The Rizwanur murder provides enough ammunition to flay the Left Front government on the issue of “state sponsored terrorism” but dear readers you must have surely noticed that our Dear Dadaist (isn’t she a touch surrealistic?) Didi, Mamata Bannerjee has chosen to maintain a “studied” silence on the matter – at least compared to her normal rabble rousing ways, she is as good as silent on this issue.
The obvious explanation is, of course, that one of her party bigwigs Javed Khan is very much in the thick of things and is probably one of those key political persons behind the terror and murder that Riz fell victim to. Whether the CBI probe is able to bring this out or not remains to be seen but it is almost a certainty that Javed Khan did not play a pretty role in the affair of breaking up the Riz-Priyanka alliance. Whether he also had a hand in sending or organising the actual goons who commited the murder will be, I hope, properly investigated by the CBI and the full truth will be known. It just goes to show that the posture that Didi takes of being the lone champion of the poor in West Bengal is nothing but just that – a posture. When it comes to helping the criminal-minded rich to carry out an atrocious act of murder, her party top brass had little compunctions.
Interestingly, it is worth pointing out here that when the Left turns Right then it is the ultra-left that becomes the Left. That is what is happening in West Bengal with the CPI(M) having completely lost touch with the people. A case in point is the kind of speeches that leaders of the party’s women’s wing – the Ganatantrik Mahila Samity – is making.
Addressing a gathering of party workers of the Ramgarh-Naktala anchalik committee (in English it is local committee of the mahila samity in the Ramgarh-Naktala locality of south Kolkata), secretary of the anchalik committee, Trishna De Sarkar said that there is nothing to get so het up about Rziwanur as he had many other girlfriends and so by implication a “looj character” to imitate a dialogue from some Bengali film classic – I fail to remember which one (probably Banchharamer Bagan – correct me if I am wrong). She went on to play down the Riz affair and made the point that there was nothing about the event that calls for such a brouhaha.
One of the commentators here, perhaps AK has made a similar point. I have to again point out that the real Rizwanur issue is that of the state and police role in it irrespective of the love affair and irrespective of the character of the protagonists involved. Whatever they may have been individually, they had got married under the Special Marriage Act which under the Indian Constitution is the strongest marriage law available. How come then that the police (and by circumstantial evidence the state administration as well) interfered in this legal marriage, terrorised the two parties and engineered a break-up of such a legally valid marriage? What then about the vaunted Rule of Law in the world’s largest democracy? I have to also point out to AK that while many poor people in India are dieing in a similar fashion the Rizwanur case has caught the people’s imagination and, therefore, it is a good one to use to highlight the main problem – the anti-people role of the state and its so-called law enforcement agencies.
The failure of the CPI(M) to react the way it should have points to the fact they too have become intoxicated by that most dangerous of country liquors – India Shining. Once under the influence you, are sure to see only industrialisation, only “development” and you invariably become blind to the people although we are told ad nauseum that all this “development” is all for them.
Take the Nandigram issue for example. The party and the administration has failed on at least two counts. First, as the so-called party of the poor peasants and workers the party wasted the opportunity of showing how farmers being displaced by industrialisation should be treated by a government that claims that it is representing them and their class interests. This is a failure at the political level and also administrative level as we shall try to show in the paragraphs that follow.
And, second it is a failure of the administration to allow a large area of the state to become a “liberated” area – a muktanchal – an area that has been kept out of bounds for the police and the state administration. This “liberated” area business happened from around August-September last year if I remember correctly or perhaps even earlier. Why didn’t the state administration take tough action then and allowed the matter to snowball into a big political issue? How is it that the state government is still not taking tough action to ensure that the police and state administration can enter the area? Why is it that CPI(M) cadres (instead of police, CRPF and if necessary the Army) are being used to fuel and fan a lingering fire that is burning only the innocent poor many of whom have already been evicted from their home and hearth? Clearly, after the government had announced as a policy statement that no land will be acquired in the Nandigram area for industrialisation, the so-called Jami Uchchhed Bachao Samity had no business to stop police and administration to enter a large area of the state.
If suppose now the Maoists organise similar “liberated” areas in the state what will the CPI(M) and the state administration do – again let some CPI(M) goons try to tackle the issue politically? Or is it that the state government has information that any tough administrative action to “de-liberate” Nandigram will lead to many Nandigrams throughout the state?
This brings me to the point of when the Left truns right, it is the ultra-left that becomes Left, the only voice of the poor and disenfranchised. Perhaps the Left Front is a bit paralysed by the Maoist threat but if it is so then it is entirely the LF’s fault because people have voted and voted and voted in the hope that the party will look after them. But if the party fails to do so the people will not sit idle – they will find an alternative and if Mamata is one big mess there is still always the people’s Great Helmsman Mao whose great deeds the people will find it a little difficult to forget in a hurry.
