[MORE] HUMAN SACRIFICE IN BENGAL....

The Telegraph reports:

Malda, March 28: Tala Murmu (65), who had been branded a “witch” after a
panchayat pradhan’s father died on Monday, was “sacrificed” on the altar of
a temple at Kendua village in the Habibpur police station area yesterday.....

The incident was preceded by a few other deaths in the recent past, prompting the villagers to summon a “renowned” witch doctor to prescribe a remedy from the “evil spell”, Soshen [son of the victim] said.....

Blaming illiteracy and superstition among the tribal people of the village, [DSP]Mondal said the residents were convinced that the deaths were caused due to the evil spell cast by someone, though the actual reasons were malnutrition and tuberculosis.

Here's the ABP followup on the same story.

Perpetrators were people who have lived most of their post-infantile lives under three decades of left rule. Three decades that saw unprecedented progress in high quality mass education - a new awakening of the people across the state through meticulous planning, sincerity and political goodwill of the state government. Three decades that also saw remarkable success in implementation of health, welfare and awareness programmes among a massive section of the population. Despite all hurdles and non-cooperation from the opposing forces.

So this must be a small aberration. A minor blot magnified out of proportion by the evil TrinamoolBJPNaxaliteMaoistMuslimFundamentalist forces [the panchyat pradhan was a Congress man - wasn't he - so how can the left front government be responsible anyway?]. A plot by the hostile media [no not bourgeoisie anymore] against the ProgressiveSecularDemocraticIntellectual heritage of Bengal. We will do all we can to preserve that heritage. Against such malicious campaigns. Because we are proud of our heritage. And also of our Chief Minister. A kha(n)ti bhadrolok. Who can recite a song from any page you may open in the Geetobitan. Challenge?

PS: And no, we will not let this minor matter provide an instance for UncivilizedCowBeltPoliticians. To justify the demand for more reservation to backwards in medical education. We are all for equality. So the students from some godforsaken village under Habibpur police station of Malda should only have equal chance of admission to a medical college [that is if they have the guts, grit and the talent to come this far]. Not more. Because we should not compromise the quality of our medical education. We are proud of our medical education and of our health system. And we are all for equality.

And India is democratic country. So a doctor must have the right to decide where he will get employed. And yes, he may choose to migrate outside the country and practice medicine in London. That is his democratic right. But if the British government wants to push back the surplus doctors and introduce draconian immigration laws, we must protest. And the Indian government must also protest. Why the hell do we have a democracy anyway, if the government does not support its own people, its own doctors in peril - in UK?

NANDIGRAM - THE AFTERMATH....

A week and a half after the carnage, Nandigram slowly fades from the headlines. The odd story of butchery is finally nudged out by the 'mystery' behind Bob Woolmer's demise and the 'do-or-die' encounter of Team India.

Independent groups conducting relief camps in the area continue to report on the hundreds that are still missing. Will we ever know what happened to them? Will the victims of Nandigram ever find justice?

Not much hope if you consider that 15 years after the post-Ayodhya Bombay riots of 1992-93, 443 people are still officially missing. Not a single soul has been convicted for the rioting that left 900 dead and 2000 injured [unofficial estimates are several times higher]. The 2002 Gujarat riots have a slightly better record of 10 of the accused being sentenced to life imprisonment for 1044 killings, 223 missing and 2548 injured [again official figures].

The CBI has a fine equation to balance. It should embarrass the CPM enough to keep a check on its badgering of the UPA government, but not too hard to incite its wrath. It is unlikely henceforth that many skeletons will tumble from the report CBI has submitted to Calcutta HC yesterday.

Meanwhile the CPM has launched an all-out damage control exercise, it's own protest against the protest. Apart from the parading the politically correct group of 'victims' in the streets of Calcutta and organising an exhibition of buses burnt during the opposition bandh, Biman Bose has identified the 'internet and websites' as the new 'international' frontier for the propaganda struggle. Scores of SFI and DYFI activists have been unleashed on their unfamiliar terrains of Orkut and online petitions, to plaster community message boards with party's version of the events. And with Buddha losing his face at least temporarily, the party is now trying hard to capitalize on Brinda Karat's appeal.

But she has no answer on why the decision to unconditionally abandon all land acquisition plans in Nandigram was not publicized before the police operations. Was it to teach Nandigram a grim lesson for defying the iron fist of the big brother in red Bengal? To set a chilling reminder to the other communities simmering in discontent at the 'industry for agriculture' policy across the state? If the compulsion to bring back the villages within the administration's jurisdiction was so strong, why has a single minister or secretary level official not visited the place to bring food, medical care and security to the battered masses?

