Free Bird

[bluefreebird-blog]

Students' Cause or Kidnapping or Child Labour

1993, the movie ‘Jurassic Park’ released. Dinosaur became the most popular character in children mind at that time. My knowledge was not minimum about the political scenario of India or Bengal during that period and can still remember that news was spread that a particular political party’s Student wing had taken the school students to Netaji Indoor Stadium with the tip that their favorite Dinosaur was there. Students went happily. Actually that was a student gathering as part of a political party’s programme.

Few days ago another similar incident rocked the city again. The All India Democratic Students’ Organization, smoothly picked up boys from Class V or VI before they could enter their classrooms in a school in New Alipore. They are claiming that the rally was in a students’ cause. From the various discussions in news channels, it is clear that such a practice is not new. It is also said that some schools are regularly supplying students for political rallies.

The problem this time was a bit different. The parents did not know there was going to be a rally and obviously they panicked because they thought the children had been kidnapped. Any school that cooperates with political parties by sending its students to rallies must be severely penalized. It is very clear that some teachers and the headmaster of the school in question were not completely innocent rather more irresponsible. Police are of say that they cannot move because no parent has named the school in the complaints. Then is that not the task of the government to ensure that such a thing never happens again to any school-going child  ?? It is fact that the SUCI, the DSO’s parent party, is an ally of the Trinamul Congress (TMC) but that should not come under any consideration.

Kidnapping is a word whose meaning is clear and specific, and no amount of argument can soften its gravity of offence. When a child is taken away without his will OR without the knowledge of his parents, he has been kidnapped. When more than 40 schoolchildren are stuffed into a van and taken away to join a rally without their parents knowing a thing, it is kidnapping many times over.

Is not that similar to enforced child labour also ? When their parents have sent them to school, then why should schoolchildren be made to walk in the heat and rain on open roads? Any political party that that takes this shortcut method to strengthen the heads in its rallies is guilty of kidnapping, of callousness, of cruelty, of violating school rules and of defying parents’ authority.

I am puzzled. Is this for Students’ Cause ? Is not that Kidnapping ? Is not that enforced Child-Labour ? Or is it a simple politicization of our everyday life ???

[bluefreebird-blog]

100 DAYS

  West Bengal has completed 100 days  under the new government last week. So many opinions, debates are moving around about the future of West Bengal or Paschim Banga, don’t know exactly what to pronounce. Mamata Banerjee and his followers are joyous with the change or ‘Poriborton’ while the oppositions are struggling to see “Where is that”.

One hundred days in power is less than a blink in historical time. But even that moment is not without significance since it allows observers to look at what has happened and which way the state is moving. To do this, the first hundred days in office of Mamata Banerjee need to be placed in their context. The great achievement of Ms Banerjee is that she has broken the vicious cycle of lethargy. She came to power promising change. She has kept her promise. The change is elusive but it is not difficult to realize. In that sense, it is hopeful.

There is a new energy which is driving ministers and bureaucrats. In this regard, Ms Banerjee, with her unending capacity for work, actually sets the example. Her choice of ministers also shows a fresh approach because it includes persons like Amit Mitra who are not professional politicians. Her intention is obviously to draw in experts to advise her on various aspects of governance and administration. People my complain about setting up of too many committees but I think, this should bring good results to West Bengal.

At the same time one should not forget the near-triumph of the first hundred days is not without wrinkles of anxiety. One of these is caused by the chief minister’s enthusiasm to declare holidays for the most insignificant of reasons. The chief minister who is trying to rejuvenate work ethic and is appealing to all political parties to stop bandhs and strikes cannot afford to be over-enthusiastic about holidays. The more critical worry concerns land. West Bengal desperately needs large-scale industrial investment. For this, consolidated chunks of land are required. Ms Banerjee, in the near future, will have to seriously review her attitude and policy on land acquisition. She will have to accept that without land there cannot be any industry. As a politician and as a campaigner, Ms Banerjee’s strongest suit was populism. This has to change as she moves more and more into governance mode.

At a completely different level, Ms Banerjee’s first hundred days in power represents the triumph of individual will. When the tide of politics was completely in favour of the Left, she refused to accept the dominance of the comrades. She launched a solitary battle against what she saw as oppression and misrule. Of course all forms of media support was there to back her drive but you cannot deny that her indomitable courage generated a movement to overthrow Left rule. She may not be the sole author and the mastermind but it is fact that she sits today with very good reason at the wheel of affairs.

It is this spirit of hers that is propelling West Bengal towards a change of which the last hundred days have provided a glimpse. Ms Banerjee has not been in solitude for a hundred days; her dynamism carries the hope that a hundred flowers will bloom in West Bengal.

