Charter for Gorkhaland plea | ||
The Telegraph: Darjeeling, June 24: The BJP and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha have chalked out a roadmap to highlight the demand for a separate state at the national level. The strategy was evolved at a meeting between Rajiv Pratap Rudy, the spokesperson of the BJP, and the Morcha leadership at the Darjeeling Gymkhana Club today. “A short-term, mid-term and long-term strategy has been worked out to highlight the demand at the national level. We have also put in place an internal mechanism for better co-ordination between the BJP and the Morcha,” said Rudy, who is also a member of the Rajya Sabha. Holding seminars, workshop and awareness programmes with writers, MPs of other parties and constitutional experts on the demand of Gorkhaland in New Delhi forms the short-term strategy. “The aim is to gain support for Gorkhaland in Delhi. We are committed to the cause of Gorkhaland. While Jaswant Singh will raise the issue in the Lok Sabha, I will do the same in the Rajya Sabha when Parliament session starts in the first week of July,” said Rudy, who has come to Darjeeling as Singh’s representative. The Morcha has also decided to form a study group that will act as a back-up mechanism for the BJP leadership in Delhi. The BJP also made it clear that it was working for the development of the hills. “Jaswant Singh had a detailed discussion with Kamal Nath, the Union surface transport minister, regarding roads in the hills,” said Rudy. Bimal Gurung, the president of the Morcha, expressed confidence in the BJP’s sincerity towards Gorkhaland. “When we backed Jaswant Singh in the general election, we had not kept any pre-conditions for the BJP except for their support for the Gorkhaland. I am happy that the demand will be raised in both the Houses and this is a feat that could not be achieved despite the bloodshed during the 1986 agitation,” said Gurung. He said the Morcha had not yet decided on holding a strike in the hills. However, the Gorkha Janmukti Yuva Morcha has decided to start an agitation from June 29 by holding torch rallies across the hills.
Protests mount against cow slaughter Statesman News Service : KURSEONG, 24 JUNE: The civic administration in Kurseong had to step in due to mounting protests in the sub-divisional town over the alleged killing of cows at a slaughterhouse, in contravention of the relevant rules. The Kurseong municipality officials met the beef vendors yesterday in a bid to restrain them from hurting popular sentiment on the sensitive matter. A section of the residents alleged that the beef vendors were slaughtering and selling cows at the Kurseong market with impunity, while the civic authority looked the other way. According to them, the slaughter of a cow and her calf had come to their notice on 18 June. Incensed by the incident they gheraoed the municipality building for hours, demanding an immediate halt to such slaughter. “Our religious sentiment was hurt as we worship cows and this is a part of the hoary Hindu traditions,” said the agitators. Finding the situation spiraling out of control, the civic officials stepped in and visited the slaughterhouse in question. As per the investigation report, the cow had just been sheltered there by a local for the time being and had not been killed at the slaughterhouse. The officials said they would still take measures against those concerned, as they were still committing an offense. With the locals remaining unconvinced, the civic authority ordered the closure of the beef shops in the town market. This was followed by a meeting convened by the municipality to thrash out the emotive issue. The civic officials and the beef vendors decided to remain vigilant to prevent the recurrence of such cases. The municipality vice-chairman, Mr Balaram Chettri, said that the civic body would not allow such cases to recur. "Apart from hurting religious sentiment it is in flagrant contravention of existing official rules,” he said. He further informed that as per the resolutions, if any-one is found sheltering cows or killing cows at slaughterhouses, or slaughtering cows at any other place in the Kurseong municipality area, legal action would be taken against them and their licenses would also be cancelled. Mr Chettri added that guards would be deployed at the slaughterhouses, to keep an eye on their activities. |
Scan on NGOs in Dooars | ||||
The Telegraph: Siliguri, June 24: Police and intelligence officers will monitor the activities of NGOs working in the Dooars, particularly in the closed tea estates, as a preventive step to check the mushrooming of Maoist outfits. “We have already identified some NGOs whose activities are suspicious. One of them is Swadhikar, which operates in three tea gardens in Kalchini block of Jalpaiguri district,” said K.L.Tamta, the inspector-general of police, north Bengal. Swadhikar is run by Bhaskar Nandi, a leader of the CPI (ML) (PCC) in Jalpaiguri. Tamta, who reviewed the security arrangements for the June 28 panchayat elections at Pradhannagar police station, told journalists that the police had already chalked out a specific plan to keep tabs on suspected Maoist activities. “Our focus is always on closed gardens, as the jobless workers might be indoctrinated by ultra Leftists. Our officials have been ordered to keep a close watch on different areas in north Bengal,” said Tamta.