While the CPM struggles hard to remove these questions from the fore-front, the main opposition parties have quickly dismissed any additional confidence the people might have placed on them by resuming their usual retarded behaviour both inside and outside the assembly.

So what did Nandigram teach all of us?

To Lakshman Seth, it might have taught the need for a different tactics to bring the rebellious farmers again under his subjugation. Maybe the need to show some carrots at first before you bring out the stick. To Biman Bose, it was probably a lesson to keep the octogenarian leaders of the Left Front partners posted more frequently, so that their babbling on prime time TV is less irritating. Maybe also to make sure that Jyotibabu does not watch the wrong TV channels at times of need. To Buddha, Nandigram might have shown the need for a new strategy to 'enforce development' on the unwilling agricultural populace.

But to the general public, to all of us who are frustrated to see our homeland sink at the bottom of every human development index, who long to see prosperity return to Bengal so that we can all go and work there, what did Nandigram have to say to us? We were hopeful of a possible resurgence, weren't we, a new Bengal under a new leadership?

Perhaps it taught us that the leadership was not so new after all. Maybe it was more like old wine a new bottle, with a new label stamped Brand Buddha and marketed aggressively through mainstream media all over the country. The same people who had decided that students in government schools need not learn English, have now come to the conclusion that we need to build large scale industries replacing extensive tracts of prime agricultural land.

So am I 'anti-industry'? This appears to be a new phrase of neo-liberal coinage to be dispensed on anyone opposing the policies of Buddhababu. Just like the 'un-American' stigma during McCarthyism in the US of the '50s.
Well, let me confirm that I am all for rapid industrialization. Post-globalization, when food is increasing a market-driven commodity, when our policy makers decide to import wheat against local procurement - the model of a small farmer growing his food in a tiny plot of vested land with a small surplus is fast becoming not only infeasible for the economy but dangerous for the farmer as well. The only way to safeguard this farmer is by creating a more secure livelihood for him. By providing employment opportunity for him in a labour intensive work unit.

But to achieve this, if we arbitrarily select one of the most fertile and well irrigated agricultural areas of the state - home to a relatively prosperous, self-sufficient, productive and socially conscious community; enforce acquisition 'with consent' [if you don't give consent you lose the land as well as the compensation]; offer no choice of reconsidering the location [since the business owner has already chosen the land before the inhabitants were informed]; bulldoze any unwilling occupants forcibly; murder some of the more defiant ones; finally setup an industry which employs less people than were originally displaced; and those who get employment actually did not come from the same community because of the advanced skillsets required - does this really address the original need to provide alternate and more viable employment opportunities for our economically backward sections?

What we need instead is probably a more scientific approach. Maybe a CPM muscleman is not the right person to decide where a chemical hub displacing thousands of people should be setup.

Maybe a person with a B.A. Hons degree in Bengali, who thinks only 1% of our state's land is barren [when the actual figure is 18%] is not the right person to set the sectorwise economic growth targets for the state.

Maybe we should create soil fertility maps of the state [as Jharkhand has done ahead of us] to identify land for industry.

Maybe we should let economists and scientists take the decision on land utilization rather than leaving the decision to politicians and industrialists themselves.

Maybe we should prioritize the agriculturally backward red-soil districts when we chalk our industrialization plans.

Maybe we should allot the abandoned/surplus land from shut down factories for setting up new industries, instead of handing these over to land sharks [as done in Batanagar, Hind Motors, Kamarhatty].

Maybe there should be enough safeguard to prevent businesses from just grabbing land at dirt cheap rates in the name of industrialization.

Maybe we should focus on employment generation potential rather than media appeal when we select which industries to attract.

Maybe the government should make more extensive use of e-governance [where we lag behind even Assam in eastern India] as contact points for the people with the state, rather than relying on the CPM party offices.

Maybe instead of displacing productive agricultural communities, government should help them access bigger markets for their economic development.

Will our people who matter take these lessons out of Nandigram? Well, going by history - fat chance. The presupposition that activities of the CPM government are aimed at improving the lot of the people, is itself at serious risk of being incorrect.

But again...., hope is the only thing we can have - so let's keep our fingers crossed.....

SHAME!

In one stroke it was gone! The veil of snobbery. The feeling of superiority in belonging to the 'oasis' in the midst of medieval India. The right to express revulsion at saffron terror in Narendra Modi's Gujarat.

14/03 dismissed it all.

The voices were many. The feeling was of confusion and disbelief. Some said that 14 killings were just the tip of the iceberg. Others pegged the number at 20, 23 or 31. Still others said CPM cadres with automatic weapons and the paramilitary forces have taken few prisoners. They had ripped apart the innards of men with bayonets and thrown away the remains in canals. The women were continuously tortured till they collapsed and then their limbs torn apart. There were reports of children being cut in halves and bodies dumped in ditches.