[bluefreebird-blog]

SINGUR PROMISE

Singur is more than a name of a small area in West Bengal. It is a name imbued with heavy political symbolism since it was the agitation there that put Mamata Banerjee on the comeback trail. She had no need to look back since then. But as chief minister, she cannot afford not to look back on Singur. She promised in the course of her election campaign that she would give back the land to the landowners who had been unwilling to part with their plots in Singur. She has, in one of her first acts as chief minister, honoured that promise. She has, through a bill passed in the legislative assembly, taken back all the land that the previous government had acquired and given to the Tatas for the small car project. From this, she has proposed to give back the land to those who had been forced to part with their land despite their unwillingness. This decision of Ms Banerjee is noteworthy for a number of reasons.

 First, very few, if any, political leaders have actually honoured a promise made in the course of an election campaign. But for Ms Banerjee, the land in Singur has become a kind of pilgrimage where she had to return to express her gratitude. For this alone, her decision is commendable. Second, the proposal to actually give back land does not have too many precedents in contemporary Indian history.

What, however, is undeniable is that the government’s decision is not without problems. One of these has become apparent in the process through which the bill was passed. The process revealed more haste than reflection. The initial step was to introduce an ordinance. Much to the embarrassment of the present dispensation, it had to be pointed out by the Opposition that an ordinance under the circumstances was unconstitutional. The governor of the state concurred and the ordinance had to be replaced by a bill presented to the assembly. Throughout the entire process, the government seemed to be in an unseemly haste.

The desire to keep an election promise is laudable but the way of delivering on the promise should avoid embarrassment and also controversy. The government would have lost nothing if it had first opened a dialogue with the Tatas before it unilaterally decided to take away the land. This could have freed the decision of the taint of arbitrariness.

The last point is important because, in some crucial ways, Singur has not lost its power as a symbol. If Singur is the symbol for land and its political power, it is also the sign of industry in West Bengal and of political disaster. West Bengal, if it has to grow and develop, needs investment in industries.

The eyes of every potential investor are all on this new government, its undisputed leader and the decision she takes. Any wrong signal is likely to scare the flock with the money. The faith that makes for investment is no less powerful than the emotion tied to land.

[bluefreebird-blog]

JOTO LOK TOTO VOTE ? The Postmortem

Look at the number of Left Front Organisations and their cumulative registered members given below. The numbers of members are given in crores. Remember the figure 3.64 crores.

A) Krishok Sobha -1.50, B) DYFI - 0.85, C) Mohila Samity - 0.60, D) CITU - 0.17, E) SFI - 0.13, F) Agragami Kishan Sobha - 0.10, G) UTUC - 0.055, H) AITUC - 0.035, I) Other Organisations - 0.20

TOTAL  - 3.64 Crores

The postmortem of left front defeat has started. Based upon the above mentioned figure they chalked out the total number of votes they would get in the last Assembly polls. But alarmingly they got only 1.95 crore votes. Clean and clear, all their registered members did not cast in favour of the Left parties.

The  poor farmers, Adivashishs (ST) even did renewed their memberships in December last year but casted their vote against them.  The political ideology of the Left parties didn’t touch their heart anymore.

Consider the pattern of taking membership of SFI. I can remember well, when I was in the queue to submit my admission fees in my college in Class XI, I  was approached by some senior students for the membership of SFI against a some of Rupees 5 (Five). I didn’t had  least little idea of what the thing was  SFI, about their origin, their  manifesto, was it for drink or eat. I gave the money as all others in the queue. What is the meaning of his kind of membership ? The same thing applies in all of their parts.

The Left parties deviated and forgot their main political job or performance while in the hasty mood of increasing the number of their membership lists. Can you believe that against the sum of only ONE rupee anybody can get the membership of  DYFI ? All you have to do is showing a support to their policy. Is it a process of taking membership ?

Now question is why people flocked to get the membership of Left parties ? Only answer is Power. Every common man has a tendency to remain under a secured umbrella of Power. The Left parties were in the throne for the last 34 years and people ran after them either out of love or fear to get a shelter under the umbrella of safety and security.

The voters who used to love the Left Parties did cast in favour of them but most of the common man who were in their favour on list just out of fear, found an alternative and turned the colour from Red to Green.

The postmortem is not yet over. They are now getting a fishy smell. Hands of America in the technology of making Electronic Voting Machines (EVM).

Lets wait for another thrilling political outcry.   

