WEST BENGAL CITU Calls for Vigorous Struggle

HOWRAH: 12^th November, 2012- THE 10th state conference of CITU West Bengal committee has vowed to launch a vigorous struggle to defend the rights of the workers in the state. A programme to mobilise wider sections of workers in defense of the gains that are being attacked now in the state has been formulated from the conference.

The state conference was held at Comrade Jyoti Basu Nagar (Howrah) and Comrade M K Pandhe Manch (Sarat Sadan) during November 8 - 11, 2012.  The conference was  inaugurated by A K Padmanabhan, president of CITU, after hoisting the Red flag and offering floral tributes to the martyrs. 

In his inaugural speech, Padmanabhan said the CITU would, jointly with other trade unions, resist the onslaught on the people launched by the UPA-II government in the name of economic reforms. Referring to the severe attacks against the workers in West Bengal in the changed political situation, the CITU leader expressed confidence that the workers of West Bengal will play their historical role in the present situation like in the earlier days. 

Padmanabhan said the Indian economic policy regime has undergone a right wing shift since the introduction of neo-liberal economic policies. The union government is acting under the dictates of the Word Bank and the chambers of commerce in order to make the labour laws of the country flexible. He warned that the trade unions would strongly resist such an attempt. Already the multinational companies are not implementing the existing labour laws. They are brazenly restricting the workers from participating in the trade unions. Even the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the people are being undermined by the big corporate and MNCs. The union government is a mere spectator to these violations. In such a scenario if the labour laws are further diluted, the workers will be subject to maximum exploitation.

Padmanabhan emphasised the necessity of protection of the trade union rights along with ensuring of the social security, control of price hike and universal public distribution system. He said that CITU has always been in favour of the united workers movement from its class outlook. After travelling a long path, all the central trade unions have called for a 48-hour countrywide general strike on the 20th and 21st February 2013. This has happened for the first time in the history of independent India. The trade unions will launch a vigorous campaign to make the general strike successful and informed that a march to parliament will be held on 20th December to highlight the demands of the working class.

Kali Ghosh, secretary of CITU West Bengal state committee placed the report in the conference. While placing the report he said that the workers movement of the state is facing various attacks during the tenure of the Trinamool Congress government. He said the situation is so bad that the chief minister refused to meet their delegation that sought to submit a memorandum about the growing attacks on trade unions in West Bengal.

Tapan Sen, general secretary of CITU, in his speech exposed the anti-people nature of the neo-liberal policies being implemented by the union government and emphasised the need for a united struggle against these policies.

In the context of growing number of unorganised sector workers and contractual workers, the 10th state conference emphasised on their problems and issues in detail and outlined the path of future programmes. Special discussions were held on these two aspects.

The delegates in the conference discussed the issue of the contractual labour in detail, especially the growing attack on the labour laws of the country in the name of labour market flexibility. How the neo liberal globalisation policies are impacting the working class people of West Bengal was also discussed in particular. The organisation has decided to observe 12th December 2012 as the demand day for the contractual workers. The workers shall unitedly hold their protest in front of the offices of the department of labour in all the districts. The delegates also pointed out the lethargy of the state government in implementing the social security and welfare programmes initiated by the earlier Left Front government. The delegates exchanged their experiences of the struggle against the terror attacks against the trade union movement by the Trinamool backed hooligans. The delegates expressed confidence of taking on this challenge in the wake of the historic success in the state of the 28th February all India general strike called by the central trade unions. The delegates underlined the importance of consolidating various streams of worker movements in order to achieve the political goals.

The 10th state conference elected the new CITU West Bengal state committee. Shaymal Chakraborty has been re-elected as the president and Dipak Dasgupta has been elected as the secretary.

MASSIVE RALLY

On the concluding day of the conference, on 11th November, the  rally was held at Dumurjala in Howrah. The rally turned out to be a mammoth one. Addressing the rally, former West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said a desperate situation is prevailing in the state in which farmers are unable to sell produce and industrialists are shying away from investing in the state. “The government failed to attract a single fresh investment. IT majors Wipro and Infosys, who came here during the Left rule, are now thinking of leaving the state,” said Bhattacharjee.

