(The terrible times)
I wonder sometimes if Netaji was the reason for the Indian government to discriminate against West Bengal ever since the country’s independence. True, Netaji fought with a promise to achieve independence by throwing the British colonial empire out with a military movement. The British perhaps knew that their time to vacate India, now with impoverished millions due to plunder and theft engineered over two centuries of British rule on a once prosperous country,
The British leaned on Gandhiji and his peaceful satyagraha, perhaps only to sideline Netaji, who went to the extent of joining hands with the then arch-enemies of the British, Hitler’s Germany and Japan. It scared the Indian Nation Congress, which has shunned Bengal ever since, discrediting its intellectuality, as the state stood to think differently and defiantly. Despite Bidhan Chandra Roy, the 1st CM of Bengal, being a member of the same party, the INC, he had to fight his way for every grain of rice, as Bengal was one of the most famine-affected states, inflicted by the wily British rulers, in which millions died and millions starved.
The state met with serious challenges during the seventies with the rise of the Naxalite movement, quelled with an iron hand by the government. Many youths fled Bengal, and so did the beginning of the flight of industries. The Left and allied parties, who ruled Bengal for nearly 4 decades, prioritised the farm sector and admitted millions of refugees from Bangladesh following the Indo-Pak war in 1971. The porous borders between West Bengal and Bangladesh saw a steady stream of infiltrators from the even poorer neighbour.
Appeasement and welfare governance firmly grew with small plots of farm land and inadequate income, resulting in protests at the drop of a hat. Big industrialists like Tata and Birla were easy names to whip up passion and further retain their stranglehold on power. The present CM assumed power with the same formula, inculcated in the minds of the people in the state: farm lands have been illegally acquired for the benefit of Tata Group to set up an automobile factory in Singur. The CM fasted for 26 days; Tata’s withdrew as Bengal jubilantly sank into another long decade of slumber with little or no investments, while most other states in India economically grew by leaps and bounds.
Tajpur sea port, in South Bengal, could have been another scope for the revival of the Bengal economy. The tender to develop the port was awarded to the newer industrial behemoth, Adani Group. It is a do-or-die situation for the state, as it kept a deathly silence even when every other opposition party was in high decibels, alleging a PM Modi-Adani nexus, soon after the Hindenburg reports were released. The quietness and non-opposition to Adani by the CM of Bengal have been undone by a party’s recalcitrant MP, Mahua Moitra, on the insistence of another business adversary to Adani.
The ethics committee is urging Mohua’s expulsion, and the CBI is currently investigating her. Though she is unlikely to be expelled, the fact that she will receive a strong reprimand from Parliament and her party chief is no secret. One more example of the undying spirit of an ever-protesting Bengal, for whatever, wherever, and whenever!
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide Voix
