CPI-M just cannot accept the fact that the rural poor have the guts to challenge it. This intolerance is at the heart of the whole episode. Another reprehensible aspect is that there appears to be a link now between the CPI-M’s Nandigram strategy and their softening of opposition to the nuclear deal.

In West Bengal, the incidents of ration riots recently took place across the state, particularly in Bankura. The ruling party has blamed the extreme Left, as in Nandigram, by pointing to arson as a tool to cause these riots. What have you to say?

Well, the public distribution system is in a shambles in many parts of the country. In West Bengal, the nexus between corrupt PDS dealers and panchayat officials is presided over by the CPI-M. They have consolidated this nexus for the last thirty years and rural people have been exploited. Now they are blaming the extreme Left for everything.
The ruling Left Front has forgotten the language of protest. Such a language of protest could be traced right through the 1857 Uprising, Chauri Chaura episode of Gandhi days; Jayaprakash Narayan was leading the freedom movement in 1942 when rail lines were uprooted. This is the language of the people when they are angry. They (Left Front) are deceiving themselves and do not recognise the reality.

How about the situation in Siwan now that Shahabuddin is in jail. It is an area where your party has a strong base?

People in Siwan are yearning for the end of Shahbuddin’s terror. CPI-ML’s protracted struggle has been a factor in cornering Shahabuddin. Our comrades, our party have played a role. He is down but not out yet. Among the Muslim community, there was a contrived sense of polarisation, but now within that community also we find our role being taken in the right perspective and we strike a stronger chord with the Muslims now.

What is the situation in Bhojpur? It gave your party’s first MP? For many, it has been Naxalbari manifesting itself in the sprawling Ikwari village in the district.

We have managed to consolidate our strength. It is clear to everybody. It has taken many years. Jawala Singh (a feudal lord of yesteryears in the area) and Ranbir Sena are not in the scene now.

Our party enjoys a lot of respect. The attrition and confrontation with the Ranbir Sena has taken a lot of our energy. We have to expand, for there are areas where we have a slim presence. We have overcome the challenge and are now reaching out to all sections.

A significant activity was the celebrations of the 1857 event in Bhojpur. We organised a programme in the name of Kuer Singh (an Uprising hero). We freed Kuer from getting a caste tag as there was an attempt to bind his legacy to a caste. We projected Kuer’s revolt in a different light. This has been an eye opener. There are positive signs and the party has been able to broaden its base.

Alipurduar is not far from Naxalbari. Did you visit Naxalbari?

With the advent of the Naxalbari movement, all the walls of Alipurduar had been painted red with maps of India bearing slogans like “Turn the seventies into the decade of liberation”. It had triggered my curiosity as to why liberate the country again. The first dead body I saw in my life was that of a young comrade, a martyr.

The All India Students Association, CPI(ML) Liberation’s students wing, has emerged on top in the recent JNU elections. How do you see it?

Basically the revival was on account of AISA’s activities on the campus. AISA took up the cause of workers of the university.

The CPI-M’s activities in West Bengal have angered the students. It is for the first time that the SFI, the students wing of the CPI-M, has not won a single seat in the JNU since 1989 when Army tanks rolled down Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Nandigram has proved to be the CPI-M’s Tiananmen Square.

How do you view the developments in Nepal with Maoists getting power in the government?

We do not formally have any party-to-party relationship with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). They have certainly shown better political maturity than the self-styled Indian Maoists and Marxists. They have combined people’s war and the mass upsurge well. Now, the difficult part of the journey has begun. Sitting in India, we can wish them well.

The establishment of Nepal as a Republic and the restoration of democracy without any foreign intervention would be an achievement there.

(The interviewer is a Special Representative, The Statesman, New Delhi.)

Army deployed after Calcutta riot

BBC News, 21 November

Troops have been deployed in the Indian city of Calcutta after protests over a controversial writer turned into riots.

Police using tear gas and baton charges were unable to control crowds calling for Bangladeshi feminist writer Taslima Nasreen to leave India.

Rioters blocked roads and set cars alight. At least 27 people were hurt. More than 100 arrests have been made.

Crowds were also protesting at recent attacks on Muslims in the Nandigram area in the east of West Bengal state.

A number of people have been killed and thousands left homeless in Nandigram after violence over now-abandoned state plans to industrialise farm land in the area.

Roads blocked

Wednesday's trouble in the state capital began after the predominantly Muslim All-India Minority Forum called for blockades on major roads in the city.


"We have called out the army and they will help us restore order"
Prasad Ranjan Ray,
State home secretary


The group said Ms Nasreen had "seriously hurt Muslim sentiments". Many Muslims say her writing ridicules Islam.

Police arrived in strength to disperse the demonstrators.

Violence then broke out in Ripon Street in the north of the city and spread to Park Circus, Moulali and many other areas of central Calcutta.

The BBC's Subir Bhaumik in Calcutta says he saw two army columns, one in Park Circus and one in Moulali.

For most of the day, parts of the city centre were a no-go area, with main roads closed to traffic and commuters stranded.

Children spent hours in buses before they could be returned to the safety of their schools.

"The protesters started pelting policemen with brick bats and acid bottles in several places, so we can say the trouble making was planned and co-ordinated," Calcutta police chief Gautam Chakrabarty said.

Idris Ali, a senior leader of the Minority Forum, blamed the state's ruling Communists for the violence.

"They have infiltrated our ranks and sparked the violence. We wanted to protest peacefully but the Marxists are trying to discredit us," Mr Ali told the BBC.

The Marxists denied the charge.

"We had no idea of their plans, they have planned the trouble, they must take the blame for this mayhem," Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Biman Bose said.

'Red terror'

The All-India Minority Forum says Taslima Nasreen's Indian visa should be revoked and she should be forced to leave the country.

Critics say she called for the Koran to be changed to give women greater rights, but she vehemently denied making the comments.

Ms Nasreen fled Bangladesh in the early 1990s after death threats and has spent the last three years in Calcutta after a long stay in Europe.

India has not granted her citizenship which she has requested but has granted regular visa extensions.

Minority Forum leaders accuse West Bengal's government of "red terror" in the Nandigram enclave, a troubled cluster of villages to the south-west of Calcutta.

The state government denies it has failed to protect the people of the area from attacks by its supporters.

Cry, Calcutta - Waves of anarchy bring army out

The Telegraph, 22 November

A girl breaks down outside her school on AJC Bose Road during the violence on Wednesday.

Inconsolable children in school uniform wail. Grown-ups in office-wear hold aloft hands and file past bewildered men in blue riot gear.

Calcutta, Nov. 21: The two universal symbols of suffering and submission played out for hours in Calcutta today as an explosive cocktail of perceived and other grievances caught fire and burned the heart of the city — the spark lit by an unseen hand.

Wave after wave of mobs — largely made of youths — mounted West Asia-style attacks on police in the maze of lanes that formed a truncated triangle in central Calcutta.

Most of the youths were missing from a demonstration that wound its way through parts of central Calcutta, raising among several demands the ejection of Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen from India and protesting the Nandigram killings.

However, feeding on an unexplained frenzy probably aided by the pressure-cooker atmosphere that set in after the last few months of turmoil over disparate issues, the protest took on a life of its own and sucked into its vortex countless excitable youths waiting to erupt.

By the time darkness fell on the wild dance of defiance, the army was patrolling parts of Calcutta after over a decade. An eight-hour night curfew was also in place as the city went to bed unsure of which way the morning will swing.


If the restraint shown by the Nandigram-scalded police works and the usual calming effect of flag marches kicks in, Thursday should see the gamble of the Bengal government calling for the army in a hurry paying off.

“It seems things have settled down a bit,” a senior police officer told The Telegraph on Wednesday night as soldiers in battle fatigues stationed themselves at sensitive spots.

Referring to suggestions that the situation could have been brought under control had the police opened fire, commissioner Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti said: “Who will dare to open fire? If we do, people will claim that it is unconstitutional.” The high court had termed the March 14 police firing in Nandigram “unconstitutional”.

Around 250 people had assembled around 9.40am near Ripon Street to take part in the protest that began as a sit-in. When the police tried to clear the roadblock during the morning traffic peak-hour, trouble broke out in Park Circus and CIT Road, apparently triggered by rumours of action against the squatters.

People started pouring out and by 10.30am, the police and the Rapid Action Force — which were expecting little more than a traffic headache that has become par for the course after the Nandigram recapture — were on the back foot.


As 350-odd policemen advanced towards the swelling tide of protesters, brickbats and bottles rained on them amid chants of “Go back, Taslima”.

“We do not want Taslima here… Send her back,” thundered a middle-aged man who later identified himself only as Alam, standing at the Ripon Street-AJC Bose Road crossing.

“Do not confuse this with Nandigram… We do not want Taslima, that’s all,” he shouted — a refrain that caught on later as some television channels turned the vandalism into a backlash solely linked to the troubled zone.

As the day progressed, Nandigram took a back seat and the anger against Taslima overshadowed other demands.

The planned chakka jam — organised by the All India Minority Forum and Furfura Sarif Muzadeedia Anath Foundation and the Jamait Ulema-i-Hind (according to the police) — soon snowballed into a fullblown urban war.

Around 12,000 to 15,000 people marched on the streets, throwing missiles at the police, torching at least 17 vehicles, including private cars, and effectively keeping thousands of children captive in schools that dot the area.

The plight of marooned schoolchildren sent waves of panic with parents groping in the dark, which made the whole city reel under the impact of the “localised” street battles.

“The school is in the middle of the trouble zone. I wonder how we will get out,” shuddered Ranjit Sen, father of Ronita, a Class X student of Pratt Memorial.

“The trauma caused to schoolchildren and teachers is particularly” reprehensible, governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi said in a statement.

To keep themselves out of the way of the police baton, many office-goers raised both hands overhead — a gesture seen usually in areas where Section 144 is in force.

Burning its fingers in Nandigram with ham-handed police action and the resultant rebuke from the high court, the state government decided to call the army at 2.10pm.

The army brass in Fort William were asked to “appreciate” that the police had already made lathi-charges and had fired tear gas shells at the mobs. “The next step would have been to open fire,” an army officer told The Telegraph. “They (the state government) did not want to take such a risk.”

The police decision to treat the protesters with kid gloves — other than lathis and tear gas shells, few crowd-control devices were used — drew some fire initially.

But the absence of confirmed loss of life at the end of the day — and considering the possessed manner in which some of the protesters kept coming back to attack the police — suggests restraint was a prudent step and tougher action could have led to a bloodbath.

“We decided to call the army to ensure that the situation didn’t go out of control,” chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said.

“The police had been attacked…. But they showed restraint and tried to contain the trouble though it took some time,” said Bhattacharjee, who held the minority forum responsible for the riot.

“Tremendous disrespect has been shown to Calcutta by an irresponsible leadership,” he said, referring to the forum.

Late in the evening, CPM leaders Biman Bose — who backtracked on an initial comment that suggested Taslima should leave — and Mohammad Salim visited some of the affected areas to advocate peace.

Taslima was not seen outside her residence in Calcutta and guards said she was not in her flat.

Till the evening, the police had arrested 57 people on charges of rioting.

NREGA: Dismantling the contractor raj

Jean Drèze
The Hindu, 20 November

A recent survey on NREGA in western Orissa points to a quiet sabotage of the transparency safeguards aimed at perpetuating the traditional system of extortion in rural employment programmes.

Once upon a time, rural employment programmes in Orissa (or for that matter in much of India) were safely in the hands of private contractors and their political masters. The game was roughly as follows. Private contractors were the direct recipients of “work orders,” and of the corresponding funds. They made money by submitting fudged “muster rolls,” with inflated employment and wage figures. A substantial part of the loot was recycled through the so-called “PC” (percentage) system, whereby various functionaries received fixed percentages of the amounts released. The contractors also had to pay tribute to their political bosses, for whom these funds came handy during election campaigns. This is the sort of situation that led P. Sainath to say that “everybody loves a good drought” — the peak season for rural employment programmes. Labourers, for their part, worked hard and earned a pittance.

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was supposed to bring about a radical change in this state of affairs. Under NREGA, rural labourers have a legal entitlement not only to work on demand but also to minimum wages. To prevent corruption, a wide range of transparency safeguards has been built into the Act. For instance, muster rolls are supposed to be kept at the worksite, displayed at the Panchayat Bhawan, and read out in public at the time of wage payments. Employment and wage details also have to be entered in the labourers’ “Job Cards”, to enable them to verify the records for themselves. Contractors are banned.

In some States, there is evidence of substantial progress in this transition towards a transparent and accountable system. In Rajasthan, for instance, contractors have virtually disappeared from NREGA and mass fudging of muster rolls is a thing of the past. Andhra Pradesh is also making rapid strides in this direction through strict record-keeping, institutionalised social audits and the payment of wages through Post Offices. In a recent survey of Surjguja and Koriya districts (Chhattisgarh), we found that in gram panchayat works, 95 per cent of the wages paid according to the muster rolls had actually reached the labourers concerned. This is a major achievement, especially in contrast with the situation just two years ago when a similar survey in the same area had uncovered evidence of massive fraud in the National Food For Work Programme.

However, the same transition is proving quite slow in some other States. A recent survey of NREGA in western Orissa, for instance, suggests that the “contractor raj” is alive (if not well) in this region. This survey, initiated by the G.B. Pant Social Science Institute at Allahabad University, was conducted from 3-12 October 2007 by students of the Delhi University in collaboration with local volunteers. Thirty randomly-selected gram panchayats, spread over three districts (Bolangir, Boudh and Kalahandi), were studied. The survey included careful verification of “muster rolls” for one randomly-selected NREGA work in each of these gram panchayats.

The survey points to a quiet sabotage of the transparency safeguards aimed at perpetuating the traditional system of extortion in rural employment programmes. Before elaborating, a few words about how NREGA works in Orissa may be useful. To keep things simple, the main focus here is on works implemented by the gram panchayats (these account for the bulk of NREGA funds in Orissa). At the gram panchayat level, the main responsibility for implementing NREGA works lies with the Panchayat Executive Officer (PEO). In some panchayats, the PEOs are assisted by Gram Rozgar Sevaks, but they are yet to be appointed in most cases. Another key actor is the Village Labour Leader (VLL), who is supposed to be selected by the gram sabha for the purpose of “supervising” a specific worksite.

The role of the VLL is actually in transition. The VLL concept goes back to the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY), a predecessor of NREGA. At that time, the VLL was a de facto contractor. He or she received the work orders, spent the funds, arranged the works, and filled the muster rolls. Under NREGA, funds are routed through the panchayat and the VLL is supposed to be a mere worksite supervisor, who earns wages at the same rate as other labourers. In practice, however, the post of VLL continues to act as a convenient foothold for the contractors. In many of the sample gram panchayats, the VLL was a small-time contractor or an agent of local contractors. In about half of the 30 sample worksites, the survey team found evidence that a contractor was involved in this or other ways.

The breakdown of the transparency safeguards is well illustrated by the fate of the Job Card. The main purpose of the Job Card is to enable NREGA labourers to verify their own employment and wage details. In Orissa, however, this purpose has been defeated from the start due to the faulty design of the Job Card. For instance, there is no column for “wages paid” in the card, making it impossible for workers to verify their wage payments. Even the number of days worked is hard to verify, as the names of the labourer and worksite have been replaced by numerical codes. To decipher a labourer’s code, one has to refer to the first page of the Job Card, which is often in English! The meaning of the worksite code, for its part, is anyone’s guess. In this and other ways, the Job Card is virtually unreadable, even for trained investigators — let alone semi-literate labourers.

The fate of muster rolls is not much better. In most of the sample gram panchayats, it was observed that various “adjustments” in the muster rolls had become routine practice. For instance, a worker without a Job Card is often accommodated by “clubbing” his or her wages with those of someone who has a Job Card under the latter’s name. Similarly, team work performed under the piece-rate system is often recorded under the name of the team leader alone. Sometimes, adjustments are also made to meet the requirements of the online Monitoring and Information System (MIS). These and related practices, well-intentioned as they might be in some cases, open the door to further “adjustments” that serve different purposes. In fact, the pressure to make adjustments in some circumstances (e.g. meeting the requirements of the MIS) seems to have become a handy cover for fraudulent practices, such as inflating the wage payments and pocketing the difference.

The bottom line is that the records are virtually unverifiable. Job Cards have become symbolic documents, and almost any discrepancy in the muster rolls can be justified in the name of “adjustments.” In this opaque environment, contractors have a field day. The extent of the loot is hard to estimate, given the near unverifiability of the muster rolls, but the “PC system” provides some useful clues. According to fairly reliable sources (including several contractors), the PC system — where it applies — absorbs about 20 to 25 per cent of NREGA funds in the sample Blocks. The “profit” of the contractors, for its part, appears to be of the order of 10 to 15 per cent. This suggests that 30 to 40 per cent of NREGA funds are siphoned off in this area.

The silver lining is that, even in Orissa, the traditional system of extortion seems to be finding it harder and harder to survive. In fact, contractors are not particularly happy with NREGA; vulnerable as it may be, the system has become more difficult for them to control. They are apprehensive of a possible tightening of the checks and balances, and have started fading away in some places (in almost half of the sample gram panchayats, there was no evidence of their involvement).

In some of the sample gram panchayats (notably in the Boudh District), corruption levels in NREGA are already much lower, by all accounts, than in earlier employment programmes such as SGRY and the National Food For Work Programme. Strict implementation of the transparency safeguards is the best way to accelerate this process of “phasing out” of the traditional system of corruption.

This story would be incomplete without a mention of the tremendous potential of NREGA in the survey areas. Where work was available, it was generally found that workers earned close to (and sometimes more than) the statutory minimum wage of Rs 70 per day, and that wages were paid within 15 days or so. This is an unprecedented opportunity for the rural poor, and there was evident appreciation of it among casual labourers and other disadvantaged sections of the population. Some of them even hoped that NREGA would enable them to avoid long-distance seasonal migration, with all its hardships.

Further, there is plenty of scope for productive NREGA works in this area, whether it is in the field of water conservation, rural connectivity, regeneration of forest land, or improvement of private agricultural land. The challenges involved in “making NREGA work” should always be seen in the light of these long-term possibilities, and their significance for the rural poor.

(The author is Visiting Professor at Allahabad University, and a member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council.)

THE COMMUTWITS’ TRIUMPH - Nandigram is supposed to have taught the reactionaries a lesson

Ashok V. Desai
The Telegraph, 20 November

In Godhra, some people detached a bogie of a train in February 2002, locked in the passengers and burnt them. The perpetrators were never conclusively identified. The Hindutwits claimed that the murderers were Muslims, and called for retribution. It started the next day. Hindu mobs killed thousands of Muslims, looted and destroyed Muslim businesses, and in three days, turned Muslims into the new scheduled caste of Gujarat — poor, deprived and maligned.

In Nandigram, some people forced local supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to leave, destroyed bridges, dug up roads, and isolated Nandigram from the rest of West Bengal. No one knows who they were. It is widely believed that they were local villagers. The CPI(M) said they were members of the Trinamul Congress, Naxalites, or both, and called for retribution. Armed commutwit mobs invaded Nandigram, killed and wounded hundreds, destroyed their homes, and turned them into the new scheduled caste of West Bengal.

This is not a coincidence; it is transfer of the technology of violence. In the Eighties, the BJP was exasperated; however hard it tried, it just could not get itself elected in any numbers, let alone come to power. And there, in the east, was CPI(M), an equally committed, ideologically-focused party, which simply could not be driven out of power. How did they do it? The Hindutwits diligently studied the secret of communist hegemony.

They worked out that the secret lay in the creation of a captive mob. Till the Sixties, West Bengal used to be India’s most industrialized state. It was the home of the jute industry, India’s largest industry next only to textiles. It was a leader in engineering; in those days of import substitution, anyone who could not get a machine or a part headed for Calcutta, where workshops could reproduce the most complicated engineering goods.

Then arrived bulk handling and cheap plastics. Pourable goods such as cereals began to be transported in containers in the United States of America. Railways acquired new wagons to transport containers; the first container ship was built in the US in 1956, if I remember right. Soon, bulk transportation spread across all the oceans, and increasingly along railway lines. And if small quantities of pourable goods had to be stored, plastic bags were more sturdy than gunny bags, and gave better protection. So over the Sixties and Seventies, life slowly seeped out of Calcutta’s jute industry. And the slump of 1965 hit its engineering industry hard.

That was when the CPI(M) found a niche amongst the embattled industrial workers. Citu started organizing them; it developed the technology of bringing them out in processions and paralysing Calcutta. It taught workers to abuse and attack managers. In a pyrrhic victory, it drove industry out of West Bengal, but captured the unemployed workers — and young men who never had any jobs. They became the CPI(M)’s foot-soldiers. They developed a rough-and-ready social insurance system: they intimidated and collected money from whoever was making a living — shopkeepers, hawkers, farmers, whoever wanted a peaceful life and could pay for it. If the victims belonged to the Congress, so much the better. Within ten years, the musclemen taught West Bengal that it was unprofitable to belong to the Congress — and that supporting CPI(M) minimized costs. This is how the commutwit monopoly of power was created in West Bengal.