And how did the Left turn completely right? When, again under the influence of India Shining or should we stick to the more appropriate term India Moonshine, the whole issue of land acquisition for industry was done without a single thought for the people who would be forced to sell off their land for industrial purposes.
As a so-called Marxist party, the CPI(M) and the Left Front knew that historically, industrialisation has always taken place through the rough-shod displacement of poor and small farmers from their land and the conversion of such land into industrial land. So in West Bengal they had a historic opportunity to show to the world how under their rule such displacement would not be painful but instead would actually benefit those being displaced.
My primary argument is why should displaced persons (those displaced by industrial and development projects) be treated as project affected persons rather than as project benefited persons? If these industrial or development projects are to bring in benefits for the economy why should not the people on whose land such development is taking place have the first charge on the benefits that accrue from such industrialisation or development? Why can’t the projects be so designed that the people on whose land the projects are coming up are assured of direct benefits from the projects so that they too can see that it is beneficial for them to give up their land and allow such new idustrial or development projects to come up? For such large projects which involve investments of more than Rs 1000 crore, it can easily be so arranged with very little additional investment (in percentage terms to total project costs) that people on whose land the project is coming up will be the first people to benefit directly from the project. Even if the additional investment is somewhat substantial, say around 20-25% of total project costs even then absorbing these costs should not be too difficult as the additional cost would be part of one-time capital cost and will be recovered if the project is otherwise sound and profitable. At the most, the break-even point will get delayed a bit but such big corporate groups as Tatas would not find it very difficult to absorb such costs and most probably would be only too willing to do so. As to how such direct benefits can be given I will have to write another post and I have to ask, dear reader to wait for it as otherwise this post would become too long. I will then also tackle the issue of additional costs in more detail.
Other than this compensation factor, the state government should have also passed a legislation to cover the following issues:
- that if the state acquires any land for industrial/development projects such acquisition will be considered as acquisition for public purposes and the state will acquire such land under the existing Land Acquisition Act.
- that such acquisition will always without fail be done as per a compensation policy that ensures that the people whose lands are to be acquired would be the first people to be directly benefited from the project that will come up on their land (just to anticipate my post on compensation policy let me state briefly that this policy will have at least the following components – (a) a fair price for the land to be determined on the basis of the difference between the average revenue generated per acre after an industrial project comes up on the land and the average revenue per acre now being generated when the land is being used only for agriculture – this will be a lump sum one-time payment, (b) a revenue stream determined by the average rate of growth in agriculture in the area concerned or the rate of inflation whichever is higher – this will be done by issuing of convertible debentures in the name of erstwhile landowners and issued by the company putting up the industrial project and where the value and design of the debentures will be such that initially and till the company starts earning profits the debenture will provide a steady stream of income to the beneficiary equal to the additional earnings he may have got from continuing to own the land and carrying out agriculture, (c) another future revenue stream that will start once the company begins to earn profit – this will be done by conversion of a part of the debenture into equity in the company – the percentage of equity being equal to the percentage of the value of the one-time payment for land as land price compared to the total initial project cost, (d) a housing unit within the project, say an apartment with each family getting an apartment whose size is equal to the number of family members multiplied by at least 120 sq ft which a beneficiary family may use itself or sell-off, and (e) suitable training and employment of at least one member of the family in the project but such employment being strictly on merit - in case a family fails to get anyone employed on merit it will continue to enjoy the entitlement of one guranteed job till someone from the family gets trained enough to be employable – that is, the idea is to keep the company responsible for providing the training to make at least one member employable till the even happens).
- that such land once acquired will be made a part of the state’s industrial land bank and will be auctioned out to industrial units instead of the present policy of acquiring the land for a specific private sector company and its project.
Besides such legislation the goverment and the political group in power (in West Bengal’s case the LF) should have the necessary political will to prove to the people that they are following such a beneficial policy for those giving up their lands for industry and it will be the responsibility of the state government and the political group in power to convince landowners to give up their land for industries in return for guaranteed benefits along the lines suggested above.
The conversion of agricultural land for industrial purposes is inevitable in a land scarce country such as ours and only a well-defined compensation policy that aims to create project benefited persons rather than project affected persons can solve the kind of problems the Left Font is now facing with regard to industrialisation. Till now the problem was there was no one to invest and now the problem is that there are too many to invest and not enough land to be provided to them for investment. Clearly it called for a well-thought out land acquisition and compensation policy but the West Bengal government went ahead with Singur and Nandigram without doing so. Even now it has not worked out such a transparent and believable policy that people can have faith in.