Slamming the government for taking the state towards an industrial disaster in absence of a clear policy, Bhattacharjee referred to how Singur has now become a desert. “Had the car manufacturing factory come up there, about 5000 to 6000 people would have got jobs. Hooghly’s profile would have been different by now, if our plan to bring industry to Singur was not thwarted. At Haldia, one cargo-handling agency was driven out to give way to a company run by a Trinamool Congress MP. This state is gradually moving towards industrial doomsday.”

Bhattacharjee said that the transport workers and the whole transport sector of the state are in a deplorable condition. Most private transport vehicles are lying idle as the agencies are becoming incapable of managing the cost of the business. Transport workers are not getting salaries, pensions, and are compelled to resort to suicides. This is the crude reality of the state where the salaries of ministers in the TMC-led government had gone up from Rs 7000 during the Left Front rule to Rs 27,000 now. And the government is acting as a sleeping beauty, he criticised.

Bhattacharjee also highlighted the farmers’ misery saying they are finding it difficult to sell their crop as the “price they are getting is uneconomical”. Explaining the current labour scenario of the country. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee sharply criticised the Manmohan Singh government for incessantly taking anti-people decisions that have severely affected the working population of the country.

Haldia: From Industry to Horror

KOLKATA, 4^th November: HALDIA, which had become one of the leading industrial locations in West Bengal, has come under serious distress in the last few months. The hoodlumraj of Trinamool Congress along with complete callousness of the state government have resulted in closure of industries and loss of hundreds of jobs.

The incident at Haldia port, over operations of ABG Haldia Bulk Terminals (HBT) exposed this ugly situation. ABG, a cargo handling concern, was facing troubles and resistance from TMC-led groups for quite some time now. The principal reason behind the untoward incidents was business rivalry. Another concern, owned by the family of a TMC Rajya Sabha member, dominated for years in the same business. It is alleged that the TMC leaders in Haldia dock created trouble at their behest. ABG also moved Kolkata High Court which directed the police to give adequate security to ABG staff so that they could work in two berths of the dock. However, TMC hoodlums, mostly brought from outside, threatened the workers, camped near the dock and resisted any activity in those berths. This was being projected as workers resentment, as ABG sacked 250 casual workers recently. While CITU demanded reinstatement of the sacked staff, TMC moved to stop work in those berths. Though officially, the state government has declared everything as normal in Haldia. Ships were docked for days and many left for other ports threatening the utility of Haldia port.

The entire episode took a shivering turn when a group of armed anti-socials raided the residences of senior officers of ABG at dead of night, abducted them along with wife and child of one, and forced them to leave Haldia.   According to an HBT statement, three officials  Manpreet Jolly, Jagadish Behara and Bushan Patil, including his wife and 1-year-old daughter  were abducted by about 50 unidentified persons. The company said they were released later after being threatened at gun point that they should not set foot again in Haldia.

While the criminals were trying to enter into their apartments, HBTs managers made many calls to the police begging for protection. The required help never came even after two hours. An FIR has been filed on the incident, said CEO of HBT. The company said that if the law and order situation deteriorates, the company will also be forced to pull out of Haldia.

Dubbing the whole issue as "hooliganism", leader of the opposition Surya Kanta Mishra said: "If such things continue, no industry will stay in Bengal. Haldia Port was developed brick by brick during the Left Front's rule. But now the anarchy by Trinamool leaders is impacting its operation and the state's economy as well." Mishra demanded a full fledged inquiry about the secret understanding between the concern owned by TMC  Rajya Sabha member and administration. He alleged that TMC was playing a dirty political game to chase away rivals to help the said concern.

Meanwhile, in Haldia many other industrial units are facing problem of extortion. TMC leaders are forcing them to sack existing staffs and replace them with lists supplied by them. A fear psychosis has gripped Haldia and nearly 100 high ranking officials of various concerns have left their jobs. Thousands of workers are facing acute problem as their jobs are threatened, many left for other cities in search of job.

A vigorous industrial hub is gradually turning into a horror zone.

People’s Democracy, 4^th November, 2012 

West Bengal on dangerous slide

By Nilotpal Basu

Agency: DNA | Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The sigh of relief on the Raisina Hills must have been loud enough. In Jangipur by-election, the President’s son and Congress nominee won the contest by the proverbial ‘whisker’. And, to the great relief of his more illustrious father and his well-wishers, he scraped through.

