Ganashakti Condems False Campaign

The following is the press statement issued by Naryan Dutta, Editor, Ganashakti on September 11.

Police has detained some persons on September 10 in connection with attack on a woman in Durgapur on September 9 midnight. The arrested persons are casual workers of a press in Durgapur, working as binders. In that press, several dailies including Ganashakti, Sakalbela, Ekdin, Prabhat Barta and some local newspapers are printed.

Ganashakti started it Durgapur edition in 2004. From the very beginning Ganashakti’s printing is done in Darpan Publications, a privately owned press. This press also prints several newspapers in their Siliguri and Kolkata facilities. Ganashakti has no printing facility of its own in Durgapur.

Many other newspapers are also printed in this press in Durgapur. Some casual workers under contract do the work of binding of the printed newspapers. These workers do the binding of other newspapers apart from Ganashakti. None of them are employees ofGanashakti or any other newspaper. Ganashakti has no direct relation with them. Police has arrested some of these contractual casual workers.

Ganashakti, like all well meaning people, wants that the culprits in Durgapur incident should be punished and police should take legal steps.  It  strongly condemns ill-conceived and false campaign against Ganashakti, initiated by Trinamool Congress concerning the incident. 

Exhibition on PS in Muzaffar Ahmad Library

KOLKATA: ON the occasion of birth centenary of Comrade P Sundarayya, an exhibition on his life and work was inaugurated in Muzaffar Ahmad library in Ganashakti Bhavan. The poster exhibition was inaugurated on August 5, the birthday of Comrade Muzaffar Ahmad.

In the exhibition, outline of PS’s life from his childhood has been portrayed through photos and graphics. His extraordinary work among the masses, the period of first expansion of the Communist Party in southern India were highlighted through excerpts from different books. A great part of the exhibition is obviously devoted to Telengana Peoples’ Armed Struggle. PS’s role in the fight against revisionism, then again against sectarianism has been detailed. Along with posters, some of his books and Bengali translation of his pamphlets have been displayed. His important articles in Peoples’ Democracy and other Party organs were displayed as photographs.

Biman Basu inaugurated the exhibition. CPI(M) state leaders were present. The exhibition will continue in Ganashakti Bhavan upto August 12. However, according to suggestions by senior Party leaders, the exhibition may travel to districts.

West Bengal state committee of CPI(M) has decided to observe PS birth centenary in a fitting manner, specially through programme of Party education. On September 14, there will be a central public meeting in Kolkata to be addressed by Party general secretary Prakash Karat.

Ganashakti Under Attack: Call for Fund Raising from People

KOLKATA: IN the bizarre media scenario in West Bengal, where almost all business newspapers and channels, except a handful, are brazenly anti-Left, the only viable and steady alternative is Ganashakti, the CPI(M) daily organ that has a broad readership and broader acceptance among people for decades.

In the changed political scenario in the state, Ganashakti has practically become the sole voice raising questions about the functioning of the state government, depicting the atrocities being committed against the peasants, workers, women and other democratic sections of people. It has already exposed corruption, nepotism and utter failures of the TMC-Congress government. Naturally, Ganashakti has also become a target for attack.

In fact, for the last 14 months Ganashakti has been facing fierce attack of the ruling parties of West Bengal. From urban belt to rural belt, the attacks were everywhere. The attacks were initiated all over the state just after the declaration of results of the assembly election. The ruling party activists immediately started threatening and also initiated attacks in many areas to stop the sale and circulation of Ganashakti. It was declared as ‘banned’, hawkers were attacked, and even the packets of the daily  were burnt.  Several boards of Ganashakti were dismantled by the anti-socials. Yet, the circulation and sale of the daily continued under such difficult situation. The readers’ increasing interest toward Ganashakti is also evident.

Beside the physical attack, the state government, in a completely illegal move, stopped issuing advertisements to Ganashakti. Even private institutions that are issuing advertisements to the daily are facing direct or indirect threats from the ruling party. So, Ganashakti has been facing huge financial loss for the last one year. Moreover, the devaluation of the rupee in comparison to dollar has resulted in a steep increase in the price of newsprint. Allied expenditures have also increased.

In these circumstances, the CPI(M) West Bengal state committee has given a call for collecting fund for Ganashakti from people. Party state secretary Biman Basu, in an appeal, said that Ganashakti has been playing its role even amidst these multidimensional attacks. It is only this daily that has been regularly taking initiatives to protect the interests of poor people including the workers and peasants and also effectively exposing the attacks on democracy. Through its news, features, articles and special contributions Ganashakti has been instrumental in revealing the undemocratic face of the state government.

Basu said that Ganashakti has been resolutely continuing the fight against the anti-people policies of the central government. It has been operating as the only alternative newspaper when almost all business newspaper groups are playing anti-Left role and eulogiser of TMC and Congress. Daily newspapers and other organs of Communist Party have always tried to portray the real picture of the society to the largest possible reach. Ganashakti has the rich inheritance of Janajudhha and Swadhinata publications. The common people have always extended assistance in publication and management of the organs of the Communist Party. The people of West Bengal protected Ganashakti during Emergency. In those dark days many people risked their lives to render support for Ganashakti. The support of the readers helped it to overcome stiff hurdles.

