by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, News, Politics
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
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, Entrepreneurship, Investing, News, Social Entrepreneur, Startup Basics, Success Stories
By Milinda Ghosh Roy,
Kolkata : With no cutting-edge medical equipment, air-conditioning or critical care unit in place, the under-construction building in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district hardly matches the popular notion of a modern medical care facility. Yet, the hospital has become a national landmark as it tells the story of a grieving brother turning his droplets of tears into an ocean of determination that helped establish it.
Taxi driver Saidul Lashkar set out on what then seemed a near impossible journey in 2004 after his sister Marufa died of chest infection as he did not have the means to get her treated in a hospital. Marufa was only 17.
Though shattered and inconsolable, Saidul took a pledge not to let anyone else in his neighbourhood die without treatment.
“I felt I needed to do something so that no impoverished person dies like she did, without getting treatment. I wish no brother loses his sister like I did,” Saidul said, leaning quietly on a wall of the newly constructed patients’ waiting hall of Marufa Smriti Welfare Foundation in Punri village near Baruipur, about 55 km from Kolkata.
Twelve years were spent chasing the dream, as the cabbie criss-crossed the streets of Kolkata, never veering for a moment from his single-minded pursuit to make the project happen. It was not at all a walk in the park, he recalled.
Saidul would talk at length about his mission to the passengers while driving and show them the documents and receipts of the donations he had received so far. But a majority refused to lend him a helping hand.
However, some did oblige, particularly a young girl, Srishti Ghosh from south Kolkata, who was so moved by his story that she decided to donate her entire first month’s salary to the hospital fund.
“I found my lost sister in Srishti. When she and her mother heard my story, they took down my number and promised to call back. I was not sure if they really would, but when she really came along and donated her first salary, I was overwhelmed,” he said.
As strangers came in ones and twos, helping him gradually raise the funds for the hospital, back home, Saidul’s wife Shamima stood by her husband like a rock.
“None of this would have been possible without my wife. When I started, a lot of people in my close circle distanced themselves from me thinking I am crazy, but my wife was there all along. She even gave me all her ornaments to collect the funds for the land,” he said.
Finally, Saidul’s dream came true on February 17 as the hospital started functioning, albeit partially, by opening its outdoor unit to patients.
In a touching gesture, Saidul got his new-found “sister” Srishti to inaugurate the hospital.
The response from the locals has been overwhelming, as the nearest hospital in the area is almost 11 km away.
“There is a buzz all around. Everybody in the area is talking about the hospital,” said Sojol Das, while driving this correspondent in his e-rickshaw to the hospital premises.
Work is now on to make it a full-fledged 50-bed hospital with other necessary facilities like X-Ray and Electrocardiography (ECG).
“This is currently a two-storied building but we have plans to make it four-storied. On the opening day, our doctors could treat 286 patients while so many others were left out due to shortage of time and resources. I am sure once it becomes fully functional, people of nearly 100 villages would be benefited,” Saidul said.
Saidul’s courage to dream big indeed impressed lots of people, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who praised his efforts in his radio address to the nation, “Mann ki Baat” .
Modi talking about the hospital project, the 40-something taxi driver said, has certainly given him more courage and assured him that he is headed in the right direction.
“Since his speech, a lot of people got in touch with me. Many have offered help. Some local contractors have helped me out by supplying sand, bricks and cement needed for the construction work, while a doctor from Chennai has expressed his wish to join my hospital and treat patients.”
Eight doctors are at present associated with the hospital where they would be providing free service for now. However, Saidul said, they have plans to provide healthcare in exchange of a bare minimum fee, necessary for the hospital’s maintenance.
Dhiresh Chowdhury, in charge of the orthopaedic department, was all praise for Saidul.
“Building a hospital is a mammoth task. For Saidul to do it with such a meagre income is unthinkable. We all are with him,” added the doctor, whose NGO Banchory is providing the medical equipment.
