Fickle Sickle

The next day angry villagers, thinking a meeting of the CPI(M)-controlled Garchakraberia panchayat going on at that time was discussing the strategy to acquire land, marched to the panchayat office. The panchayat members, instead of pacifying the mob, called the police who lathicharged the villagers.

The mob retaliated by hitting back and torching two police vehicles and ransacking the panchayat office. Over the next six days, hundreds of CPI(M) supporters and activists were driven out of their homes, two of them killed after their houses were torched and two party offices set on fire by angry locals. The CPI(M) retaliated by launching an attack on the villagers last weekend, killing three of them. As this issue hit the headlines, HDA's Seth denied on January 7 the Opposition charge that any notice had been sent for the acquisition of the land. His lie was caught out when copies of the letter he had signed and sent to the BDO appeared in the media.

Finally, it took an admission of guilt by an embarrassed Buddhadeb Bhattacharya on January 9 to calm tempers. The letter sent by HDA would be "torn to pieces," he said. "Issuing this letter was a blunder. I've asked the district administration to keep quiet for sometime," he said, adding, "no land would be acquired until all details had been worked out and everyone, including the land losers, is taken into confidence."

Buddhadeb also said that a mass awareness campaign on the benefits from SEZs and industrialisation would be launched. But he has been saying this for quite some time now with no campaign in sight. The reason: his party cadres really don't, or can't, fathom how they can convince small and marginalfarmers-- the backbone of the party's support base-- to give up their land.

They also don't know how to defend their senior leaders' dalliance with "class enemies". More so since the CPI(M)'s own allies aren't with the party on this. With the cadres falling into sullen silence and the land acquisition issue serving to unite diverse opposition forces, the CPI(M) leadership will have a tough task traversing down the road to industrialisation in Bengal.

The acid test will lie in its ability to convince the landowners at Nandigram to give up their land voluntarily. But the CPI(M)'s past record does not inspire very much hope for Buddhadeb passing this test. Essentially because the party has never believed in dialogue, relying instead on force and show of strength. Many in the Left feel that to survive, and to get the process of industrialisation that's so vital for Bengal's future back on track, the CPI(M) has to become transparent and practice some of the edicts it has been preaching for so long about people-friendly industrialisation.