At least he did not have to bite the dust like the other son – of chief minister of Uttarakhand — who got the drubbing in Tehri. Abhijit – the President’s son – made it. In fact, these by-election results have been a clear pointer to the public mood on ground zero. That the spate of reforms and the endless revelation of corruption and scams engineered at the highest echelons of the ruling establishment continue to influence public perception was underlined in these results. Despite the bravado of the mandarins of neo-liberalism, the reforms, far from refurbishing the image of the government, have actually accentuated its further alienation from the people.

So, though Abhijit survived, the impressive lead of 1,28,000 votes his father had clocked tumbled to just 2,500; and this despite the Trinamool Congress and its supremo Mamata Banerjee’s public support for his candidature.

That the electoral commitments made by these two parties to the Bengal electorate in the 2009 and 2011 elections have gone awry is patently clear. The Trinamool disowns the government in Delhi; and the Congress reciprocates in Kolkata with the choicest invectives. And, obviously, the fundamental promise of their joint electoral campaign of paribartan has flopped. It is through these allegations and counter allegations that the electorate’s adverse experience about them gets reinforced.

But this is not merely about Jangipur people’s disenchantment with these parties in alliance. It is not also about performance of the Left, which all but wrested the seat and managed to retain its votes in trying circumstances. The CPI (M) candidate established lead in four of the seven assembly segments that constitute the Jangipur Lok Sabha seat as against only one in the assembly elections. But, let that pass.

Perhaps, the most significant feature of this by-election was the advance the communal forces registered. The BJP’s vote share went up to 10 per cent from a meagre two per cent. Between them, two Islamist parties — the SDPI, part of the Kerala-based Popular Front, and the Jamaat-e-Islami sponsored Welfare Party of India — got almost eight per cent votes. Such level of support for communally-oriented political outfits is definitely a new development in West Bengal. Obviously, it is fraught with major adverse ramifications in a border state which is intensely diverse and has 27 per cent Muslim population.

But frankly speaking, this was waiting to happen. Since the inception of the Mamata Banerjee-led government in the state, a major damage has been done by overt religious appeals to the minorities for electoral support. West Bengal has been a state, perhaps unique, in staying clear from the dangerous concoction of religion and politics. Therefore, election results during the last six decades have underlined gradual decline of communal forces in the state’s politics. It will be pertinent to mention that a prominent member of the Nehru government – Shyama Prasad Mukherjee — resigned and formed the Hindu Mahasabha nursing the fond hope that it would advance in the state which suffered the trauma of Partition. But Mukherjee failed abysmally. And subsequently, with the growth of the Left in the state, the tradition of harmony got consolidated. When the country was burning in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination or demolition of the Babri Masjid, the state remained an oasis of peace and amity.

But today, that legacy appears to be in jeopardy. The crude religious appeal that the chief minister makes to the minorities by putting on hijab while addressing her audience in Muslim neighbourhoods or frequently using phrases like Khuda Hafiz or Salam Aleqqum; and linking all activities of her party with one or the other religious practice of Muslims is an ominous development. Even the withdrawal of the Trinamool support from the UPA government was linked to Jumma Namaz. The controversial decision to give governmental grant to imams of local mosques is not only being challenged in the courts but by sections of the Islamic scholarship.

But more than that, this is courting the BJP to exploit these overtures. West Bengal, a border state with significant minority population, has always interested the Saffron brigade; but thanks to the consistent secular practice by all other political parties in the state, their efforts tanked.

But now that is threatened. The additional problem is the developments in West Asia which disturbs Muslims across the world with a sense of frustration, insecurity and revulsion. The community has extremely legitimate concerns – more socio-economic and related to human rights and social justice than religious. Unless this cesspool of sentiments is channellised by secular democratic forces, they will become cannon fodder to sectarian Islamist forces; even more so, in the face of aggressive assertion by the Hindutva forces.

Jangipur brings home this danger with all its grotesque ramifications. One hopes that this will drive sense in the TMC and its supremo. Let us hope that at least Jangipur teaches her to mend her bizarre and deeply divisive political pursuit.

The writer is a member of the central committee, CPI(M)

Jangipur Bye-Election:: 18 Booths that Changed the Result!

ONLY 18 polling booths saved Congress candidate Abhijit Mukherjee to scrape through with a wafer-thin margin in Jangipur Lok Sabha bye-election in West Bengal. And, the results in these booths showed a unique feature, defying all logic and in total discrepancy with the overall pattern.

