December 3, 2008

SINGUR RALLY OF THIRTY THOUSAND CALL FOR INDUSTRIALISATION


TURN AROUND OF MIND-SET NOTICEABLE AMONGST VILLAGERS


SINGUR, 3rd December,2008: The morning haze still hangs in shreds – the fertile rural earth is just being warmed up by the somewhat weak and yellow sunlight, and it is 3 December. We move around the villages in and out of the vicinity of Singur, and beyond, in the Anandanagar Gram Panchayat, and speak to the rural folk.

The CPI (M) activists and mass frontal workers-- plus their family members – even the kids had joined in, a typical Hooghly tradition – were in the midst of preparing to be in their best turn outs for the early afternoon pro-industrialisation rally of the Left mass organisations opposite the motor car factory, now dusted over, and with a somewhat forlorn look.

Red Flags and banners are being pressed carefully with hot iron with great care and then neatly folded. The flag poles and the thinner flag staffs are oiled and then wiped clean. Fresh coats of cheap paint are brushed on the letterings that the buntings, the flags, and the banners carry, words that have the equally cheap whitish-coloured ‘undercoat’ the last evening.

The banners simply call for industrialisation, and for a stronger unity of the kisans with all other sections of the working masses. Men, women, children—all are hard at work and perhaps all of them found my urbane, inquisitive-to the-point-of-being-dilettante approach somewhat irksome.

Nonetheless, they do bother to respond to my prying queries. After all, this is a known old face they see. ‘What is the rally for, comrades and brothers? Is it a paalta (reaction and response) to the rally of the Trinamulis the day earlier?’ The response border on anger – indeed, I find anger to be the sentiment of the hour in the villages I walk around – ‘no. it is not.’

‘We have not done right’, they say, in unison in most instances, ‘by voting in the Trinamulis, at the last Panchayat polls a few months back. They do not want us to have a life that is better. We shall call for development – both in our green fields and in the yards of the large factory grounds that resembled a kabristan. We shall make it come alive, we shall ask the Left Front government and the Party to start industrial ventures there and beyond, and we shall not rest till we have these done -- and now please go, and leave us be.’ We leave and the ageing heart is now pleasantly warm.

No wonder the rally called under the aegis of the CITU, the AIKS, the AIDWA, the DYFI, and the SFI on a large stretch of cropped land opposite the small motor car factory yard, draw more than thirty thousand people who lustily roar out when the speakers talk boldly about re-starting, if necessary from scratch, and making the Singur factory yards hum again with the whirr of the machines-- and the people do derisively hoot when the leaders recall the Trinamuli chief’s ‘homely tale’ about ‘uprooting the factory premises’ and ‘making it a cabbage-and-potato patch.’ The mood has turned.

The speakers included central committee members of the CPI (M) Benoy Konar (who presided) and Shyamali Gupta, and state secretariat member Subhas Chakraborty along with Kali Ghosh (CITU), Samar Baora (AIKS), Minati Ghosh (AIDWA), Avas Roychaudhury (DYFI), and Dhruvajyoti Chakraborty (SFI).

By B. PRASANT

BENGAL LEFTFRONT SWEEPS HOWRAH, JHARGRAM ELECTION


MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS 2008




KOLKATA, 3rd December, 2008(INN): Bengal Left Front candidates won overwhelming electoral triumphs, in the most difficult of circumstances, at the emanate township of tribal Jhargram in adivasi-dominated Midnapore west. The Left Front also won three of the five civic by-polls that were held on the same day 30 November 2008.

They also registered a thumping victory at the industrial township of Howrah called Kolkata’s twin city. Like in the earlier years, the Left Front lost out in Berhampore where Adhir Chaudhuri again put his muscle power in, and in ample measure, to bolster and supplement his money influence. Krishnagar’s civic board again slipped out of the political grip of the Left Front although margins of losses were smaller that the margins of seats won by the all-in alliance of the Bengal opposition, more of which later.

Much had been made in the corporate media about Jhargram. They said that the adivasis were no longer with the CPI (M). Some like the Ananda Bazar Patrika group of publications and the TV channels it owns, went a step farther to say, again and again, with a dry humour, that the adivasis were always against the ‘CPM control’ over them, and that this time around, the blockades and the dug out made of a few roads were clung to by the worthies of the media to outline a whole structure of danger signals for the Communist Party – whose candidates, they predicted with a fine, laid-back casual air, were going to lose in huge humiliation in the Jhargram municipal elections.