But the overwhelming image, which we all saw with our own eyes, was of police chasing and emptying their guns on the protesters while they ran for their lives in their sarees, clutching their children in their hands.

Almost everyone talked about the missing. The wife was in Nandigram Hospital with bullet wounds in her leg. The husband is critical in a Calcutta hospital with more bullet wounds. The wife was crying - she has no news of her toddler sons. NDTV reported an estimate of 400 to 500 missing.

In Barkha Dutt's 'We the People', Aparna Sen broke down talking about the women she has met in Shonachura village. The men were all gone. Armed gangs of inebriated CPM goons attacked the women in the night. One guy called Tapan Mitra, who appears to be a former Haldia Petrochemicals chief, laughed out loudly at the comparison between Godhra and Nandigram. He has been to Godhra, he claimed. It was not clear if he has been to Nandigram, though. The same person later proclaimed his unflinching faith in Buddhadeb's infallibility. One voice in the crowd asked why no such questions were asked when a housewife from a family of CPM supporters was similarly raped last month.

Mamta Banerjee has compared Nandigram to Iraq, but I have not heard of such atrocities being committed on women in Iraq. Except for the occasional American soldier convicted for rape, there have not been reports on Sunnis raping Shiite women or vice versa. In this regard, the terrorists in Iraq appear lot more civilized than the cadres reared by our poet Chief Minister.

Nandigram reminds me instead of the Hutus and the Tutsis.. and of Darfur. Buddhadeb wanted to make Calcutta into Shanghai and Singapore. Instead he has taken us to Somalia. He had initiated us to the countdown on FDI targets for Bengal. Now we are counting the butchered and the raped.

In this chaos, I found one article in Outlook particularly appealing:

Why then, may we ask, does the CM always claim that he’s caught
unawares? I’m not suggesting that he’s lying. He isn’t, I’d say. Its just that
his level of understanding, his political acumen, and even perhaps his level of
intelligence, is low. I take full responsibility for saying this—everyone,
including the Governor, apprehended that attempts by the police to enter
Nandigram would spark violence. The Governor had even warned the CM about this.
To plead, after so many avoidable deaths, that events overtook him does little
to absolve Bhattacharjee and, in fact, only shows him in an extremely poor
light. Doubts have been expressed, and rightly so, over his capabilities to
occupy the CM’s chair.

In 1990s, Buddhababu had left Jyoti Basu's cabinet in a huff. He does not want to be part of a 'cabinet of thieves', he had said.

Thieves, it seems, were better than these rapists.

WHO THE HELL IS SALIM AFTER ALL?

Who the hell has our poster boy of neo-liberalisation been pursuing so amorously, at the cost of the lives of 22 poor Bengali villagers [40 as per unoffical estimates] so far?

Sudono Salim (Chinese: 林绍良, Liem Swie Liong or Lim Sioe Liong) (born 10 September 1915), an ethnic-Chinese Indonesian of Hok-Chia (Fujian Province in China) origin, is considered one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Indonesia, although it is widely suspected that his successes are through bribery and partisanship. At one point in time, he was believed to be the richest individual in Indonesia. His businesses were mostly without competition, due largely to his strong ties to then-president Suharto and co-ownership with prominent politicians and public figures. He monopolized the Indonesian cement and flour industries, among many others. ... He also used to own Bank Central Asia (BCA), the largest non-government-owned bank in Indonesia, until 1998 when the company was confiscated by the Indonesian government. The monopolistic nature of his businesses left many grumbling, and during the Jakarta Riots of May 1998, his mansion in Jakarta was burnt to the ground. He has since resided in the United States in an undisclosed location.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudono_Salim

INCREDIBLE INDIA

The Hindu reported on Thursday Feb 22, 3 days after the Samjhauta blasts:

Placing their destinies in God's hands, over 600 people boarded the Delhi-Attari
Special N. 4001 from Old Delhi railway station here at midnight on Wednesday,
undeterred by the blasts that rocked the Samjhauta Express on Sunday night.

Though there was tight security, a two-level checking process and a sizeable
number of Railway Protection Force personnel, the scene at Platform No. 18 was
anything but edgy. Passengers were chatting up with relatives and friends who
had come to bid adieu. There were no signs of worry on the faces of Mohammed
Riyaz and his wife Salma who were returning to Karachi on the train.

