Communists’ Land Plan Could Backfire in India

[BanglaBhoot]

NANDIGRAM, India — Promising land to the landless, the Communists won Abdul Bakir Shah’s heart decades ago. Under an ambitious land reform drive, Mr. Shah, a sharecropper all his life, got title to nearly one fertile acre. His village and others like it have voted Communist since, keeping the party in power for an uninterrupted 32 years here in West Bengal State.

But things went topsy-turvy two years ago. As Bengal belatedly joined India’s slow but inexorable march to capitalism, the Communist-run state government sought to scoop up this entire cluster of mud-and-thatch hamlets to make way for the construction of a multinational chemical industrial complex. The Communists, under whose leadership factory after factory had been shuttered across this state, said it was time to bring private industry and jobs back to Bengal.

“Reform or perish,” became their rallying cry.

That is when the Communists lost Mr. Shah’s trust.

“We don’t have any faith in them anymore,” he said.

Now, in the parliamentary elections under way, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) faces one of the toughest political fights of its long history. It is a party divided between the pull of industrial capitalism — not unlike in China — and its tradition of championing the rural poor. That struggle reflects much of the conflict that has bedeviled India in recent years, and bitter discord over land acquisition has broken out in many parts of the country.

How the Communists perform here in their stronghold of West Bengal will, to a large extent, determine how much influence they have over the next government of India, and by extension, over the nation’s economic and foreign policy.

Even though the Communists here are unabashedly capitalist, at the level of the central government they hew to more traditional ideology, blocking a slew of economic reforms and raising a ruckus over India’s deepening friendship with the United States.

In the past five years, controlling one in 10 seats in India’s 543-member Parliament, they have been particularly influential. This time, they may not be, having been made vulnerable by the turn away from their old core principles. The fight for the hearts of men like Mr. Shah is at the heart of their challenge.

“Our basic constituency is the rural poor,” insisted Mohammad Salim, a veteran member of Parliament in the party. “Their thought processes were hijacked by a powerful coterie, by big noise.”

Much of that “big noise” has come, on the one side, from the feisty political opposition leader, Mamata Banerjee, who has usurped the Communist Party rhetoric and cast herself as the savior of the rural poor.

On the other side, Maoist guerrillas have begun gaining ground, particularly among indigenous people in remote, destitute corners of the state. The other day, wielding bows and arrows, hundreds of them blocked traffic in the center of the state capital, Calcutta.

As Bengal’s voters went to the polls on Thursday, suspected Maoists planted bombs, ambushed a car, killing three election workers and imposed a fairly successful boycott call in pockets of the state.

Acquiring the land of folks who know no other life is difficult any way. But here in Bengal, the fury is even greater than elsewhere. The land is fertile and exceptionally crowded — with an average of 904 people in each square kilometer — and, as Mr. Salim acknowledged, all the more coveted by those who were landless for so long.

Ms. Banerjee has seized on that anxiety, and has succeeded in blocking several industrial projects that the Communists sought.

A factory to build the world’s cheapest car, the Tata Nano, was forced to move out of the state. Plans for a nuclear power plant have been scrapped. The same has happened to the would-be chemical plant, which the state proposed relocating near the Sunderbans delta; that, too, has faced protests. A steel plant farther east is a target of Maoist attacks.

Ms. Banerjee, for her part, once aligned with the rightist Bharatiya Janata Party, has turned herself into a friend of the have-nots. “You used to say, ‘Long live Karl Marx,’ ” she said of the Communists while on the campaign stump the other day. “Now you say, ‘Long live Tata, Karl Marx, you go.’ ”

She promises reopening factories shuttered under the Communists. She pledges more money for those who lose land. She accuses the Communists of intimidating voters. Ms. Banerjee is often seen on television scuffling with the police at street protests.

“Today they will take your vote, tomorrow they will take your land, the third day they will ask for your daughter, your son,” she warned darkly. “This fight is for your survival.”

Her critics call her an opportunist. A Communist Party campaign billboard, in the center of Calcutta, shows a young man with a briefcase and his head hung low, and a slogan that blames Ms. Banerjee for driving jobs out of the state.

Another, a cartoon, shows a portly Ms. Banerjee, holding a begging bowl and placards that read: “No Industry,” “No Progress,” “No Roads.”

Each party accuses the other’s cadres of murder and mayhem. Their campaign posters contain graphic images of maimed, charred bodies.

Part of the problem is that Bengal, after more than 30 years of leftist leadership, remains among the country’s most destitute and dysfunctional states. It has one of the highest school drop-out rates. Nearly half the poor do not have access to public food subsidies, as they are supposed to. Land reform slowed to a crawl in the last decade.