In Jangipur, Congress candidate defeated CPI(M) candidate Muzaffar Hossain by a margin of only 2536 votes. Congress candidate got 3,32,999 votes while CPI(M) candidate got 3,30,383 votes. The seat fell vacant after Pranab Mukherjee was elected President of India. In 2009, the senior Congress leader had won the seat with a margin of nearly 1,30,000 votes. The vote share of Congress came down from 54 per cent in 2009 to 39.01 per cent in 2012, a drop of nearly 15 per cent. CPI(M)’s vote share in this year’s election was 38.71 per cent. In other words, the President’s son Abhijit Mukherjee won the seat by a margin of only 0.30 per cent votes.

Another notable feature of the election was that BJP got more than 85,000 votes while two other parties, SDPI (24,691) and WPI (41,620) polled considerable votes. Though the elections took place after Trinamool Congress split from UPA at the centre and after Congress walked out of the state cabinet, the TMC decided not to contest. The formal explanation was ‘courtesy’ shown by Mamata Banerjee to Pranab Mukherjee. In the absence of TMC, the extraordinary rise of votes for BJP and other two political formations has attracted some attention in political quarters.

CPI(M) has taken a lead in four assembly constituencies while Congress in three. In 2011, Left Front won only one out of these seven assembly segments. 

All trends, however, took a U-turn in 18 polling booths in the two village panchayats of Giria Sekendra area under Raghunathganj assembly segments. This area has witnessed severe terror for last few months and most of CPI(M) activists had to flee. Left Front candidate could not enter this area during the campaign. In these booths, CPI(M) agents were not allowed to be present. Congress hoodlums captured the booths and freely voted for hours. The villagers were forced to remain outside the booths. The booth capturing was even recorded in TV footage.  Despite repeated requests, police came and stayed just for few minutes. It did not intervene effectively. The CPI(M) candidate had alerted the Election Commission much before about the possibility of booth capturing. But the state election office failed to ensure free and fair voting in these disturbed areas. The result showed that in these booths Congress candidate ‘polled’ 600 to 700 votes while CPI(M) got just 6 to 20 votes. In one such booth (in Patlatola Primary School, Booth no: 23) Congress candidate has got 679 votes out of total 685, while CPI(M) candidate has not got any vote at all. The dreaded criminals from Jharkhand were brought to terrorise the entire area. Congress candidate took a lead of more than 7000 votes from these 18 booths and thus saved the ‘prestige’ of himself and his father on whose name he fought the elections.

CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat termed the result of Jangipur as ‘technical victory’ of Congress. Biman Basu, Left Front chairman pointed towards drastic reduction of votes of Congress. It was because of the anti-people policies of the centre and non implementation of promises, he asserted. CPI(M) Murshidabad district secretary Mriganka Bhattacharya rightly concluded that although the result was formally clinched in favour of Congress through manipulations and terror in the 18 booths, they were morally defeated.

Voting Pattern in 18 Booths

Booth No.	Name of the booth	Polled vote	Abhijit Mukherjee	Muzaffar Hossain	Sudhangsu Biswas
17	Labanchoya Primary Schl. (Room-1)	346	316	11	14
18	Chandpur Primary Schl. (Room-1)	591	536	10	2
19	Labanchoya Co-operative Society	350	268	46	12
20	Momintola Primary Schl.	626	586	16	5
21	Momintola Madrasha	526	481	17	1
22	Sonarpara Primary Schl.	675	606	31	4
23	Patlatola Primary Schl.	685	679	0	0
24	Bhairabtola Primary Schl.	514	216	75	177
25	Bhairabtola Health centre	479	426	27	0
26	Bhairabtola paschim Primary Schl.	521	398	72	0
27	Lalkhandiyar R C H Bhaban	512	489	15	4
28	Sekendra G P Bhaban (Room-1)	614	533	49	6
33	Giriya Kishmat Primary Schl. (Room-1)	502	435	43	1
33A	Giriya Kishmat Primary Schl. (Room-2)	354	294	94	0
36	Imamnagar Primary School (Room-1)	296	207	65	4
36A	Imamnagar Primary School (Room-2)	538	459	70	1
37	Khejutola Primary School	495	429	35	2
40	Rameswarpur Primary School	628	462	112	8
	Total	9252	7820	788	241