Having learnt this technology, the Hindutwits reproduced it in Gujarat. In every village, every community, they collected musclemen and set up branches. But in one respect, they had it easier than the commutwits. Gujarat is more commercialized and industrialized than West Bengal; there were many more rich men to tap, and, correspondingly, the tribute to be collected from each was smaller — so small that many of them would not mind paying. Besides, many of these rich men could be asked to give jobs to the faithful, in which case those believers did not have to be paid a dole at all.

But how were those moneybags to be persuaded that Muslims were their enemies? Right into the Nineties, 600 tons — 600,000,000 grams — of gold used to be smuggled into India. So was most of synthetic cloth. So were thousands of watches. All these goods used to be loaded into fast boats in Dubai, carried across the sea, and land on Gujarat’s coast. They were a source of great convenience for consumers fed up with the rigours of the socialist state, and a source of prosperity for those involved in smuggling and selling the goods; most of whom were Muslims. Once in a while some smugglers were caught; their names were predominantly Muslim. Sometimes the smugglers fought and murdered one another; those caught were again Muslims. Thus there arose an impression in Gujarat that Muslims were smugglers and thieves. So when the Hindutwits offered to sanitize Gujarat of the Muslim criminals, they found ready clients. When they removed Muslim competitors from business, their services were all the more appreciated by Hindu shopkeepers. When the commutwits sanitized West Bengal, they created an economic desert. When the Hindutwits sanitized Gujarat, some flowers went missing, but business continued to bloom.

This is where the difference lies. Year after year, Gujarat grows faster than West Bengal. West Bengal, once one of the richest states, has fallen behind until it is just about average today; Gujarat, once average, has advanced upwards. No ruler of West Bengal who attends meetings in the South and North Blocks of Delhi, who can read figures, can ignore West Bengal’s decline.

That is why the commutwits are in a hurry. But they cannot bring back the capitalists whom they scared away in the Sixties. Nor can they tolerate the emergence of thousands of small industrialists, for whom trade unions would be anathema. What would be compatible with Citu’s prosperity? Obviously, industries that pay workers well. So the commutwits’ first answer was information technology. They laid out the red carpet for IT moguls. Some came, but on the whole they preferred the South; it has a huge output of graduates with good English, and they do not mind people from other states coming in. So today, West Bengal’s IT employment is still in thousands — no higher than that of Gujarat.

Now the commutwits have thought of big industries like steel and car-making. These require large tracts of land, and the commutwits are determined to clear land of obstructive human beings, however much blood they have to shed. The Hindutwits think that the post-Godhra riots taught Muslims a lesson; the commutwits think that Nandigram has taught the reactionaries a lesson. And if it has not, they will teach it again, in battlegrounds galore. Mamata, take guard!

Each lesson will reduce the number of industrialists that would be prepared to invest in West Bengal; Buddhadeb will have to travel ever farther to find an investor. But it is a quest in the right direction — for making West Bengal India’s richest state. It may take some time, and many lives, but so what? Revolutions cannot be made without bloodshed. In the meanwhile, the prime minister will continue to monitor the situation closely — from Moscow, Washington, Cape Town, from his eyrie on Race Course Road.

For Soumitra, Maoists get reel

Anjan Chakraborty
The Statesman, 20 November

KOLKATA, Nov. 19: They are known to target CPI-M leaders and police ~ be it in words or action. But for the first time, Maoists have chosen an apolitical person, Satyajit Ray’s favourite actor, Soumitra Chatterjee, to correspond with and question his stand on the Nandigram issue. Though the letter does not “call for his head”, as Maoist mails often do, or warn him to stay away from the CPI-M, it has made police sit up and take notice.

The letter, written by the state secretary of CPI (Maoists), to Soumitra Chatterjee, questions the Tollywood actor’s stand on the recapture of Nandigram by CPI-M cadres. “You played the character of Pandit Mashai in the film Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds) where there was a division between ‘we’ and ‘them’. You had portrayed a rebel character in the film and in the end the rebels were victorious.”

“But that was 1980 (the year the Satyajit Ray film was released), now this is 2007 and you have switched allegiance. In the fight that is going on, there is a division between ‘we’ and ‘them’ as well, but you have now taken the side of Hirak Raja (Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee). In this fight, the general public have retreated temporarily, but what will happen in the end? What does history tell you?,” the letter cautioned the Tollywood actor.

The letter, dated 14 November, also questioned why Soumitra Chatterjee has taken up the side of the “oppressor”. “Why are you scared? For what reason? In exchange of what have you sold your protesting self to Buddhadeb? We do not know whether there is any reservation or secret reason that compelled you to align with Buddhadeb. You have got everything in life ~ money and recognition ~ then what more do you want that you have to pawn your thinking to the fascist rulers? Think ....,” wrote the state secretary of CPI (Maoist). The letter ends with a note of caution: “There is still time to stand by the ‘oppressed’ people and tell them that you are one of them and had somehow lost your way. We do not wish that the love and affection that you earned by portraying the character of Pandit Mashai in Hirak Rajar Deshe is transformed into public hatred.”

When The Statesman tried to contact Soumitra Chatterjee, his cell phone was found switched off and on calling up his residence a family member said he was unwell and would not like to discuss Nand-igram. The South 24 Parganas SP, Mr Praveen Kumar, first denied having any knowledge of any CPI (Maoist) letter to Chatterjee, but later said ‘after checking with the local police station’ that “they had sent some policemen to the actor’s residence to find out if he had received the letter or not”.

CPM, Majlis spar in Andhra House

Statesman News Service. 20 November

HYDERABAD, Nov. 19: The CPI-M and Majlis Ittehadul Musilmeen today sparred in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly over continuing violence in Nandigram. The Majlis promised that it would soon enter West Bengal to win over Muslims.

MIM floor leader Mr Akbaruddin Owaisi, during a discussion on minorities’ welfare, said the West Bengal government was talking in Gujarat chief minister Mr Narendra Modi’s language. He was referring to West Bengal chief minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, saying the victims at Nandigram were paid back in their own coin.
CPI-M floor leader Mr N Narasimiah bristled and said the MIM was a party confined to only the Old City.

“They have no right to criticise Marxists and Communists. We don’t need to take lessons from you,” he said. Countering this, Mr Owaisi said they have a presence across Andhra Pradesh and had contested a few constituencies in West Bengal as well. “Mr Bhattacharjee is justifying the killings and talking like Mr Modi,” he said.

Mr Narasimiah shot back: “How can you compare Mr Bhattacharjee with Mr Modi? Nandigram is different. Maoists have infiltrated the place and the violence was started by them. This is happening despite the West Bengal government stating four months ago that it would not acquire land at Nandigram for the special economic zone. We are at the forefront of protecting secularism,” he said.

Mr Owaisi accused the CPI-M of double standards, by taking away farmers’ lands in West Bengal and demanding lands for farmers in states like Andhra Pradesh. “Soon, we will go to West Bengal and win the hearts of Muslims there," he said.

Wheels within the nuclear wheels

Raju Santhanam
The Statesman, 20 November

The Left “clearance” for the IAEA talks does not represent a weakening either in the Left position or a “thaw” in the relations between the two major UPA partners. It begs a bigger question: is the Congress misreading the Left again?

Actually, the chances of a mid-term election have only increased. The reason: the nuclear deal, the bone of contention, will come up again as a make-or-break issue when the Left-Congress committee meets to consider the India-specific safeguards.

Ironically, everyone including the Left acknowledges that not many know or realise the implications of the nuclear deal except a select few of the SMS generation. The issue is unlikely to influence the voter. In addition, a Parliament resolution on the deal, whether put to vote or not, would hardly enthuse voters burdened by aam aadmi issues. Yet by hardening their positions, Mr Prakash Karat and Dr Manmohan Singh ~ both driven by conviction and for their own ideological reasons ~ appear to be steering the country towards yet another mid-term poll.

Each side is hugely suspicious of the other. If Mr. Karat’s hobnobbing with the likes of Amar Singh was not taken to very kindly, statements emanating from senior ministers threatening elections have also not helped. The Left’s green signal for talks with the IAEA has to be seen in the context of mutual suspicion between a nuclear “love-struck “ Congress and an embittered Left that is determined the country have no truck with the USA. While the Left-Congress marriage is clearly on the rocks what has added to their plight is lack of communication and mutual suspicion.

The question everyone in Delhi is asking is why the Left has “given in” on the IAEA talks. When such a suggestion was made in the first week of October, the Left rejected it outright. What has changed since then? Is this merely to give Dr Singh face? If the government returns from the IAEA talks and the Left rejects its proposal, would that not cause greater loss of face? Or, is the Left move a googly that would finally lead to a face-off?

The facts that come tumbling out are too clear to miss. With the Left green signal, the following things have been set into motion. A quick agreement with the IAEA to get India specific safeguards before the UPA committee, further discussions with the Nuclear Supplier Group, then ratification by the US Congress. But the proponents of the deal are running against time.

If the US pointsman is to be believed, everything should have been done by early January 2008 for ratification by the US Congress. The Congress in Washington requires a minimum 30-day notice.

Now if the Left has its way, it would ensure that even the intra-UPA committee meeting would not take place before December. In effect, March appears to be cut off point as far as the Bush administration is concerned and already there are murmurs from Left quarters that even if everything is in order the Government should not sign up with Bush, a lame duck outgoing US President.

The Left strategy thus seems to be to buy time and to ensure that nothing substantially moves before February.

On its part, the Congress does not want to waste any time. The proponents of the nuclear deal are taking the Left nod for a yes to the nuclear deal. The Left “clearance” is seen as a virtual go-ahead because commitments in international fora need to be honored. Sources in the Government say if the UPA joint committee rejects the proposal after talks with IAEA then it will have no option but to press for polls. The AICC resolution supporting the nuclear deal will be seen as the entire party’s endorsement of the deal. The ace up the Congress sleeve is the Gujarat Assembly election results slated for December.

However, has enough groundwork been done for mid-term polls? If now the entire exercise of rushing to swing the deal ends up in opposition from the Left once again, it would mean egg on the face unless the logical corollary is the announcement of elections.

A Congress win in Gujarat would certainly embolden the UPA to go for mid-term polls. Internally, the Congress is quoting the Left’s own assessment that the Left would lose at least 20 seats in the event of early Lok Sabha polls.

Therefore, the Left gesture in what seems like a volte-face appears in effect only to be a ruse to buy time. The only reason they allowed the IAEA talks was the suspicion that the Congress might blow the election bugle sooner than anticipated.

With both the Congress and the Left not really budging from stated positions ~ the Left did budge a millimetre ~ the question is who will blink first. In the past, it was the Congress that swallowed its pride and backtracked; within days of a strong Left reaction both Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh offered to put the nuclear deal on hold. The same allies who had supported the deal developed cold feet. Some members of the core group too who were initially prepared to face polls also began having second thoughts. The Congress was then totally unprepared to even threaten mid-term polls.

The first face off could be on 23 December when the Gujarat election results are out. By that time, crucial meetings between IAEA, the NSG and the UPA coordination committee would be under way. There is little chance that by December-end Mr Karat would reconsider and see any merit in the nuclear deal whatever the India specific safeguards. Dr Singh is hardly expected to budge from his position that the Indo-US nuclear deal represents a turning point in the country’s history.

The battle-lines are drawn. On the last occasion, the Congress was clearly surprised by the Left roadblock on the deal. Part of it is also a misreading of the Left, a factor that made Congress lobbyists run to Budhadheb Bhattacharjee and Jyoti Basu.

This time the Congress appears to have finally realised that the Left speaks with one voice. It is more prepared as indications from the AICC session suggest. The Left too is ready to put the government “on autopilot” as Mr Karat himself threatens.

While the Left exercise is calibrated like a chess game, the Congress strategy seems based on factors they have no control over. While a Congress win in Gujarat would embolden the party, a defeat at the hands of Narendra Modi would herald vacillation, indecision and lack of political conviction, something the Congress has displayed in the past.

(The author, a veteran journalist, is a former Resident Editor of The Statesman.)

CM determined to set up chemical hub in Nandigram: Kshiti Goswami

www.uniindia.com
Created on : 11/17/2007 2:01:20 PM (NORMAL )

West Midnapore, Nov 17 (UNI) RSP leader and State PWD Minister Kshiti Goswami today alleged that West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is determined to set up a chemical hub in Nandigram.

''In spite of assurance by the Chief Minister that no chemical hub would be built here, secret preparations were on to have it set up in Nandigram itself,'' the RSP leader said.

''The CPI(M) activists have taken control of Nandigram. The BUPC supporters have been driven out and I have confidential information that they will finally settle in Nayachar Island, leaving the fate of Nandigram to be decided by the CPI(M) cadres,'' Mr Goswami maintained.

He was talking to newspersons at the PWD Guest House here this morning. He had been attending a two-day district conference of the RSP in Midnapore town.

Coming down heavily on Mr Bhattacharjee, Mr Goswami said the Chief Minister's party was following the ''Chinese form of Communism'', while forcibly taking over land from the poor farmers.

''Of late, the Chief Minister and his men have been staunch followers of the Chinese model of communism. In China, millions of farmers had been killed in the 60,000-odd riots, while snatching away their land,'' he said.

Mr Goswami, who is a core committee member of the State Cabinet, pointed that the State government was determined to setting up a Hub in Nandigram, in spite of recommendations by the committee to avoid the project taking over multi-cropping land.

''Since the mini-Front members were a majority in the Core Committee, two more ministers Kiranmoy Nanda and Pratim Chattarjee have been recently inducted into their side to gain majority,'' Mr Goswami alleged.

He further maintained, ''Stories of induction of Maoists were nothing but lies to mislead the people of the state.'' Mr Goswami said he will go through the deliberations of all the district conferences of the party beginning with Midnapore, before reconsidering his withdrawal from the Ministry.


The news, notwithstanding the somewhat clumsy reportage, seems to point to a very real threat.

Remember that Buddhadev Bhattacharya said, "There shall be no chemical hub in Nandigram unless the people there want it".

The operative part of the sentence is "...unless the people there want it".

Therefore, if the people there can somehow be shown wanting it and the government goes forward with its plans of erecting a chemical hub at Nandigram, then it can be argued the CM is not contradicting his assertion.

I was in Nandigram yesterday (18.11.2007) with a team carrying relief for the victims of CPI (M) assault and mayhem. What we witnessed at Sonachura market is a climate of pure and unmitigated terror amongst the villagers who were still there in the village. There is a possibility that the people in Nandigram will be terrorised into exhibiting their consent to the government's plan of setting up a chemical hub, unless the spirit of the people continues to simmer even under unbelievably trying circumstances.

Civil society needs to be on its alert.

Santanu Chacraverti

We Need cash now to continue our movement and relief

Please donate money today or within 5 days to us. Cash is desirable. Those who are interested to donate money in cheque send it at account no 24941, on behalf of Janaswastha swadhikar manch, Kanara bank, sealdah branch. But we need cash now. Pl contact with me or prasun at 9903042267 or 9830015598. or Hindol at 9830751535, or at Dr debopriyo mallik 9830510911.

CPM cadres and local leadership pressurize people at nandigram to wipe out the relief camps

Since Yesterday CPM leaders are pressurizing people at the relief camps to destroy the relief camp within 48 hours. Against this we are going to the Governor so that the relief camp would not suffer any kind of fascist attack. Please protest against this fascism.

Sahonagorik Mmuktomancha

ANGER AND AFTER - Disenchantment with the status quo in Bengal is out in the open

Ashis Chakrabarti
The Tellegraph, 19 November

I was a young student in Calcutta at the height of the Naxalite movement. When I became a reporter, Indira Gandhi had already declared her Emergency. Fortunately, those were the final months of a national misfortune. For me, there were two telling images from the intellectuals’ mahamichhil last week, which dramatically captured the contrasts between then and now. One was the poster that had Narendra Modi’s face super-imposed on that of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. The other was the banner that said, “Tomar naam amar naam Nandigram Nandigram”, with its echoes of the leftist slogan on Vietnam in the Seventies. If the first showed the anger against the chief minister of the Left Front government, the other reflected a dilemma, especially for the Naxalites of those years.

The once-radical Left felt betrayed by the fact that a “leftist” party and its government had perpetrated the violence at Nandigram. Many of them had been victims of the terror let loose on campuses, in neighbourhoods and elsewhere in Bengal, by the stormtroopers of the Chhatra Parishad, the Youth Congress and of course, the police in the Seventies. And, they knew that many who had masterminded and even taken part in those atrocities are leaders of the Congress and the Trinamul Congress today.

For the former Naxalites who joined the rally, Bhattacharjee has killed the idea of the Left by running after big money and emphasizing production and not distribution. Nandigram was the last straw for those who had been appalled that the police under a leftist government shot farmers in order to pave the way for a Tata factory.

But Bengal’s memory of Naxalite violence and the consequent economic collapse in the Seventies is still fresh. Almost all Naxalite groups that had taken part in the violence in those days have subsequently realized that their adventurism did not serve the cause of any revolution, leftist or otherwise, but made Bengal a byword for violence and despair.

The interesting thing about these ex-Naxalites joining the rally in such large numbers is that it was they who now joined Aparna Sen and Sankha Ghosh and not vice versa. The College Square, where the intellectuals’ rally began, was once the showpiece of their liberation movement. It was the battleground where the walls of the buildings around would proclaim “China’s chairman [to be] Our chairman” and where a great revolutionary offensive would be launched in order to “behead” the bust of Vidyasagar.

Their successors are still out there, killing policemen and innocent people in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and in their very own Andhra Pradesh. If the presence of the former Naxalites at the rally was a fact, its real import was that they now walked Calcutta’s streets, silently, against the politics of violence. A long walk indeed away from the elimination of the class enemy.

Bengalis, not a martial race by any standard, have always had a romantic view of violence. The Naxalism of the Seventies continued, in a sense, the tradition that produced terrorist violence against the British and the romantic call for “blood” by Subhas Chandra Bose. This preference for violence is one of the reasons why Mahatma Gandhi has not been idolized by Bengalis the way he has been hailed in many other states in India. Even poets, musicians and writers who endorsed political violence in their work found a ready response in Bengal. In Ghare Baire, Rabindranath Tagore asked Bengalis to give up violence, but the idea was not popular.

The rally would suggest that the relevance of Tagore’s message is becoming clear only now. In the Seventies, the alternative to the Left was ultra-Left. We all know what the consequence was. Even the former Naxalites would have to be extraordinarily gullible to nurture any such illusion. Today, the alternative seems to be a greater consolidation of the apolitical protests. The rally and the public campaign in the Rizawnur Rahman case bear this out. But, if politics has failed us, there is no solution in sight, except a vague idea of returning power to the people. But the realization that the politics of the status quo is not acceptable any more seems to be striking root in a state that has been used to giving politics and politicians a dangerously exaggerated importance.

This disenchantment with the status quo underscores the rejection of the politics of violence, be it by the CPI(M), the Congress types, including Mamata Banerjee, or by the Naxalites of yesteryear or the Maoists of today. What the Marxists did at Nandigram is now seen to be the ultimate in violence because the ruling party and the government were partners in the crime. When Sankha Ghosh and Aparna Sen refused to join the rally if Mamata Banerjee planned to take part in it, they sent out this very message in no uncertain terms. Violence, they meant, was as unacceptable from the CPI(M) as from the Trinamul or any other political group.

It would be absurd to suggest that the rally marked the beginning of the end of politics as we know it in Bengal now or that an alternative was at hand. It would be naïve to expect the CPI(M) or its opponents to change their methods dramatically overnight. But they cannot afford to ignore the writing on the wall. For Bhattacharjee, the ultimate irony is that he won the partisan battle at Nandigram with force, but had his victory rejected by not only the villagers of Nandigram but also the people of Bengal. Even the supporters of his party would privately admit that the dubious success would cost them much more politically than the failures of the past eleven months.

But then, anger at the CPI(M) and its betrayal is one thing. Building up a credible alternative that will have answers to the problems of governance and of Bengal’s economic revival, is a very different matter. The Naxalites or their many avatars in the radical Left have been Bengal’s worst problems and cannot therefore offer any solutions. The attempt to form the alternative to the CPI(M) can best be sought along apolitical lines. The political parties would be there, of course, but the agenda for them needs to be increasingly set by the apolitical conscience and action of the people. It looks like a tall order in a state — and a country — where politics has long become the last resort for people who are far worse than scoundrels.

That, at least, was the new will of the people of Bengal that the rally — and the candlelight campaigns for Rizwanur Rahman before it — expressed and celebrated.

I had confirmation of this mood and the message as I was walking back to work from the rally. Returning from it, a former Naxalite activist, who retired from his college lecturer’s job last year, struck up a conversation. He was hopeful that the rally had inspired a different kind of fight against the CPI(M). “But the only way for the fight is through the ballot, not with bullets,” he said, almost to himself.

I returned home that evening with two simple messages from the rally. One, Bengal at last perhaps wants an alternative to the CPI(M). Two, the search for it cannot end in a return to the Seventies.

Playing particle politics: Thus Spake SIta

Sitaram Yechury
Hindustan Times, September 12

The disruption of parliamentary proceedings by the BJP, preventing a discussion on the India-United States nuclear deal, is not merely unfortunate. It constitutes the deliberate negation of the expression of the people’s will through their elected representatives on such an important matter that has far-reaching consequences for India’s sovereignty. The specious plea that the BJP invoked to affect such a disruption was the demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to examine this deal.