Basu appealed to workers, sympathisers of Left forces, common people and above all the readers of Ganashakti to stand by the daily in this adverse situation. Fund raising to support Ganashakti will be organised in the entire month of August. Basu expressed confidence that Ganashakti will continue to play a strong role to bolster the right to freedom of expression of the democratic people of West Bengal in the future.

GANASHAKTI Completes Forty Four Years

THE Ganashakti was set up as an ‘eveninger’ way back in 1967, on 3 January. The occasion is utilised by the Bengal unit of the CPI (M) every year to take a political message to the people. This year was no exception. Biman Basu, state secretary of the CPI (M) and chairman of the Bengal Left Front addressed a packed gathering at downtown Durgapur.

There he explained in detail the present situation prevailing in Bengal. It is a situation dominated by the focus of the rainbow opposition plus the lumpen elements, backed by the ruling classes and the corporate media, seeking in their joint and several efforts to bring in political instability in the run up to the civic and assembly elections in 2010 and 2011.

The opposition as the speaker pointed out were out to frustrate the democratic process, taking free recourse to violence. They are also on to create as insurmountable as possible obstacles on the path of development and growth, in every social and economic sector. The poor people are attacked and attempts essayed to create a rift and a cleavage in their ranks. Forces of casteism and communalism are put to ‘proper’ use in the unholy drive.

Everyday one notes the dastardly murder of CPI (M) workers as well as of poor kisans, daily wage earners, and even of teachers and headmasters. A lie campaign is indulged in with ferocity against the communists. The media is a willing mouthpiece, the bourgeois media that is. The democratic rights of the people are under severe strain. The largest section of poor people being butchered especially in the red clay zones belong to the SC and STs.

Some of the attempts by the bourgeois media and of the bourgeois opposition, tagged along by left sectarians, has no limits to the lies being fulminated aplenty. It is even being touted in the big media that the Left Front government is disturbingly eager to take over land parcels owned by the minority communities.

The 11 lakh acres of land distributed by the state government as a part of its redistributive land reforms that have won laurels here and abroad, 70 per cent has gone to the minority communities, SC, and ST poor. 1.5 lakh acres of khas land remain in limbo because of court cases and thus, the parcels cannot be redistributed despite all the goodwill of the state LF government and the LF. Would the bourgeois media take note before launching on yet another self-righteous attack on the CPI (M)?

The opposition has put a series of obstacles on the path of development-oriented, employment generating programmes. These ill-gotten efforts have effectively robbed the youth of the paths of job openings. These attempts will be protested with fervour, and not taken lying down by the people of the state. The developmental programmes of the state government must move smoothly forward.

The series of shilanyas programmes of the railway minister came in for a dose of strong criticism. The speaker described the series of such programmes as a festival of stone-laying ceremony. What the people must realise is that paving the state with commemorative stones would not serve to create jobs. The speaker gave call to the people to hold aloft the Red Flag and carry forth a widening struggle against the forces of anarchy, counter-development, and terror. The Ganashakti as usual shall play an important role in this regard, the speaker had no doubt.

Earlier in a programme held on the same occasion in Kolkata, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was pungent in his critiquing of the union home minister who had earlier in the week said that the developments in Bengal were productive only of despair. The speaker said that the home minister should remember the state of hopeless confusion that has been created out of the Telangana imbroglio before levelling criticism at the Bengal LF government. The chief minister has also written, as he disclosed, a short letter to the home minister starting his case. Buddhadeb reiterated that the killers of the ‘Maoists’ received close tactical and logistical support of the Trinamul Congress and its lackeys.

Narayan Dutta, editor of Ganashakti addressed both the Kolkata and Durgapur programmes. Biman Basu presided over the Kolkata meeting.

UPA and NDA will lose partners after the polls: Buddhadeb

Kolkata, March 29: Both the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will lose partners after the Lok Sabha polls leading to the consolidation of the Third Front, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said Sunday.

“The efforts to cobble up a non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and non-Congress alternative will gain a more distinct shape in the post poll situation. Partners will come out of both the UPA and the NDA,” Bhattacharjee, a Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader, said in an interview to his party’s mouthpiece Ganashakti.

“The new force that will see consolidation in that scenario must have a common minimum programme,” he added.Bhattacharjee said the leftists will have to play a role in such a situation. “We will perform our duty.”

The CPI-M politburo member felt the Third Front had become relevant now both in terms of its strength and number of constituents.“But this is not enough. We have to consolidate the front by holding discussions. The process has already started, and such dialogue will continue even after the polls.”

In an obvious reference to the Congress and the BJP ridiculing the Third Front for its large number of prime ministerial hopefuls, Bhattacharjee said adopting the right programme was the main pre-requisite for forming an alternative government.“The leftists are laying stress on drawing up such a programme, and not on any party or leader,” he said.

Bhattacharjee said the leftists will take a call on joining a Third Front government after reviewing the post-poll situation.He said the leftists’ main aim in the Lok Sabha elections is to form an alternative non-Congress and non-BJP government. He claimed that there was a distinct possibility of the leftists, and secular and democratic regional parties getting a majority.

