Left divided over SEZ and acquisition
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
NEW DELHI: First Singur and then Nandigram. The killing of six persons at Nandigram on Sunday is widening the fissures within the Left Front with CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc attacking the CPM chief minister for not getting the allies on board.
Like Singur, Left-inclined intellectuals have again issued a statement deploring the violence in Nandigram. On Monday, CPI (ML) workers also staged a demonstration outside AKG Bhavan, CPM headquarters in the Capital, and demanded the resignation of Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and scrapping of SEZ laws.
CPI national secretary D Raja said the Nandigram incident is "unfortunate." Directly blaming the state government, Raja said, "The situation should not have been allowed to reach this stage. I wish there was more transparency. There is a need to convince everyone and evolve a political consensus." While clarifying that the Left constituents are not opposed to industrial development, Raja said the stand of the Left parties on SEZs would have repercussions on the national SEZ policy and therefore there is a need to implement it in "transparent" manner in West Bengal.
RSP leader Abani Roy, critical of the manner in which land acquisition in Singur was carried out, has also cautioned against its repetition in Nandigram. But CPI (ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya is not convinced with churning within the Left Front and considers it akin to 'running with the hare and hunting with the hound' syndrome.
He dared the LF partners to quit from Bengal government if they are so upset with Bhattacharjee. He also demanded release of CPI (ML) workers in Bengal. Left and left-of-centre intellectuals like Arundhati Roy, Romila Thapar, Jean Dreze, Sumit Sarkar and others in a joint statement said the tense situation in Nandigram is "likely to be repeated across the state if the policy continues to be executed as it has, without consideration for human rights, democratic procedures and livelihoods".
They called for the formation of an all-party peace committee in West Bengal to ensure cessation of action against the villagers and an immediate end to the forcible acquisition of land.
Link
Labels: Bengal, Nandigram, News
posted by Bimal 1/09/2007 02:41:00 PM,
1 Comments:
-
At January 9, 2007 at 8:07 PM,
Anirban Halder said...
-
This is in response to your comment in my blog Kolkata Curry. Friend, bandh should never be the preferred way of a democratic protest. It should always be the last resort and that too should never be enforced on anybody.
I fully condemn the minds who were involved with the clash that caused the killings. But how sensible is calling a bandh to protest it? There are many other democratic ways to protest. And an 'enforced' bandh is unquestionably undemocratic.
Have you ever thought how a bandh affects thousands of marginal people who make a living out of daily earning? A bandh makes them suffer like nothing else. How justified is it to make thousands of people suffer because political parties want to make a point of the killings?
