What Damage Control?
After having received a lot of flak from all quarters, including its alliesand the Left-leaning ‘intellectuals’, the CPI(M) has gone into a damagecontrol mode, mainly by holding public meetings to explain the need forindustrialisation to the people. But, truth be told, the exercise is bound to bean eminently futile one. The reason being that our Marxists, especially CMBuddhadeb Bhattacharjee, have no genuine regrets for the mayhem at Nadigram andwon’t shed their arrogance or won’t approach the problem with an open mind.This became amply evident from recent statements made by top CPI(M) leaders.Earlier this week, Bhattacharjee told a gathering of student activists belongingto his party’s affiliates that he’s owning moral responsibility for themassacre. But his body language, the words he chose, the tone of his deliveryand his gestures showed he was far from being contrite. And then, he exposedhimself by castigating the people of Nandigram for continuing to wallow inignorance and not realizing that had they handed over their lands, their liveswould have changed dramatically for the better. Bhattacharjee mocked them andthundered that the chemical hub that was to have come up at Nandigram woulddefinitely be set up elsewhere. Bhattacharjee’s senior colleagues have alsobeen speaking in the same vein, mocking and insulting all those opposed to theCPI(M)’s arbitrariness. That is why the damage control launched by the partyis bound to fail.