42ND FOUNDATION DAY OF GANASHAKTI CELEBRATED

KOLKATA: It was all a case of whisper and run. G-a-n-a-sh-a-k-ti, we would utter at an undertone, low pitch and lower volume, when we saw a working class or a lower-income urban person hurrying by the College Street-Harrison Road crossing near the Presidency College, and slip him or her a copy of the evening Ganashakti and the person would without looking us in the face, equally covertly slip us an eight-anna or a rupee piece would not wait for any return of ‘change.’ Then we would disappear-- mingling seamlessly into the office-and-factory crowd retuning from work, and hurrying to the Sealdah railway station nearby. There was no flyover here, then. It was the anarchic decade of the 1970s.

Nevertheless, mostly, it was a case of, as we said, whisper and run, and for our lives. In most instances, Congress mastans from the nearby Amherst Street den of the local MLA would roam around waiting for a hawker of Ganashakti to show himself and then pounce on him in their wolfing dozens, and then, beat him until he would fall unconscious-- and who cared whether the fallen comrade was dying from massive internal bleeding?

Alternatively, or sometimes in tandem, it would be the Congress-backed ‘Naxalites,’ of a new generation of violent neo-fascists, emerging from the gully of a ‘road’ called Bhabani Dutta Street who hurled bombs and ran at us, flourishing daggers. The law-keepers would simply look the other way – too frightened to do anything. The corporate newspapers were demonstratively casual in reporting or keeping silent on the death of a CPI (M) sales-person even as everybody in the media knew that we were braving every frighteningly adversarial circumstance determinedly and every evening to sell Ganashakti, the evening newspaper of the Bengal unit of the CPI (M).

Since then, comrades, we have come a long, long way. However, it must be put on record that while there was a qualitative change in the daily lives of people, and in the process of democratisation at the grass-roots level when the CPI (M) and the Left Front came roaring out of the elections of 1977 at the crest of a mighty popular wave, the Ganashakti was never a de novo phenomenon in 1977 and onwards, alone. Through the roughest of times, it has maintained its role unbroken, back held straight, as a Party organ, as an agitator, and as an organiser, as per the Leninist dictum that continues to govern it today.

Changes, yes, have certainly taken place. It is a big broadsheet of a newspaper now, from the two-page tabloid it was, sometimes carrying sixteen pages, and eight pages are the norm. More additional pages are planned in the days to come. Colour and graphics of a superior order have touched the contents. The hand composition, the linotype, and the photo-offset have given way to computer composition, very often than not ‘online.’ The number of subscribers has increased, what, perhaps several thousand folds so that the newspaper, a morninger for decades now, is able to commandeer a niche amongst the cut-throat-everything-sells-including-lies-served-up-with-attractrive-supplements media world of the 21st century.

Prakash Karat, CPI (M) general secretary was the principal speaker at the celebrations held at the Calcutta university centenary hall on 3 January 2009, and he roamed over a large range of subjects. Prakash Karat’s overwhelming and overarching arguments were in the realm of India’s present set of foreign policy imperatives that made it kow-tow in a lowly humbled fashion before the violent tents of US imperialism.

Linking up terrorism with imperialism, the CPI (M) leader said that when one spoke of fighting terrorism and its discontents, one must not at the same time be a running mate of the violence-in-action that was the US military might. The speaker also came down heavily on the linkages now clearly seen between religious fundamentalism of both kinds and terrorism. He also explained the causes of the no-longer-sub-prime financial crises overwhelming the capitalist world, and affecting the developing countries in the process.

Biman Basu, state secretary of the CPI (M) saw the burgeoning of semi-fascist terror of the 1970s in the way the Trinamulis and the lackeys tried their best or worst to disrupt the social fabric through inchoate violence, chaos, and anarchic manoeuvres, and had the corporate media to give them the publicity of the ‘right’ kind.

From the divisive moves of the GJM at Darjeeling, to the vicious plan to snatch away three western districts of Bengal for a ‘merger’ with Jharkhand, to the everyday violence unleashed on the daily lives of the working people – the Trinamulis and their running mates were out to create an atmosphere of instability in Bengal, as the Lok Sabha elections approached fast, and as their desperation grew by leaps and bounds.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Bengal chief minister noted that in every issue touching daily lives from the grievance of the PTTI studentship to the sub judice issue of auto-rickshaw illegality to developmental and urbanisation schemes was being poisoned by the Trinamul Congress with its attitude of innate violence against all pro-people, civil, and civilised manners of existence itself. Buddhadeb narrated the successes of the Left front government over the years and said that every aspect of the lives of people was considered whenever land was acquired for developmental purposes.

Prakash Karat set the tone of the meeting that had become more of a rally held indoors, when he said that the struggle of the Bengal CPI (M) was never of its own alone—the whole party stood by it with the revolutionary earnestness the struggle deserved. The evening also saw a cultural programme. The Party units selling the highest number of the daily were felicitated. Ganashakti editor Narayan Dutta presided.