DEVELOPMENT GOES ON UNABATED IN JANGAL MAHAL

‘MAOIST’ VIOLENCE NOTWITHSTANDING

When the Home Minister came to Kolkata to meet the chief ministers of Bengal, Orissa, and Jharkhand over the modus operandi to “tackle ‘Maoist’ violence,” Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee handed over to him a slim document that summed up the continuity of developmental work going on relentlessly, with the welfare of the poor firmly in sight, in the violence-affected jangal mahal.

We can briefly summarise the basic premises of the six page document, thus.

1. The expenditure of allocated amount of REGA for Midnapore west has increased by nearly 98% from 2008 to 2009 with an additional creation of close to 85% of man-days

2. In Purulia the concomitant figures are respectively close to 147%, and 180%

3. In Bankura by the same criteria, the figures that are arrived at are 80% and 94%

4. There has been a doubling or more of expenditure in the supply of potable water with other allocations for development of the supply-related infrastructure in these districts

5. The laal maati or red clay area has seen in this period creation of nearly 800 km of pucca and metalled road with 275 km about to be completed as an additional component.

6. Until December of last year, more than 30 thousand of the poor have been in receipt of shelter under the Awas Yojana

7. 50 thousand ST elderly have received pension as members of the BPL

8. Nearly 14 thousand forest patta have been distributed

9. The total amount of land under pattadari thus reaches 5300 acres

10. The three red clay districts witness the successful running of 74 ICDS projects afresh plus 18 thousand Anganwadi Kendras

The document clearly shows how the pro-poor developmental efforts could be carries on relentlessly by the popular Bengal Left Front government despite obstacles of every kind having been thrown on the path of progress, and the bourgeois media have been at their best (worst?) trying spread canards about how the red clay zones remain in the backwater of development(INN).

West Bengal announces compensation for tribal women in Lalgarh

Kolkata, January 12: The West Bengal government Monday announced compensation for the tribal women in West Midnapore’s Lalgarh who had been victims of police excesses during raids November last year, officials said.The compensation would be given to 14 tribal women who received injuries during the police action.

“We’ve decided to give Rs.50,000 to a tribal woman, Sitamoni Murmu, who suffered a serious injury during the police operation. The state government will also grant Rs.25,000 to Palmoni Murmu and 12 other tribal women will get Rs.15,000 each,” Ardhendu Sen, the state home secretary, told reporters here.

Trouble erupted at Lalgarh after the police arrested some school students and allegedly heckled tribal women after the convoy of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and central ministers Ram Vilas Paswan and Jitin Prasada was ambushed with a landmine blast near Bhadutala Nov 2 while they were returning after a steel plant inauguration.

On Dec 8, almost a month after the tribal agitation was launched in Lalgarh, a committee against police atrocities, headed by tribal leader Chhatradhar Mahato, kicked off an agitation. They demanded a public apology from the district police for the alleged excesses committed against them during the course of investigation into the landmine blast.

A state government-appointed panel, headed by backward classes welfare department secretary R.D. Meena, earlier submitted its report to West Bengal Chief Secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti. After examining the report, Chakraborty placed it before Bhattacharjee.“Though there was no specific report against the police officers involved in the operation, we’ve decided to take action against the inspector-in-charge (IC) of Lalgarh Sandip Singha and officer-in-charge Sushanta Rajbangshi for their role in the police operation,” Sen said. He said the state government would take action against the police officers later.

TRIBAL ORGANISATIONS VOW TO DRIVE MAOISTS OUT OF KANKRAJHOR-BANSPAHARI

By B Prasant

THE road to Kankrajhor lies through an extension of the Dalma forest across the border. The forest, still filled with herds of rare Indian elephants, sweeps into Bengal through the rolling jungle mahal of Banspahari.

The forests have hitherto been routinely, and profitably, desecrated by the Maoist gangs who do a thriving business on the precious wood of the Sal-Mahul-Pial trees and we saw all along the roadsides outlines of neatly sawn and rope-bound wood piles, trimmed into cartable length, ready for transport to the abutting states, come the opportune moment.

The break of dawn at Banspahari, closely abutting Jharkhand, sees the fulminating rage of the adivasis now organised under the Jakat Majhi Marwah units against ‘outsiders,’ as Maoists are now inevitable referred to in the Santhal-Oraon-Munda-dominated regions of the red earth zones of Bengal.

The flashpoint was provided by the corporate media who reported that a ‘Maoist woman cadre’ has been ‘brutally done to death’ by the Jakat and left to rot deep inside what remains of the once dense forestry that lead to Banspahari-Kankrajhor, once the stamping ground of the left sectarian gangs.