Now, the very same BJP had accepted the ruling of the Speaker and the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha that a discussion on the nuclear deal under any rule that requires voting is not permissible under the present constitutional provisions. Therefore, a discussion was permitted under rules where voting is not mandatory. Having accepted this, the demand for a JPC examining the deal simply does not arise. The right course would have been to have a proper structured discussion in the House and establish the fact that the majority in Parliament is opposed to such a deal.

This is precisely what the BJP prevented. There are, of course, compelling reasons for the party to not want a debate as it would have exposed their double-speak on the issue. After all, the architecture for the present strategic alliance with the US was detailed under the BJP-led NDA rule. Though defence cooperation with the US began under the Narasimha Rao government, the impetus for developing the strategic alliance came during the six years of BJP-led NDA rule.

Following the May 1998 Pokhran II episode, eager to have the US lift the imposition of sanctions, prolonged secret negotiations took place, in eight rounds, between Strobe Talbott and Jaswant Singh. Following this, in 1999, India for the first time participated in the international military exchange training programme of the US. Following the visit of Bill Clinton in 2000, this alliance deepened, with India becoming the first country to welcome the US national missile defence programme.

In fact, AB Vajpayee articulated the desire of his government that India be treated as the US’s “natural ally”. Following the 9/11 attacks, Vajpayee promptly wrote to President George W Bush offering India’s military facilities in the US’s war against terrorism. The fact that the US chose Pakistan, instead, was bemoaned by Advani as a result of the “logic of geography”. To drive home their eagerness, Advani not only visited Washington but also the CIA headquarters to discuss security cooperation.


In 2002, the Bush administration set out its national security strategy. This stated: “The US has undertaken a transformation in its bilateral relationship with India based on a conviction that US interests require a strong relationship with India.”

Following this, in 2004, under the Vajpayee government, the next steps in the strategic partnership round of talks started that extended cooperation in space, nuclear, high technology and missile defence fields. A discussion in Parliament would have brought out these and many other aspects of the strategic relationship with the US that the BJP was seeking. This would have completely exposed its current ostensible opposition to the nuclear deal. This is the real reason for sabotaging the discussion.

The UPA government unfortunately followed these developments with the June 2005 defence agreement and the July 2005 Manmohan Singh-Bush joint statement, ignoring the serious implications and consequences.

The Left has always been critical of these developments and opposed the efforts by the Indian ruling establishments to replace Pakistan as the strategic ally of the US in the region. It is, therefore, only natural that the Left would not be a party to the UPA government’s efforts to carry forward and complete the tasks that the NDA government had begun.

In order to examine the Left’s objections and the grave implications of this deal on India, a UPA-Left committee has been constituted. This, ironically, met for the first time on the anniversary of 9/11. The exchange of notes has begun and only time will tell how sincerely these concerns will be addressed. The UPA, on its part, has committed that the committee’s findings will be taken into account before proceeding to operationalise the deal.

Among the many serious implications that will be discussed by this committee, consider a couple of them. As regards the issue of uninterrupted fuel supplies to India, Article 5.6 (a) states, “... the United States is committed to seeking agreement from the US Congress to amend its domestic laws and to work with friends and allies to adjust the practices of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to create the necessary conditions for India to obtain full access....” Clearly, therefore, the US is obliged under the 123 agreement to amend its existing laws, including the Hyde Act, within which this 123 agreement is anchored, to ensure uninterrupted fuel supplies. Should India not wait till this happens in the US? Why is there such a hurry to operationalise this agreement even before the US fulfils its commitments?

Second, the 123 agreement clearly states that its implementation will be in accordance with national laws and regulations [Article 2(1)]. For the US, this means the Hyde Act. Contrast this with the US-Japan 123 agreement where, in the event of a dispute not being settled mutually, a provision has been made for referring such disputes to an arbitral tribunal. The US-China 123 agreement explicitly incorporates a principle of international law that no party may invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty.

Should India not have negotiated such safeguards rather than be at the mercy of US domestic laws? Particularly since India has had its own bitter experience with the earlier 123 agreement with the US in 1963. The US, through a new national law, promulgated subsequently 15 years later, nullified the 1963 agreement and stopped supplies to Tarapur reactors. Must we not protect ourselves from a repeat of such an experience?

While these and other such matters will be discussed in the UPA-Left committee, it needs to be repeated that nuclear energy would be the most expensive energy option that India has. According to the estimates made by eminent scientists, the cost per megawatt of electricity would be around Rs 11.1 crore from imported nuclear reactors. The Prime Minister has announced a target of generating 40,000 MW of nuclear power in the future.

Of this, assuming that 10,000 MW would be generated from domestic reactors, the remaining 30,000 MW would cost us Rs 330,000 crore. Now the same 30,000 MW, if produced through coal, would cost us at best Rs 120,000 crore. Using gas and water, this would cost Rs 90,000 crore only. By using the nuclear option, India would be spending anywhere beyond Rs 2 lakh crore more than by using the available alternatives.

Can India afford such an expensive option? Imagine, this cost difference can build nearly 20,000 fully equipped 100-bed public hospitals, or 2,50,000 schools like the Navodaya Vidyalayas with full boarding facilities for 100 students. Who says, therefore, that the nuclear deal does not affect the common man? Apart from all other serious implications, this deal actually denies us the opportunities, very dearly, to improve the livelihood of the aam admi.

Sitaram Yechury is a Rajya Sabha MP and member, CPI(M) Politburo

Nandigram Recapture By CP(I)M

NANDIGRAM RECAPTURE BY CP(I)M

Video Footage NDTV

Firing wholly unjustified: HC

Legal Correspondent
The Staesman, 17 November

KOLKATA, Nov. 16: Delivering judgment in the Nandigram killings case today, Calcutta High Court held that police firing there on 14 March in which 14 people had been killed was wholly unjustified and violative of Article 21 (protection of life and personal liberty) of the Constitution.

The Division Bench of the Chief Justice, Mr SS Nijjar and Mr Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose which passed the order stated that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into the Nandigram incident will continue and asked the investigating agency to submit a comprehensive report to it within a month.

The court rejected all the arguments of the state government and did not accede to a state government plea to stay the implementation of its judgment.

COMPENSATION PACKAGE

The state government was directed to pay Rs 5 lakh to the kin of each person killed in the indiscriminate police firing, Rs 1 lakh to each injured person and Rs 2 lakh to each of the rape victims who have been duly identified. The compensation, the court directed, should be paid within one month.

The Bench stated that the action of the police on 14 March cannot be justified on the grounds of sovereign immunity. The Advocate-General’s argument claiming immunity for police action on such occasion is not acceptable, the court held.

The police action cannot be justified even under the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, the Police Act, 1861, or the Police Regulations, 1943. It is ultra vires Articles 14,19 and 21 of the Constitution of India, the court further held.
The judgment stated that 14 persons had been killed in the police firing in Nandigram and 162 persons had been injured.

The court also noted the details of rape of women. It directed the state government to pay compensation to all those who suffered in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court.

SUO MOTU NOTICE

The Bench stated that it was justified in taking suo motu notice of the wholly indefensible incident of police firing at Nandigram on 14 March on the basis of newspaper reports and the statement made by the Governor.

The state Advocate-General’s submission that the Governor’s statement cannot be taken into consideration in view of the statement made by the chief minister in the Assembly is not acceptable.

INTERIM DIRECTIONS FLOUTED

The court observed that during the hearing of the Nandigram matters, interim directions had been issued on a number of occasions. It was, however, brought to the notice of the court that the state government had failed miserably to carry out these directions.

Even in cases in which the directions were implemented, it was done in a manner which resulted in little benefit to the people who were sought to be benefited. “We, therefore, direct the state government to implement all the directions issued by this court on 15 March, 2 May and 3 May, 2007.”

CBI INQUIRY

The court stated it had no hesitation in directing the CBI to continue the inquiry. Earlier, on 15 March, the court had directed the CBI to collect all relevant material about the Nandigram incident. The CBI had submitted a report to the High Court on 22 March.

Now, it was held, the CBI is directed to conduct a thorough and detailed investigation and submit a comprehensive report to the court within one month.
The report should clearly set out the crimes that have been committed against any individual. The victims should be identified. The offenders should be identified. The report should state whether any departmental action or criminal proceedings have been initiated against any individuals or officers who have transgressed any provision of law.

The CBI is directed to take necessary steps before appropriate courts of law ~ (including) registration and initiation of criminal proceedings in accordance with law, it was further held. The Advocate-General, Mr Balai Ray, made a prayer that the operation of the judgment be stayed for three weeks. The court refused to accede to the prayer.

After the judgment was delivered, the Advocate-General told reporters that he would advise the state government to prefer an appeal against the judgment to the Supreme Court. The appeal will question whether without the consent of the state government the CBI can inquire into any criminal case. This matter, Mr Ray said, had been referred to a larger Bench of the Supreme Court and was pending before that larger Bench. The state government had filed an affidavit justifying the police firing in Nandigram. The government had then also ordered an administrative inquiry.

Can the CPM stop raping women in Nandigram? Or is that too much to ask?

(The following report is from CNN/IBN. It has been located and entitled for circulation by Satya Sivaraman.)

Nandigram: The fear of CPI-M cadres looms large in her eyes. Forty-year-old Akreja Biwi doesn't want to go back home anymore. Last Sunday, as the CPI-M recaptured Nandigram, nearly 100 of the party cadres allegedly looted her house, raped her and her daughters. All her daughters have gone missing.

“My daughters and I saw them from a window. They were carrying rifles. We pleaded with them but they said that they would kill us if we didn’t let them in so I opened the door and ran and they chased us

“The cadres pulled me hard and raped me and my daughters,” says Akreja Biwi.

It is an unparallel tragedy that is now unfolding in hospital wards in Nandigram and Kolkata.

Those who managed to flee their homes speak of the torture they endured every night.

“The women are being raped mercilessly every night and we are not being able to come out,” says a resident of Gokul Nagar village.

“Hundreds are being killed, dragged away from their homes and burnt,” adds another resident of Gokul Nagar village.

The place has turned to killing fields with violence perpetrated by the CPI-M that was justified not just by the party but also by the Chief Minister who rules the state.

Seventy-five-year-old Kalpana Munian was hit by a bullet in the lower abdomen so was 40-year-old Sonachura.

For both them, it is a painful wait. Doctors can't operate on them because there is no one to sign their forms.

Their families are still stuck inside Nandigram's killing fields where the CPM is still in control despite the CRPF's presence.

Unabashed Unconstitutionality: what does a citizen do?

The Chief Minister of West Bengal, in connection to the recent CPI (M) led assault in Nandigram, made two statements that have been recorded both by the print and electronic media.

On 13.11.2007 he said that in Nandigram “the people who suffered were paid back in their own coin”.

He repeated the above statement in a press conference on 14.11.2007. When questioned, in the same Press Conference, whether his aforementioned statement was not more fitting for a CPI (M) spokesman than for a Chief Minister, the Chief Minister replied that “As I have taken the oath as a chief minister, I am aware of my constitutional duties and my responsibility towards the people. But I cannot be above the party.”

The implications of the statements, when read together, are devastating. The Chief Minister has made a public declaration indicating that his party affiliation takes priority over his constitutional obligations whenever there is a conflict between party interest and the laws of the land.

The Congress leader Somen Mitra has rightly stated that “the statement is not that of a constitutional government”.

As a citizen one has the inalienable right to constitutional governance and rule of law. So what does a citizen of India, particularly one residing in West Bengal, do under the circumstances?

NO DIWALI IN NANDIGRAM

Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri

Data for land relations in Nandigram are hard to come by. However, population
data are available from the Census of India, 2001. While almost 46,000 people are agricultural labourers, bargadars, and small or marginal farmers in Nandigram Block I, out of a total population of about 1,74,665, the number of agricultural labourers is a little less than 20,000. Taking 55% of the total population to lie within the age group of 15-59, we can say that 48% of the working population are indigent agriculturists. There are also workers in the garment industry in Metiabruz, Kolkata, commuting between the metropolis and Nandigram. So, most of the people are hardworking and poor. But only 21% of the working population are agricultural labourers, while for West Bengal, as a whole, agricultural workers make up 33% of the main+marginal workers in rural areas.

So, landlessness and rural differentiation is less in Nandigram than elsewhere in
West Bengal, with a consequent incidence of lower intra-peasantry tensions and a propensity of united action led by the better-off. However, this hasty conclusion may have to be reversed if the actual land relations speak differently.

Also, 60% of the people are Muslims, 30% BC, mainly Namasudras(India Together, 29.10.07)(less precisely, it is said that 40% are Dalits, All India Fact Finding Team, March, 2007).

That this struggle was so united could further be explained by the threat observed to everybody's land and livelihood a la Singur. But, the social backdrop was conducive to unity.

As indicated already, rural unity usually means leadership of the gentry/rich
peasants. Nandigram was no exception. However, the leaders, here, had their own electoral agenda.

The issue of land acquisition should have been resolved after the back-out of the
government on the chemical hub proposal. That it did not was squarely due to thecontinuation of tension caused by refusal of the government to compensate the victims of the 14th or seek out and punish the guilty, as well as the declared intent of the CPI(M) to re-occupy Nandigram with all that this re-occupation would mean. However, when the united resistance forced the government, especially after Khammam, to think aloud about compensation, the leaders could have given a proposal to the people for restoring displaced people on both sides and negotiating peace, from a position of strength, as they are now having to do from a position of weakness. Why did the leaders not do this? Did they dream of carrying on the resistance till the panchayet elections? If they did this, they underestimated the electoral compulsion of the CPI(M) . That party could not tolerate a Nandigram defiant right to the panchayet elections, because this would embolden rural Bengalto resist its bullying all over the state. The success of a bully depends to a large extent on a reputation of invincibility.

The leaders of Nandigram, on the other hand, may be thought to have been using the peasants for their own agenda, at least to some extent.

Now, the lack of differentiation referred to above was a coarse phenomenon and,
within it there have been repeated glimpses of fine fissures. Before the BUPC was formed many village committees had come up. The BUPC ignored these committees and constituted itself with representatives of political parties. Even this BUPC, as reported, has not met since the 14th, leave alone carrying on continuous consultation with the people.

This was the condition when the CPI(M) made its counter-attack on November 6-8, increasing in intensity day to day. The leaders made some attempts to defend
Block II, and when they failed, quickly abandoned Block I and negotiated peace, on the ground, including a volte face on the issue of peace-keeping by the police, while the TMC leadership at the state (and national) level, called first for CRPF
deployment, and, then, for declaration of Nandigram as a disturbed area with a
military presence. This was an unfortunate stand, with less than adequate concernfor the people who would face the terrible 'pacification' programme of these agencies. In fact, the stance of the leaders that the CPI(M) would be repulsed by the force of arms in frontal combat was never a viable one, and crumbling of this stance in the face of superior force was bound to occur one day. The leaders were less than responsible in maintaining a hollow belligerence which must have misled their followers, where the sagacious course would have been to consolidate the gains of the struggle to save the land from the chemical hub chimera.

The buckling of the leaders gave the CPI(M) its electoral desideratum -- 'noone
can defy us, so, beware', and left the people naked before the vengeance of
Lakshan Seth and Binoy Konar. Of course, the oppressor never wins in the long
haul. That is the lesson of history, and the lion-hearted people of Nandigram will
fight to win another day, in their own way, and, may be with leaders with the sameinterests as themselves. In the mean-time, as the CPI(M) relentlessly pursues itsoccupation, a desperate resistance does continue. Even today, according tounsupported news leaking out through the blockade, 20-30 thousand people aremarching against the occupiers of their land, and Harmad bullets are finding theirtargets. In this terrible situation, whatever be the differences with the erstwhile leaders, it is not the time to turn away from any political force. The force amassedby the CPI(M), backed by the might of the state, requires a united opposition of all who oppose the occupation, whatever be their motivation for doing so.

Another dimension of the problem has uncovered itself. According to the Indian
Express of 3.11.07, 'Biplabi Yug', a Maoist paper, has claimed Maoist presence in Block I. The Economic Times of 7.11.07, reports a similar claim. The CPI(M) has immediately taken the position that a Maoist presence justifies all repressive measures, although, technically, the Maoist party is not banned in this state. If thestories of such a presence are true, then, too, the CPI(M) has only itself to blame forcreating such a terror that Maoists are welcomed.

Also, a low key presence must, then, have been there for some time, and the BUPC must have taken help from them whatever disclaimer they may now advance.The Maoists could not have dropped suddenly from the sky. Their high keyemergence, if a fact, raises the question as to what is their programme here. As we saw, class conflict is not likely to be intense. Will the Maoists be content, at thismoment, to help in the resistance to CPI(M) terror and other immediate issues withthe aim of a dignified and equitable peace, or, will they attempt to pursue aprotracted policy of gaining political power locally and promoting a guerrilla zone inthis area of one thana so completely surrounded by hostile CPI(M) bases? Theseare questions the people will raise in Nandigram.

The hub falls - Human shields, CRPF brake in final assault by cadres

The Telegraph, 12 November

Name and number plastered on her forehead, Moni Sau, a resident of Sonachura, breaks down at Tamluk Hospital on Sunday. The 21-year-old was hit by a bullet in the left arm. Picture by Pradip Sanyal
Nandigram, Nov. 11: The Red Army recaptured all the Nandigram villages in a final, lightning offensive this evening while the state government pitched in by holding the just-arrived CRPF back at Tamluk.
Some 450 cadres crossed the Bhangabera and Tekhali bridges around 4.30-5pm and advanced towards the Opposition “fortress” of Sonachura, firing from behind 600 captive Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee supporters whom they used as human shields. By 5.30, Sonachura had fallen without resistance.

“The CPM game plan clicked. Seeing their supporters in front of the advancing cadres, the Pratirodh Committee men refrained from shooting and ran away,” a police officer said.

He said the CPM had sensed that Sonachura might put up a stiffer fight than Maheshpur, regained on Wednesday, and had drawn up the human-shield strategy.

The cadres already held some 100 Pratirodh Committee supporters hostage in Maheshpur. Yesterday, when Opposition marchers ran helter-skelter under the Red Brigade’s fire, some 500 of them were chased into party stronghold Khejuri and held captive.

The local police had already been instructed to stay inside the barracks. District police chief S.S. Panda, too, was stopped at Chandipur as he headed to Nandigram, the officer said. “He had to return to his Tamluk office.”

Garchakraberia fell at 6.30 after some token resistance. Kalicharanpur was easily overrun. By 7.30, when the cadres retreated into Maheshpur, Nandigram town was the lone Opposition citadel left standing.

The police gave no casualty figures other than saying that a Gokulnagar resident, Dipak Das, 30, was found with bullet injuries near Tekhali bridge and taken to hospital.

About 2,000 CPM refugees who had accompanied the attackers — they were sandwiched between the Red Brigade and the hostages — stayed back in their home villages. Some 100 fighters stayed for their protection. Late into the night, these cadres were firing warning shots to discourage any Opposition counterattack as more CPM homeless trooped back.

Tomorrow morning, the Central Reserve Police Force will arrive from district headquarters Tamluk, 65km away, to protect the returned refugees. By then, all the Red Brigade men will have left the entire area.

Allies RSP, Forward Bloc and the CPI held the CPM “entirely responsible” for the “politics of violence and revenge” in Nandigram but had not a word against the Trinamul Congress-led Pratirodh Committee. The victorious CPM promised safety to Opposition supporters.

“Most of those who had fled their homes from either side have returned. I appeal to the rest to come back immediately. They are free to carry out their respective political activities,” state secretariat member Shyamal Chakraborty said.

A district official said the CPM worked out its strategy late last night after the Centre agreed to send the CRPF. The paramilitary troops arrived in Howrah this morning but were taken out of the equation by the state government, which decides when and where to deploy them.

The cadres began shooting from Khejuri across the Bhangabera bridge, about 2km from Sonachura, since morning and the Opposition returned the fire intermit-tently.

Around 4.30pm, some 200 Red Brigade fighters crossed the Tekhali bridge and made towards Sonachura, 6-7km away, behind a thousand CPM refugees and 400 hostages.

Just after 5, a second group of 250 cadres — behind another 1,000 refugees and 150-200 hostages — crossed the Bhangabera bridge. It reached Sonachura around 5.45, some 15 minutes after the first team.

In Nandigram town, where some 10,000 Opposition supporters are camping, Pratirodh Committee convener Abu Taher said: “So many have been left homeless again today.”

Of the five CRPF companies (about 400 personnel) in Tamluk, 16 jawans set off for Nandigram police station tonight to oversee the arrangements but CPM cadres blocked their truck on the way.

The jawans chased them away but had to turn back when a group of women CPM supporters formed a chain before the truck a little ahead.

CPM supporters ignored pleas to spare the children and kept firing at the Pratirodh Committee procession yesterday, said Sanat Pramanik, now in SSKM Hospital with a bullet wound.

“They were firing indiscriminately. Several kids were killed. We pleaded with them to spare the kids but they kept firing,” Sanat recounted from his bed at Cabin 22 of Wood Burn ward.

Two men and a woman were brought to SSKM with bullet injuries yesterday. Doctors said their condition was “critical but stable”.

Sanat was in front of the rally when the firing started. “First there was intermittent firing and the crowd started dispersing sensing danger. Soon, there was heavy firing.”

The man from Karpara saw “three children being hit by bullets and lying still” in front of him.