In Nandigram, discontent had piled up against the government. It exploded over its bid for the land. In the spring of 2007, at the height of the troubles, at least 14 people died in clashes between Communist Party supporters and opponents.

A year later, Ms. Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress Party swept the local village council elections for the first time in more than three decades. So tense does it remain that in one hamlet, a conversation with visiting journalists nearly brought supporters of the two rival parties to blows.

The people of Mr. Shah’s hamlet were all once Communists. Now, the few Communist holdouts cluster together on one side of the main road. They say they are forbidden from the tea shop on the main road. They are afraid to vote. They seethe at Ms. Banerjee for having driven a potential factory from their area.

“She just wants the poor to stay poor,” said Zahidul Mullick, who guessed his age to be around 18. He said he dropped out of school after the fifth grade and worked as a tailor, as most of the men in the hamlet do.

“Look, we are not educated,” said Halima Begum, 22, balancing a baby on her hips. “We couldn’t work in the factory. But we could clean the houses of the people who come to work there.”

Across the street, Mr. Shah said he was immediately suspicious of the proposed chemical complex. He was terrified of being displaced. For the first time in more than 30 years, he and his neighbors turned against the Communists.

“They thought the party was so strong we would do whatever they say,” said one of his neighbors, Atibul Shah, 22.

His family, he said, had voted Communist for three generations. This time, he had ridden the train for two days from Mumbai, where he works in a garment factory, for the chance to vote the Communists out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/world/asia/03communists.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=print

 

[Jako]

The disputed land deals in nandigram or an even famous singur were the best offered to the farmers.......if you have a closer look,you can see that most of singur accepted the deal gladly with pleasure,some wanted more money,but wanted the tata factory to happen atlast.......but the birodhi netri mamata bannerjee brainwashed them,and conspired with those minority opposers against the ruling govt......the land in singur was not fertile,and with cement and sand on them they became even more unfertile,no agriculture is possible there now.....with tatas gone ,what did wb gain? nothing... The communist govt's dream of seeing a better singur,with laned highways and huge part buisness surrounding the tata plan was shattered.......as for nandigram,i too had some confusions,but those were cleared after one of his recent interviews in the news channel-24 ghanta.........you can have a clear thought of mamata under the present developments,we have a island with no inhabitants,which we found as a alternative to nandigram,but guess what, mamata still opposed with some laughable reasons.......with mamata there improvement in bengal will be zero...thnx

 

[sob]

IMO the problem could have been easily solved had the TATAs acquired the land directly at the prevailing market rates rather than let the Govt. buy it at ridiculously low rates based on an archaic old law.

Also sending in the Communist goons to force the farmers was a major blunder. Mamta has done no service to Bengal with her stance but the communists with their inept handling of the issue have completely screwed the local people.

 

[toxic_pus]

IMO the problem could have been easily solved had the TATAs acquired the land directly at the prevailing market rates rather than let the Govt. buy it at ridiculously low rates based on an archaic old law.

Also sending in the Communist goons to force the farmers was a major blunder. Mamta has done no service to Bengal with her stance but the communists with their inept handling of the issue have completely screwed the local people.

Bingo. Spot on.

The communists are supposed to be the left and the TMC is supposed to be the right. The reverse happened here.

Left turned right, and Right turned left. The poor farmers were caught in between.

 

[toxic_pus]

Nandigram and Shingur were bound to happen. There are many reasons for that. It is not possible to squeeze all the reasons with every detail, in a forum post. Some reasons were as follows.

1. The staple diet that most of the bengalies grew up on is SOCIALISM. Money is bad, profit is bad, businessman is bad, capital investment is bad. So many bads defined our economy, thanks to our communist friends. Initially Mr Ahok Mitra would draw budgets where unplanned expenditure would far exceed planned expenditure. Then Dr Ashim Dasgupta started selling his zero-deficit "alternative budget", which apparently allocated more funds for rural development. (Census of 1991 and 2001 give a horrible picture of rural Bengal). These people concentrated more on agriculture, while industrial base dwindled, partly because of apathy of GoI, but largely due to our own militant trade unionism. For some reason, they believed that good old 17th century agriculture would result in second bengal renaissance. Thus, instead of decreasing reliance on agriculture, it actually increased it.