Inquiries quickly enough reveal that the woman who succumbed to an untreated case of tuberculosis could not have access to medical care. The Jakat immediately assembles and takes out an impromptu procession sans banners but with Red Flags. They demand reinstatement of the medical centre at Banspahari, callously and casually blasted apart by the Maoists last year. On October 22, 2008 the miscreants and villains proceeded with impunity to blow apart a medical outdoor van killing the doctor and the nursing staff in it.

Sidhu Hembram a relative of the deceased woman is seething with rage when he tells me that ‘like in Belpahari, Bhulaveda, and Simlipal, we too shall force the Maoists out of their safe houses in this area and drive them off.’ The resonance in his voice, though thin and reedy, and the language of his body, emaciated but resolved, tells me that the mass of the working people of the area shall keep the tryst Sidhu articulates.

The police sources inform us that a core band of 20 Maoists operate in the area in groups of twos and threes, and they are armed with automatic rifles and IEDs. They come from across the border, threaten and extract funds from the poorest of the poor, blow up infrastructure, cut up road communication network and then disappear. We learn from Jakat leadership as we leave for adjoining afforested zones along an orange-brown metalled road, that it will try to foil the proposed ‘meeting’ the Maoists have threatened to hold at gun point, which they usually, nay inevitably do, in the Banspahari area, probably in the small cluster of villages adjacent to the Banspahari-Jharkhand border.

Elsewhere, on December 11, the Jakat resistance movement has seen the first martyrdom -- of Banspahari’s Jordanga village’s mukhiya (village head), Sudhir Mandi. The killing is done in typical cowardly Maoists’ way. Sudhir was once the former sabhapati of the Binpur two Panchayat Samity, representing the Naren Hansda faction of the Jharkhand Party, and now he was an activist-leader of the Jakat, being a much-respected Majhi or village Pradhan himself among the adivasi inhabitants.

Sudhir was on his way home after a day-long back-breaking toil as a daily wage labourer -- and the light dimmed as evening was dropping in. Challenged by a quartet of armed Maoists, near a culvert, on the bend, that would lead to his hutment, at Chakadoba village, Sudhir fought back. Outnumbered, the unarmed adivasi leader was gunned down -- and he died on the spot.

Sudhir had been engaged lately in active propagation among the adivasis not to pay ‘levy’ to the Maoists, not to give them shelter, and to foil all the villains’ efforts at creating ‘liberated zones’ where democracy was only conspicuous by its complete absence. Sudhir had also been fulminating against the cult of assassination, of which he himself has now become a brave victim who would not bow low before the killers.

HUGE RALLY

The previous day, December 10, a large adivasi-non-adivasi rally at the coal belt of Asansol in the adjoining Burdwan district called out, large and clear, that no longer shall the tribal communities be allowed to be led astray by sectarian and divisive elements. It was music to our ears when adivasi leaders who have never been associated with CPI(M) proclaim bam front sarkar gariber jamir adhikar diyinchhey, samman diyinchhey – roughly translated, ‘it is the Left Front government that has given us the right to land proprietorship, and has honoured us.’

The speakers whose ranks included adivasi leaders like Phulan Murmu, a militant Santhal who has resisted Maoist incursion, Benoy Hansda, Mongol Murmu, Kabilal Mandi, Robin Tudu, and Laxman Bauri. Phulan is insistent when she says that the present sarkar has worked a lot to give status and rights to women including joint pattas in agricultural land plots, and forest rights in the adivasi belts of western Bengal.

The demands that were raised from the rally include rapid development of the western zone, quickening of the process of awarding of SC/ST certificates, pension schemes for woodcutters and peasants, augmentation and widening of the drive for educating the adivasis, equipping them for jobs outside of the traditional pursuits etc. Among the non-tribal speakers were CPI(M) MP Bangsagopal Chaudhuri and CPI(M) MLA Dilip Sarkar.

In neighbouring Durgapur, I was present at a cultural convention of the adivasis on December 11. A total of 450 delegates came from all over Bengal. The same spirit and tenor, as was witnessed at the Asansol rally, prevailed here. The extra element was provided by the bewilderingly wide array of chime, wind, percussion, and string instruments, including various dance forms, with the performers holding hands in solidarity, in unity. The joyousness of the occasion would overwhelm anyone present.

Later, tribal and non-tribal speakers -- the latter including LF government’s minister Jogesh Burman, and CPI(M) leader Muzaffar Hussein -- fulminated against Maoist sectarian conspiracies. They called for faster pace of development of the adivasi regions with more education and more employment opportunities through development schemes. The Bengal adivasi and lok-shilpi sangh organised the programme.

