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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Jangalmahal: Receding Prospects of Dialogue

Jangalmahal: Receding Prospects of Dialogue

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published Published on Nov 11, 2011   modified Modified on Nov 11, 2011

-Economic and Political Weekly

 

Mamata Banerjee concurs with P Chidambaram’s counterinsurgency strategy.

She revels in rhetoric – Mamata Banerjee’s word of honour was parivartan (change). A large section of the people of West Bengal desperately wanted change, so parivartan brought her to the helm at Writers’ Building, with its Corinthian facade carrying over from the heyday of the East India Company, now, of course, the office and secretariat of the chief minister of West Bengal. But what did parivartan mean for the people of Jangalmahal, the forested belt of Paschim Medinipur, Bankura and Purulia? The astute politician that she is (and no one can accuse her of being a non-performing asset), she had, prior to the state assembly elections, spelt this out quite accurately. No wonder the Trinamool Congress (TMC) performed beyond its dreams in Jangalmahal in the assembly elections in April-May this year. Mamata Banerjee and the TMC she heads, as part of parivartan, promised the withdrawal of the Joint Forces (JF) that for the adivasis has been an occupying force since mid-June 2009, the unconditional release of all political prisoners, especially the hundreds of their own men, women and children arrested and dumped into jail in the course of the JF operations, and a dialogue with the Maoists who are leading the resistance there.

As we said, she is not a non-performing asset. Every other day she is up to something, and the fourth estate, which usually sleeps late and gets up on the wrong side of the bed, late, is kept on its toes every morning, getting to know the chief minister’s route to Writers’ at the eleventh hour. So, with the usual spectacle, she has been disciplining the health service, but, predictably, has not bothered to even begin the process of reformulating public health policy to serve the needs of the majority who can ill afford what the mushrooming private sector has on offer. The Jangalmahal agenda ostensibly got off the ground very soon after she took office – she appointed a committee to review the cases of political prisoners and a team of interlocutors to get in touch with the Maoists on behalf of the government to facilitate a dialogue. Till date, not a single “Maoist” political prisoner has been released. Indeed, the hundreds of adivasis with false cases slapped on them are still languishing in jail. It goes to the credit of the first Left Front government that it did keep to its promise of an unconditional release of all political prisoners in West ­Bengal soon after it came to office in the aftermath of the ­Emergency in 1977.

Early last month, Akash, the secretary of the West Bengal State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), in a signed statement with two of the state government-appointed inter­locutors, offered a ceasefire for a month provided the West Bengal government directed the JF to cease operations during this period. Sure, this was a conditional ceasefire, but a positive step all the same, and it was now up to Mamata Banerjee to take the “peace” process forward. But, as minister of home affairs in the state cabinet, she did all she could to lay the blame for violation of the ceasefire on the Maoists. The home department continued to ban the holding of mass meetings by organisations the intelligence wing claimed were linked to the Maoists – even the Nari Ijjat Bachao Committee (Committee to Protect the Honour of Women) was not allowed to hold its meetings, while the Bhairav Bahini (translated as “terrible force”!), the newly formed vigilante wing of the TMC, was given a free rein. Just the day before the chief minister in a public meeting in Jhargram on 15 October castigated the Maoists, calling them “supari killers” (contractual killers) and “jangal mafia”, the JF, in a raid on the village of Sushnijubi in the Kakrajhor area of Belpahari block in Paschim Medinipur district, is reported to have raped a 28 year-old ­homemaker when men in khakicame searching for her husband with a warrant for his arrest. This crime created quite a furore because of what the victim did in its aftermath and the shameful behaviour of the district police thereafter, which deeply offended the dignity of the adivasi community. But the woman home minister had not a word to say about the incident even as she used the choicest invective to condemn the Maoists. Despite tall claims, what parivartan has the lady brought to Jangalmahal if her home department directs the police to arrest a doctor and his associate on 14 August when they were returning after having treated around 140 poor adivasis at a health camp at Patharchakri, charging the two medicos under Section 151 of the CrPC, which is meant to prevent the commission of cognisable offences?

If there is going to be some parivartan in Jangalmahal, it is the recruitment of some 10,000 special police havildars (constables), on the lines of what the Chhattisgarh government did, and this, after the Supreme Court declared such a practice unconstitutional. And, the other change is, of course, that the TMC’s own Bhairav Bahini was assisting the JF just like the CPI(M)’s Harmads acted as collaborators of that occupational force. The lady talks of development, but how many new ration shops (fair price shops under the public distribution system) has her administration opened in Jangalmahal in areas where they are desperately needed? Frankly, she, in league with Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh is following the counterinsurgency strategy of Union Minister for Home Affairs, P Chidambaram, which stipulates that the Maoists have to be “flushed out” before “development” can begin. In the interim, development = the construction of roads.


Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XLVI, No. 46, 12 November, 2011, http://beta.epw.in/newsItem/comment/190598/


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