Author: Ashok Ghosh
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: February 10, 2008
High treason in West Bengal as Communist police gun down comrades for daring
to question the loot of NREG funds
To many, it may sound dichotomous to press
for a programme and then to dump it unceremoniously, but to a Leftist it should
appear mischievous. The failure of the Left Front Government to implement
NREG after fighting hard for it to be incorporated in the Common Minimum Programme
(CMP) is clear manifestation of hypocrisy practiced by some of the constituents
of the ruling coalition in West Bengal for quite some time now.
The Left parties had fought hard to incorporate in the CMP the NREG, ensuring
100 days of work in a year for the rural poor. But a recent survey shows how
dark it is beneath the lamp. It shows how the Left Front Government of West
Bengal has not only failed miserably to practice what it has preached for
years, but it has also been found guilty of gagging the voice that dared to
raise the issue.
The Forward Bloc, despite being the second-biggest
Left Front partner and a part of the Government in West Bengal, was received
with bullets and mass arrests when we raised the issue.
The situation is such that we have not been
able to guarantee even 10-12 days of work, leave alone 100 days. And we are
told that the national average for the NREG scheme is somewhere around 40
days. If this is not a crime, what is?
A survey showed that at least Rs 620 crore
has been returned for the failure of various departments of the State Government
to use it for job generation in the rural areas. This, when Chief Minister
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has repeatedly gone on record saying job creation
is the only goal he has in mind. Even a fraction of the enthusiasm shown for
acquiring agricultural lands for capitalists could have produced the desired
results. But the bottomline is that the panchayat system in Bengal runs on
vested interests.
Is it not disheartening to note that last
year the State could spend only 7.54 per cent of the funds sent for the NREG?
As per available estimates, the State could spend only Rs 26,474.70 lakh out
of Rs 351,313.23 lakh sent for rural job creation. Not only this, the Government
failed miserably in implementing other schemes as well.
In Sampoorna Gram Swarozgar Yojna we could
utilise only 66.36 per cent of the fund available. It was even lower at 58.13
per cent in the case of Sampoorna Gram Rozgar Yojna.
The Bloc raised these issues at Left Front
meetings. We also sent letters to the Chief Minister seeking a status report,
but nobody responded. This and many other issues forced the Bloc to strike
it alone in the panchayat election. In the last State conference, the party
decided to go it alone in the panchayat election as it was sure that the CPI(M)-run
bodies were laden with corruption.
After so many years of functioning together
we have found that the biggest constituent party in the Left Front has allowed
panchayati raj to degenerate into a one-party rule where nothing but vested
interest works. From its outwardly appearance, the village panchayats may
seem to be working properly, but within it the whole system has become corrupt
where only a few people close to the village leadership -- needless to say
that they belong to the CPI(M) -- eat away the pie. Generally it is seen that
only those who belong to the CPI(M) get the benefits of the NREG programme.
That party is further divided into groups
and the group in power eats the cream. And a dissenting voice is silenced
mercilessly. No wonder they say, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Another survey found that rural West Bengal
has the largest number of people who cannot spend more than Rs 12 per day
whereas the national average is around Rs 20. Against this backdrop, isn't
it a crime to raise false hopes of urbanisation and neo-industrialisation?
Is this not a blot on the face of the same Socialist movement that once claimed
to champion the cause of the have-nots?
Realising that the Forward Bloc could no longer
permit this degeneration, we staged village-based movements for the past one
month. More than 7 lakh villagers gheraoed panchayat and SDO offices. About
4,000 of them were arrested. But things reached a Nandigram-like climax on
February 5, when the trigger-happy police of our own Government shot dead
five of our workers. Such was their efficiency that the bullets fired from
AK-47 rifles did not miss a single target as they struck the victims in their
heads.
Dinhata was a second Nandigram where the political
establishment looked the other way when police fired at innocent, unarmed
protesters demanding proper account of their money. This is not the real face
of the Left Front which was based on a shared vision of Socialist principles.
The West Bengal Government is deviating from its original path.
The Forward Bloc will not allow this to happen.
We will not allow Nandigram to take place for the third time.
-- As told to Saugar Sengupta