[bluefreebird-blog]

ATTITUDE OF GRACE

Manners maketh a man. Manners also make politicians in a parliamentary democracy. It is always assumed in parliamentary democracy that exchange of words and hostilities will remain confined to the floor of Parliament and never be carried outside it. This automatically imposes certain limits on the kind of language that is used and ensures that political hostilities do not turn personal. Communists across the world, perhaps because they did not, for a long time, believe in parliamentary democracy, have never hesitated to use abusive epithets against their political and ideological rivals. No less a person than Vladimir Lenin showed the way in this regard. He used vile abuse against his opponents in speech as well as in writing. In Indian politics, the venerable Rajani Palme Dutt, a leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain who ran the Indian communist party by remote control from London, did not hesitate to call Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi “a lackey of British imperialism’’. Grace was not a quality that the communists either believed in or valued.

Within the ambit of West Bengal politics, there are many examples of graceless behaviour and tasteless decisions. One was the renaming of Harrington Street as Ho Chi Minh Sarani because the consulate of the United States of America was situated there. How would the comrades feel if today Alimuddin Street were to be renamed after an anti-communist leader like Washington or Siddhartha Sankar Ray? The communists consistently ridiculed the Congress leader, Atulya Ghosh, because he was visually challenged (They named him ‘Kana Atulya’). Jyoti Basu was notorious for his bad manners and brusque manner; and true to form, he showed his lack of grace when he refused to attend the funerals of two of his predecessors. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, known for his pose of intellectual superiority, did not even call on the widow of Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the erstwhile chief minister of West Bengal. But Mr Bhattacharjee had taken pains to accord a State funeral to Mr Basu, another former chief minister. Instances can be multiplied.

The point of citing these instances is to contrast them with the decision of Mr Bhattacharjee and some of his comrades to attend the swearing-in ceremony on Friday. It was an unexpected exhibition of grace and courtesy, and all the more laudable for it. The new chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, had extended a personal invitation to which Mr Bhattacharjee and his comrades responded in the best possible way. It can only be hoped that this exchange of courtesy marks a new beginning in West Bengal politics. The smugness and arrogance of the communists had made common decency a rare commodity in the public life of the state. Defeat has restored decency.

This has been possible because Ms Banerjee has chosen to be high-minded in her triumph. This may not quite be the return of good manners but praise be for a small beginning.

[bluefreebird-blog]

Bengal Industry Blues

Some informations are gathered and provided by some of my friends. Thanks to them. I think it is only the tip of iceberg. 

  We have heard long and loud about how the Nano would have changed the face of Bengal-tempted more industrialists to flock to Bengal. I do not know how this will turn out. But for now, I am starting to list the industries that have closed down in the past years, by militant trade unionism of CITU and apathy of the government. If you are reading this and think there are more names you can think of, please contribute. I will try and go on adding details of every factory, over time.

Bengal Lamp Factory- Jadavpur (closed down 1989)

Annapurna Glass Factory- Jadavpur (Ekta Heights has come up in its place now)

Sulekha Works- Jadavpur (closed down Jan 1989, Devloke apartments rise up there)

USHA Factory- Prince Anwar Shah Road (South City has come up here)

National Instruments- Jadavpur (Land sold to JU)

Jessop's Factory

Kakinara Paper Mill

Haringhata Dairy Farm

Dhakeswari Cotton Mill

Asansol glass factory

Sen Raleigh Bicycle Factory CCIL Asansol

The Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation (MAMC) Durgapur

Dunlop Tyre factory

Beni Engineering- (1987)

Mohini Mills- Belgharia (Closed down in 1988)

Basanti Cotton Mills- Panihati (Closed down May 1987)

Hindwire -

B.T. Road - wire manufacturing company

Thermal Power Station- Shyamnagar

National Tannery (Close down 1995/6)

Aluminius Manufacturing Company (AMCO) (Close down in 1985)

Eastern Paper Mill- (Closed down in 1986)

Siddhartha Apparels- (Closed down in 2002)

Kolay Biscuits- (Closed down in 1980s)

Metal Box (Closed down )

Dunbar Cotton Mills

Small Tools Manufacturing Company

Bangodaya Cotton Mill (Closed down in 1984) (Peerless Abasan’ has come up after dismantling Bangodaya Cotton Mills)

Indo-Japan Steels Ltd. (Closed down in 1996)

Tyre Corporation of India

Bengal Pottery (Closed down in 1993)

Bharat Brakes and Valves

Smith Stainisstreet

Electrical Manufacturing Company (EMC)

Sur Enamel

Scientific Indian Glass Company (Closed for more than 25 years. A huge complex of six multi-storeyed apartment blocks collectively referred to as Brindaban Gardens is already in place.)

