January 16-31, 2007

In the early hours of the morning of 7 January, a brutal attack was launched on villagers of Nandigram in East Midnapore district of West Bengal who were waging struggle to prevent forcible acquisition of their lands for an SEZ. This SEZ was sanctioned by the Left Front Government of West Bengal for the Salim Group of Indonesia. At least 6 villagers, including a 14 year old boy, were killed in the firing and more than a score sustained grievous injuries.

The villagers were patrolling their area to prevent the authorities from entering and forcibly carrying out the land acquisition. An earlier rally taken out by local residents to protest the land acquisition on January 3rd had also met with fierce repression by the police. Many people were seriously injured. Agitated villagers then gave back tit for tat and also set up blockades. After that, cadres of the ruling CPM had swung into action and organised a number of armed camps to gherao and intimidate the villagers. The leader of CPM’s peasant organisation had even brazenly declared: “If necessary then we’ll surround the four gram panchayats from all sides and make life hell for them. Then they will understand the fun.” The villagers claimed that it was these elements that attacked them on the night of 6-7 January with the full connivance of the police.

This is yet another example of attempts by the authorities across the country to crush the resistance of peasants and other people to the acquisition of their lands against their will to set up SEZs in the interests of big Indian and foreign capitalists. This is the second such instance in West Bengal. Where land acquisition for SEZs goes on elsewhere, the CPM vociferously opposes it. But when it comes to the state where they are in power, they resort, without any shame, to the same excuses as other ruling parties, such as that it is good for “development”, and that the process of land acquisition is “fair” and only a handful of politically motivated “trouble makers” are creating the problem.

The real issue is: what kind of a Marxist party can go out of its way to carry out land acquisition for big capitalists, and then unleash violence against villagers who do not want to give up their land? Even the Union Minister of State for Commerce agreed that the government in West Bengal was not obliged to involve itself in land acquisition. On its part, the government is claiming that it is doing so to ensure better compensation for the peasants!

Not only is the West Bengal government desperately eager to invite big capital to set up their empires in their state at the expense of the farm and homestead lands of villagers, but it is ready to use ruthless violence and terror to put down any opposition. From its narrow, self-serving perspective, the villagers are not working people, people with rights who do not want to give up their land, but are mere agents or pawns in the hands of rival parties who deserve to be crushed.

It is the logic of the path of social democracy, of acceptance of the capitalist system of exploitation that has led the CPM to taking the side of big capital against the interests of the working people. It is the logic of becoming part of the reactionary Indian state that has led to this situation where it can carry out and justify such outrageous attacks on the lives and liberties of people.

However the struggle being waged by the people in Nandigram, Singur, and other parts of India against the confiscation of their lands for the sake of capitalist development cannot be subdued so easily. It is gaining in strength and winning the support of ever larger sections of the people.