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The process of land reforms initiated by the LF government, known as Operation Barga, further consolidated their hold over rural areas. However, the two processes were not taken to their logical conclusions. Says Debabrata Bandopadhyay, former land reform commissioner of West Bengal, “Operation Barga registered the names of around 15 lakh bargadars, but did not grant them ownership rights over the land. Similarly, the LF government has not devolved any significant power to the panchayats.” In fact, far from empowering villagers at the local level the panchayati raj system has become a “wide nexus of corruption” according to Manoj Bhattacharya former MP and spokesperson of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) an LF constituent. “If people oppose the ruling party then they are deprived of the amenities provided by the panchayat system and threatened,” he adds.

This was illustrated by a visit to Kemia-Khamarpara panchayat on the outskirts of Kolkata in North 24 Parganas district. These are the rural areas adjoining the up-market Rajarhat and Salt lake localities. The urban-rural divide is stark indeed. Driving through Kolkata’s commercial district of Salt Lake is a revelation. Many of the gleaming steel and glass buildings housing IT majors wouldn’t look out of place in Mumbai or Bangalore. The rural hinterland of Kemia-Khamarpara is clearly changing. A board in front of a field announces that this is the site for ‘La Martiniere School for Boys’. Another sign points the way to a ‘vedic retreat’. Manas Ghosh, president of the local Trinamool Congress (TMC) unit is predicting a rout for the CPI (M) because people are fed up with corruption and cronyism by panchayats led by the party. A case in point is the Union Government’s NREGA scheme which guarantees a minimum of 100 days of work per person in rural areas. Since the job cards are issued by the panchayats the party has entered their men’s names in the rolls. “These people do not work, but get paid anyway while the deserving ones go jobless,” says Ghosh. There are also allegations that CPI (M) cadre are intimidating opposition candidates into not filing their nominations.    

The fact that the CPI (M) has a vice like grip in rural West Bengal was driven home during the Nandigram uprising in 2007. Nandigram was a solid red bastion till plans for taking over farmland for a chemical hub was announced. Overnight party workers, disgusted with the party attempting to shortchange them, switched allegiance to the BUPC. “One important lesson of the 11 month struggle was the absolute need for unity to defeat the CPI (M),” declares Arjun Sengupta, a government employee and Assistant Secretary of the non-party West Bengal Government Employees Union (WBGEU). One factor that has benefited the LF hitherto was the feeble resistance put up by a disunited and fractious opposition. Post-Nandigram, there seems to be a realization for some kind of united front. Thus an alliance was forged between the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) and the TMC. This unlikely pairing of a “left” and “right” party seems strange till you realize the symbiotic nature of the alliance: the TMC contributes the numbers (it is the only opposition party that has some kind of mass base) and the SUCI contributes the intellectual capital. There is a possibility of many more such informal understandings at the lower levels among parties to defeat LF candidates. Further, even LF front partners may be working to undermine each other and big brother CPI (M). A report in the Statesman on May 20 quotes Left Front Chairman Biman Bose saying that “the LF partners’ incapacity to evaluate their organisational strength has posed a problem in unifying the Left”. The report also quotes him saying that “several thousand candidates of some of the LF partners are contesting against the nominees of other partners. At some seats the LF partners have been contesting on the basis of an understanding with other forces”.   

Pravas Ghosh, Secretary of the WB unit of SUCI, explained the alliance in terms of putting up a common front to “break the nexus of vote-bank politics controlled by the rural gentry and mafia that the panchayats have turned into.” The SUCI is contesting 1,775 gram panchyat, 427 panchayat samity and 63 zilla parishad seats throughout WB.

On the other hand is ‘Babu Sheik’ of Chanduli village in Bardhaman district. Babu was with the CPI (M) and a member of the party’s village committee. The village committee has the final word on implementation of local projects by the panchayat. Babu was aghast with the rampant corruption regarding the distribution of rations at the fair price shop. “Rice and wheat meant for above poverty line (APL) and below poverty line villagers was diverted to the open market where it was sold at a profit,” he says. When he protested he was suspended and implicated in a number of false cases in the local police station. He then joined the CPI, an LF constituent, but is working to split the left vote to defeat the CPI (M) candidate.         