Contrast this with a report from Guardian on Jul 29, 2005; three weeks after the 7/7 blasts:

However, it [the station] remained noticeably quieter than would be expected in the rush hour, and only two passengers got on the 7.05am District line train from Edgware Road to Wimbledon.
One of them, William Mascimento, a 22-year-old carpenter from Camden, north London, said: "I am worried - I will admit it, but I just won't show it. But at the same time I have got to get to work and carry on with everyday things."
He said the five colleagues who usually travelled with him to work had opted to stay away from Edgware Road and instead take alternative routes.
By 8am - usually the beginning of the peak rush hour - the platforms remained virtually empty, with only a handful of commuters getting on and off trains.

As an Indian, this gives me hope for our future - may be in the same way cockroaches hope - to survive nuclear holocausts.

BIG B AS BIG P?

After selling off [nearly] half of Uttar Pradesh to the Ambanis, Mr. Amar Singh of the Samajwadi Party seems to have set his eyes on the highest office of the land. He wants his good friend Mr. Amitav Bachchan to be the next president of India, apparently. Last evening's news night on Times Now saw Mr. Raj Babbar demand that, before proceeding, Mr. Bachchan should issue an affidavit confirming that his candidature would not promote commercial interest of 'brokers' [like Mr. Singh]. I don't know the feasibility of having affidavits like that, but Mr. Babbar might be in right track considering that 200 thousand sq ft of prime real estate in the heart of Delhi is at stake.

Meanwhile I hear rumours that Baby B-Ash engagement was so timed to set the context for her involvement in Samajwadi Party's campaign in the upcoming UP elections. Not withstanding Big B's vociferous endorsement of the 'spectacular' law and order situation in the state, after Nithari and the other scandals, only Ash will be able to deliver UP again for Mulayam and Amar.

THE PERFECT APPLE

I have always found the Sunday magazine of the Hindu to be a more interesting read than that of most other newspapers [e.g. TOI], who seem take their Sunday readers for a bunch of adolescent imbeciles. This Sunday was no exception.

In their trends section the Sunday Magazine carried a delightful report on the growing popularity of local farmers' markets in the UK as opposed to the conventional option of supermarkets. Supermarkets impose exacting cosmetic standards on farmers to ensure that the products look attractive on their shelves. So the apple has to be at least 65 mm in diameter, it should have the correct shape, the redness should not be either too much or too little, at least half of the surface area should be red, the amount of skin blemishes should not exceed 1 sq cm of the surface etc. To create this perfect synthetic apple, farmers use genetically modified breeds, apply excess chemical fertilizers + pesticides and abandon the cultivation of the varieties that do not meet supermarket specs.

Against this background in UK, the Hindu reports,

"farmers are fighting back. And, perhaps it is because of recent food scares and
worries about genetically modified food. Or a mounting concern for the
environment. Or, a more selfish quest for food that doesn't taste travel-weary.
But British consumers are now insisting on eating and buying local produce, as
they now want to know where, and how, their food originated. "

So growing number of consumers are sourcing their food not from supermarkets but directly from local farmers in the weekly farmers markets. The produce is fresh, more natural and the seller is ever eager to seek information on the specific needs of the buyer. The UK already has 225 such markets. The popularity seems even more in the US where such markets numbered more than 4,000 in 2006 with annual growth rate of about 20% in numbers. It is estimated that the average English lunch sourced from supermarket creates 37 kgs of greenhouse gases, due to transportation and storage, while the same lunch from the local markets products, creates only 38 gms of the same.

All this information may be trivial if you are familiar with weekly vegetable markets that are so common in rural districts or smaller towns of India. When I stayed in Bhubaneswar, our Sunday afternoon ritual was to walk to the Sunday haatho - the giant weekly farmers market in Patia chowk - to buy our stock of veggies and other consumables for the week. The freshness was not only there in the food we bought but also in the generous haggling with the sellers and the delight in finding some long forgotten vegetable your grandma last cooked when you were in class five.

And then the Big Bazaar opened the first so-called departmental store in Bhubaneswar and things changed forever. Sunday ritual remained the same, but the methods changed. So instead of walking to the haatho, people would drive 10 km each way to pick the cold storaged, plastic wrapped and price tagged jhingas and brinjals from the supermarket shelves, at a 20% permium, and cram them into their shopping carts.

All this makes me wonder while the whole world seems to be reversing gears and adapting trends that have been preserved in our country for thousands of years, why the hell are our politicians with their hoisted dhotis running helter-skelter behind the Ambanis and Mittals of the world, so that they might kindly condescend and set up the next supermarket chain in your home state? Just how many more years do we have to tolerate this suicidal bullshit in the name of our 'emerging economy' till some common sense descends on our policy makers??