2. Immediately after the communists came to power they organised a hotch potch of a land reform. They consolidated their hold, riding on the war cry of "Jomi tar, langol jar" (Land belongs to him, who owns the plough). What it did was, it created land hunger among the populace (incidentally communism is just the opposite of the brand of land reform started by our communists). This also resulted in splitting land into tiny pieces, which ran counter to the modern concept of large scale farming (economies to scale etc.). Additionally it increased claimants. (For example, if a land, say, of size 10 acre had 1 or 2 owners, now the same piece of land has more than 10 owners.) This increased number of claimants, was a typical problem faced at Singur. While in Nandigram, the root of the problem was land hunger.

3. Mr Budhadeb Bhattacharya, it seemed, was in a hurry. He needed everything now. He forgot, that he was actually walking a line that was just opposite of what they have preached for a good 30 years. That, it not only needed to take the whole thing slow, but needed a complete change in the psyche. He blundered at Singur, by hurrying through the deal, without letting the locals have their say. At Nandigram, he blundered by sending trigger happy cops.

4. 30 yrs of uninterrupted rule, together with virtual white wash of the opposition also made the communist government, complacent. Time and again, I heard them say, "oder bojhatey hobe", (We have to make them{the people who are protesting} understand) as if they have themselves nothing left to understand. People like Binoy Krishno Kongar, Laxman Seth, would stoop to the level of illiterates just to abuse the opposition and their potential voters.

5. To this add, idiotic opposition of Ms Mamta Bannerjee. She is fickle minded, doesn't understand politics, doesn't have a clear vision, nothing at all. Her political career is solely based on anti-CPI(M) and doesn't have her own concrete idea of how to run a state, or what alternative policies should be adequate to counter the current policies. She saw an opportunity at Nandigram and Shingur and grabbed it with both hands. (Incidentally, at one point of time the communists also conducted their affairs solely on the basis of anit-centre rhetorics. They do it even now, albeit in a much lower tone than before.) She thought that if the communists are given the opportunity to industrialize, the whole edifice of her politics will be shattered like glass. There was already a growing resentment among the ones who felt betrayed by the policies of the current govt. All she had to do was just lean on them and put her political weight behind them. And voila. She got a perfect anti-CPI(M) movement that she had always dreamt of.

Wrong, self-destructive policies of the left govt., with an equally moronic opposition of Ms Bannerjee, were responsible for the flight of TATAs

 

[Nemesis]

The problem with Nandigram and Singur was that the West Bengal government forcibly bought the land from the farmers to create their SEZ, which obviously lead to protest. I don't deny that their were farmers who were willing to sell their land, but a significant portion were against it.

They was a lot of hullabaloo in Delhi that these farmers who are protesting are "against Industry." "Against Development" , etc. But the truth is, if they don't want to sell their land, who is the government to force them to?

Instead of Nandigram, let's say a similar thing happened in Delhi or Mumbai, you've lived in your own house for years and suddenly, people come up to you and say, you need to sell your land to us to make way for a highway, or a whatever, would we stand for it? No, we would take them to court. And what happened when the farmers protested? They were killed in police firing. I completely lost faith in all Communist parties after this.

And people wonder why Naxals have such a strong influence, it's because of BS like this.

 

[Jako]

Actually about 80-85 percent of the farmers agreed to sell their lands,the remainings were brainwashed by mamata in singur......the land in singur was not fertile........furthur with the tatas coming a lot of development in the infrastructure of singur was seen,but alas all are gone now........saw a documentory on post-tata singur a few days ago......it was heart touching,how the people were upset about their future,they said how they planned of a better life with the tata and other investments....this were the same people who supported mamata before,it was quite amazing how they changed sides,and understood whats good for them.......mamata is nowhere to be seen in singur now,but the govt is going heaven and hell,to find a good investor for singur....a chinese company has already showed interest........bengal was,is and remain a communist state......thats a guarantee......thnx

 

[Nemesis]

What do you mean they were brainwashed by mamata??, you're making this assertion based on what? If a farmer refuses to sell his land, he becomes brainwashed by Mamata bannerjee? Are you aware that protest against SEZ has been going on in other parts of India as well? Are they all brainwashed by "Naxals" "Oppositions" etc?

Some farmers don't want to sell their land because that is all they have. Completely understandable. Why should they be forced to sell their land for the benefit of people living in the cities? We should be better served by focusing on Agriculture instead of insipid Montek Singh Alluwhalia inspired projects like SEZs which only serve to increase the gap between the rich and poor.

bengal was,is and remain a communist state.

Probably. Although all the people living in Kolkatta would won't against the CPI - as they always have. At least that's what my bong relatives in Cal keep telling me.