Hit on the left foot, he collapsed.

Tapas Khatua of Gangra dived into a pond with a child and dragged himself several hundred feet to save himself after being hit by a bullet on the waist.

“The procession started at Sonachura around 9.30am and was moving towards Nandigram,” he said. When it reached Parulbari near Maheshpur High School, around 60 people came out of a house and started firing. “A bullet pierced a man’s abdomen and hit me. The man died on the spot.”

Tapas dived into a pond. “A child had grabbed my shirt and I took him along. There were a lot of men and women, diving into the pond.”

He climbed out of the pond and started the crawl, across a paddy field, towards a cluster of houses. “I don’t know what happened to the boy,” Tapas said. Bleeding profusely and in seering pain, he pulled himself into a house.

“Everybody was in panic. I requested two women to take me to hospital,” he said.

While walking with the women as crutches, some of the villagers identified Tapas and took him to hospital.

Jhuma Das, 30, a mother of three, was returning to her in-laws from her parents’ house in Kalicharanpur when she was caught in the crossfire. A bullet pierced one foot and hit the other.

“I don’t know who took me to hospital,” she said.

The ambulance in which Sanat was being taken to hospital was stopped at several places by CPM mobs which had set up roadblocks.

On March 14, two tear gas shells had burst very close to Sanat and affected his vision.

Actors, artists and writers on Sunday took the Nandigram protests to Nandan, where the Calcutta Film Festival is being held.

Nearly 100 protesters, more than 20 of them women, were arrested. Actor Parambrata Chatterjee, actress Bidipta Chakraborty and 37 students, some from Jadavpur University, were among those put behind bars.

The actors were released about five hours later, after a meeting at Lalbazar between deputy commissioner (headquarters) Vineet Goyel and a group of protesters, including film-makers Aparna Sen and Goutam Ghose and poet Sankha Ghosh.

“I don’t know on what grounds we were arrested. We did not step into Nandan, nor did we have any arms and ammunition. We were sitting outside the Academy of Fine Arts, singing,” said Parambrata after his release.

The protesters gathered at Esplanade around 1.15pm and walked towards Nandan. The police stopped them on Kyd Street. After staging a demonstration for half an hour, they returned to Esplanade and formed a “human chain”.

“The protesters then walked to the Academy in small groups and sat down on Cathedral Road, disrupting traffic. This was around 2.20pm,” said an officer of South Traffic Guard.

The demonstrators spoke against the government’s role in Nandigram and sang songs of protest. Scores of policemen and Rapid Action Force personnel were deployed. The demonstration ended at 4.15pm with the arrest of the protesters.

About 40 minutes later, Youth Congress supporters started walking towards Nandan from Elgin Road. They clashed with the police, when they tried to stop the rally. A section of supporters pelted stones, smashing the windscreen of a state bus. Five passengers were injured.

In the evening, Trinamul Congress supporters tried to barge into Nandan. A traffic sergeant was injured in the clash that ensued.

The scene of the action shifted to Lalbazar after that. The intellectuals tried to enter the police headquarters to secure the release of the arrested protesters but found the gate shut. “There was confusion because we could not allow everyone who had turned up to step inside,” said a senior officer at Lalbazar.

Outside the gate, several demonstrators, including poet Joy Goswami, theatre personality Suman Mukhopadhyay and director-singer Anjan Dutt, were lighting candles to protest the Nandigram violence.

WHERE PARTY RULES - Only an incompetent government sanctions terror

Rudrangshu Mukherjee
The Telegraph, 12 November

In the communist pantheon, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will occupy, when history passes its verdict, a higher pedestal than Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and even that leader beyond human reproach, Vladimir Illyich Lenin. This is because Bhattacharjee is the only communist leader under whose aegis the State has actually withered away in one part of the world. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has ushered West Bengal into the ultimate communist utopia.

It may strike many as incongruous that the biggest champion of industrialization that the blighted state of West Bengal has ever had should actually preside over the collapse of law and order in his state. Capital and industry cannot flourish without law and order. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is thus the maker and the unmaker of his own dream project. Such incongruities can only thrive in West Bengal.

Absurd incongruities are described by a popular saying in Bengali — bhuter mukhe Ram naam — a ghost or an evil spirit taking the name of Ram. One is reminded of this saying when the governor of West Bengal is condemned by the leadership of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for having transgressed his constitutional limits. This exhortation of the Constitution by the CPI(M) is as rich as it is absurd. When and where has the CPI(M) abided by the Constitution, its letter, its spirit and its unwritten but assumed conventions?

Events in West Bengal, especially over the last few months, in Nandigram and elsewhere, have demonstrated the scant regard the CPI(M) and the government that it leads have for the Constitution and the rule of law that is enshrined in that hallowed document. It is abundantly clear to everybody — from the governor of the state to its home secretary and to ordinary people — that law and order does not exist in Nandigram and its environs. It is equally clear that CPI(M) cadre have had — and continue to have — a large role to play in this collapse of law and order. There is no point in raising the biblical question: who cast the first stone?

The comrades might actually be embarrassed by the answer to the question since they have made terror and cadre-power a mode of life and politics in rural West Bengal. Keeping that issue, important as it indeed is, to one side, the fact of the matter is that in a large area of south West Bengal, CPI(M) cadre have been directly involved in killing and destruction to regain control over territory which the party had lost to its political rivals. It is no longer possible to say that this violence is the handiwork of local party bosses such as Lakshman Seth and his ilk. The violence bears the signs of sanction from the party’s top leadership. Witness the crass instigation of violence in the various statements made by Benoy Konar, by the recent pronouncement of Brinda Karat, and even earlier, the declaration of Sitaram Yechury immediately after the violence of March 14. Yechury said then, “It’s a political assault. We will meet the challenge politically. This is not new for us. We have fought such political battles in the past.”

Konar and Karat removed all veils of decency, when, like fascist leaders, they asked their party workers to take to arms against their opponents. Yechury’s call was a little less crude and therefore worthy of dissection. It is undeniable that from the beginning of 2007, whatever be the cause of it, there was a breakdown of law and order in the area around Nandigram. Political parties were engaged in armed combat; men, women and children were being forced to flee their homes, leaving behind their sole means of livelihood. It was a situation that demanded the immediate intervention of the West Bengal government so that normalcy could be restored and people, irrespective of their party affiliations, could return to their homes and their work. But Yechury, a member of the CPI(M) politburo, completely ignored the position that the government machinery and the rule of law should prevail. Instead, he saw it as a political assault on his own party (his use of the pronoun, ‘we’, cannot be taken to stand for the government since he is emphatically not a part of the West Bengal government), and he suggested that his party would meet the challenge. Not the government, but the party: what was constitutionally the job of the government was appropriated by the party. The CPI(M)’s mode of meeting the challenge politically was, as events have amply shown, to unleash its cadre to recapture Nandigram through terror and the systematic use of violence. What can be more unconstitutional than this? The CPI(M) thus has at least two members of parliament who, in open defiance of the Constitution, have invoked the use of violence by its party cadre to resolve what was a law and order issue and therefore a governance matter.

The fallout of this was that for 11 months the government led by a CPI(M) chief minister dawdled and did nothing. It watched the violence escalate till the home secretary of the state was forced to describe Nandigram and its surrounding villages as a “war zone”. Is it possible to believe that the state government with all its resources could not quell the violence and disarm the population? If the answer is yes, then what does it say about the government’s competence, about its right and ability to rule?

The truth lies elsewhere. The government sat back and watched the CPI(M) get the upper hand in the battle in Nandigram. The distinction between the party and the government has become so blurred over 30 years of communist rule that this was easily possible, and perhaps even sanctioned. If the law and order machinery were allowed a free hand in Nandigram, it would, in the course of operations, be forced to arrest and disarm CPI(M) activists as well as their opponents. The CPI(M) would never allow a government headed by its own chief minister to arrest and disarm CPI(M) cadre. Thus, Bhattacharjee’s hands have been tied. Hence his hapless silence over the episode, which is nothing more than a tacit acceptance of the charge of incompetence.

Incompetence is the utopia of the communists, since it allows party cadre to have a free run of violence and terror. West Bengal is that dystopia: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

One can only appeal to the chief minister to forsake his spurious faith in a so-called infallible party. The party is not always right, irrespective of what his Stalinist gospel might have taught him. He should act according to his conscience. He once famously quoted the poet, Shelley, “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed.” Let his conscience bleed a little. He has no further to look than the governor of West Bengal.

The surname, Gandhi, is not an easy one to bear. Gopalkrishna Gandhi does so with great dignity and courage. True to his distinguished lineage, he has allowed his conscience to speak and made himself the only source of some light in the hell called West Bengal.

Hunt for missing kin begins

Statesman News Service, 12 November

NANDIGRAM, Nov. 11: The day Bengal celebrated Brother’s Day when sisters wished long life to their brothers through an elaborate ritual, Dipen Mondal of Gangra village, Nandigram, had to frantically search for his elder sister in the paddy fields and then rush her to the hospital when he found her lying unconscious with bullet wounds in her leg near Maheshpur Kamarpara this morning.

Even when Dipen didn’t know whether life had already ebbed away from his sister, Kalpana, he considered himself lucky as many others in Nandigram scoured the paddy fields in vain in search of their missing relatives. For the past few days Dipen had been using the cover of darkness to look for his sister. He was so desperate this morning that he continued his search even in daylight and succeeded in tracing Kalpana in the morning. Immediately, he got hold of a cycle van and pedaled her away to Nandigram Hospital where she responded to treatment. Her condition was later stated to be stable.

After the CPI-M launched its offensive in a bid to recapture Nandigram villages, supporters of Bhumi Ucched Protirodh Committee (BUPC) began a hunt for their relatives who went missing in the aftermath of the fresh cycle of violence.

“The number of missing people is going up. A total of 350 persons can’t be traced after CPI-M cadres fired bullets at our rally near Maheshpur Bazar yesterday.

Again, those who were driven out of their homes in the past four days have to go without food and shelter,” said Sheikh Sufiyan, a senior BUPC member.

He said the CPI-M allowed only 11 persons of Gokulnagar, Sonachura and Southkhali villages to return home during the day. But these villagers narrated tales of brutal torture by CPI-M cadres at a primary school near Khejuri where they had been kept.

Relatives of Mr Goutam Pradhan, a resident of Sonachura who went missing after the firing, had no idea about his whereabouts till late this evening. They fear CPI-M cadres have dumped Goutam’s body elsewhere.

Relatives of Mr Abhimanyu Patra, a BUPC supporter, ran from pillar to post today to trace him, but failed in their efforts. BUPC members informed them he was last seen at Maheshpore Bazar yesterday afternoon.

“We ran for our lives after the firing began. Abhimanyu fell to the ground after a bullet struck him in the leg. We couldn’t find him since then,” said a BUPC supporter of Sonachura.

Mrs Shibani Mondal, a housewife from Gokulnagar, said she had been abducted and later kept at Amtala primary school at Khejuri along with nearly 100 BUPC supporters who were beaten up by CPI-M men for participating in a BUPC rally.

So much for the CPI-M’s efforts to help their supporters return home and exhort them “not to take revenge through retaliatory strikes, but cohabit with their adversaries.

CRPF, Mamata barred from entering Nandigram

Statesman News Service, 12 November

NANDIGRAM, Nov. 11: As the battle to regain ‘lost ground’ continued in Nandigram with armed CPI-M cadres and Bhumi Ucched Protirodh Committee (BUPC) supporters training their guns at each other, Trinamul Congress chief Miss Mamata Banerjee was not allowed to enter the trouble-torn areas by CPI-M cadres. Later reports said some CRPF personnel were prevented from entering the area by suspected women cadres of the CPI-M.

One injured in yesterday’s firing died at the Tamluk District Hospital today. Tapas Khatua, a resident of Gopalnagar, succumbed to injuries in the wee hours today taking the official death toll in yesterday’s firing to three, with over 30 feared dead unofficially.

Three other BUPC members are still battling for their lives while several others remained missing till late this evening.

The CPI-M, meanwhile, recaptured portions of Garchakraberia, Sonachura, Adhikaripara and Gokulnagar villages today, all of which, are known to be BUPC strongholds. Fearing fresh attacks, a large number of people from these villages went to undisclosed places. It was learnt that armed CPI-M cadres took out victory rallies in several villages.

The CPI-M brought out rallies at the villages it had captured in the past four days and a few hundred residents of Samsabad village left their homes, fearing fresh attacks by CPI-M cadres who fired three bullets in the air this afternoon.

Unconfirmed reports said that the body of a middle-aged man, believed to be a victim of yesterday’s firing, was found in a canal at Khejuri this morning. Police, however, dismissed the report, terming it as a rumour.

Meanwhile, Miss Banerjee sat on a dharna near Maniktala crossing, off Mecheda-Digha Road, demanding withdrawal of the blockades. She alleged that CPI-M cadres today fired bullets in the air to scare off the villagers. Earlier in the day, Miss Banerjee, who was gheraoed by CPI-M cadres at Kolaghat on her way to Nandigram last night, tried to enter Nandigram from three places, but was forced to return as CPI-M cadres blocked the way.

Miss Banerjee visited Tamluk District Hospital this afternoon where a few BUPC supporters, who were injured in yesterday’s firing, are undergoing treatment.
Miss Banerjee, who spent the night at a government guesthouse at Kolaghat, entered Tamluk via Radhamoni in a motorcycle this morning under tight police protection.
Later in the afternoon, Miss Banerjee met SP Midnapore East, Mr Satya Shankar Panda to take stock of the situation prevailing in violence-hit villages.

Meanwhile, five companies of CRPF reached Howrah railway station this afternoon and they are expected to reach Nandigram tomorrow morning, said Mr AK Singh, a CRPF spokesperson.

Cracks widen in Left

Statesman News Service, 12 November

KOLKATA, Nov. 11: Exploding the illusion of Left unity, the Left Front junior partners ~ RSP, Forward Bloc and the CPI ~ today held the CPI-M “solely responsible” for the fresh blood-letting at Nandigram. Never before during the past three decades of LF rule has the CPI-M been put on the dock by its junior partners in such unambiguous terms.

After the Governor indicted the Marxists’ naked aggression at Nandigram in their bid to wrest villages from the control of Trinamul Congress and BUPC, the LF junior partners’ resolution, adopted at an emergency meeting, completely isolated the CPI-M in state politics.

The pithily-worded resolution dealt such a stunning blow to the CPI-M that the latter immediately reacted by saying that it always had to bear the brunt of “attacks” from its adversaries.

“It’s sad that our LF partners have decided not to stand by us at this hour when 28 villagers belonging to our party have been killed during violence unleashed by the Opposition at different places during the past few months. The LF partners’ action will only help the Trinamul and its allies,” Mr Shyamal Chakraborty, CPI-M state committee member said.

Adding to the CPI-M’s woes the PWD minister and RSP leader, Mr Kshiti Goswami stuck to his decision not to remain in the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Cabinet. He even urged his party colleagues to resign from the Cabinet in protest against the CPI-M’s handling of the situation in Nandigram.

“The CPI-M wants bloodshed to recapture its lost territory, trampling down democracy. I cannot accept a situation where innocent people are being subjugated through brutal use of force,” Mr Goswami said.

The PWD minister, who has already stopped using his official car, said he won’t go to the state secretariat tomorrow.

The RSP will discuss, at its state committee meeting on 13 and 14 November, the situation arising out of Mr Goswami’s decision.

In Delhi, after the CPI-M politburo meeting, which was dominated by Nandigram issue, Mr Sitaram Yechury claimed that there were no cracks in the LF on the issue.

The LF junior partners held a two-hour-long meeting and adopted a resolution stating that they “don’t support wanton violence as a means to find a solution in Nandigram”.

“We are totally opposed to it. The CPI-M alone is responsible for this unfortunate turn of events. Peace and normalcy would have to be restored in no time and appropriate administrative action taken. Persistent social and political initiative would also have to be taken for restoration of peace,’’ the unanimous resolution said.

Explaining their stand that the CPI-M is solely responsible for the arson and carnage at Nandigram, the junior partners said the CPI-M leadership had never discussed with them its plan to take control of Nandigram by using force and causing bloodshed.

Undeterred by such trenchant criticism, both within the LF and outside, the CPI-M today claimed that Nandigram was “at last free from terror and the people there could now breath in fresh air under the open sky”.

The CPI leader and minister for water investigation, Mr Nandagopal Bhattacharya, reportedly told his colleagues in the LF that the chief minister had asked him to “wait for a couple of days when things would be all right”. The partners wondered whether the chief minister’s assurance implied that the CPI-M would drive away all its opponents at Nandigram with the help of the CRPF. A team of NDA leaders will visit Nandigram soon, BJP president, Mr Rajnath Singh, said, according to its state unit.

bloody hands again

Statesman News Service, 11 November

NANDIGRAM/KOLKATA, Nov. 10: A day after the Governor’s call for an end to violence, killings continued unabated in Nandigram today as armed suspected CPI-M cadres fired bullets indiscriminately at a peace rally organised by Bhumi Ucched Protirodh Committee (BUPC) at Maheshpur in Nandigram today. In the surcharged atmosphere in the area and lack of access thanks to road blocks put up by CPI-M supporters, it was impossible to confirm the death toll. While unconfirmed reports put the toll as high as 35 with bodies being fished out of a canal, police would confirm only two persons, including a woman, having lost their lives and at least 13 others having been injured.

Eyewitnesses said thousands of BUPC supporters, who were driven out of their homes in the past 72 hours by armed CPI-M cadres, brought out a rally from Sonachura around 10 a.m. this morning demanding restoration of peace in the trouble-torn villages. Residents of Maheshpur, Tarulbari, Baranagar, Gokulnagar, Adhikaripara, Tekhali Bazaar, Brindabanchowk and several other villages took part in the march.

When the rally reached Maheshpur, armed CPI-M cadres allegedly fired indiscriminately at unarmed BUPC supporters killing Sheikh Rezaul (35), a resident of Bojabari village and Shyamali Manna (40), a housewife from Gokulnagar, on the spot and injuring 13 others. Policemen present at the spot reportedly remained silent spectators, allowing the CPI-M activists to complete the operation smoothly in half-an-hour. BUPC leader Sheikh Sufiyan claimed that at least 35 persons had been killed in the firing. “We have seen 14 bodies being taken to the CPI-M’s Sherkhanchowk office in rickshaw vans by CPI-M cadres. The remaining bodies were later dumped elsewhere.” He further alleged that as many as 30 BUPC supporters, who had received bullet injuries, had been abducted by CPI-M goons.

The CPI-M men allegedly fired at ambulances ferrying injured persons to Tamluk district hospital and a hospital in Nandigram. “We were able to rescue 13 people and rushed them to Nandigram hospital. Five of them ~ Mr Ashis Pandit, Mr Goutam Das, Mr Jadav Maiti and Mr Tapas Khatua ~ were shifted to Tamluk district hospital in a critical condition,” Sheikh Sufiyan said.

BUPC leaders alleged that nearly 200 persons have gone missing following the firing. Those who failed to escape were to a house near Maheshpur and Khejuri college and beaten up by CPI-M men. CPI-M men also attacked BUPC supporters who took out another procession from Bhangabera this afternoon. CPI-M-hired goons fired at unarmed people from Tekhali Bridge. The attackers ransacked shops owned by BUPC supporters at Sashigunge Bazar. Here too, policemen on duty remained mute spectators. Later in the day, BUPC supporters gheraoed Nandigram police station alleging inaction. Policemen allegedly resorted to lathicharge in which few persons, including women were injured. BUPC leaders alleged that more than 80 armed CPI-M cadres were hiding in Maheshpur Bazar, Amgachia primary school and Galnagar primary school.

Mr Raj Kanojia, inspector general of police (law and order), said two persons, including a woman, were killed and 17 others injured in today’s firing. Asked to comment on alleged police inaction, Mr Kanojia said policemen had been gheraoed at Nandigram police station, which had kept them from reaching the spot.

Chhota Angaria accused held

MIDNAPORE, Nov. 10: Two prime accused in the 2001 Chhota Angaria mass killings wanted by the CBI ~ Tapan Ghosh and Sukur Ali ~ were among eight persons arrested in Egra today while fleeing in an ambulance and three other vehicles with three BUPC members injured in Nandigram whom they had abducted, alleged Trinamul MLA for Egra Mr Sisir Adhikary. He said one of the cars belonged to the Khejuri panchayat committee (WB29 3500) and bore a state government sticker. Ghosh, a CPI-M Midnapore (W) district committee member, and Sukur Ali were intercepted by locals this evening. Mr Adhikary said one of the injured persons was a 65-year-old woman whose cries were heard by residents when the ambulance carrying her was passing by. The IG (law & order) confirmed the arrest of eight persons in Egra but declined to give details. A CBI team has left for Egra to arrest the duo. SNS

Kshiti wants to quit Cabinet

KOLKATA, Nov. 10: The Left Front is showing cracks following the “recapturing process” in Nandigram with RSP leader and PWD minister Mr Kshiti Goswami deciding not to continue in Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s Cabinet and seeking his party’s permission to resign. Some of his party leaders joined Ms Medha Patkar at her protest rally in a show of solidarity today. His party also lent its support to the Governor’s yesterday’s statement, something other LF allies such as Forward Bloc and CPI did not.