The PDS scam hit the headlines in late 2007. The basic issue is that fair price shops, through which essential commodities like rice, wheat and kerosene are distributed has been misused by the ruling party. Essential supplies are sold in the open market while the BPL people do not receive their share. Villagers in Bankura, Birbhum and Bardhaman took matters in their own hands and demanded their rightful share outside ration shops and in many instances beat up the dealers and burnt the shops. Many of the dealers were connected to the ruling party. This surge of rural anger came right on the heels of the Nandigram violence.   

The political space vacated by the CPI (M) is being filled by other political parties. For instance, CPI (ML) Liberation is trying to represent the rural poor, a constituency that was once the calling card of the CPI (M). CPI (ML) Liberation is one of the splinters of the CPI (ML) party formed after the exodus of an extreme-left faction of the CPI (M) in 1967 after the Naxalbari uprising. I traveled to Mahipalpur village in Hooghly district to see how CPI (ML) Liberation was planning to contest the polls. Hoogly, incidentally, is where Singur – which witnessed a violent agitation against land acquisition for Tata’s Nano car factory – is located.

CPI (ML) liberation is contesting in 2000 odd GP seats throughout WB. The party is positioning itself as the guardian of the rights of the landless peasants, or so claims Shankar Baul Das, who is contesting on a party ticket for the 28 Bolagarh ZP seat. Some of the demands on which he is canvassing include raising the number of work days under NREGA from the current minimum of 100 to 200 and raising the minimum wage to Rs 100 per day. The party has found some traction here after a near revolt of agricultural labourers after the CPI (M) dominated panchayat reneged on wages owed to them. Then there is the issue of Singur. The issue of land acquisition will play some part in determining the fortunes of candidates who contest on various party tickets though it is difficult to predict its exact impact on the final outcome. Land acquisition is also contentious because of the sheer number of people who depend on agriculture in WB. According to a Liberation activist, there is a lot of disguised unemployment in agriculture in the state because productivity has peaked due to the intensive use of machinery and pesticides. This has led to a lot of out-migration of agricultural and other labour from West Bengal. So is industrialization the solution, I ask him? “How can fertile farmland be handed over to industry even as food prices are rising. In any case, instead of inviting new industry how about reviving all the sick industrial units in the state,” he retorts.                 

The wider debate about industrialization is West Bengal has been sidelined by political nitpicking. But the fact remains that the CPI (M) remains as committed as ever to it. On May 1 I was on a bus traveling to North Bengal when I saw something interesting. It was an advertisement issued by the government in the English-language newspapers commemorating May Day. But instead of the traditional hammer and sickle, the sickle had morphed into an industrial style cog-wheel with serrated edges and the hammer had also acquired industrial appendages!

North Bengal is known for its tea estates. Darjeeling tea is famous worldwide. A lower grade of tea is grown in neighbouring Jalpaiguri district, known as Dooars chai. The problems affecting agriculture in North Bengal are well documented, but officially unrecognized. Jalpaiguri – which lies at the confluence of Northeastern India, Sikkim, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Bihar and Nepal – is home to a variety of people. There are 131 tea gardens in Jalpaiguri employing 2.5 lakh workers, mainly adivasis from Jharkhand and Nepalis. The town of Banerhat near the Bhutan border lies close to a cluster of tea gardens. I visited some of them with Victor Basu who is trying to organize the labour there. As I rode with him I noticed graffiti scribbled on the tea garden fences: We demand the immediate creation of Gorkhaland. The old agitation for Gorkhaland had flared up again under a new leadership. The Indian-Nepalese concentrated in Darjeeling want their own state to be carved out of the hill areas of WB. There is a substantial population of Indians of Nepali descent here and there is talk of including certain blocks of Jalpaiguri in the proposed new state.         

Earlier in the day I was talking about the role of panchayats with Sarita Pradhan, a labourer from Kathalguri tea garden, in the office of Dooars Jagran, the organisation the Victor runs. Kathalguri shut down in 2002 when the owner ‘abandoned’ it and left the workers to their fate. Since then Dooars Jagran has recorded 525 starvation deaths in Kathalguri alone and another 300 in Ramjhoda. Victor estimates the total number of deaths in Jalpaiguri’s closed tea gardens at between 900-1000. Of course, the statistics and cause of death are disputed by the government.    

Panchayati raj was introduced in the tea gardens only in 1997. There is a lot less awareness about the role of panchayats. Sarita didn’t show any enthusiasm to vote because no benefits have accrued from local self-government. A ‘people’s manifesto’ is being prepared by Dooars Jagran in association with the West Bengal Education Network (WBEN), a statewide coalition of activists, NGO’s and self-help groups. The manifesto contains 12 demands to be presented to the candidates in the polls when they come canvassing for votes in the tea gardens. Among them: implementation of NREGA, social audit of public finances and provision of proper education facilities.