But the dreamer in Saidul now refuses to stop with only one hospital.
“Now that I have so many people with me, I feel I can go even further to fulfil my dream. Maybe I won’t limit myself only to constructing one hospital. Maybe I’ll go further in search of new dreams.”
(The weekly feature series is part of a positive-journalism project of IANS and the Frank Islam Foundation. Milinda Ghosh Roy can be contacted at milinda.r@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By 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
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Kolkata : Condemning the armed rallies organised on occasion of Ram Navami in Bengal, the CPI-M on Monday accused state and the Central governments of indulging in “competitive communalism” to divert people’s attention from major issues of life and livelihood.
The state Communist Party of India-Marxist leadership also questioned the Bengal government’s role in curbing such violence in the name of religion and accused the state ruling’s Trinamool Congress of deliberately creating space for RSS and other Sangh affiliates to hold armed processions in the state.
“There is a planned attempt to break down the secular fabric in the state. This is intentional and politically motivated. The state government, Central government and the forces behind them are intentionally fueling this politics of division, in order to divert people’s attention from their failure in addressing the more pertinent issues of life and livelihood,” CPI-M state secretary Surja Kanta Misra told reporters here.
“Another new phenomena this year has been the competitive communalism by the state ruling party and those in power at the centre.
“The Trinamool Congress also organised Ram Navami rallies across the state this year and RSS welcomed the move. We have even witnessed that BJP and Trinamool Congress leadership in north Bengal’s Alipuduar unitedly organised a Ram Navami rally. In many places Trinamool’s presence in the rallies were academic. They left spaces open for the RSS and other forces,” he alleged.
Taking a swipe at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for relaxing the blanket ban on armed rallies in the state, Misra claimed the relaxation encouraged Hindutva outfits to hold so many armed rallies on Ram Navami on Sunday.
Noting that the Left parties raised questions on the state administration’s role after so many people rallied with arms during Ram Navami last year, the CPI-M leader questioned how the rallyists were allowed gather so many weapons and claimed it is certain that preparations of such magnitude cannot be made in short while, bypassing the local administration.
Warning about more such rallies to be held in the state in the next few days, Misra demanded arrest of political leaders involved in such preparations and sought an all-party meeting on the issue.
“We demand these issues to be immediately addressed. The people who were leading these rallies, are leaders of certain political parties. Both the leaders of state’s ruling party and the party ruling at the centre have been involved in promoting such actions. These people should be immediately arrested. But there is no such actions yet.
“If needed, the state government should call an all party meeting to neutralise the tensions and stop rumours from spreading. There is news that similar rallies would be held at some places today (Monday) and tomorrow (Tuesday) as well. Those need to be curbed,” he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Commodities, Commodities News, Markets, Medium Enterprise, News, SMEs
Kolkata : The West Bengal government, along with all stakeholders, is planning to work out a strategy to strengthen the brand of Darjeeling Tea so that producers can fetch better value for the crop, an official said on Saturday.A
“We will work closely with the stakeholders to device a strategy to promote Darjeeling Tea brand. Details are being worked out,” West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation Managing Director Vandana Yadav said at a CII organised summit here.
According to her, the state government officials had a discussion with the stakeholders at the Hill Summit on how to further improve the branding of Darjeeling Tea.
“It should not be perceived as a bulk commodity and should be considered as a niche product. Darjeeling Tea is popular in key markets like Europe, US, Japan.
“If we can increase the brand value, we are hopeful that the tea industry will be getting higher premium,” she said.
Darjeeling tea, which enjoys the coveted GI tag and is preferred by tea connoisseurs across the world, had faced a crisis in the wake of a political shutdown in 2017 that lasted for 104 days.
A section of the Darjeeling tea planters had apprehended due to non-availability of Darjeeling tea, the buyers who have been sourcing it, might switchover to others varieties and tea from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kenya might make a breakthrough into the market.
However, other section of planters was hopeful that GI tag would be saviour to the industry.
—IANS