“I do not want to continue as a minister in this Cabinet. I have let my party’s general secretary know,” Mr Goswami said. “I protested against the violence which has been continuing for the past 10 months. The government had enough time to act, but it did not,” the minister said. RSP leader Mr Manoj Bhattacharya hinted at Ms Patkar’s protest rally that his party would soon take a “strong decision” on withdrawing from the Left Front.

Veteran Forward Bloc leader Mr Ashok Ghosh agreed with the Governor’s statement in spirit but felt it was “unfortunate and uncalled
for”. SNS

Dollar’s Skid Puts a Glow on the Euro

JEREMY W. PETERS
NYT, January 3

The dollar slumped yesterday and the euro climbed to a three-week high against the currency.

A steady slide in the value of the dollar since late 2005, primarily against the euro and the British pound, has steepened over the last month amid indications that interest rates will rise in Europe, while the Federal Reserve is expected to cut rates this year.

At the same time, countries with large dollar holdings are showing a new willingness to dump the dollar in favor of the rising euro, though the current activity is seen as posing little long-term risk to the dollar.

Late last month, the United Arab Emirates became the latest country to shift more of its currency reserves away from the dollar, joining Russia, Switzerland, Venezuela and others.

Those moves coincide with ambiguous signals from China about possibly pulling back from the dollar, and recent word from Iran, the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, that it would prefer euros as payment for oil, which is typically priced in dollars.

But currency experts say that this turn away from the dollar is not likely to do any long-term damage to the currency’s value for a number of reasons. First, the motives of central banks that are adding other currencies to their reserves do not appear to be driven by the belief that the euro will eventually supplant the dollar as the world’s key currency.

Rather, these central banks are doing what investors do to cut risk: diversifying their portfolios.

Moreover, the amount of currency moved so far has been relatively small in a global market that trades trillions of dollars a day — only about $2 billion in the case of the United Arab Emirates, for example.

“There is some indication that central banks are moving to diversify reserves, but it’s at a very slow pace,” said David Powell, a currency analyst with IDEAglobal. “Is it the start of a massive shift out of the dollar? I would say no.”

Yesterday, the euro traded at $1.3272, up from $1.3198 late Friday in New York. The British pound was at $1.9721, up from $1.9586. The United States dollar index, a measure of the dollar’s strength against a basket of currencies, fell to 83.23 from 83.65 on Friday. In February 2002, the index was at 120.

But trading was thinner than usual yesterday as financial markets were closed in the United States, as were markets in Tokyo and Singapore.

In 2006, the euro appreciated more than 11 percent against the dollar, while the British pound rose nearly 14 percent against the dollar.

But the dollar is not likely to start flowing with great speed out of central banks because foreign countries risk devaluing their investments if they do so. Even the slightest suggestion that a country is thinking about swapping dollars for euros risks sending the value of the dollar falling, and in turn hurts all foreign investors in American securities.

The case of China, which holds more Treasury securities than any other foreign nation except Japan, offers an example of why countries would be reluctant to dump their dollar reserves. In October, the most recent month for which figures are available from the Treasury Department, China held $345 billion in Treasury securities. That was up from $301 billion a year earlier. Its currency holdings total $1 trillion. About $700 billion of that, economists estimate, is in dollars.

So in many ways, it is in China’s best interest not to let the dollar’s value slip. Heavy sales of the dollar could make it harder for the People’s Bank of China to manage its gradual appreciation of the yuan against the dollar. Anything more abrupt, Beijing fears, would make Chinese goods less competitive in the United States and pose problems domestically for some of the loans from its state banks. And if the dollar drops too much, the value of China’s holdings would decrease, limiting the lending ability of its banks.

Nonetheless, the rising euro is not something the United States or foreign investors can afford to ignore.

“You have to start to thinking that the euro can be of some risk to the dollar,” said Shaun Osbourne, chief currency strategist at TD Securities in Toronto. “Over the course of the next 5 or 10 years, I don’t think there’s any danger that the dollar’s pre-eminence is threatened. But in the long run, there is certainly the risk that does happen.”

One issue driving investors from the dollar is the possibility that interest rates in the United States and Europe may move farther apart.

Financial markets are currently expecting at least one interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve sometime next year. That contrasts with predictions of further rate increases by the European Central Bank.

“A lot of foreign investors think the Fed is going to cut rates in 2007, and that’s a rather dollar-bearish thing,” said Julia Coronado, senior economist with Barclays Capital.

Some economists predict the dollar will fall further in 2007. The euro finished 2006 at $1.31, and some economists see it climbing near $1.40 — a high in its seven-year history.

“We believe that the dollar’s decline versus the euro has further to run, with $1.38 a possible destination for the pair over the next six months,” said Tom Levinson, a foreign exchange strategist with ING Wholesale Banking in London.

Still, many economists are unwilling to predict that the dollar faces an inevitable demise. “The dollar is still the world’s No. 1 currency, and it’s going to stay that way,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist for Global Insight. “The euro is gradually going to become more important, but I don’t see it becoming more important than the dollar.”

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

High price of the cheap dollar

Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2005

Asia subsidises the United States’ debts


George W Bush’s visit to Europe last month showed a desire for rapprochement with the members of the EU, even if differences have not disappeared, for example over Iran and arms sales to China. Beijing influences the rate of the dollar, interest rates and the US commercial deficit. The Chinese now hope their financial and economic power will bring diplomat benefit.

By Ibrahim Warde

The value of the dollar, US interest rates and its commercial deficit are dependent, at least in part, on decisions made by and in China. Now the Chinese want to cash in on their financial and economic power, and demand diplomatic privileges.

THE former US treasury secretary, John Connally, famously said in 1971, “It’s our currency but it’s your problem” (1), but it could have been a reference to the dollar policy of President George Bush’s first administration.

Preoccupied primarily with the war on terror and obsessed with Iraq, policy makers paid scant attention to international economic policy. Certainly, they repeatedly proclaimed their attachment to a strong dollar, to forestall too much speculation against it, but relied on the market to avoid dealing with the twin deficits - budget and trade - that had grown to record heights.

In 2000 the Bush administration inherited a $240bn budget surplus. By 2001 the recession, which reduced tax receipts, plus massive tax cuts voted by a Republican Congress (on the grounds that surpluses were now a permanent part of the economic landscape), and a sharp increase in defence and homeland security expenditure turned a substantial surplus into a huge deficit ($412bn in 2004, 3.6% of GNP). The trade deficit steadily increased over three years, reaching a record $618bn (5.3% of GNP) in 2004 - a 24.4% increase over 2003.

The twin deficit question is discussed at every meeting of the G7 (US, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada) and at every major international conference. But the proposed solutions entail painful choices (tax increases, lower defence spending, encouragement of saving) that clash with the principal political orientations of the Bush administration.

The US buys 50% more than it sells overseas. Foreign investors, through their acquisition of US treasury bills, sustain the lifestyle of the world’s greatest power. Resolving such disequilibria through the dollar policy transfers the costs of adjustments - as growth, jobs and savings - to the rest of the world. A weak dollar makes US products more competitive, US assets cheaper and more attractive to foreigners, and devalues a foreign debt estimated at $3 trillion. It is unusual to be both the world’s greatest debtor and the issuer of the world’s principal reserve currency.

In 1913 Britain, at the apogee of imperial power, was the world’s main creditor. Over the next 50 years it exhausted itself defending, without success and at great cost to its industrial base, the value of the pound. The dollar weapon, which is the current version of what De Gaulle used to call the exorbitant privilege of the US (printing a currency that foreign central banks have no option but to amass), allows the painless reduction of the twin deficits, at least in theory.

Domestic political factors validated such an analysis. In the months before the 2004 US election, every poll indicated that a majority of voters felt that the Democratic senator John Kerry would do a better job of managing the economy. Polls suggested a close election; good numbers on growth and jobs were necessary for the re-election of Bush (the first president since Herbert Hoover in whose term more jobs were lost than created). Only an undervalued currency could produce the necessary good figures.

Dramatic decline

Yet in the weeks after Bush’s re-election the dollar’s decline greatly accelerated. In December 2004 it kept going down, reaching a historic low of $1.35 to €1 on 24 December. The ritual, though unreliable, end of the year predictions of bankers and economists for 2005 were almost unanimous: it was bound to sink further.

Many factors help explain such a consensus. Bush’s re-election raised concerns that foreign policy adventures and fiscal laxity would continue, especially when the president interpreted his slim lead (3%) over his Democratic challenger as a popular mandate for bold and costly initiatives. Bush asserted that he would “spend his political capital” on such controversial policies as the partial privatisation of social security, a measure likely to cost the treasury hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few years.

The failure of the low-dollar policy to dent the trade deficit was another factor. A falling dollar was expected to eliminate the deficit by helping exports and hindering imports. Instead, the gap widened unprecedentedly, highlighting structural impediments. The logical conclusion of the financial markets was that the dollar’s decline was too small to matter. A new consensus emerged: to reduce the trade deficit by half, a further 30% decline in the dollar was necessary. It would then be down to €0.55.

Hence the worry of dollar holders, especially those central banks that had supported the currency, and therefore 86% of the trade deficit. Because they kept the greenbacks generated by the US global buying spree, Asian central banks now hold about $2 trillion. Why did China, Japan and others absorb such assets denominated in a falling currency? They were trying to prevent the appreciation of their own currencies, which would have hampered their exports. By investing most of their dollars in treasury bills, these central banks were keeping US interest rates at a historically low level, thus producing the strange cycle in which trade deficits help fund the US budget deficit and make up for its low savings rates.

As the dollar sank further, many central banks began to diversify their reserve currencies, especially by increasing their euro holdings. Such a strategic shift was logical: suffering some losses is one thing; being left holding the baby after a debacle is another. On 19 November the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, warned that foreign investors would soon tire of financing the current account deficit and put their money into other currencies. He said: “It seems persuasive that, given the size of the US current account deficit, a diminished appetite for adding to dollar balances must occur at some point” (2).

A few days later Yu Yongding, a member of the monetary committee of the Chinese central bank, indicated that China had reduced its relative share of US treasury bonds as protection against a weak dollar.

The trend was confirmed with the publication of a survey of 67 central banks by Central Banking Publications. It revealed that more than two-thirds had reduced the relative share of dollars in their portfolios in the last four months of 2004. According to one of the authors of the survey, Nick Carver, “Central banks’ enthusiasm for the dollar seems to be cooling off . . . The US cannot take support for the dollar for granted” (3). Oil-producing countries are not happy to see a fall in the currency in which their oil is billed. Some of them are starting to shun the US for fear that their holdings may some day be frozen as a result of the war on terror.

No longer ‘other countries’ problem’

Foreign exchange policy is at best an inexact science, rife with unintended consequences. At some point, the positive effects of devaluation give way to negative ones. Unable to stem the decline of the dollar, US policy makers have discovered that the dollar weapon is a double-edged sword. When confidence is lost, the dollar is no longer other countries’ problem.The expectation of steady devaluation sets off chain reactions: foreign investors demand higher returns to acquire or keep dollars or to buy treasury bills. The steeper the likely tumble, the higher the expected premium in the form of interest rates.

In turn, high interest rates can have a major impact on investment and spending. The real estate sector, greatly favoured by historically low interest rates, would probably collapse. Given the interdependence of economies, a US recession would drag down the world economy.

Europe (and to a lesser extent Japan) has been alone among major powers to suffer the consequences of a weak dollar. The motto of the first president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Wim Duisenberg, was that “a strong euro is good for a strong Europe” (4). Now that his wish has been realised, few in the euro zone are pleased. The current ECB president, Jean-Claude Trichet, bemoans the “brutal” fall of the dollar, which has undermined the competitiveness of European exports. Unsurprisingly, the euro zone had one of the world’s lowest growth rates in 2004. Optimists focus on the silver lining: the falling dollar mitigated the impact of soaring oil prices, since oil contracts are negotiated in dollars. As the former French finance minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, said, a high euro “is not only misfortune” (5).

Since China linked its renminbi (currency of the people, the official name of the yuan) to the dollar in 1994, it is making common monetary cause with the US. The dollar’s plunge has allowed it to maintain its competitiveness in relation to the US and improve it in relation to the rest of the world. The asymmetry of US-China relations is striking: the US deficit with China is $207bn, more than a third of the total US deficit (6). Public opinion is divided. Some argue that the availability of an ever-growing number of products at rock-bottom prices is a boon to consumers. Wal-Mart, the largest employer in the US, imports some 70% of its merchandise from China. But an increasing number of corporations, workers and politicians now complain about unfair competition and support a more aggressive stance towards China.

Officially, US policy makers, who consider the yuan undervalued by 40%, have called on the Chinese central bank to stop its heavy buying of dollars. China’s response has so far been indecipherable. Clearly, the matter is being discussed at the highest levels. Some officials have hinted at loosening, even at eliminating, the dollar peg. Vice-Premier Huang Ju announced that China would reform its currency policy - with the caveat that it would do so cautiously. He also declined to set a timetable, saying that his top priority was the creation of a stable macroeconomic environment. Others dismiss such talk. According to the head of the central bank’s monetary policy department, Yi Gang, Beijing intends to maintain its exchange rate policy to preserve stability and promote economic growth. Invited to speak to the G7 finance ministers on 4 February, the central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, refused to address the issue.

Economic powerhouse

The message may be that China is entitled to its monetary sovereignty. Its exceptional growth rates (averaging 9.5% annually between 1997 and 2004) and the enormous potential of its 1.3 billion consumer market have aroused the interest of all multinationals. China has become an economic powerhouse representing 4% of the global economy (in 1976 it was was 1%). It is estimated that by 2020 that figure will rise to 15%.

China is the world’s workshop. Although it is not a technological and scientific power, it and the US are the locomotives of the global economy.
From outsourcing to the price of raw materials to the recovery of Japan, many crucial aspects of world economy are greatly influenced by China’s policies. The acquisition by a Chinese firm, Lenovo, of the personal computer unit of IBM was symbolic of the new role of a country with great ambitions. China has successfully launched over 40 satellites, and plans manned space flights every other year and a moon exploration programme.

Chinese leaders are well aware of the risks of a change in the status quo. Factors provoking instability include high inflation, real estate speculation, a banking sector riddled with bad debt and an underdeveloped capital market. Considering the growing gap between rich and poor, and the absence of democracy, the risks of a political explosion are real (7). Hence the caution of elites worried above all by a sudden slowdown in economic growth, which would have unpredictable economic and political consequences, especially in US-Chinese relations.

It is easy to forget China sharply disagrees with the US on many key issues, including Iran, North Korea and Taiwan.

Everybody, except currency speculators, realises that concerted management of the currency problem is preferable to free-for-all policies. Analysts of international monetary relations have adopted a realpolitik perspective focusing on a “monetary mutual assured destruction”, joint European-Japanese interventions in currency markets, or a major alliance uniting China and the US against the rest of the world, through which the US will buy Chinese goods in exchange for Chinese financing of US deficits (8).

The possibility that a theoretical threat will be implemented - Japan liquidating a big chunk of its US treasury bills, or the US imposing retaliatory sanctions against China - creates periodic panic in the markets.

Joint interventions by the Big Four (US, Europe, China, Japan) based on the Plaza Accord model, are likely to halt speculation and reduce instability. On 22 September 1985 (see opposite) ministers of finance and central bankers representing the G5 (US, Japan, UK, France, West Germany) met to declare the desirability of an orderly rise in currencies other than the dollar. They pledged to work closely to achieve that goal whenever necessary. Thus began, under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan’s treasury secretary, James Baker, the controlled decline of the dollar (9).

Today such an agreement is unlikely. Unilateralism and the ideological proclivities of the Bush administration militate against the principle of cooperative intervention. More important, leadership will have to come from Washington and no US government official is in a position to act as forcefully as Baker did. The treasury department was once prestigious and powerful. Bush’s first treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, was seen as too independent-minded and sacked after two years. In his account of his Washington years, O’Neill describes Bush as ignorant of economic matters; at cabinet meetings he was like “a blind man in a room full of deaf people” (10). Since the Iraq war Bush is too preoccupied with great ideological crusades to pay much attention to mundane matters.

Surrounded by yes-men

His November re-election has reinforced his proclivity to surround himself with yes-men. The principal qualification for a political appointment seems to be loyalty, rather than competence. The current treasury secretary, John Snow, is overshadowed by Bush’s political advisers. Greenspan, now 79, is in his final year as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Whoever succeeds him must achieve the impossible: obtain the absolute confidence of the president and of the markets. Hence the current hazing, with pretenders positioning themselves by defending the indefensible (for example, the wisdom of tax cuts) (11). There is a vacancy of economic power: those who sold the Iraq war and engineered Bush’s re-election are also in charge of selling his economic policies.

Since the official start of Bush’s second term on 20 January, the attitude toward the twin deficits has changed. The policy of benign neglect has gone too far and there is a real risk of a free fall. Deficits will no longer be reduced by letting the dollar slide, but through rapid economic growth, which will be fuelled by tax cuts. Hence the new discourse: trade deficits are a sign of strength. In the words of Snow, the deficit is a sign that the economy “is growing faster than those of our trading partners in the euro zone and in Japan. The economy is growing, expanding, creating jobs and disposable income, and that shows up in the demand for imports” (12).

Similarly, Greenspan no longer talks about the danger of deficits. He now sees market pressures and domestic US forces “which appear poised to stabilise and over the longer run possibly to decrease the US current account deficit and its attendant financing requirements”.

The official policy still supports a strong dollar. The difference today is that the government’s actions aim to prevent any new slide of the dollar. On 2 February the Federal Reserve raised its federal funds rate by a quarter point to 2.5%, making dollar placements more attractive. (The ECB has kept its rate unchanged at 2 %.) In the communique accompanying the announcement, the Fed stressed the good health of the US economy.

As for the budget deficit, Bush has reiterated his commitment to “reduce the deficit by half ”. On paper, the 2006 budget is notable for its wide-ranging cuts. Almost every sector, except for defence and homeland security, is affected. Over 150 federal programmes will be eliminated or drastically reduced. Social programmes, particularly those related to children and the indigent, are seriously affected. But the budget rests on fanciful assumptions and excludes the costlier items. Military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are not included (13). Nor is the cost of the partial privatisation of the social security system, estimated at $754bn over 10 years.

The Bush administration is betting on a sharp rise in revenues, which would be generated by . . . lower taxes. Bush has suggested making temporary tax cuts ($1.8 trillion) permanent. In 2004 tax receipts were only 16.3% of GDP, the lowest level since 1959. In 2000, when the budget had a surplus, the rate was 21%. Vice-President Dick Cheney, who had said that “deficits don’t matter” (14), is poised to play a key role in pushing a conservative domestic agenda (15). There is little doubt that his tax cutting zeal will trump Bush’s promise to reduce the deficit by half.

(1) Barry Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System, Princeton University Press, US, 1996.
(2) Larry Elliott, “US risks a downhill dollar disaster”, The Guardian, London, 22 November 2004.
(3) Mark Tran, “Move to euro hits US finances”, The Guardian, 24 January 2005.
(4) Willem F Duisenberg: “The first lustrum of the ECB”, speech at the International Frankfurt Banking Evening, Frankfurt, 16 June 2003, http://www.ecb.int
(5) Cécile Prudhomme, Le Monde, Paris, 10 November 2004.
(6) David E Sanger, New York Times, 25 January 2005.
(7) See Le Monde diplomatique, English language edition, special dossier on China, September 2004.
(8) See Eric Le Boucher, Le Monde, 25 January 2004, and Pierre-Antoine Delhommais, Le Monde, 5 January 2005.
(9) The dollar, which was worth 4.15fr in the first quarter of 1980, had risen to 9.96fr in the first quarter of 1985. It fell to 7.21fr in the first quarter of 1986 and to 6.13fr in the first quarter of 1987. In marks, the respective values of the dollar were 1.77DM, 3.26DM; then 2.35DM and 1.84DM. See Jean-Marcel Jeanneney and Georges Pujals, eds, Les économies de l’Europe occidentale et leur environnement international de 1972 à nos jours, Fayard, Paris, 2005.
(10) Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2004.
(11) Paul Krugman, New York Times, 25 January 2005.
(12) Elizabeth Becker, New York Times, 13 January 2003.
(13) Such costs are unpredictable, and dealt with through separate mechanisms not included in the budget.
(14) Ron Suskind, op cit.
(15) Jim Hoagland, “Cheney’s undimmed role”, Washington Post, 10 February 2005.

Ibrahim Warde is a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Medford, Massachetts) and author of The Financial War on Terror (I B Tauris, London, 2005).

Falling Dollar Adds to Investor Woes

WSJ, November 11
GREGORY ZUCKERMAN and CRAIG KARMIN

The dollar tumbled last week and took the stock market with it.

The weak greenback was just one more thing for stock investors to fret about. The combined weight of their concerns has knocked the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 7.9% from its record close just over a month ago.

As the housing meltdown drags on, losses on mortgage-related securities continue to mushroom, including news last week of write-downs by American International Group, Morgan Stanley and Wachovia. Disappointing October retail sales stoked concerns that consumer spending is being impacted by the housing downturn as well as by near-record oil prices. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke Thursday said Fed policy makers see economic growth slowing "noticeably" in the current quarter.

Meanwhile, the tumbling dollar could make some overseas investors reluctant to hold U.S. securities and could make it tougher for the Fed to cut interest rates further.