At Diana tea garden Vijay Singh, a temporary worker at Diana points out that the integrated child development scheme which is implemented by the panchayat is not functioning properly because the ICDS centre has no building. The scheme is meant for taking care of the children of working women. But when it rains, which is quite often, the children have to remain at home. “The government declared the formation of gram unnayan samities in every panchayat in 2004 to ensure greater participation to solve just these issues, but it has not been vary effective,” says Vijay. The Sampoorna Grameen Rojgar Yojna, another Central scheme to be implemented by the panchayats, has not functioned effectively here. Under SGRY Rs 62 has to be given out per worker per day which includes a minimum of 5 kg of rice at a rate of Rs 6/kg. Party controlled panchayats have given less and pocketed the difference.

The final halt on my way back to Kolkata was at Malda. This district is one of the more backward ones and has a host of rural problems: trafficking of women, rural poverty, etc. But what I found was even worse. From Malda I headed to Bangitola GP, which lies in Kaliachak 2 block, bordering the Ganga. There is a huge problem of soil erosion in the villages bordering the Ganga. For the past 50 years around 40,000 families in Malda have lost their land due to soil erosion. The problem began with the construction of the Farraka barrage further downstream, near the border with Bangladesh. The barrage destroyed the natural flow of the Ganga which started overflowing its banks upstream.

I was sitting in the office of the Ganga Bhangan Pratirodh Action Nagric Committee (Ganga PAN). Ironically, their office had to be relocated here from Panchanandpur three years ago because that village went underwater! Some of the members of the organization had lost their homes and fields 6-7 times. Khitir Bux, an office bearer of Ganga PAN committee says, “We estimate the number of displaced people here at 2 lakhs”. People who cannot afford to buy new land simply move into shantytowns or migrate. Malda has one of the highest out migration rates in West Bengal. With poverty and migration come the inevitable trafficking of people, which includes women and children. There are a lot of women from these areas who are promised jobs and marriage outside the state by touts, but instead end up in bars and brothels. In fact, studies by NGOs have shown that a disproportionate number of women working in the ‘dance’ bars and brothels in Mumbai are from West Bengal. “Every day around 350-400 people leave Malda,” says Ruhul Amin a resident of Bangitola.

The results of the panchayat polls may not necessarily reflect the turbulence in West Bengal’s politics. That there has been a dent in the Left’s support and the opposition has gained is undeniable, but overall, the Left still has a majority, though not as commanding as in the past. One question that will confront the Left and which will have to be resolved is how to continue the industrialization project in a manner that does not alienate the population at large.  

Note: A shorter version of this article appeared in Himal Magazine in July.

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The construction boom of the ‘90s and the new millennium resulted in working class areas becoming more upmarket with the construction of highrise apartments meant for the rich and upper middle class. The mill workers and cab drivers who inhabited these chawls cashed out while they could and fled to the suburbs, where housing was more affordable. In a sense, the working class, many of whom were Maharashtrians, were being priced out of the downtown area that was slowly turning unaffordable for all but the super rich. As one friend of mine put it, this was ethnic cleansing by other means.

Its not restricted to only the posh areas. Take Dharavi for instance. The largest slum in Asia is also set for change. Dharavi harbours many thriving industries in its narrow and rundown bylanes. Leather manufacturing units, pottery units, jewellery stores are some of them. Kumbharwada is a thriving potters colony in the heart of Dharavi. The potters here are migrants from Gujarat who came to Bombay generations ago. The potters houses open out into a common courtyard in which they work together. Pots jostle for space with potters’ wheels. To one side are the ovens where the clay is baked. The ovens belch out smoke which covers Kumbharwada in a thick fog of white smoke. The Slum Rehabilitation Scheme (SRA) threatens to break up the community life of Kumbharwada in particular and Dharavi in general. The slums are to be replaced with apartments. Residents of Kumbharwada ask, “What will happen to our community”. There are no easy answers.

Its not as if answers are any more easy for people who live in highrise buildings. Take me for instance. I am a typical middle class resident of Bombay, trying to earn a living in a big lonely city. I was born in Bombay to a Tamil mother and Telugu father and spent 10 years living in a Maharashtrian colony speaking Hindi and Marathi with my colony friends and Telugu and Tamil at home. Those happy early childhood years translated into a love for Marathi, which I still understand and can speak to an extent. I am pretty comfortable with Marathi and in the company of Maharashtrians.