They were proved wrong and left, perhaps not possibly literally, quite red in the face. The LF supported CPI (M) candidates won 13 of the 17 seats that were contested. We had won 11 seats the last time around five years back.

Before reeling off the figures of the sorry losers, let us say that this time, in every municipal ward, and in all four civic bodies and in the by-polls, a mahajot, stretching from the separatist Jharkhandis to the reactionary Congress and the Trinamul to the left sectarian ‘Maoists,’ was active in a full-fledged manner with one-to-one contests being the order of the day. We still recall posters of BJP and Pradesh Congress during our recent visit to the laterite zone of Bengal that said ‘vote for the Jharkhandis or the Trinamulis as per strength and prospect of the candidate.’

Congratulating the adivasi brothers and sisters for the courage of political conviction, they had shown, when the time came to cast their votes, LF chairman Biman Basu said that the Communists had remained with the adivasis right from the 1950s through many struggles and movements in their interest and for their uplift.

From the Lodha struggle, to the rĂ´le played by central committee member of the CPI (M) Kumar Siralkar (who is fluent in five adivasi dialects) in helping Santhali make it to the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, to the hard struggle for the barrage on the roaring Kangsabati river, to struggling against the Jharkhandi and Maoist intruders and their killers’ ways, the Communist Party had always been in the van taking along the people of the vananchal till the very recent movement for the recognition of the right of the tribal to the forest resources.

Bimanda also made a very valid point when he said that the corporate media, print or otherwise would always call those engaged in digging up roads of felling precious trees, adivasis, and those going against these barbaric acts of commission men and women of the ‘CPM’ Bimanda asked the members of the fourth estate to be a little less biased when they regurgitate their anti-Communist ire. Midnapore west CPI (M) secretary Professor Dipak Sarkar has quietly pointed out to us, as the results were coming in, the crucially important fact that this year, the mahajot notwithstanding, the two reserved seats for adivasis at Jhargram went to the CPI (M) by a much larger margin than the last time around.

At Jhargram, in fact, the seats of the Pradesh Congress came down from two to a tragic one, that of the separatist Jharkhandis by the same statistical step down, while the Trinamulis just managed to hang on to two seats as they had done during the last elections although going by the diminishing return of popularity measured in terms of the votes won, one feels rather good when one looks to the next elections.

The question that the Telegraph correspondent, who has this bubbly outlook on whatever the issue is at stake, be it elections or accidents, in the instant case, both, chose to ask of Biman Basu was to probe and find the reason why, ‘despite the motor factory at Singur not coming to fruition, and what with Howrah abutting Kolkata’ (did he mean that the metro had ‘protested too much’ on the motor car factory issue?!), how could the CPI (M) make out so well, come the civic polls? Biman Basu as is his wont would not deign to reply to conjectures without analysis, and he told this straight to the reporter’s face.

But what struck us as fair bemuse was that the big money media owners have by now been able to make ‘corporate brains’ of young men and women sufficiently, hatefully corpulent enough about and against the Communists, for them to reveal their hatred openly, in public, in media conferences, and not bothering to wait to go back to sit at the spanking new state-of-the-art PCs back in the office to boot and the work sheet to open.

Elsewhere, in Krishnagar, 24 seats saw a split like this: Left Front 2 (4 seats won during the previous poll), Trinamul Congress 8 (from nought earlier), and Pradesh Congress 14 (down from 18 the last time around). Berhampore saw Pradesh Congress of the Adhir fraction sweep all 25 seats although margins were lesser.

In Howrah, the picture is like this (with seats won earlier in brackets): LF 33 (37), Pradesh Congress 9 (8), Trinamul 7 (4), and finally BJP 1 (1). The LF and the CPI (M) would go in for a detailed analysis of the poll results, ward by ward, before coming up with a review, the senior CPI (M) leader Biman Basu informed the media.

B.PRASANT

Tata Motors moves HC on Singur land allotment


Kolkata, 3rd December, 2008: Tata Motors has approached the Calcutta High Court against an RTI application seeking details of its agreement with the West Bengal government on the land allotment at Singur, from where the company has since moved out.

