N WORD IS BACK

by M Rama Rao, Dec 1-16, 2007

The N-word is back. As the temperature dropped to below seven degrees Celsius for the first time on the first Saturday of this December, the Marxist Ayatollah Prakash Karat was back at his past time. He issued a fresh N-ultimatum to the Manmohan Singh government - stop operationalisation of the Indo-US nuclear deal by this month-end or face mid-term elections.

The ultimatum came two days after the Indian team left for Vienna to resume the 'nuclear safe guards' talks with the global nuclear watch dog, IAEA. And he sported a smile as he delivered his punch line before an appreciative Delhi state Marxist audience at the impressive Constitution Club on the Rafi Marg. Karat also explained fellow comrades why he had allowed the team go. “Because of Gujarat elections”.

Said Karat, “We don’t want the BJP to win the polls. We have to defeat the Modi government. So we don’t want to disturb the situation now. The Congress may not be worried (over BJP factor) but we are”. In other words the rationale for the Marxist led Left life-line to UPA is clear: they don’t want the UPA coalition government to fall before the Gujarat elections lest the BJP benefited.

Perfectly justified political line. But the question that begs the answer is: Why did Karat babu deem it necessary to go to the town with his ‘BJP jeetega’ fears when the first round of polling was taking place in another four days, December 11 to be precise. Did he not factor in the possibility of BJP trying to derive some mileage from the fresh scorn heaped on the Congress?

The Marxist headquarters at the AK Gopalan Bhavan close to the heritage Gole Market building is unwilling to field these questions. The Congress friendly Sitaram Yechury offered his own spin on his General Secretary speak which in essence meant nothing but some word play. “The CPM agenda is not to destabilise the government but to stop the nuclear deal because it has increased India’s vulnerability to US pressures in various fields particularly independent foreign policy”, he said from Gujarat where he was campaigning, and yet left unanswered the all important question: What was the trigger that had almost activated the Karat bomb?

Well, the trigger was the developments in the red citadel Kolkata and its black spot, Nandigram. The Central Reserve Police Force too played no mean role.. After deployment, it demanded a clear mandate for action and clear delineation of areas for its charge. This was something unusual for a force known all over the county for their lathis. And then it unearthed graves.

On Dec 5, CRPF had found five graves from Bidyapith village in the CPM stronghold of Khejuri from where charred human bones and skulls were dug out the next day. The remains were sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory for examination. The CBI recovered more bones from another grave at Talpati canal at Bhangabera in Nandigram around the same time.

Another freshly dug grave was unearthed on Monday, December 10. It was at Parulbari village near Maheshpur and attracted police attention after the locals complained of a bad smell emanating from the place. Maheshpur was a strong hold of Bhumi Uchched Paratirodh Committee till very recently.

Superintendent of Police, Midnapore (East), Satyeswar Panda described the grave as freshly dug. His colleagues suspect that these bodies might be those of outsiders who had taken part in the ‘Nandigram battle’. The police discovered some flesh and long hair about 100 metres from the grave.

The new grave was found in an area owned by Amrita Das, a local. He cultivates paddy on his land but the place where the grave was discovered has not been cultivated for months. When police questioned him, Das gave conflicting statements on why he didn’t cultivate paddy in that portion of his land. Initially, he said that he was not in the village for the past few months and was unaware of the persons who had cultivated on his land.

When pressed further, he said that portion of the land was not good for cultivation of paddy so he used to ignore it, according to the officer investigating the case.

Just eight days prior to these ‘discoveries’, on Dec 2, Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi visited Nandigram belt. It was his first visit to the area which has been in the headlines after the industry friendly Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government selected Nandigram for a chemical hub in January 2007 and invited the wrath of the locals initially and of Marxist betenoire Mamata Bannerjee later on.

Gandhi has been unusually harsh in his critique of Buddhadeb and his tryst with farmers’ destiny. But the visit went off without any hitch. In fact, the governor took time off to play cricket with children at the grounds of Sitananda College. He wielded the willow and was bowled out in the very first ball. Gandhi, however, played on and faced a few more balls much to the delight of the children and the villagers who had gathered there.

In Lyuten’s Delhi around the same time, Mamata Bannerjee, the maverick Trinamul Congress chief, called on Sonia Gandhi and made out a case for a more pro-active Congress role on Nandigram and related issues. A couple of hours later, AICC announced that a fact finding team would be sent to Nandigram. And Congress men in Kolkata issued a statement demanding the scalp of chief minister. Did they do so with or without the cue? No one is ready to field the question, at least for the present.

Eom

BUDDHA SPEAK

You may not like him. But you cannot dislike him and his disarming smile in particular. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the West Bengal Chief Minister, is an unsual comrade and an equally unusual politician. There is a frankness in him that disarms you. Like when he said (Dec 4), ‘I should not have said it was tit-for tat, opposition was paid back in their own coin’. The reference was to the way the CPM cadres regained control over Nandigram by evicting the Mamata brigade.

In Delhi for a politburo meeting, Buddhadeb said, ‘I should not have said this because now I want peace, peace for all, peace for all sections’. ‘The situation’, he said, ‘is gradually normalising’ and added that the Nandigram episode was an ‘administrative’ failure.

Reaction was swift and sharp from his adversaries. Said Mamata Bannerjee: “Whenever he comes up with a sort of regret, the violence starts”.

West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WPCC) General Secretary Manas Bhuiyan said that "Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is in the habit of making regrets later for his comments. He had done it on several occasions in the past. He should quit after his admission that Nandigram was an administrative and political failure."

The RSP leaders said Nandigram fiasco was because of CPM's ‘unilateral decision to handle the situation there keeping the partners in the dark’..

Forward Bloc state Secretary Ashok Ghosh said: “What we have been saying, what the people and the intellectuals have been saying has been echoed now by the Chief Minister admitting that Nandigram was an administrative and political failure”.