At different points I have lived in Delhi, Hyderabad, Goa, Chennai and Lucknow. I can speak Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and understand a smattering of Bengali. In addition I went to my Grandparent’s place in Andhra Pradesh every year for summer holidays. They taught me to read and write Telugu. I spent a formative part of my life and college years in Hyderabad and made many good friends. I have fond memories of Hyderabad, but am not overly attached to it. On the other hand I am also fond of Mumbai, but am not overly attached to it either. Come to think of it, there is no place I can call ‘home’ in the sense that I am rooted to it.

My search for ‘roots’ has led me to learn Telugu more fluently. I take long distance telephone tutorials in the language from my Grandmother and have taken to reading a Telugu paper daily in Mumbai. According to Raj Thackrey I am a traitor. Do I feel like one? I don’t know what a traitor feels like? Maybe Raj knows something that I don’t.

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As the British-Indian dominions hurtled towards independence and civil war loomed large Gandhi found himself out of synch with even the Congress leadership (let alone the Muslim League). Probably the one person who shared his vision and might have been sympathetic died in 1942. Rabindranath Tagore first applied the moniker ‘Mahatma’ to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi and Tagore were contemporaries who loomed large over the intellectual landscape of India. They communicated regularly with each other and an examination of their letters would provide valuable clues into the political and cultural trends of pre-independent India.

Gandhi had a vision for India moulded by his experience of the mass poverty and misery he encountered. He also had first hand experience of the dehumanising effects of colonialism. As a practicing lawyer in South Africa he first formulated a counter response to colonialism . It was a unique mix of his spiritual and religious praxis and contained elements of satyagraha, non-violence and morality. Frantz Fannon, writing 50 years after Gandhi has this to say about how to overcome the debilitating effects of colonialism:

At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them and restores their self confidence. Violence hoists the people up to the level of the leader. The violence of the colonized unifies the people. The colonized man liberates himself in and through violence.

(Rebel) My family name: offended; my given name: humiliated; my profession: rebel; my age: the stone age.

(Mother) My race: the human race. My religion: brotherhood…

(Rebel) My race: the fallen race. My religion…but it is not you who will prepare it with your disarmament; it is I who will revolt and my poor clenched fists and my bushy head…    

Quoted from The Wretched of the Earth 

Fannon was also writing as a victim of colonialism, as a psychoanalyst who had seen through the hypocrisy of France/Europe that “never tires of talking about the rights of man at every street corner, and never stops massacring man at every street corner”.

Gandhi was writing also as a victim of colonialism, but albeit from a more privileged  location, socially speaking. A rich barrister’s son, Gandhi himself became a barrister (the social equivalent of engineers, doctors and MBA’s today). Fannon was born in the French colony of Martinique in a mixed family of African slaves and Tamil indentured workers, though he writes about his experiences primarily as a person of African descent.

Gandhi’s resistance to colonialism was based on the foresight that the principles of violence, if deployed in the Indian context, would be disastrous. The Mahatma was sufficiently grounded in Indic traditions to be able to draw upon to create a mass grassroots movement.

When he talks of ‘Ram Rajya’ he is trying to conceptualise independence for the masses in an idiom that they will understand. When he talks of self sufficient villages he realises that the bulk of India lives in its villages. Gandhi had the foresight to see that that the path independent India was headed down was materialistically rich, but spiritually bankrupt. He had the conviction to articulate a unique vision, based not on ecologically unsustainable Western models of development, but one that drew richly from the indigenous culture and had the potential to retrieve the self from a state made numb by colonialism.

After August 15, 1947 the Mahatma’s time was up, and he probably sensed this. He was useful as far as leading India’s struggle for Independence. He was able to unite a nation as diverse as India toward a common purpose. After this he was just a plain hindrance. His anguished cries for Hindu-Muslim unity treated as the rantings of an ‘out of touch’ mad man; his vision for a new India based on truth, morality and non-violence an obstacle for the development of the nation on the lines of science, technology and rationality.

Maybe the newly formed nation heaved a secret sigh of relief that a troublesome character had been conveniently got rid of, that too by a member of an obscure, extremist grouping. This right-wing Hindu group soon became the convenient scapegoat, assuaging the guilt that maybe we all had a role in killing the Mahatma. Not so much the person as the ideal.