ADAIVASI YOUTH CLEAR ALL ROADBLOCKS PUT UP BY MAOISTS IN PURULIA-BANKURA

BHULABHEDA (WEST MIDNAPORE), 12 December, 2008(INN):The entire network of what are non-arterial links between the main roadways is now free of felled trees, ditches, and boulders. Traffic of all sorts’ moves freely. As we return from the red earth of Purulia via Bankura and onto Midnapore west, we see militant processions of adivasi youth, men and women, occasionally children in tow, the Red Flag fluttering in the chill of the first and late wintry breeze from the north-west, as they stride along boldly, arms swinging gaily, slogans emanating from the chapped lips, conviction of courage written all over their faces, along both sides of the roads. ‘We do not want the Jharkhandis and the Maobadis to ruin life for us anymore,’ is the general refrain. The awesomely large and cavernous kettledrums thudded out a thunderous resonance, and the horns sounded the timbre of the forest.

Entering Bhulabeda, I was quite thrilled to see another sight – a sight long, long overdue. Thousands upon thousands of adivasis -- and this time the vast crowd is a happy mix of tribals and non-tribals, of the villages and the townships – all united under the Red Banner. What the self-proclaimed Maoists and their in-closet friends and associates, and patrons in the corporate world should note is the chilling fact, for them and for persons of their ilk, here and abroad, the scorn and hatred the tribal-non-tribal rally-- I would not call it a joint rally, it was a peoples’ rally, vast and moving – exuded for the criminals and the assassins-- all the way. Somehow a feint sense emanating of a feeling of guilt and a sense of having been betrayed earlier all those decades could be felt in these old bones from the otherwise militant ambience around all the time as I alighted from the vehicle I have been travelling in and, in a second, mingled fadelessly yet seamlessly into the power and glory of the people’s march.

The rally culminated in a vast assemblage held under the aegis of the two very organisations that had been in the past bitterly misled and alienated from the mainstream of the struggles of the forest people by the Maoists and the Jharkhandis – the all-India Jakat Majhi-Marhwa association and the Bhumija Munda Kalyan Samity. The rally iterated in strong language and firm tone what has been going around the villages and the hamlets, the gunjes and the townships the last few weeks and months.

The likes of Jharkhandis and Maoists must not find any toehold in the red clay zones. They are not to cross over from the neighbouring districts to where they may continue if the people there so allow, doing the misdeeds of their uniquely anti-people sort. They must not try to communicate to the people this side of the state border in any way. They should not expect any safe haven awaiting them – rather the contrary. They should also come out with a public explanation why they killed so many people-- tribal or non-tribal is not of importance as a point of distinction, the ‘reason why’ is. Every speaker strongly emphasised the public confessional aspect, I did not fail to note despite the slight inadequate fluency in Bengali of the comrade who translated the Santhali for me.

The speakers also dwelt at length on the sensitive topic of destruction of the forest resources including the cutting down of boughs as this meant finis to the process of growth of tussar and resham varieties of silkworms. The speakers also appeared quite sheepishly apologetic in their own way about the felling of trees, some of which worth lakhs of rupees, for the purpose of blocking the roadways.

All of them were also in unison on two other issues: the western area of Bengal must undergo faster development, and the police must not enter the villages without the accompaniment of the Jakat leadership. They iterated that the myth that the Maoists had spread around about the Jakat being unwilling to have the authorities arrest and take into custody criminals was just that—a myth. The rally ended in a befitting way as torches were lit and the assemblage burst into a song with a touching refrain that sent a stab to the softest part of the human heart – kam, khai, emaa lem – roughly translated as ‘give us work please, so that we are able to go to sleep on full stomachs....’ .

by B. PRASANT

West Bengal tribal development unparalleled: Biman Basu

Kolkata, Dec 12 (IANS): The West Bengal government implemented the maximum number of developmental projects for the tribal communities in its backward districts, Left Front chairman Biman Basu said Friday while reacting to Trinamool Congress allegation that the state did not implement the centrally funded projects.”The way we’ve implemented central government funded projects for the betterment of tribals in West Bengal is unparalleled,” Bose told reporters here.

On Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s allegation that the state did not implement the centrally funded projects for the backward classes, he said: “If the centre had any problem with the functioning, they would have consulted the state government directly.” “You cannot even see that much of development for the backward communities in our neighbouring state Jharkhand, which is considered as a tribal-dominated region in our country,” Biman Basu said.

“About 60 percent of the total land reforms, which was distributed among the tribal communities in India, took place in our state,” added Basu. Terming Trinamool supremo’s comment as baseless, Basu said: “One needs to be very careful before passing such comment. If she (Banerjee) has to point a figure at the role of West Bengal government, she must gather proper information on the issue.”