The company on Tuesday challenged before the High court the RTI Commissioner's competence to deal with the matter, with its counsel submitting before Justice Dipankar Dutta that the Right to Information Act was not applicable in case of an agreement involving industrial secrets.

Justice Dutta has scheduled the matter for hearing on Friday. The company said in its petition that as the Nano project has been shifted to Gujarat from West Bengal, there was no logic in seeking to know a deal which has fallen through.

Justice Dutta had on September 26 set aside an earlier order of the information commissioner here on Tata Motors' plea that it had not been given a chance to be heard by the commissioner before ordering revelation of the agreement. The court had then directed the commissioner to hear the matter afresh giving all parties fair chance to be heard.

However, after one hearing, Tata Motors moved the High Court again with the fresh plea and Justice Dutta took it up yesterday. The prestigious Nano car project was shifted to Gujarat following prolonged agitation by unwilling farmers demanding return of land.

Metro Cash & Carry opens first store in Kolkata


Kolkata, Dec 3, 2008 : Metro Cash & Carry, the Indian arm of German wholesaler Metro AG, Wednesday opened its first outlet here, nearly two months after the company was granted licence to sell farm commodities and other food items in West Bengal. “We have invested Rs.140 crore (Rs.1.4 billion) in the region and also created 350 new jobs for local citizens,” Metro Cash & Carry India managing director Martin Dlouhy told reporters here.


The company faced tough times earlier as Forward Bloc, a partner in the state’s Left Front government, which controls agriculture and agricultural marketing departments, opposed the renewal of the licence. None of the Forward Bloc members turned up for the inaugural ceremony though the company said it had invited them.


Asked abouit this, Forward Bloc leader and Agriculture Marketing Board chairman Naren Chatterjee told mediapersons: “We usually don’t go for any private company’s ceremony. There is no other reason apart from this for not attending the inauguration.”


Including the 100,000-square-feet Kolkata store, the German wholesale major has five stores in India - two in Bangalore, one each in Hyderabad and Mumbai. Cricket star Sourav Ganguly and state Sundarbans Affairs Minister Kanti Ganguly inaugurated the outlet.


“I am confident that our unique model will catalyse the entrepreneurial attitude of Bengalis by providing a one-stop solution for purchase, improvements in assortments and high quality products to our professional customers,” Dlouhy said. The minimum level of purchase from this store should be Rs.1,000, a company source confirmed.

Hindustan Motors launches mini-truck


The vehicle is developed jointly with Shandong Shifeng of China.
To produce 1,000 vehicles a month.Plans national roll-out in nine months.



KOLKATA, 2nd December, 2008: C. K. Birla-controlled Hindustan Motors on Tuesday launched a mini-truck, which, it hoped, would utilise the substantial excess capacity that the country’s oldest automobile unit had in the face of plunging sales of its flagship vehicle, Ambassador.


Talking to the media after the national launch by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee of the first new vehicle in 28 years, company Managing Director R. Santhanam said that with retail finance becoming a serious problem in the last three months, Ambassador sales had nearly halved between July and October as compared to the same quarter in 2007. The mother unit at Uttarpara has an annual capacity of 24,000 units.

“With the new car ‘HM-Shifeng-Winner’ we hope to utilise some of the excess capacity,” he said.
Production capacity for the new vehicle, developed jointly with Shandong Shifeng, a China-based automotive and agri-equipment company, is 1,000 vehicles monthly and newer variants of the mini-truck, including a CNG model for the National Capital Region (NCR), will be ready in about two months.


A national roll-out was planned in nine months, Mr. Santhanam said. Moloy Chowdhury, Vice-President, said that while the chassis and the cabin assembly were developed by the Chinese company, the power unit, driving component and gear box were by Hindustan Motors.


Mr. Bhattacharjee said that this was a cheerful development after the very grim happenings in Mumbai. “We condemn the happenings and pay homage to those who sacrificed their lives while performing their duty,” he said.


He said that the State had suffered a serious setback after the pullout by the Tatas. “We tried to persuade them but they left under certain circumstances. We have to try again afresh since the State needs automobile and ancillary units”. He said that he had readily agreed to C. K. Birla’s proposal to set up IT units and housing to utilise the excess land at Uttarpara. “He says he has just started developing the projects”.


Company Chairman C. K. Birla said that this was an important day for the company. The three external divisions for forging and castings were progressing well, Mr. Birla said.