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In this conversation, arose the question of the resurrection of the Iran-Pak-India pipeline – a key concern issue for US. In fact, when India agreed to can the deal in 2005 and vote against Iran in the UN, most had called it “US arm twisting”. The truth I believe was different. India most probably obtained an assurance for the nuclear deal in exchange for that crucial vote.

The Negotiator said, “Well, Indians say the Iran pipeline wont go ahead, but we see something else in the papers”. I told him to wait till the nuclear deal goes through in India. Indeed, India would not pursue the Iran pipeline if its energy interests are assured. Currently, India consumes 5.6 million barrels of oil a day, and is thus the world’s fourth largest energy consumer and the Iran pipeline is at best an interim solution. The nuclear deal forms the only real way out of India’s energy conundrum.

But politics trouble the US side as well. Post the Indian approval, Bush has to push the bill through the Congress. And that will be no mean task. At least two Democrat experts on non-proliferation tell me this deal is a loss for the US and that they will oppose it tooth and nail unless its content is changed. Only a Presidential veto by Bush can save it, as is being expected here. The nuclear deal might actually become Bush’s finest foreign policy achievement.

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After March the WB government was wary of sending the police in lest it inflame the situation further. Meanwhile, there was a split in left-liberal/Marxist/communist circles in India. A lot of people were aghast that the CPI(M) had resorted to force against peasants in favour of industrialists. There was heated debate across various forums between independent left-liberals and party-affiliated leftists. A lot of people in the left movement felt betrayed by the CPI(M)’s actions. Even some card-carrying members (leftist historians Sumit and Tanika Sarkar) spoke out against the CPI(M)’s role in Nandigram and particularly against WB Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.

Things rested there till November. After Durga Puja, the CPI(M) mounted a concerted offensive to regain physical control of Nandigram. The offensive was led by a huge force of party cadre mobilised from all over the state, armed with firearms. They shot their way into Nandigram and wore down the armed resistance. Brutal atrocities were committed: there have been reports of women being raped, men and children being shot dead and burning of houses belonging to BUPS members. The party cadre unleashed a wave of red terror in village after village.

Sonachura, Garchakraberia, Tekhali, Egra, Khejuri…

Name after name, seared into the nation’s consciousness by the violence, just like Naroda Patiya, Gulberg Society and Godhra burned our conscience in 2002 during the Gujarat carnage.

The CPI(M) cadre used classic battle techniques including using human shields to storm their way into Sonachura, a BUPS stronghold. Now it was the turn of the BUPS members to be driven into refugee camps. There is no way of verifying casualties because the media and civil society activists were not allowed to enter the war zone.

What was most sickening was the way the party justified its cadre’s conduct. No less than the Chief Minister said (when asked if he regretted the red offensive) that, “they have been paid back in their own coin”. Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury justified what their cadre’s did. Brinda asked the cadre to administer the ‘dum dum dawai’ (dum dum medicine) in Nandigram, a reference to to 1970’s when the CPM fought Maoist’s in dum dum with firearms. A lot of intellectuals aligned with the CPM have issued justifications for the recapture of Nandigram. Read this statement put out by JNU intellectuals and the rejoinder here. Then, read this amazing statement calling for ‘left unity’ and the rejoinder by concerned citizens.

What are the lessons of Nandigram?

The most important is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely: whether it is wielded by the left or the right. An organised political formation of any ideological bent has to sustain itself using certain power structures and will try any means possible to maintain its hold over those structures.

Secondly, only a truly democratic polity where dissent is respected and encouraged can allow for a peaceful resolution of conflict over social/economic (and I daresay religious) issues.

Thirdly, Nandigram has revealed the hypocrisy of the organised left which professes to speak for the ‘people’ but has no hesitation in physically crushing them.

Fourthly, the time is ripe for independent, non-party affiliated thinking about political, social and development issues.

What has got relegated to the background is the question of industrialisation in Bengal and India. Questions about what and for whom is development intended? What is the right way to go about it and a development approach that puts people first and is environmentally sound need to be asked NOW, before more Nandigram’s erupt in the country.

Postscript: In 1956 Soviet tanks brutally crushed a people’s uprising against communism in Hungary. This act alienated many European Marxists and paved the way for new streams of thought. I believe Nandigram is our ‘Hungarian uprising’.

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