Painful Week

Buffeted by one concern after another, the Dow industrials last week declined 4.1%, trimming their year-to-date advance to 4.7%. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index, recently the better performer, saw a steeper 6.5% drop. So far in 2007, the Nasdaq is still up 8.8%.

Stocks will likely continue to be bumpy. And while shares have often done well in the final months of the year, investors shouldn't get their hopes up this year. "Given the uncertainty surrounding the banks, the market probably needs either a big drop in oil prices or an additional Fed easing to see a repeat of the fourth-quarter rally we've seen over the last four years," says Jason Trennert, chief investment strategist and managing partner at Strategas Research Partners, a research firm in New York.

A Slowing Economy

Corporate profits reported so far for the third quarter are down about 2.4% from a year ago, according to Thomson Financial. While most economists don't predict a recession, or downturn in economic activity, a marked slowdown seems to be emerging as the most likely scenario.

"The economy faces a protracted period of subpar growth rather than a recession," says Martin Barnes, managing editor of The Bank Credit Analyst, a Montreal-based publication. "The biggest risk to our view is that the contagion from housing to consumer spending [proves to be] greater than we expected."

Mr. Bernanke said last week that the Fed expects the economy to remain "sluggish during the first part of next year" and then strengthen.

One concern is that growing troubles for financial companies could spur them to curb their lending, putting a crimp on the economy. Deep writedowns and losses at Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and other financial heavyweights in recent weeks underscored how these companies had too much exposure to the subprime mortgage market. Now, investors are concerned about the potential for more markdowns ahead.

Dollar Woes

Last week, the U.S. currency suffered one of its worst weeks in years, plummeting to a record low versus the euro and touching its weakest level against the Canadian dollar in more than five decades. Lower U.S. interest rates have contributed to making the dollar less attractive to overseas investors.

Despite the powerful sell-off -- one that some analysts are starting to say looks overdone -- few traders or investors expect much of a relief rally for the dollar anytime soon. That's because the currency has become so unloved.

"Market psychology regarding the dollar is deteriorating rapidly," Morgan Stanley currency analyst Stephen Jen wrote in a recent report.

A steady decline in the dollar isn't necessarily a bad thing for the U.S. economy. A weaker currency makes American products more competitive abroad, and overseas profits have been rising for many large U.S. firms.

But if the dollar falls too far or too quickly, it can cause problems: U.S. assets look less attractive to foreign investors, and foreign goods become more expensive, which could lead to inflation.

The dollar weakness could also put the Fed in a bind. The Fed may be inclined to cut rates further to help revive a slowing economy and ease credit concerns. But lower rates would only make the dollar less attractive to foreigners and cause it to fall more.

Analysts see further dollar declines through year end.

Looking at Stocks

At this juncture, some market watchers say many areas of the U.S. stock market look attractive -- but only as long as the U.S. steers clear of recession. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index now trades at about 16 times its expected earnings for this year, a reasonable price. And the yield on the key 10-year Treasury note has slid to 4.2% from over 5% this summer, making stocks more attractive by comparison.

Analysts say it's too early to buy beaten-down financial shares, partly because it is not yet clear how much the assets they're holding are worth. Instead, it's best to focus on stocks that continue to generate strong earnings and are in sectors that are less impacted by housing woes.

For instance, some analysts say Nike (NKE) should be helped by global excitement about the 2008 Olympics, and they say the shoe and apparel company is doing a good job making inroads against competitors like Timberland and Under Armour. Nike is expected to grow profits 18% in the next year, and trades at a price/earnings multiple of about 18.

The company is growing profits at more than a 20% clip in Asia, which may be able to keep Nike's earnings flowing even as the U.S. continues to slow, some say.

Write to Gregory Zuckerman at gregory.zuckerman@wsj.com and Craig Karmin at craig.karmin@wsj.com

BATTLE ZONE NANDIGRAM

Watch Nandigram Video Footage

Enough is enough - West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi flays CPIM leadership on Nandigram rampage

November 10, 2007

West Bengal Governor, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, today, rails at the principal ruling party of the State in a public statement issued by his office

The ardour of Deepavali has been dampened in the whole state by the events in Nandigram. Several villages in Nandigram are oscillating from the deepest gloom to panic. Large numbers of armed persons from outside the district, have, it is undeniable, forced themselves onto villages in Nandigram Block I and II for territorial assertion.

Thousands of villages have consequently been intimidated into leaving their homes in villages such as Daudpur, Amgachi, Jambani, Simulkundu, Brindabanchak, Tekhali, Nainan, Kanongochak, Takapara, Sarengabari, Ranichak, Kamalpur and Keyakhali.

Even as of 4 pm this day (November 9,) I have received phone calls from responsible persons in Nandigram saying that several huts are ablaze. Large number of villagers have taken refuge in the local high school in Nandigram, bereft of food and personal security.

At the time of writing, the most accurate description for Nandigram is the one used by our Home Secretary, namely, it has become a "war zone". No Government or society can allow a war zone to exist without immediate and effective action.

I am fully aware of the fact that, earlier in the year, many villagers in Nandigram, who were perceived as sympathisers of the ruling establishment had been obliged to leave the villages and seek shelter in Khejuri. I am also aware of the apprehension that some Maoists, their numbers being unverified, are believed to have entered the area.

Those who had to flee Khejuri must come back with full confidence and dignity. And no quarter should be given to the cult of violence associated with Maoists. But the manner in which the 'recapture' of Nandigram villages is being attempted is totally unlawful and unacceptable.

I find it equally unacceptable that while Nandigram has been ingressed with ease by armed people on the one hand, political and non-political persons trying to reach it have been violently obstructed. Some of them were bearing relief articles for the homeless. The treatment meted to Smt Medha Patkar and other associates of hers last evening was against all norms of civilized political behaviour.

A group of the MPs and one MLA, representing the CPI-M met me this morning and urged me "to apply my good offices for the peace processes in Nandigram". Peace is the need of the hour in Nandigram. For that peace to come, I told them, effective action will have to be taken in terms of action initiated against those responsible for the March 14 events in due process.

The alert and observant people of West Bengal have a right to know that following discussions with political leaders like Smt Mamata Banerjee, MP, Shri Partha Chatterjee, Leader of the Opposition, West Bengal Legislative Assembly, Shri Pradip Bhattacharya, Working President, West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee, Shri Manas Bhuiyan and non-political persons, I have been in regular communication with the Hon'ble Chief Minister Shri Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and requested the State Government to take certain immediate steps. These include (i) the immediate return of the ingressers; (ii) the giving of urgent relief to the displaced persons in Nandigram and (iii) the facilitation of their return to their homes.

I have also asked the administration to remove the new unauthorised manmade blocks at entry points to

1. Chandpur-Rai Para-Phulni More-Khadinbari-Nadia

2. Nandakumar-Kapaseria-ferry to cross over to Nandigram

3. Heria-Nandigram

4. Potashpur-Nandigram

in order that the isolation of Nandigram from the rest of the State ends.

I have made it clear that unless these steps are taken within hours, and the syndrome of "capture and recapture" is not ended, the beginnings for a resumed dialogue through the package announced by the Chief Secretary last night will not get off the ground and the peace talks process will remain grounded. Peace talks must resume soon and, despite the lateness of the hour, I welcome the pragmatic optimism expressed in this regard by our elder statesman, Shri Jyoti Basu.

Let me conclude by saying: Enough is enough. Peace and security should be restored, without any delay, from where they have been evicted from Nandigram.

CPIM Polit Buro accused by Gandhi retorts

10 November 2007
Press Statement

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:

On West Bengal Governor’s Statement

The statement issued by the Governor of West Bengal regarding the latest developments in Nandigram is surprising. It is well-known that from January 2007, there has been violence engineered in Nandigram and normal life disrupted. For the past ten months, thousands have been driven out of their homes and the State administration prevented from functioning in the area.

The Governor has been fully appraised of the reasons behind this abnormal situation. The Governor is well within his constitutional role to communicate his views to the state government and the Central government. However, he has chosen once again to go public with a statement which is uncalled for. The content of the statement makes it clear that this is not the role expected from the office of Governor under the Constitution.

Nandigram Under Fire

9th November 2007
Press Release

• Thousands Forced to Flee from Nandigram,Activists Under Arrest
• Memorandum Submitted to Governor of West Bengal
• Dharna begins in Kolkata, Two Day Protest Fast to Commence Tomorrow

Nandigram is under fire and scare. On the festive days of Kalipuja, the light
emerging from the land of Martyrdom is not of the lamps women would light in
their 'badis' (houses) but from the burning houses, put on fire by cadres
entering village after village and occupying land forcibly.

The reports coming from the land and the citizens as members of the Bhumi
Ucched Protirodh Committee indicate that AT LEAST 20,000 FAMILIES ARE MADE TO
FLEE FROM THEIR HOUSES IN SATANGABARI, SAMSABAD AND OTHER VILLAGES which are
either demolished or looted. We met Taslimadi in Kapasberia with Minudi, who
have taken shelter in their relatives' houses. But the tears in their eyes and
choked voices brought to us the pain and anguish for being made destitute and
homeless which could not be hidden. While thousands of families and more than a
lakh people have shifted either to the schools and other public buildings, or
to the open grounds where huge camps are set up by the committee where most of
the people are being fed, if not left hungry.

Tens of people, from the villages that laid their lives for land in 2007, the
very year of remembering of Gandhiji's Satyagraha, the Martyrdom of Bhagat
Singh and 150 years of the Sepoy Mutiny, saw their victory in the cancellation
of the Chemical hub to be brought on the lush green land in Nandigram, East
Midnapore. But that was not all. They are facing worse of the battles, a war.
Beyond throwing small bombs, firing across the Khaals (naalas) and rivulets,
demolishing 60 houses in Satangabari (May 2007) and such other attacks
threatening and targeting villagers; boycott of labourers and hawkers going to

work and customers going to nearby market is also a serious concern. Resistance
to this also became violent, as people and some of the supporting social and
political activists claimed that they could not survive without it.

A new phase began, with steady increase in the large number of persons, known
to be Harmad Vahini, CPI (M) cadres, and an open attack on the houses and
villages and also persons, started in October. Persons of both sides seem to
have been killed but no one is sure of the final tally. The information from
the area was in parts and parcels and delayed but now it's clear that CPI(M)
cadres from outside the area, as they are identified with goons, have been
marching, beating, hitting ……. forcibly occupying territory. News conveyed
and flashed clearly indicate that Satangabari, Samsabad, Sonachura and few
other villages are partially or fully vacated, occupied and houses looted and
damaged, even burnt. Beyond this, the total picture of the fight going on among
the unequal forces is not coming out but it's certain that unlike what is
presented from the ruling quarters in West Bengal, there is no infiltration of
Maoists that has caused all this. There may be a handful of activists belonging
to various ideologies â€" Gandhian to Maoism â€" reaching Nandigram, but we
have not doubt that the battle was started, led and is carried forward by the
local residents, women, men youth and children included.

We know that hundreds and hundreds of families have been left without
livelihoods who are only crying halt to snatch away their land, asserting their
rights but also appealing for peace. They, in thousands, are innocent, they are
challenged but they are committed even to lay their lives but not bent or
submit. They are beyond party lines, accepting the leadership of Bhumi Ucched
Protirodh Committee with representatives of villages' communities, peoples'
organisations such as Gana-unnayan and Jana-adhikar Raksha Samiti and also

local residents representing SUCI, TMC, PDCI and Congress as parties and
Jamait-e-Ulema-i-Hind. This must be understood by all.

What is going on in Nandigram is undemocratic, criminal and also inhuman.
People on both sides are losing lives while property and livelihood in the area
is irreversibly damaged. This is unacceptable.

The West Bengal Government has been repeatedly appealed by various
organisations, to control the situation by compelling the CPI (M) cadres to
withdraw the siege and stop forcible entry and occupation, but to no avail. THE
POLICE, INCLUDING SENIOR OFFICIALS, SEEM TO BE INACTIVE AND APATHETIC AS PER
ORDERS AND UNDER THE POLITICAL CONTROL OF LAKSHMAN SETH, MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
AND CHAIRMAN OF HALDIA DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY.

It is all these which necessitates an urgent intervention by not only the
Central Government, the Home Ministry but also the Constitutional authorities
and the National Human Rights Commission, to say the least.

IT WAS EXACTLY TO HIDE THIS AND PREVENT AN EXPOSURE THAT THE WEST BENGAL
GOVERNMENT IS NOT PERMITTING THE MEDIA PERSONS, except those who could somehow
manage.

We, representatives of Peoples' Movements, Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samiti
and New Trade Union initiatives, NAPM, APDR, Forum of Artistes and
Intellectuals, Teachers and Scientists' forums, representatives from SUCI
including Tarun Sanyal, Sunondo Sanyal, Tarun Naskar, Sujata Bhadra, Meher
Engineer, Amit Bhattacharya, Debaprosad Sarkar(MLA), Anuradha Talwar ,Swapan
Ganguly and Medha Patkar, decided to visit Nandigram on being invited through
repeated calls and messages from the people facing the onslaught.

Yesterday, November 8th 2007, we proceeded towards Nandigram accompanied by
tens of policemen and officials, who warned us of security problems but also
assured us of being there to protect. On their conveying to us a possibility of
having a dialogue with the Chief Minister or Chief Secretary in the Government,

we agreed to hold the dialogue after visiting the area and assessing the
situation there. We took the Haldia route instead of the route we took earlier,
where CPI (M) cadres had stopped us.

We reached Kapasberia More at about 12:30 p.m. A gathering of 30-40 CPI (M)
cadres with Red flags stopped our convoy and started shouting abusive slogans
against us. Interestingly the police pilot car leading the convoy stepped aside
and made way for the goons so that they can have a free hand on us. A few
cadres specifically targeted Medha Patkar, Tarun Sanyal, Debjit, Deboprosad
Sarkar and Meher Engineer as well as a few media persons in other vehicles.
They started attacking Medha Patkar with fists, violently pulling her out of
the car by holding her hair and Sari. They broke the specks of Debjit and
partly tore the clothes of Sunondo Sanyal. They also broke the camera of a
media person.

All the while, the cadres were encircling all the cars (except the police ones)
and breaking the glass panes, shouted abusive and filthy languages to all of
us. Even at this point, police chose to be silent spectators who are watching
some fun for free. Five vehicles were able to turn back and move a few yards.
One sumo car (WB 02H â€" 4402), carrying Meher Engineer, Amit Bhattacharya and
Hindustan Times reporter Alok Banerjee, was severely damaged and the passengers
including Alok Banerjee were badly beaten in this unprecedented act of violence
by CPI(M) terrorists. The driver somehow managed to move forward towards
Kapasberia School where the local residents gave the passengers first aid.
Medha Patkar and others began to stage Dharna on the Kapasberia bridge and had
a protest sit-in for 3 hours and more. We handed over a letter addressed to the
Superintendent of Police and asked to make way for our visit to Nandigram and
to book the attackers under law.

Local residents came out in large numbers and showed their support and

solidarity towards us and to the struggle of common people of Nandigram and
condemned the CPI (M) attack on us. They also condemned the deliberate and
directed police inaction. Subsequently we lodged two complaints with the local
Mahishadal Police Station, one relating to breaking down of the above mentioned
Sumo car, and the other regarding the physical attack on Medha Patkar,
Deboprosad Sarkar (MLA) and others by CPI (M) cadres. We returned to Mecheda
for further action where Medha Patkar and Tarun Sanyal addressed the local
residents.

• We condemn such undemocratic and criminal tendencies by the ruling
party and demand as free and concerned citizens of India as well as
representatives of peoples' movements that we should be allowed to visit
Nandigram where more than a lakh people have become homeless and need our
immediate support and relief.

• We are shocked by the apathy, inaction and both direct and indirect
support of the police to the CPI (M) hooligans, indicating a break-down of
State Machinery resulting in non-availability of any channel for security and
redressal of grievances of common people.

• We urge an urgent intervention by the Governor of West Bengal as well
as the Union Government of India to open up Nandigram by ensuring withdrawal of
siege and stopping outsider-attackers from entering Nandigram.

• We demand that peaceful defenders of Human Rights' belonging to known
Peoples' organisations should be allowed and protected and their entry to
Nandigram area should be facilitated.

• We hope that all concerned and progressive citizens, civil
organisations as well as political parties will protest against the onslaught
on Nandigram, forcible occupation of their territory and violation of basic
human rights and civil liberties, compelling the Constitutional authorities and

government to intervene in this battle between the State and people for
freedom, democracy, right to life and livelihood.

Latest News:

1. Three People including Sadikulla from Jamat-e-Ulema-Hind, Schoota Das and
Samar Das, have been arrested while going towards Nandigram today.

2. Activists and intellectuals including Medha Patkar met the governor today
and submitted the memorandum to ensure the freedom of the people of Nandigram
and also the protection of their Constitutional rights.

3. People across India have written to the WB government condemning the attack
and the situation in Nandigram.

4. DHARNA (SIT IN) HAS BEGUN IN KOLKATA TODAY, IN WHICH PEOPLE FROM VARIOUS
ORGANISATIONS AND ACTIVISTS INCLUDING MEDHA PATKAR ARE PARTICIPATING. A TWO DAY
PROTEST FAST WILL COMMENCE TOMORROW.

Press Conference

THERE WILL BE A PRESS CONFERENCE AT 3.00 P.M. TODAY, DEMANDING THE IMMEDIATE
RELEASE OF ARRESTED ACTIVISTS AND BRINGING NORMALCY IN NANDIGRAM.

Sukhendu Bhattachrya - Sanhati Udyog/NAPM
Anuradha Talwar - Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samiti/NTUI
Sujata Bhadra- APDR
Tarun Naskar/ Dilip Chakraborty- Forum of Artists and intellectuals
Meher Engineer- Teachers’ and Scientists’ Forum
Shyam Bihari Singh- Janata Dal (Secular)
Kartik Pal- CPI (ML) Liberation
Shaktiman Ghosh- National Hawkers’ Federation
Amit BhattaCharya- Prof. Jadhavpur University
Gautam Sen- Intellectual
Medha Patkar- National Alliance of People's Movements

Nandigram: sporadic violence continues

Marcus Dam & Vinay Kumar
The Hindu, 8 November

Landmine blasts point to Maoists, says CPI(M)

— Photo: PTI

common concerns: West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu in Kolkata on Wednesday.

KOLKATA/NEW DELHI: There was sporadic violence again in the Nandigram area of West Bengal on Wednesday. It involved activists of the Trinamool Congress-backed Bhumi Ucched Pratirdoh (Resistance against Land Eviction) Committee and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The State Government said some of those who had left their villages following violence had started returning.

The death toll in the violence on Tuesday that had spilled over from the previous night had risen to four, Home Secretary Prasad Ranjan Ray said. He mentioned reports of one more death.

But Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee claimed that 22 persons had died and that several bodies had been thrown into the Haldi river. There were reports of houses being set on fire and bomb-throwing between rival groups.

Roadblocks were set up in parts of Kolkata and in the districts following a call by the Trinamool Congress for a stir, leading to disruptions.

Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi called Mr. Ray and Director- General of Police A.B. Vohra to the Raj Bhavan. He was told of steps being taken to tackle the violence.

“There was no major violence in Nandigram during the day and many have started returning to their homes, though there are others still unable to do so,” Mr. Ray said later. Three days of violence has resulted in a fresh exodus, and nearly 2,000 people are still away from their villages.

Mr. Ray had no information about the arrival of Central forces for deployment, as sought by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee who spoke to Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil.

The Left Front leadership renewed its call to re-initiate the peace process through discussions between political parties. Left Front Committee Chairman and CPI(M) State Committee Secretary Biman Bose hoped “that peace could return in the area through a negotiated settlement.”

Veteran leader Jyoti Basu said the Left Front had asked the Chief Minister to put off the deployment of central forces given the situation. If required, he would call Ms. Banerjee “one hundred times” for talks to explore ways to restore normality.

In New Delhi, the CPI(M) expressed concern at the recurrence of violence in Nandigram, and said the West Bengal Government should ensure the induction of the Central security forces to restore normality and peace.

In a statement, the party Polit Bureau said an alliance of political forces had occupied the area and physically driven out all those who were identified with the Left.

“Under the guise of the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Samiti, the Trinamool Congress and some other forces have combined to maintain their sway in the area. In order to achieve their aims they have ganged up with the Maoists who have brought in armed squads from outside West Bengal,” it alleged.

The Maoists’ role, the Polit Bureau said, has been exposed by the landmine blasts that took place on Tuesday.

Nandigram deadlock likely to end

NDTV Correspondent
Thursday, November 8, 2007 (Kolkata)

A truce was reached on Thursday between CPI-M and anti-land acquisition activists at strife-torn Nandigram even as the West Bengal government announced compensation for those who died in the March 14 police firing and violence.

Chief Secretary A K Deb said Rs two lakh would be paid to the families of each of the 14 killed.

No decision has, however, been taken about those injured in the incidents, he said.

Supporters of the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee agreed to refrain from violence and lay down arms after a meeting with CPI-M leaders.

Deb said both the groups reached an agreement that the administration would take action against anyone who used arms.

Deb, quoting a BUPC source, said the committee had no link with Maoists and anyone suspected of having ties with Naxalites would face action.

