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‘Bengal violence fallout of economic clashes and ruling party aggression’

‘Bengal violence fallout of economic clashes and ruling party aggression’

'Bengal violence fallout of economic clashes and ruling party aggression'By Milinda Ghosh Roy,

Kolkata : Dearth of effective employment, aggressive political campaigns and a common tendency of the ruling parties to throttle the voice of the opposition are the major factors in the culture of political violence in West Bengal, say experts and politicians.

Despite being largely free from caste conflicts and sectarian strife, the state has for decades topped the chart in political clashes which have left hundreds dead and maimed and caused loss of property worth crores of rupees.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s denunciation of the widespread violence and killings focussed around the state rural polls as “murder of democracy” has brought the malady more into national limelight, analysts feel the recent political disturbances — in which at least 22 people have died since the start of the poll process — are no flash-in-the-pan happenings.

Political science teacher Udayan Bandopadhyay termed the violence in Bengal as a by-product of unemployment and over dependence of people on political parties for different governmental projects.

“People depend a lot on the local power nexus, mainly from the ruling dispensation, to get some sort of disguised employment, like the Hundred day’s work scheme (MGNREGA),” said Bandopadhyay, an associate professor in Bangabasi College.

“We are boasting over MGNREGA (the rural jobs scheme). But it proves that the state is actually the last in creating effective employment. It clearly shows that in rural areas, the state has not been able to produce anything apart from seasonal agricultural employment,” he added.

The violence that often seems like a battle of political ideologies from outside is actually driven by economic reasons in a state like West Bengal that lacks proper ways to earn livelihood.

“It has nothing to do with political ideology; these are absolutely localised clashes over the spoils. I think it will increase in terms of number of clashes and casualties in the coming days if the employment scenario in the state does not change,” Bandopadhyay claimed.

According to another political analyst, Anil Kumar Jana, violence during an election process is not just limited to Bengal but is prevalent across the country. The aggressive campaigning by the political leaders is largely responsible for this.

“Some of their actions are provoking the people more as in India a section of people still look up to the leaders. The violence in West Bengal is nothing new. But this time around, it became murkier as the election campaign by the BJP was very aggressive,” he said.

“On the other hand, the Trinamool Congress lacks political or ideological persuasion and heavily banks upon the politics of anti-establishment. So, the party’s aggression naturally flows down to the workers at the grassroot level,” said Jana, head of Vidyasagar University’s political science department.

Referring to the massive inflow of money to the panchayats, he pointed out that the competition to win is fierce because those who would come to power would be able to lay their hands on money.

The political parties blamed each other.

“Election or no election, the Trinamool has always tried to destroy the opposition. Before the rural polls the Chief Minister (Mamata Banerjee) herself implied that 100 percent seats should be won by Trinamool Congress. So the police and state administration took it as a mandate from the Chief Minister to annihilate all opposition forces. As a result, there was a series of violence by organised goons, ably aided and abetted by the police and the state administration,” said CPI-M politburo member and MP Mohammad Salim.

BJP Secretary Rahul Sinha targeted both the communists and Banerjee.

“This trend of state sponsored terrorism has been introduced in Bengal by the communists. I won’t say that violence was non-existent during the time of the Congress but it is mostly an invention of the Left regime. To address this fear of losing their support base, the CPI-M introduced a trend to throttle the opposition voices,” Sinha contended.

“This has been further promoted by Mamata who gave the hooligans an open licence. She is also openly using the police force as a part of her cadre base. More than clashes, it is mostly attacks on the opposition by the ruling party,” Sinha added.

State Congress president Adhir Chowdhury regretted that Bengal held the number one tag in political violence.

“Some places have communal tension or unrest over social, racial or religious issues but in Bengal it is a tradition to throttle the voice of the opposition through attacks and violence. Now it seems that doing politics for a party like Congress is a criminal offence,” Chowdhury maintained.

The Trinamool, however, refused to accept that political atrocities have increased during its rule.

“The violence that’s happening now is largely orchestrated by the opposition parties like BJP and CPI-M who are instigating unrest among people to show the current government in a bad light.

“Some parties are even bringing in goons from states like Jharkhand that has a more severe history of political violence than Bengal. However, the state administration is doing its best to handle the adversities,” Trinamool Secretary General Partha Chatterjee said.

