[Note from Hindu Vivek Kendra: If this had happened in a BJP ruled state, the whole media, electronic and print, Indian and foreign, would have decended to the place and made it into a huge event. But since it is a communist ruled stated, principles of professional journalism dictates that this is swept under the carpet.]
It is a rare moment when one simultaneously realises the value of money as well as its abysmal worthlessness - and also the terror of living under an "egalitarian" Marxist regime. A Rs 10 note can see you through an entire week on a staple diet of rice and save you from starvation death.
Otherwise, for miles together, there is nothing money can buy - a handkerchief, an aspirin tablet, a bottle of cola or mineral water, or snacks, nothing. A briefcase of currency notes is as good as waste paper. We, as part of a BJP team, were heading towards a tribal settlement about 50 km from the nearest railhead Jhargram. What passes for a road there is a tarred track, full of potholes and slush.
At the end of the first 30 km appears Belapahari, the nearest urban centre of our destination - Amlasole. Then the last 20 km are really difficult to negotiate - for there is no road whatsoever, but only a dirt track crisis-crossed by fords in spate. A distance of 50 km, hence, takes over four hours of driving. The landscape is refreshingly clear of electric and telephone poles, the visible symbols of modern times. The monsoons have struck and the wrinkled landscape of west Midnapore district, far away from Gangetic West Bengal, is frilled with raw greenery.
West Midnapore is making the headlines for the starvation deaths in Amlasole-Kankrajhore. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (known for striking a line different from his party, whether on illegal madrasas, Sonia Gandhi, FDI or Dhananjoy Chatterjee's capital punishment) has practically acknowledged the infamy at Amlasole, even though party organ People Weekly denies this tragedy of the people, and Basudeb Acharia describes it as a "figment of imagination."
Nay, Bhattacharjee went a step ahead and admitted that there are many such Amlasoles in the State. Could there be a worse indictment of a "people's government" which has ruled the State for the last 27 years?
While the hunger black spot has catapulted west Midnapore to the national media, another shocking incident at another end of the same district has gone virtually unnoticed.
Is it perhaps because the country, or even West Bengal, has ceased to care about bloody political feuds going on in the state? When Australian missionary Graham Steins was murdered in the dark of the night along with his two young sons in Orissa, the incident rightly invited all-round condemnation. All human life is precious and cannot be allowed to be wasted.
But in this West Bengal district bordering Orissa, a political worker was set ablaze in broad daylight in the presence of a frenzied mob, dozens of armed policemen and the victim's hapless family members. It took almost a week of repeated and humiliating visits to the authorities to claim the charred remains of Aadikantha Daliya. Forty five-year-old Daliya was a scheduled caste activist of the BJP, a father to a 16-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son.
He fell victim to the CPI-M's anti-social activities glossed over as political rivalry. Is this antipathy because he was a humble downtrodden person with a BJP affiliation, and comes from a village of BJP supporters? On the hot and humid day of May 22, no food was being cooked in the house of Daliya, since the other members of his family were observing a fast for goddess Shitala Mata.
He was not a part of that and walked to the nearby Birsa Munda Chowk, a market square with some 30 or 40 shops, to eat something. The area is under Sasra gram panchayat (Anchal No. 3) and was controlled by the BJP between 1998 and 2003, and is now under CPI-M domination. Coincidentally, Ardhendu Satpathy, a CPI-M activist who was largely known for running an extortion racket in the area, had been found murdered that day.
The Marxists had plotted a revenge for it. In a bizarre incident of Marxist hooliganism, Daliya found himself attacked by the Red henchmen as he was eating. Birsa Munda Chowk is a BJP-stronghold and Daliya somehow ran helter-skelter and hid himself in a garment shop. But the large Marxist mob gathered outside was bent on a blood bath. Ironically, they were in the company of West Bengal's "committed" police who remained mute witnesses, if not active participants.
The mob went on a spree of destruction, looted and set fire to most of the shops in the Chowk known to be a BJP-bastion. The shopkeepers were heavily outnumbered by the mob and hence their resistance proved ineffective. Meanwhile, the news of this ongoing carnage reached Daliya's house, and his entire family and many villagers came out to head for the Chowk. His brother was the first to reach there, being on a motorcycle. But even then they were unable to prevent the murder of Daliya.