He also said that the BUPC's demand for withdrawal of cases lodged against those involved in the March 14 violence had been rejected.

''The government will take action if any case of indulging in violence on March 14 is proved on inquiry,'' he said.

Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee had earlier said that compensation would be paid to the families of the victims of the police firing.

Earlier on Thursday, Social activist Medha Patkar was assaulted allegedly by CPI(M) activists at Kapaseberia in East Midnapore district while on her way to Nandigram.

''There were CPI(M) men carrying red flags who blocked my car and some other vehicles which were going along with mine to Nandigram. I was hit on the face and they tried to pull my hair and was about to drag me out of the car,'' Patkar said over the phone from the spot.

Patkar said she and her associates squatted on the road in protest against the attack.

Inspector General of Police (Law and Order), West Bengal, Raj Kanojia said in Kolkata that one of the vehicles in Patkar's convoy was damaged.

Candlelight vigil

A candlelight vigil began at 6 pm on Wednesday and will continue for the next 100 hours, demanding the restoration of peace in the troubled war zone.

The venue for the vigil is not far from where the vigil was held for Rizwanur, outside St Xavier's College.

The 100-hour vigil has been started by the same group of people who went on a vigil for Rizwanur. It worked last time and are hoping the initiative will work again.

''The message is again that we need peace in Nandigram. No political statement, no political message, no political demand but very simple peace in Nandigram. It is a very big irony that India should be at peace but Nandigram should be at war,'' said Mudar Patharya, Investment analyst.

Initial response last evening was a mere trickle. But as word about the vigil gets around, organisers are sure more Kolkatans will join in the stand for peace.

People of Kolkata do not want to just sit back at home and see what is happening on TV screens. They want that, whosoever does the administration, at least bring peace and look after the people in the village.

The first and last time a candlelight vigil was held in Kolkata was in the Rizwanur Rehman case where the public demanded a CBI inquiry into his death. They got what they wanted.

This time it is a call for peace in Nandigram, a message they hope politicians and administrators in the state will hear.(With PTI inputs)

Nandigram burns again, death toll rises

Kolkata, Nov 7 (IANS): Thousands fled from their homes in Nandigram Wednesday to escape an offensive launched by the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) activists from the adjoining base of Khejuri to regain control of their lost ground.

'Four villagers have been killed since Tuesday in the Khejuri-Nandigram area. At least 10 people were injured, including a woman and a policeman. There has been tension since morning but there has been no firing,' East Midnapore Superintendent of Police S.S. Panda told IANS.

'Two of the killed were identified as Tushar Kanti Sahu and Nirapada Ghata but the other two we could not identify,' he said Wednesday.

'Nandigram has turned into a war zone. We are trying our best to control the situation,' West Bengal Home Secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy told reporters Tuesday.

Roy said police were taking positions to guard Tekhali Bridge to prevent further violence.

An English daily put Tuesday's toll at 10 but police have confirmed death of only four people, taking the toll in Nandigram violence to 32 since January when the region flared up over proposed land acquisition for a special economic zone (SEZ), including a chemical hub, a plan which was later scrapped by the state government in the face of stiff resistance.

Though the SEZ was scrapped, a turf battle continued in Nandigram between the CPI-M and the Trinamool Congress supported Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) in the run-up to the Panchayat elections in May next year.

CPI-M supporters Tuesday torched house after house in Nandigram, about 150 km from Kolkata, as they advanced from adjoining Khejuri to regain control as villagers fled for their lives, carrying whatever they could, reports from Nandigram said.

Some 200 CPI-M men from Khejuri armed with long-range rifles, single-barrel guns, pipe guns and bombs Tuesday crossed the Talpatti canal at Bahargunj and attacked Satengabari, Brindabanchowk, Jambari, Girirbazar, Keyakhali, Simulkunda, Saifullachowk and Raynagar villages of Nandigram.

'It is a planned attack. The CPI-M has assembled its armed supporters to mount the attack with the backing of Eastern Frontier Rifles (EFR) and crush the opposition,' said West Bengal Public Works Department Minister Kshiti Goswami who belongs to the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), an ally of the CPI-M in the government.

According to one report, 30-year-old Manasi Das, in an advanced stage of pregnancy, was holding on to her four-year-old daughter Shiuli when two bullets pierced her thighs Tuesday. She hasn't seen her daughter since.

'Shots were being fired from Khejuri since early morning. From 8 a.m. the shouts of CPI-M workers drew near. I was hurrying out of the house with my daughter,' Manasi told a Kolkata daily from her bed at Tamluk Hospital.

'My husband Swapan had our six-year-old son Soumen with him. I was hit in the legs and collapsed. I have not met my daughter or any of my other family members since,' she said.

Most residents of BUPC-controlled areas of Satengabari, Girirbazar, Brindabanchowk and Jambari fled their homes Tuesday. They were given shelter in school buildings elsewhere.

The CPI-M has been launching attacks from Khejuri where about 1,500 party supporters are living in refugee camps after they had to flee Nandigram since the flare-up in January.

On March 14, at least 14 villagers were killed in police firing in Nandigram when they resisted the entry of policemen to the area.

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has appealed to opposition parties to find a political solution to the Nandigram violence while seeking the presence of central security forces in the area.

© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service




CPI(M) 'recaptures' Nandigram bases

Indo-Asian News Service
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 (Kolkata)

Launching a massive offensive against the Trinamul Congress-backed group, the Communist Party of India -Marxist (CP-M) regained lost bases in West Bengal's Nandigram, as fresh violence claimed four lives in the trouble-torn area amid demands for central intervention by opposition leader Mamata Banerjee.

As violence escalated in Nandigram, veteran CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu changed his stand and said deployment of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) should be postponed and if needed talks should be initiated with Banerjee for the third time to find a political solution.

''I have told the chief minister (Buddhadeb Bhattacharya) to postpone deployment of central forces in Nandigram. Instead, we have asked him to arrange an all-party meeting to restore peace in troubled areas. If needed, we can talk to Mamata Banerjee again though previous all-party peace talks failed,'' Basu said after meeting of the ruling Left Front.

Hours later, Banerjee called a press conference to demand deployment of the army in Nandigram under central supervision and invocation of Article 355 of constitution in the state which mandates the union government to protect states against internal disturbance. She, however, expressed her willingness to sit for talks if the same was held at Basu's initiative.

''We demand immediate central intervention in the state under Article 355,'' she said as she threatened to unleash an agitation which ''would be a free-for-all and with no idea what shape the same would take''.

Report of deaths

About 2,000 people fled from their homes in Nandigram since Tuesday to escape an offensive launched by CPI(M) activists from the adjoining base of Khejuri to regain control of their lost ground.

''Four villagers have been killed since Tuesday. There is a report of one more death but the same is unofficial,'' West Bengal Home Secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy said.

Roy virtually rebelled against the CPI(M)'s official stand and gave his own version of the situation in Nandigram. CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose was quick to retort that the home secretary was not aware of the full facts in Nandigram.

''About 2,000 people, largely Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) supporters, are homeless. The CPI-M has gained ground in Maheshpur and adjoining areas of Nandigram. Many CPI-M supporters have returned home,'' Roy said.

''Nandigram has turned into a war zone. We are trying our best to control the situation,'' he had said a day before.

Earlier, East Midnapore Superintendent of Police SS Panda said that besides the four deaths about 10 people were injured in the violence since Tuesday, including a woman and a policeman.

The death toll in Nandigram violence rose to 32 since January when the region flared up over proposed land acquisition for a special economic zone (SEZ), including a chemical hub, a plan that was later scrapped by the state government in the face of stiff resistance.

Though the SEZ was scrapped, a turf battle continued in Nandigram between the CPI(M) and the Trinamul Congress-supported BUPC in the run-up to the local body elections in May next year.

CPI(M) supporters on Tuesday torched house after house in Nandigram, about 150 km from Kolkata, as they advanced from adjoining Khejuri to regain control as villagers fled for their lives, carrying whatever they could, reports from area said.

Planned attack

Some 200 CPI(M) men from Khejuri armed with long-range rifles, single-barrel guns, pipe guns and bombs Tuesday crossed the Talpatti canal at Bahargunj and attacked Satengabari, Brindabanchowk, Jambari, Girirbazar, Keyakhali, Simulkunda, Saifullachowk and Raynagar villages of Nandigram.

''It is a planned attack. The CPI(M) has assembled its armed supporters to mount the attack with the backing of the Eastern Frontier Rifles (EFR) and crush the opposition,'' said West Bengal Public Works Department Minister Kshiti Goswami who belongs to the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), an ally of the CPI(M) in the government.

According to one report, 30-year-old Manasi Das, in an advanced stage of pregnancy, was holding on to her four-year-old daughter Shiuli when two bullets pierced her thighs Tuesday. She hasn't seen her daughter since.

''Shots were being fired from Khejuri since early morning. From 8 am the shouts of CPI(M) workers drew near. I was hurrying out of the house with my daughter,'' Manasi told a Kolkata daily from the Tamluk Hospital.

''My husband Swapan had our six-year-old son Soumen with him. I was hit in the legs and collapsed. I have not met my daughter or any of my other family members since,'' she said.

Most residents of BUPC-controlled areas of Satengabari, Girirbazar, Brindabanchowk and Jambari fled their homes Tuesday. They were given shelter in school buildings elsewhere.

The CPI-M has been launching attacks from Khejuri where about 1,500 party supporters are living in refugee camps after they had to flee Nandigram in January.

On March 14, at least 14 villagers were killed in police firing in Nandigram when they resisted the entry of policemen to the area.

The chief minister has appealed to opposition parties to find a political solution to the Nandigram violence while seeking the presence of central security forces in the area.




Reports hint Maoist hand in Nandigram

Monideepa Banerjie
Thursday, November 8, 2007 (Nandigram)

The CPM has blamed hardline Maoist militants for the violence in Nandigram and now reports suggest that the outfit has penetrated into the violence-torn region.

Maoist training camps in West Bengal's Purulia district bordering Jharkhand have been around for years now.

According to intelligence sources, since February trained Maoists from these camps are filtering into Nandigram and joining hands with the anti-SEZ group, the Bhoomi Uchched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) to keep the police out.

''We have information from various sources that some of the Maoist elements are there in Nandigram. To what extent they are effective and to what extent they are abetting or supporting this movement against the government - whatever the movement may be - is not entirely clear to us,'' said Amit Kiran Deb, Chief Secretary, West Bengal.

Till September, the presence of the Maoists in Nandigram was really nebulous. No one was sure who they were, where they were, what they were doing and what their resources were.

The breakthrough came on September 22 when prominent Maoist leader Ranjit Pal was spotted at Sonachura.

Pal has claimed he was involved in the killing of JMM MP Sunil Mahato at Jamshedpur on March 4 this year.

According to information available with NDTV, leadership of the Maoist movement in Nandigram is being given by a core group of 10 to 12 people, led by Arup and Tapashi.

Out of a total of 110 to 120 Maoists camping there, 20 to 25 are women. They have several frontal organizations including the Matangini Mahila Samiti and the Bandi Mukti Committee.

Intelligence agencies believe that the October 14 rally jointly held by the Maoists and the BUPC point to the Naxal involvement in the area.

In the recent past, the Maoists have opened a training centre at Ranichak in Nandigram itself. Local boys are allegedly being trained in the use of arms and also improvised landmines.

The Maoists came under attack from the Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee, who promised to give all possible help to the administration if they began a crackdown on Maoists.


Governor discusses Nandigram with Buddhadeb

Sourav Sanyal, Monideepa Banerjie
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 (Kolkata)

West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Wednesday discussed violence in Nandigram with West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

''He has brought reports to the notice of the state government and the Government of India,'' a Raj Bhavan release said.

The Governor was observing the rapidly evolving developments closely, the release said.

Home Secretary P R Roy and the IGP A B Vohra also called on the Governor, he added.

Earlier on Wednesday, as CPI(M) activists blocked all entry points leading to the war zone. Trinamool Congress set up pickets along the roads, apparently to check vehicles for the illegal entry of firearms into the area.

Caught in the political cross fire, thousands of villagers whom are now sheltering at camps having lost their home and hearth.

Sixty-year old Bhushan Pramanik is lying like a vegetable since Sunday at the Nandigram Primary Hospital. Running for his life from armed men who set fire to his house, Bhushan suffered a stroke that has paralysed his right side and left him without speech.

''They were firing indiscriminately. Thousands of CP(M) cadre were firing at our home from the other side. They were looting and vandalizing our homes and setting them on fire. People were running for their lives leaving everything behind,'' said Madhuri Koyal, Resident, Nandigram.

The school at Nandigram has turned into a relief camp and thousands of terrified villagers - like this pregnant woman or this elderly man - have taken refuge in the classrooms. They are paying the price for living in a war zone.

''Bullets and bombs are raining where we live. We are being continuously fired at. I am not well. Where else could I have gone except for the relief camp,'' said Namita Mumian , Resident, Parulbari village.

''It is impossible to live with terror inflicted on us everyday by armed outsiders and continuous firing which is why we came straight to the relief camp,'' said Aurobindo Das, Resident, Jambari village.

A battleground since January over land acquisition, Nandigram is now witnessing a fight for turf by the CPI(M) and the Trinamool backed Bhoomi Uchched Pratirodh Committee or BUPC.

The Left, which held all 10 panchayats in the area is trying to regain ground lost to the BUPC after police firing on Match 14, 2007 left 14 dead.

''Some people are trying to create disturbance in Nandigram. They are trying to acquire Nandigram by any means. This is a political ploy,'' said Biswajit Maity, Resident, Nandigram.

At least 3,000 people are holed up in this camp alone. People, who have fled their homes and left behind everything fearing for their lives.

They just want peace and justice for the mindless bloodshed that Nandigram has witnessed for 11 long months. (With PTI inputs)


PM concerned over Nandigram deadlock

NDTV Correspondent
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 (Kolkata)

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has expressed concern over the continued violence in Nandigram.

In a letter to Trinamool Congress leader Partha Chatterjee, Singh wrote that he was concerned about the developments there and has asked Home Minister Shivraj Patil to look into it urgently.

The prime minister, however, hasn't said anything about deploying the CRPF in Nandigram.

Singh was replying to the letter written by Chatterjee, who wants the border between Khejuri and Nandigram be declared a disturbed area.

Meanwhile, CPM leader and former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu has said the situation in Nandigram is not acceptable.

He however, has said Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has been asked to postpone the deployment of central paramilitary forces at Nandigram to contain violence.

Condemning the spurt of violence that intensified since Sunday night, Basu said he had never seen an agitation where movement of police force was being blocked by digging roads.

''Trinamool has said that they will not allow anyone else to live there except their own supporters. Has anybody heard of such agitation? We cannot accept such agitation even if one hundred supporters of CPI(M) are killed'', he said.

But interestingly, while the Left Front has advised the chief minister against sending paramilitary forces for now, the CPM politburo in Delhi has asked the state government to send central security forces at the earliest.

In a statement, the politburo expressed deep concern at the recurring violence and blamed the Trinamool Congress for inciting tension with Maoist help to target political opponents.

The politburo said the state government should ensure the induction of the Central security forces in the area to restore normality and peace.

Tension prevails

On the ground, clashes were reported today from three villages in Nandigram. However, Inspector General (Law and Order) Raj Kanojia denied any fresh incident.

On their part, Trinamool Congress supporters took to the streets to protest the violence at Nandigram and blocked Howrah Bridge, Hazra and Syambazar leading to a traffic jam.

On Tuesday, the police couldn't even enter villages like Satengabari and Ranichak where the two opposing sides took on each other with gun and bombs and left three dead and at least 10 others injured.

On March 14, police firing and clashes between CPI(M) supporters and members of the Bhoomi Uchched Pratirodh Committee left 14 people dead in Nandigram. (With Agency Inputs)

Left Front discusses CRPF deployment

Special Correspondent
The Hindu, 8 November

Basu favours postponement of fresh deployment; ready for talks with Mamata

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE: A Nandigram resident in grief as she is compelled to leave her house and join a relief camp on Wednesday.

KOLKATA: Leaders of the Left Front had asked West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to “postpone for now fresh deployment of the Central Reserve Police Force” in Nandigram and to re-initiate the political initiative to restore peace there, veteran leader Jyoti Basu said here on Wednesday .

Meetings convened twice between the political parties to explore ways to bring back normality might have failed, but another meeting could be held, Mr. Basu said, emerging from a meeting of Left Front leaders.

To a question from newspersons, the former Chief Minister said that if it is required he was willing to call Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee “one hundred times” if that would help resolve the impasse. “I have no quarrel with her… If they [the Left Front leaders] want it I will definitely call her. But if [those] leaders say all those living there will have to be Trinamool Congress members, then even if a hundred people die we cannot accept it.”

“What sort of a movement is this where roads have been dug up, bridges blown up… Is this a movement?” asked Mr. Basu on the agitation led by the Trinamool Congress-backed Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee.

“I have never seen or heard of such a movement ever before. What are the local police doing?”

Mr. Basu had expressed his views at the meeting on the deployment of the CRPF in Nandigram, but “no hard and fast decision was taken on a postponement,” Left Front Committee Chairman Biman Bose said later. “I have said it earlier and am doing so again: the State administration will take a decision [on any deployment].”

Mr. Bose wanted all democratic parties including the Trinamool Congress to resist Maoist activity in Nandigram if peace is to be restored there.

The three landmine explosions in the area on Tuesday, and reports of more mines being planted have raised suspicions of a Maoist hand. The methods employed suggest that the planting of mines was “probably” the handiwork of underground outfits like the Maoists, and they should be isolated by all political parties that believe in democracy, Mr. Bose added. The Trinamool Congress and the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee should snap links with the outfit, “or else the peace process will be affected.”

Mr. Bose said he would “appeal to the administration and the Chief Minister to ensure that the administration acts properly in Nandigram and its surrounding areas.

Referring to Home Secretary Prasad Ranjan Ray’s suggestion that Tuesday’s violence was incited by firing from Khejuri, which is a CPI(M) stronghold, he said it “was made on the basis of misinformation.” Mr. Bose added: “What had occurred was cross-firing; it could not have happened from one side only.”

On the question of the role of some supporters of the CPI(M) in the violence, he asked: “If someone comes to attack, one can wait for some time but can one do so for eternity?” He added: “When… pushed to the wall one has to protect oneself in self-defence.”

Mr. Bose said a collective appeal had been made to the people of Nandigram to help initiate “a democratic peaceful process” and to take steps “so that all those who have had to leave their homes can return.”

A Tale of Tragic Love Cracks Calcutta’s Mirror

SOMINI SENGUPTA
NYT, October 28, CALCUTTA

A HINDU-MUSLIM love affair. A rich, well-connected patriarch. A high-handed police inquiry. And finally, a dead man on the railroad tracks.

For over a month, Calcutta has been gripped by the story of Rizwanur Rahman and Priyanka Todi: he a young, striving Muslim, she a fabulously wealthy Hindu, both daring to marry despite her family’s archresistance and, in the end, paying a terrible price. On a Friday in September, barely a month into their marriage, the body of Mr. Rahman, 29, turned up on the railroad tracks, his head mangled almost beyond recognition; whether it was murder or suicide remains in dispute. Ms. Todi, 23, shut herself off from the media glare and has said nothing publicly since.

At the center of their short-lived union stood the city police. Over the course of the eight days they lived together in Mr. Rahman’s family home, police interrogated the couple no fewer than three times, apparently at the request of Ms. Todi’s family. The police chief at the time, Prasun Mukherjee, justified his officers’ intervention by saying, at a news conference, that he found resistance to the marriage by the bride’s family “natural.” The family, he added, according to local press reports, “reacted because Rizwanur’s social and financial status did not match theirs.”

The police swiftly labeled Mr. Rahman’s death a suicide — a verdict his family just as swiftly rejected.

This tale of love, defiance and death has dominated the public imagination of this city, and not only for its rich drama and intrigue. It seems also to have touched a raw nerve, sparking public outrage that the police were making the bedroom their business, and seeming to do so at the behest of the rich and mighty. The case has been particularly jarring to the psyche of a city that has long regarded itself as a place where Hindus and Muslims can live relatively peaceably.

The Telegraph, a Calcutta-based newspaper, concluded in a sardonic editorial that the police, rather than pursue robbers and murderers, had chosen to investigate a legally registered marriage. “They would make very good uncles,” the editorial said, adding, “the police seem to feel avuncular towards a particular economic class only.”

A candlelight vigil sprang up outside the prestigious St. Xavier’s College, the Christian missionary school from which Mr. Rahman graduated with an English honors degree. And for three weeks, students, families and ordinary people of all faiths flocked there every evening, signing giant banners and lighting up a narrow sidewalk with hundreds of small white candles. “Candles of conscience,” read a banner. “Why is Todi so cozy?” asked another, referring to the bride’s father, Ashok Todi, a prominent businessman and a men’s underwear baron.

“Calcutta has always taken pride in being different from other cities in India — we’ve been inclusive, the only metro that hasn’t voted along parochial lines, a bit rebellious and openly pro-underdog,” said Bonani Kakkar, founder of a citizens’ group that calls itself Public, an acronym for People United for Better Living in Calcutta. The group sent out mobile-phone text messages to draw crowds to the candlelight vigil. “Money didn’t make a difference in this city,” she said. “Today it does.”