(Milinda Ghosh Roy can be contacted at milinda.r@ians.in )

—IANS

Bengal violence has hurt Mamata’s all-India plans

Bengal violence has hurt Mamata’s all-India plans

Bengal violence has hurt Mamata's all-India plansBy Amulya Ganguli,

The Calcutta High Court’s decision to suspend the panchayat poll process in West Bengal is a major blow to Mamata Banerjee, for it shows that her government has not been able to ensure even a routine administrative procedure like the peaceful conduct of an election campaign.

The failure is a blot on a government which is not only in power with a comfortable majority but also claims to be highly popular. What the judicial verdict has indicated, therefore, is that the government has been either unable or unwilling to act against the Trinamool Congress cadres who have been accused by the opposition parties of preventing them from filing the nomination papers.

To make matters worse, the State Election Commission has apparently been coerced by the government to withdraw an earlier decision to extend the time for filing nominations. From both the aspects of the rampaging cadres and the arm-twisting of a constitutional body, the government has emerged in extremely poor light.

By allowing the situation to deteriorate to such a level, Mamata Banerjee has done a disservice to her professed mission of leading the charge against the Narendra Modi government. Instead, the well-known street-fighting capabilities of the Trinamool Congress have again come to the fore.

Yet, given the general perception of the Chief Minister’s hold over the state, it can seem odd that the ruling party should have been so intent on cowing down its opponents. The party performed satisfactorily in the 2013 panchayat elections, winning 13 of the 17 zilla parishads and faring equally well in the gram panchayats, although there were also complaints about intimidation and rigging against the Trinamool Congress in that year, with 24 people dying in poll-related violence.

There is little doubt that the Trinamool Congress will have little difficulty in winning a majority of the seats this year as well. But its fear apparently is the extent of the gains which its latest adversary, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), may make.

As is known, the BJP has been steadily improving its position in West Bengal at the expense of the Left and the Congress. In the recent by-elections to the Uluberia Lok Sabha and Noapara assembly seats, the BJP came second to the Trinamool Congress, pushing the communists to the third position. The Congress was nowhere in the picture.

The general belief is that the BJP has been cashing in on Mamata Banerjee’s pro-Muslim image and has also been unabashedly displaying its aggressive Hindutva policies as during the Ram Navami celebrations when the saffron activists took to the streets carrying arms.

Although it is widely conceded that the BJP has a long way to go before it can pose a serious challenge to the Trinamool Congress, the latter is scared that a noticeable improvement in the BJP’s position in the panchayat elections will enable it to build a base which will prove handy to the party in 2019 when it hopes to add substantially to its tally of two Lok Sabha seats (out of 42) which it won in 2014.

For Mamata Banerjee, even a marginal setback is unacceptable because she belongs to a generation of Bengali politicians to whom the BJP is an outlier although its founder when the party was known as the Jan Sangh, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, was a Bengali.

However, the way in which her party cadres went about trying to stop the BJP in its tracks is damaging to her reputation because a leader who is thinking of putting together an alternative to the ruling dispensation at the Centre cannot afford, first, to appear unsure on her home turf and, secondly, of resorting to brawling tactics.

Such ploys make her stand out as a provincial immersed in local politics with its “tradition” of violence with which the communists were associated both when they were in the opposition and when they were in power. The Trinamool Congress appears to be continuing in that mode, presumably because it has coopted many of those who were earlier in the Communist Party of India-Marxist.

What the BJP’s opponents will have to remember is that one reason why the saffron outfit is believed to be losing ground in northern and western India is the lawlessness of some of its followers like the gau rakshaks or those who target courting couples belonging to different religions or threaten to bury alive filmmakers and actresses whose artistic works they do not like.

As Hamid Ansari said in his last interview as the Vice President, Muslims are among those who have been feeling insecure in the last few years because of the unruly conditions. The reason is the atmosphere of communal animosity for which the Hindutva storm-troopers are responsible.

Any party which wants to project itself as the core around which an opposition to the government at the Centre is expected to coalesce, as Mamata Banerjee wants to do, cannot go down the same path of intimidation and anarchy.

(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com )

—IANS