Oriental Metal Industries (Made way for a residential complex)

Structural Engineering

Sekhar Iron

Titagarh Paper Mill (Dying) and does not produce paper any more

Apollo Zipper

East Anglia Plastics

Ruby Paints (residential apartment constructed)

Hindustan Iron popularly called ‘rod call’ (residential apartment constructed)

ARP Rubber (residential apartment constructed)

New Luck Rubber (residential apartment constructed)

Business Firms (preparation ongoing for residential apartment)

Asila Pharmaceuticals

Motor Machinery Manufacturing

Paul Lehman

Vegal Engine and Engineering

Siddheshwari Hosiery (residential apartment under construction)

BMT Mills (residential apartment under construction)

Chopra Motors and Chaliha Rolling Mills-Tollygunj

American Refrigerator (ARCO) -Taratolla

Machinery Manufacturing Company (MMC)-Taratolla

Bengal Ingot-Taratolla

Das Reprographics-Taratolla

Avery-Taratolla

Glaxo-Taratolla

Rolls Mills-Taratolla

Poddar Projects-Taratolla

Shalimar Tar-Taratolla

Rolls Print-Taratolla

Siddhartha Apparels-Taratolla

WEBEL (the manufacturing units have closed down)-Taratolla

Air Condition-Taratolla

Kesoram Cotton-Taratolla

Farinni-Taratolla

Angel India-Taratolla

Steel and Allied Products-Taratolla

APJ India-Taratolla

Mahindra and Mahindra-Taratolla

ALCON-Taratolla

universal Autocraft-Taratolla

Mandal Rubber-Phool bagan-Taratolla

Surah (Bally) Jute Mill

Gobinda Sheet Metals

Kedar Rubber

Calcutta Jute Mill

Orient Fan- (dying)

Tata Oil Mill

Santosh Biscuits

Bengal Chemical has sold some of its ‘excess’ land on which a multinational school has come up

Small Tools Manufacturing Limited, which has been dismantled of late paving the way for the proposed ‘Orchid Towers

In 2003, the Government of West Bengal had asked WEBCON (a State Government public sector consultancy firm) to carry out a study on the ‘excess’ land located within various industries. The study revealed that there were about 41,000 acres of ‘excess’ land in just 500 industrial units in West Bengal.

Question is, if the colour of Writers Building turns green after the Friday the 13th (May), will the scenario of the state change ?? If not "Poriborton" or "Protyaborton" will end up with the same meaning.

[bluefreebird-blog]

Obama Blues

Revenge, it was famously remarked by the fictional godfather, is a cold dish; it is best served cold. The president of the United States of America and those under him who run the country’s intelligence and counter-terrorism operations will draw consolation from that statement. It has taken nearly a decade to track down and take out the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden.

After 10 years, the US president can claim that justice has been delivered upon a person who declared war on the US and killed thousands of innocent men, women and children. It cannot be denied that even with all the sophisticated technology at their disposal and the manpower at their command, the US intelligence agencies found it extremely difficult to track down Osama bin Laden. Immediately after the attack on the twin towers in September 2001, it was widely believed that Osama bin Laden was hiding somewhere in the hills of Afghanistan. It was only when the extensive bombing of that terrain yielded no success in locating him that the realization came that the world’s leading jihadi was probably hiding somewhere else.

The discovery of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan — that too in a locality close to the capital — will surprise very few people in India. That Osama bin Laden had close links with Pakistan and the acts of terrorism that emanated from that country is something that India has claimed in every relevant international forum, especially to the US. The latter will prove to be incredibly gullible — more gullible than what it has been in the past — if it believes that influential sections of Pakistan’s establishment were unaware of Osama bin Laden’s presence in the heart of Pakistan. Barack Obama will find it very difficult to explain to his people how the US considers Pakistan to be an ally in the fight against terrorism when the number one enemy of the US was actually living in Pakistan openly in a rather opulent mansion in an area where some of Pakistan’s military elite reside. The operation against Osama bin Laden on the soil of Pakistan could turn out to be a defining moment in the history of the relationship between Pakistan and the US.

If the attack on the twin towers was the most momentous event of the first decade of the new century, the killing of Osama bin Laden in a covert operation could be the most significant one of the second decade. The man whose name was emblematic of terrorism has been eliminated. Mr Obama, when he made the announcement, rightly emphasized that an enemy of humanity had been eliminated.

Osama bin Laden had killed indiscriminately and had celebrated violence. His exit from the world represents an act of cleansing.