The case has become potent political poison for the Communist Party politicians who have ruled West Bengal State for 30 years and who have long cast themselves as defenders of Muslim interests. Mr. Rahman was a young, educated Muslim with no known criminal record, and his mysterious death finally forced the party leadership to act. After weeks of public pressure, the police chief, Mr. Mukherjee, was transferred from his post. A court here ordered a fresh inquiry into Mr. Rahman’s death, by a federal agency called the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The saga of Rizwanur Rahman and Priyanka Todi can be read as a fable of modern aspirations encountering feudal traditions.

The couple represented a generation of young Indians eager to find their place in the new economy. Rukbanur Rahman, older brother of the groom, described the younger Mr. Rahman as bookish and strong-willed. He had defied his family early on by studying English literature; his father and older brother pressed him to study science, which is what most Indians still regard as a path to a safe career. His dreams of pursuing a graduate degree in English were cut short by the family’s limited financial means, and the younger Mr. Rahman found a job teaching graphic design at a private academy. Graphic design is a quintessential new economy pursuit that would have been virtually unheard of a generation ago.

At the design school, he met Ms. Todi. She was once a student in his class.

How their romance blossomed, and for how long, is not known. But one day in late August, an unusually nervous Rizwanur Rahman approached his brother and confessed to having secretly married. On Aug. 31, he brought his bride home to the Rahmans’ small, two-room apartment on a narrow alley in a working-class Muslim neighborhood.

His family knew it was a far cry from the upmarket suburban home where she grew up and they took note of how well she seemed to adjust. For a year, she told them, she had been living without air-conditioning in her room at home, as preparation for a new life with the Rahmans.

That new life lasted no more than a week. First, her father came to urge her to leave. Then the police summoned the couple to the headquarters of the “anti-rowdy” division. On one occasion, Rukbanur Rahman recalled, police officers threatened to chain-gang the entire Rahman family to the police station if the couple refused to come with them for questioning. No charges were filed against the couple. The police have declined to comment on the case because it is under investigation.

On Sept. 8, in circumstances that remain murky, the police persuaded Ms. Todi to go home to her parents, Mr. Rahman’s brother said, with a written assurance that she could return to her husband in a week.

She did not, and it left Mr. Rahman distraught. He spent nights at the homes of friends and relatives. He sought out an attorney. When his family suggested that he may have to give up hope of reuniting with Ms. Todi, he became furious. “ ‘She is my life,’ he said,” Rukbanur Rahman recalled. “He was deeply in love.”

Two weeks later, Rizwanur Rahman’s body was found on the railroad tracks in another part of town. Federal investigators are trying to determine whether it was a case of murder or suicide.

Pakistan Rounds Up Musharraf’s Political Foes

JANE PERLEZ and DAVID ROHDE
NYT, November 5

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 4 — The government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, making no concessions a day after seizing emergency powers, rounded up leading opposition figures and said Sunday that parliamentary elections could be delayed for as long as a year.

Security forces were reported to have detained about 500 opposition party figures, lawyers and human rights advocates on Sunday, and about a dozen privately owned television news stations remained off the air. International broadcasters, including the BBC and CNN, were also cut off.

The crackdown, announced late Saturday night after General Musharraf suspended the Constitution, was clearly aimed at preventing public demonstrations that political parties and lawyers were organizing for Monday.

“They are showing zero tolerance for protest,” said Athar Minallah, a lawyer and a former minister in the Musharraf government.

In Islamabad, police forces continued to block the Parliament and Supreme Court buildings. But the day was mostly quiet, there was no formal curfew, and most people went about their business as usual. Several small protests were broken up, including one involving two dozen people who scuffled with the police.

Police officers armed with tear gas broke up a meeting at the headquarters of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission in Lahore and took dozens of people away in police vans, including elderly women, schoolteachers and about 20 lawyers, according to people at the meeting. In all, about 80 lawyers were detained, and many others who faced arrest warrants remained in hiding, according to members of a nationwide lawyer’s lobby that has grown increasingly influential as an anti-Musharraf voice.

The head of the human rights commission, and one of Pakistan’s most prominent democratic figures, Asma Jahangir, was placed under house arrest on Saturday night. Among others arrested were Javed Hashmi, the acting president of the political party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and workers of the political party of the opposition leader, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Ms. Bhutto remained in her Karachi home on Sunday.

Despite repeated warnings by the United States and other Western nations over the past several days, the Musharraf government also appeared set to put off parliamentary elections that had been scheduled for January. At a news conference on Sunday, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said that the government was holding internal discussions on the future of the elections. “We are still deliberating,” he said. “In an emergency the Parliament could give itself one year.”

As the Bush administration has seen General Musharraf, one of its closest allies in fighting terrorism, become increasingly unpopular with the Pakistani public in the past several months, American officials have urged the general to abandon his military post and hold fair elections to bolster his standing. But even though he promised from time to time to step down as Pakistan’s military leader while remaining as president, he never did so.

His decision to suspend the Constitution and fire the Supreme Court was taken days before the court was due to decide whether his re-election on Oct. 6 was valid. A close aide to General Musharraf said the Pakistani leader had decided to declare an emergency when he was told last week by a Supreme Court justice that the court would rule within days that he was ineligible to continue serving as president. The ruling would have been unanimous, according to the aide.

A government spokesman, Tariq Azim Khan, when asked Sunday why 500 people had been arrested, said the arrests were “preventive measures” because the people presented “a threat to future law and order.”

Ms. Bhutto returned to Karachi from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates hours after emergency rule was imposed. Leaders of her party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, had said she would fly to Islamabad on Sunday to hold talks with other opposition parties on how to proceed. But Ms. Bhutto did not show up here.

In interviews with foreign broadcast outlets, she called on the Musharraf government to lift what she called “martial law” and to hold elections.

Sympathizers of Ms. Bhutto, who came back to Pakistan with the backing of the United States and the specific mandate of bringing a democratic face to Pakistan, said her options for influencing the situation were limited.

Ms. Bhutto’s potential to rally large numbers of demonstrators, her most potent weapon, was now in severe trouble, said Najem Sethi, the editor in chief of The Daily Times. Organizing large protests under emergency rule, and after the bomb attack on her arrival procession Oct. 18 that killed 140 people, would be very difficult for her, he said.

“She will be very critical,” Mr. Sethi said. “But she is not going to participate in protests. She’s going to make a token representation. Behind the scenes she will work with the government for election as soon as possible.” Enver Baig, a senior leader of her party, said that the group’s strategy in the immediate future would be announced Monday.

Among the lawyers arrested was the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, who has opposed General Musharraf in legal arguments before the Supreme Court. Mr. Ahsan led the protests last spring over the firing of the Supreme Court Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

A legal colleague of Mr. Ahsan’s, Ayesha Tammy Haq, waited outside the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjacent to the capital, to see Mr. Ahsan on Sunday. “If you want to take the country away from Talibanization, these are the people who can do it, the secular middle class,” Ms. Haq said.

One of General Musharraf’s main justifications for suspending the Constitution and firing the members of the Supreme Court was the need to combat extremists sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In his address, he blamed the Supreme Court for hampering the government’s antiterror efforts by releasing terror suspects.

Even though the government was doing all it could to prevent public demonstrations by the legal profession, lawyers said they had other strategies to undermine the emergency rule.

An effort would be made to persuade lawyers not to appear before any judges who had agreed to be sworn in as judges under the emergency decree, said Mr. Minallah, the lawyer and former government minister.

Further, two thirds of the judges in the high courts had resigned or were not invited to be sworn in again under the emergency laws, said Feisal Naqvi, a lawyer who was at the raided meeting. Only 5 of the Supreme Court’s 17 judges agreed to take a new oath of office on Sunday morning, Mr. Naqvi said.

At the government news conference in Islamabad, Prime Minister Aziz spoke further about controls on the news media that were reported Saturday night. Broadcasters had said that the government had issued orders that journalists who brought “ridicule or disrepute” to General Musharraf and other officials could face up to three years in prison. On Sunday, Mr. Aziz said that the government would meet with television broadcasters to work out a “code of conduct.”

Pakistani journalists, proud of the dozen or so privately owned news channels that have flourished in the last three years, said Sunday they would refuse to knuckle under. “We will resist by not institutionally accepting this,” said Talat Hussein, the director of news and current affairs at Aaj TV.

After a meeting of the Federal Union of Journalists here, the president of the Islamabad Press Club, Afzal Butt, said the press would boycott government functions and briefings on Monday.

Earlier, the director of the Aaj channel, Wamiq Zuberi, said a magistrate accompanied by five buses of gun-toting police officers showed up at the studios on Saturday night and tried to confiscate an outdoor broadcasting van. The magistrate did not have a warrant and the workers at the studio stood their ground, forcing the officials to leave empty-handed, Mr. Zuberi said.

Salman Masood contributed reporting.

U.S. Is Likely to Continue Aid to Pakistan

By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID ROHDE
NYT, November 5

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 — The Bush administration signaled Sunday that it would probably keep billions of dollars flowing to Pakistan’s military, despite the detention of human rights advocates and leaders of the political opposition by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the country’s president.

In carefully calibrated public statements and blunter private acknowledgments about the limits of American leverage over General Musharraf, the man President Bush has called one of his most critical allies, the officials argued that it would be counterproductive to let Pakistan’s political turmoil interfere with their best hope of ousting Al Qaeda’s central leadership and the Taliban from the country’s mountainous tribal areas.

Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that while the United States would “have to review the situation with aid,” she said three times that President Bush’s first concern was “to protect America and protect American citizens by continuing to fight against terrorists.”

“That means we have to be very cognizant of the counterterrorism operations that we are involved in,” she said. “We have to be very cognizant of the fact that some of the assistance that has been going to Pakistan is directly related to the counterterrorism mission.”

In Islamabad, aides to General Musharraf — who had dismissed pleas on Friday from Ms. Rice and Adm. William J. Fallon, the senior military commander in the Middle East, to avoid the state-of-emergency declaration — said they had anticipated that there would be few real consequences.

They called the American reaction “muted,” saying General Musharraf had not received phone calls of protest from Mr. Bush or other senior American officials. In unusually candid terms, they said American officials supported stability over democracy.

“They would rather have a stable Pakistan — albeit with some restrictive norms — than have more democracy prone to fall in the hands of extremists,” said Tariq Azim Khan, the minister of state for information. “Given the choice, I know what our friends would choose.”

It was a sign of their confidence that Pakistani officials announced that parliamentary elections set for January might be delayed for as long as a year. Just before she learned of that announcement, Ms. Rice said, “We have a very clear view that the elections need to take place on time, which would mean the beginning of the year.”

In Washington, officials acknowledged that they were trying to balance the American insistence that Pakistan remain on the path to democracy and General Musharraf’s unwillingness to risk chaos that would allow Al Qaeda and the Taliban to operate more freely.

“The equities in Pakistan are huge,” said a senior official deeply involved in trying to persuade General Musharraf to fulfill his promise to hold elections and run the country as a civilian leader. “We’ve got U.S. and NATO troops dying in Afghanistan, and a war on terrorism” that cannot be halted while General Musharraf tries to shore up his powers, he said.

It was unclear to what extent General Musharraf perceived an urgent threat to the country in deciding to declare an emergency that suspended civil liberties.

But several administration officials said they were struck by the heavy-handed nature of the crackdown announced Saturday. Until a few days ago, they said, General Musharraf had been offering private assurances that any emergency declaration would be short-lived. “They have made this crisis more acute by the way they’ve done this,” the official concluded.

President Bush has made spreading democracy a major foreign policy theme and his administration has quietly pushed General Musharraf for months to be more open to sharing power, going so far as to help broker talks between him and Benazir Bhutto, the leader of Pakistan’s largest opposition party.

But Mr. Bush has said nothing in public about General Musharraf’s latest action. His silence contrasts sharply to his reaction to the crackdown on dissidents in Myanmar last month. In that case, Mr. Bush announced specific steps against Myanmar rulers. But Pakistan, officials argued, is a different case: it is a nuclear-armed nation that Mr. Bush had designated a “major non-NATO ally,” even though its enthusiasm for counterterrorism has been episodic.

In Islamabad, Western officials said Mr. Bush’s limited choices could worsen if protests erupted, and they complained that in the past few months General Musharraf had focused more on weakening his rivals than fighting Islamic extremists.

For more than a year before Saturday’s declaration, American officials have seethed over Pakistan’s poor performance against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. General Musharraf’s effort to strike a deal with Islamic militant groups in the tribal areas failed. When he ordered troops back into the tribal areas in recent months, many were killed or kidnapped.

In interviews before and after the emergency declaration, Western diplomats and former Pakistani military officials said General Musharraf had done a poor job countering growing militancy, particularly this year. The military-led government has moved too slowly, prepared poorly for operations and often appeased militant groups.

“Initially, this was not complicated,” said Mahmood Shah, a retired brigadier who was the senior Pakistani government official in charge of security in the tribal areas until last year. “Now, this is a very complicated situation.”

Through it all, the United States has continued pumping money to the country. While the total dollar amount of American aid to Pakistan is unclear, a study published in August by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated it to be “at least $10 billion in Pakistan since 9/11, excluding covert funds.” Sixty percent of that has gone to “Coalition Support Funds,” essentially direct payments to the Pakistani military, and 15 percent to purchase major weapons systems. Another 15 percent has been for general budget support for the Pakistani government; only 10 percent for development or humanitarian assistance.

General Musharraf’s supporters argued Sunday that his government — now unencumbered by legal constraints and political concerns by the emergency decree — will be in a better position to eradicate extremists and that if the United States wants that security, it must back him.

“If your agenda is to save attacks in the U.S. and eliminate Al Qaeda, only the Pakistani Army can do that,” said the close aide to General Musharraf. “For that, you will have to forget about elections in Pakistan for maybe two to three years.”

Pakistani opposition groups argue that General Musharraf has failed and that his emergency declaration will increase instability and militancy in the country. They say nationwide elections would produce a moderate government with popular support to crack down on militancy.

There is little question that General Musharraf has failed to develop broad domestic support for battling terrorists. His political party is divided, has not carried out promised reforms and would likely lose an election.

A poll in September by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based nonprofit group, showed that Osama bin Laden was more popular in Pakistan than General Musharraf, with 46 percent of respondents giving him a “favorable” rating against 38 percent for the president. Ms. Bhutto got a “favorable” rating from 63 percent. The nationwide poll surveyed 1,044 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and David Rohde from Islamabad, Pakistan.

A PRESIDENT RUNNING OUT OF ROOM TO MANOEUVRE - Pakistan: trying to please everybody

Le Monde diplomatique, February 2007

The United States has condemned the assistance the Taliban
receive from across the Pakistan border. President Pervez
Musharraf has announced the destruction of three training camps close to the frontier but, as elections approach, he is also trying to reach an accommodation with Islamist groups in Pakistan.

by Jean-Luc Racine

PAKISTAN'S voters will choose a new president, national
parliament and provincial assemblies this year. There are
doubts about how the three ballots will be conducted, and the
process also raises longstanding and fundamental questions
about the relationship between the military regime and the
parliamentary opposition. If General Pervez Musharraf is
re-elected as president, perhaps it is time for him to shed
his uniform and rehabilitate the democratic opposition and
its exiled leaders.

Some opposition MPs are Islamists who provide a
constitutional front for radical armed Islamists, in league
with the military, but targeted by Musharraf, who has
persistently called for "enlightened moderation" in the
service of a "progressive, dynamic Islamic state". Could this
relationship between the mullahs and the army develop? Its
complexity is increased by the involvement of radical
Pakistani Islamists in Kashmir and in the tribal areas on the
Afghanistan border where the Taliban are regaining ground.

The deteriorating situation in the western coastal province
of Baluchistan demonstrates the central government's
difficulties in dealing with inequalities between provinces;
and in reconciling internal affairs with wider regional
issues such as the international gas pipeline projects,
involving Iran and Afghanistan; or the new port at Gwadar,
intended to be China's gateway to the Indian Ocean.

The shadow of the United States falls over all this. It
constantly praises Musharraf's key role in the war on terror;
it also presses him to do more against al-Qaida and the
Taliban.

Musharraf, and many of those around him, argue the necessity
of not separating civil and military power precisely because
Pakistan faces all these internal and external challenges.
They insist that the president is the man to deal with the
situation and the army is the only body capable of effective
action. This view also finds favour among foreign political
leaders. But some Pakistani liberals, anti-Islamist
supporters of real parliamentary democracy, view the military
regime as part of the problem, not as a potential solution.
These are major challenges.

Jihad in Afghanistan

During the 1980s the Afghan war against Soviet occupation and
the Kashmiri rising against India allowed Pakistan to develop
an active regional policy intended to prevent it from being
squeezed between India and Afghanistan. As a frontline state
against the Soviet Union, Pakistan allowed the US to give
effective support to the mujahideen. After the Soviet defeat
in 1989 the mujahideen tore themselves apart and Pakistan's
influence was not decisive; Pakistan supported the Pashtun
Gulbaddin Hekmatyar against Ahmed Shah Massud's pro-Indian
Tajiks. The rise of the Taliban after 1994 offered fresh
opportunities. At the same time, Pakistani jihadists were
fighting in Indian Kashmir, boosting the insurrection and
bogging down much of the Indian army in a dirty war.

After 9/11 Musharraf soon understood the stakes in
Afghanistan and saw the risks of refusing the deal offered by
the Bush administration. He abandoned the Taliban (which
refused to expel or hand over Osama bin Laden) and signed up
to the war on terror. He shuffled his top brass, denounced
extremism and arrested hundreds of al-Qaida militants
including, in 2003, such senior figures as Khalid Sheikh
Muhammad, who had planned 9/11.

George Bush promoted Pakistan to the rank of "major non-Nato
ally" in 2004. But the US administration wanted more than
just Pakistan tracking down Bin Laden and Muhammad Omar. Both
the US and the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, blamed the
setbacks of Operation Enduring Freedom on the porosity of the
long, mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Musharraf decided in 2004 to send troops to South Waziristan,
an agency in the federally administered tribal areas (Fata)
along the Afghan border. Guerrilla fighting ensued between
the army, which lost 800 out of 80,000 men, and militias --
Afghan Taliban, neo-Taliban from Pakistani tribes and
international al-Qaida combatants. The government reached
agreements with the local tribal chiefs in South Waziristan
in 2004 and 2005, and in North Waziristan in 2006, but these
did not stop the fighting. The dispute with Kabul intensified
because of infiltration from Pakistan's tribal zones and
Baluchistan into Agfhanistan. The US army noted this
deterioration and the advance of the Taliban in southeast
Afghanistan at the expense of Nato forces (1).

On the Pakistan side of the border, the rebelliousness and
radicalisation of the Fata became a major preoccupation.
Caught between US pressure and anti-US public opinion, the
government had to pay for its repressive policies in the
tribal areas. Its largely ineffectual and occasionally
controversial operations included an air raid that killed 80
people in a madrasa in the Bajaur agency on 30 October 2006,
the day that a deal was due. Nine days later a revenge
suicide bombing on a barracks in the Northwest Frontier
Province, outside the Fata, killed 35 recruits.

Negotiations with the tribal chiefs often required the
mediation of the Islamist parties, and especially
Jamaat-e-Ulema-e Islam (JUI, Assembly of Islamic Clergy), led
by Fazlur Rehman, the opposition leader in parliament and an
open supporter of the Taliban. The use of force against
Pakistan's citizens has tarnished the government's image,
without successfully ending the ongoing Talibanisation of the
Fata. There are fears that this process could extend to the
Northwest Frontier Province, which is at present governed by
the Islamists of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA, United
Action Forum).

Another tribal problem

Despite differences, the problem here is also essentially
tribal. Baluchistan provides a large proportion of Pakistan's
gas supply and believes that it is being exploited by the
central government and the wealthy province of Punjab.
Baluchistan is the largest and least populated of Pakistan's
provinces, and has gone through a series of crises since
independence, including the suppression of several
insurgencies (1958-60, 1973-77) (2).

The first phase of the construction of the deep-sea port at
Gwadar and the stationing of more numbers of troops in the
province have worsened the frustration of the Baluch
autonomist movements, which now enjoy the support of
important tribal leaders who previously upheld the political
status quo.

In August 2006 government forces killed Akbar Khan Bugti, a
rebellious former governor of Baluchistan. This pyrrhic
victory radicalised both insurgents (including the Baluch
Liberation Army) and local political parties that support
greater autonomy. The Baluch problem is undermining major
projects -- the port at Gwadar (where Chinese engineers have
been kidnapped) and the gas pipeline linking Iran to India
via Pakistan -- that could boost Pakistan's economy.

`Proxy war' in Kashmir

At first Musharraf mishandled relations with India. By
precipitating the Kargil conflict in 1999, on the line of
control that separates Indian-and Pakistani-controlled
Kashmir, he ended talks between the two governments. Although
limited, this was the first war between two states that had
recently acquired nuclear weapons. Later, for 10 long months
following the failure of the Agra summit in July 2001 and the
terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi in
December 2002, the threat of war loomed again.

In a historic speech in January 2002, Musharraf condemned
jihad. But he had no intention of undoing the painstaking
preparations made by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence
(ISI) to intervene in Indian Kashmir. These involved
Lashkar-e-Taiba, the armed wing of the powerful