He was dragged out by the mob in front of his family members and burnt alive. His brother was also beaten up, the petrol from his motorcycle taken out and the vehicle set on fire. All this was done in the presence of the police, "comrades in khaki". While the CPI-M goons are still carrying on, the whole village of Tikaitpur is today a terrorised lot with the police regularly raiding the victim's family and its sympathisers to dissuade them from pursuing the case and having any affiliation with the BJP. It took a week to recover the charred remains of the victim. Compensation seems a distant prospect.
Now back to Amlasole - people in the compass of Belapahari might well be said to be living in the 15th or the 16th century. Their only sign of visible contact with the 20th are some worn-out plastic utensils. There is no electricity, telephone or fair price shop. From Amlasole, it would take a day to walk to Belapahari, struggling along the muddy path, braving the wildlife.
The five persons who perished due to starvation, belonged to the below poverty line. But the CPI-M, to push up its figures of "achievement," had ignored them. However, that is no wonder since they belong to the political lineage of Stalin, who could see no famine in Ukraine in 1932-33 even when seven million perished due to his forced collectivisation policy.
Likewise, Maheswar Murmu, West Bengal's minister for development of western region, who himself is a tribal, could not see any starvation death when he was sent on a tour. He proved to be more loyal than the king when he said that the chief minister might have said the deaths were due to poverty, and that the media distorted it to starvation. He maintained that no one had died of starvation and the stories about starvation deaths were all bogus. Murmu reportedly felt that if the people do not have grains they can eat rats, toads and snakes (Caveat by C R Irani, the Statesman June 27)!
There is little scope for employment in Amlasole or Tikaitpur. Till five or six years ago, collecting kendu leaves (used in the making of bidis) on behalf of merchants or middlemen used to be a source of subsistence. Then the CPI-M decided to take over the trade by agitating for a substantial rise in the cost of leaves. The Naxalites have done the same thing in Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh in order to siphon off large amounts of money through extortion.
Not finding the Marxist conditions viable to their profit, the merchants or middle-men have fled. But the Marxists have provided no alternative in the form of a cooperative society or something similar. This is the same mindset with which the Marxists have laid waste the industrialisation of West Bengal. Marxism gained popularity by clamouring for more wages to industrial workers.
As a result of such unrealistic demands, industrial units went bust one by one. In power, the Marxists have presided over the steep industrial decline of West Bengal and flight of capital from the State. But in west Midnapore and the greater Jharkhand region of Purulia, the Marxists are getting a taste of their own medicine. With the subsistence level of employment gone, the hopeless situation has created a fertile recruiting ground for radical Left militants.
Groups similar to the Naxalites - the Janayuddha Gosti/PWG, and Maoist Communist Centre - are making their presence felt. Midnapore district was originally on the MCC compass in its previous version Dakshin Desh (in the Sixties and the Seventies) led by Amulya Sen and Kanai Chatterjee, who did not merge the outfit with the CPI(ML). And today with PWG and MCC strongholds in neighbouring Bihar and Jharkhand, they are casting their long shadows on West Bengal as well. Twice before the recent general elections, Janayuddha Gosti posters appeared in the Chief Minister's locality in Kolkata asking people to boycott elections.
Is it a mere coincidence that the only link the State government has with these hapless areas of west Midnapore is the police? On February 25, 2004, eight policemen lost their lives when a land-mine went off when they were patrolling. In December 2003, sub-inspector Nilmadhav Das was killed in an ambush. The policemen also sulk about serving in such inhospitable terrains.
A visit to Belapahari region would appear to be a visit to a shockingly different world. Nature has been far kinder to this region than to Orissa's Kalahandi or Bolangir. It's unbelievable that one of the most richly endowed States of India could have such a hidden recess of poverty and deprivation; and all this less than 200 km from Kolkata. It's ironic that in an era of food surplus and telecom revolution, regions like Belapahari can exist.
What is shocking is the vulnerability
of the region to malnutrition, starvation, disease and death! But above
all, it's the fear - the vice-like grip that the Marxists have. Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee has admitted, "There is no use elaborating on what these
people died of, especially since there is no guarantee that such deaths
will not be repeated." That's quite an honest commentary on the performance
of a "people's government!"