In conclusion one must come back to the point with which we started – when the Left turns right, the ultra-left becomes the left. Perhaps only Maoist pressure will make the CPI(M) again start thinking of the people as also of the people who man its middle and lower levels where party cadres have begun to believe that they are party cadres only to enjoy the fruits of power and to become rich and powerful themeselves and to hell with the rest of the people. I am sorry that I have remind my comrades in the CPI(M) that drinking is bad for health and drinking India Moonshine is fatal! Stop drinking! Think people first!
5 Comments
November 2, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Great post. Thanks
In my previous post, I pointed out that irrespective of anything it is the love story which caught people imagination. If you stress that this incident can be a good test case to expose police anti people role then I think we are waking up too late in our life. My point is we have digested the same system for such a long time. We as a human being very selfish, we don’t see the issue until we face it, we don’t learn by experience, we always think it won’t happen to us. We pick and choose which suits us. We don’t negotiate – it hurts our ego.
I’ll again come back to the point that character building is important in life. Law enforcement is there to help us but we should also follow some discipline in life.
November 3, 2007 at 12:31 am
To AK, so if we are waking up too late in life, isn’t that better than not waking up at all?
There are so many angles to this story – who knows what caught the attention of so many people?! I know what did it for me – it was the press conference given by the arrogant and disdainful ex-commissioner.
“Character” and “discipline in life” are words open to subjective interpretation – and completely irrelevant in a discussion of a criminal case that involves the horrendous death of an individual. IMO, it is despicable to try to dilute an issue by raising questions about a victim’s “character”.
November 3, 2007 at 1:55 pm
See AK if you say we are waking up too late in life then you are implying that most people are already awake to this issue of the anti-people role of the police and state. Is this really so?
Even in the Rizwanur case people are finding it easy to confuse the issue and raise such totally irrelevant issues as “character”, “injustice to the holy spirit of love” etc and many are falling for it. This is especially true of the younger generation of the middle class who have fallen complete victims to the present consumerist culture. These people have no idea of what police repression is all about that many of us – who spent our childhood during the days of the Naxalite movement – are very much aware of.
The character of police repression has not changed and if I use the case of a young romance to show how reprehensible the police and the state can be I do not think I am making a mistake. If the younger generation can identify better with Riz than with the thousands of innocent youths who were murdered or maimed in cold blood by the police during the early seventies then so be it – I don’t see what is wrong with that. If you can highlight every other instance of police atrocity please do – nobody is stopping you.
In this site I have already provided links and comments on the killing of Charles Menezes, an innocent Brazilian in the London Underground to claim that the state and police everywhere is actually the same – they kill inocent people to maintain what is a clearly an unsustainable system. Even today the newspapers have reported of another Riz-Priyanka type case where the daughter of a rich Hindu is being hounded for marrying a poor Hindu. I am sure that hundreds of cases of police repression on innocents can be documented everyday in India. But that does not in anyway diminish the importance of even one of the lives affected, least of all Rizwanur’s.
I have also commented upon how it is the overwhelming social force of property and inheritance that overcomes even the natural love that a father is supposed to feel towards his daughter. Is social prestige or property inheritnce more important than the happiness of one’s daughter?
Thus, on the whole I have not limited myself to decrying the Rizwanur murder simply because it is a tragic end to a romantic love story which should have ended with the words “and they happily lived ever after”. Instead, I have tried to highlight the deep-rooted social evils that the Riz case is just a symptom of.
So, again I must say if you have other cases of such social injustice that you want to highlight – just go ahead. I will surely not stand in the way of anybody who wants to do that.
November 3, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Priyanka’s Letter for her Father……[read it]
Priyanka Todi wrote a plaintive letter to her father before she left her Salt Lake home to go and live with her husband on Tiljala Lane. She had said they would be happy if he allowed them to live.
Letter begins with “I am going. I am leaving the house. I love a young man. Initially, I thought it won’t work out so I told him I will marry according to the wishes of my father and mother, both if whom I love because I knew you will not approve of the marriage with him. But soon I realized that I loved him too much and without him there is no future for me.”
Read complete letter >> http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=127463
Please Don’t Keep Mum……Break Your Silence and Raise Your Voice for Justice
Hey friends! He started a fight most of us want to but do not dare to. He has given his life to the cause, let us keep it alive by Joining here >>
http://www.merinews.com/registerContributor.jsp?msgID=
Thanx
November 5, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Mr Occam’s Razor
If you say character building and discipline is very subjective then so is “love”
Thanks for stretching your imagaination.
Where did you see me raising questions on the character of the victim. You ought to read my comments twice before making any such allegation. I used a generic term called ‘we’ if you have any problem with that please refer to dictionary.