Nothing’s Right for Left

Satya Sivaraman Nandigram, West Bengal

The deep trenches that once blocked state officials and police from entering the area are now filled up. The paramilitary forces that kept warring ruling party and opposition activists apart are gone. Public transport plies again on newly repaired roads, as the local panchayats implement employment-generation schemes with vigour. Both farmers and agricultural workers are back in their fields and the markets bustle, stocked with fresh fish and vegetables.

Two years after the West Bengal police carried out a 'massacre' against peasants resisting government takeover of their land for an industrial project and many months of turmoil later, the historic battleground of Nandigram appears to be normal again. Or, at least, it seems to the casual eye as one drives through the villages and hamlets dotting this fertile delta land, tucked in between the Hooghly and Haldi rivers that meet the Bay of Bengal, a few kilometres away.

Like elsewhere in this state though, over three decades of uninterrupted 'party-police' rule of the CPM-dominated Left Front (LF) regime has ensured nothing, or so it seems on the surface. As another round of elections approach, this time for the Lok Sabha, tensions are rising and there is violence on a daily basis in these parts after a lull of several months. "We still cannot sleep at night for fear of being attacked," says Nishikanta Mondal, president of the Sonachura panchayat, that had borne the brunt of violence unleashed by the government and CPM machineries against villagers resisting the project. Every night, he complains, there is gunfire and bombs thrown by the CPM goons holed up in the neighbouring bastion at Khejuri across the Talpati canal.

Nishi Babu, as he is popularly known, used to be a longtime CPM activist in the area before quitting in the 1990s after he was upset over corruption within the party. When the anti-land acquisition movement started in 2007, he became a natural leader and soon found himself hunted down by both the police and the CPM musclemen forcing him to turn to the opposition Trinamool Congress (TMC) for support and protection.

This is a typical story in this area. This used to be a strong red bastion in Bengal for decades, but has now been swept into the gleeful, waiting arms of the TMC. In elections to the three-tier panchayat system in May last year, the TMC - which had backed and partly led the peasant agitation against the Indonesian chemical hub along with other resistance groups - routed the CPM in not just Nandigram, but the entire East Midnapur district picking up 32 out of 53 panchayat seats. It also got control over the zilla parishad in the district for the first time ever.

Later during the year, the Nandigram assembly constituency was won by the TMC in by-elections called due to the resignation of the sitting CPI MLA caught in a bribery scandal. The TMC candidate, Firoza Bibi, who lost her son in police firing the previous year, defeated the LF-backed CPI nominee Paramananda Bharati by 39,551 votes in a multi-cornered contest.

Little wonder then, as TMC supremo, Mamata Banerjee, kicked off her campaign for the Lok Sabha elections on March 14, she chose to start from Nandigram. Addressing a large gathering at the place where 14 villagers were killed in firing by the police and CPM cadre the same day in 2007, Mamata made it clear that the struggle would be central to her party's campaign. "It is Nandigram that has opened the door for change in West Bengal and it shall continue to do so," she said, promising to carry the 'holy earth' of Nandigram in an urn, throughout Bengal.