The Telegraph: Siliguri, June 24: Four of the 14 closed tea estates in the Dooars are likely to reopen soon, if Tea Board of India officials are to be believed. The estates, some of which are closed since 2002, have become hamlets of utter poverty since then. Numerous efforts to reopen these gardens were taken up at different levels but proved futile. “Chances seem to be brighter this time, at least for Shikarpur and Bhandapur, Chamurchi, Chinchula and Samsing,” G. Boriah, the director (tea development) of the tea board, told The Telegraph over the phone from Calcutta today. “We are in regular contact with the (existing) owners and have come to know that all these estates will be taken over by new owners and the process of take-over is on. The new owners have been contacted as well, and they have reiterated that the gardens will reopen soon.” According to Boriah, the new owners, some of whom are from the tea industry, have already signed agreements with the existing ones. “Activities like clearing the dues, fixing liabilities and some other formalities are going on. We, too, are anxiously waiting for these gardens to reopen,” he said. The prospect of reopening Raipur Tea Estate is high as the owner has cleared the bank dues and is expected to receive the keys through the Debt Recovery Tribunal in Calcutta, the official said. Following the slump in tea prices and the economic meltdown in the market across the country, a number of estates, all producing CTC brands, had closed down in the Dooars. For the past 7-8 years, the workers of the closed gardens are dependant on a monthly aid of Rs 1,000 from the state government, 100-day-work scheme and sale proceeds of tealeaves. A number of workers and their family members have also died of malnutrition. Workers, however, are not ready to believe the reopening story. “We have often heard of such developments but ultimately, nothing has come into our hands over the past few years,” said Phanindranath Das, an employee of Sikarpur and Bhandapur. “We are not ready to buy the story unless we see the new owner entering our estate, reopening it, clearing our dues and launching full-fledged operations.” |
Stage set for Malbazaar municipality poll
Statesman News Service JALPAIGURI, 24 JUNE: The political parties of Malbazaar and the administration are gearing up for the forthcoming Malbazaar municipality poll, scheduled for 28 June. The relentless political campaigning which has been continuing for over a month has reached its fag end now, with the rivals oozing confidence of expected triumph. The civil administration and the police officials of Malbazaar have held a meeting with the candidates belonging to all the political parties to inform them about the election procedure. The Malbazaar SDO Mr Nilkamal Biswas said: “We have tried to convince the parties to abide by the Model Code of Conduct and we are satisfied with the outcome.” Dwelling on the nitty gritty of the poll schedule, the SDO said that the polling would start at 7.00 a.m. and would continue until 3.00 p.m. “All the EVMs will be kept in the strong room to be set up in the premises of the SDO office. “The counting will be held on 1 July from 10.00 a.m. onwards,” said Mr Biswas. He further said that 18 polling booths would be set up, spread over 15 wards. “The former joint secretary of the state finance department Mr Arup Kumar Saha would monitor the civic poll as an observer,” added the SDO. The Malbazaar CPI-M zonal committee secretary Mr Chanu Dey said that the Left Front would provide a clean and efficient board. “We have refrained from embarrassing the Congress and the Trinamul Congress by harping on the intrinsic divide within the much-vaunted state level alliance. Our focus remains trained on development,” the CPI-M leader said. The Congress Malbazaar block president Mrs Sulekha Ghosh and the Trinamul Malbazaar block president Mr Subhasish Das exuded confidence of emerging victorious in the civic polls. “Bickering in the alliance will not have a negative impact on the poll outcome,” they claimed.
FIRST SWINE FLUE CASE IN W.B. Kolkata, June 25 (IANS): A first case of swine flu infection has been detected in West Bengal with a seven-year-old girl testing positive for the disease, officials said Wednesday. Shruti Ghosh, who returned to the city from Australia via Bangkok Monday, was admitted to a state-run hospital after doctors found her with symptoms of the disease. “Her blood sample was sent to the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) in New Delhi. On Wednesday night, the NICD director verbally informed Shruti’s father that her daughter is suffering from swine flu,” Tapas Sen, nodal officer for swine flu in the state health department told IANS. Indo-Asian News Service 73 CASES OF H1N1 New Delhi/Chandigarh, June 24 (IANS) Five people, including an eight-year-old boy and two teenagers, were detected to have been affected with swine flu Wednesday, taking the total number of influenza A (H1N1) cases in India to 73, health officials said. Two of the new cases are from Delhi, while one each is from Madurai, Hyderabad and Chandigarh, according to the officials. “At least 532 persons have been tested so far. Of them, 73 are positive for influenza A(H1N1). Of these, six are indigenous cases, who got the infection from the positive cases who travelled from abroad,” said an official statement. In Delhi, a 40-year-old man and his wife tested positive for the flu. The man had travelled from the US via Germany and was accompanied by his 39-year-old wife. Both of them had developed fever, sore throat and body ache. “They reported to the identified health facility on June 22. Their samples were given for testing and the report showed that they were infected with the virus,” a health official said. The eight-year-old boy, who came from the US via Mumbai, reached Madurai June 13. His family reported his case to the health facility June 18. The fourth case is from Chandigarh where a 19-year-old youth was found to be infected with the flu. He had also travelled from the US and reached New Delhi June 20. “He travelled by road to Gurdaspur. He developed fever, cough on June 22 and reported to the health facility at Chandigarh,” the official said. The boy studies computer science in California and had come to spend his holidays at his home in Punjab. “The patient was admitted to the government hospital in Sector 16 of Chandigarh Monday with a complaint of high fever, running nose and sore throat. Seeing his travel history, we admitted him here in an isolated ward and sent his throat swab samples to NICD (National Institute of Communicable Diseases) in New Delhi,” H.C. Gera, union territory nodal officer for swine flu, told IANS in Chandigarh. “We got the confirmation from NICD on late Tuesday evening that he has tested positive. Our team of doctors is observing him and his condition is stable. There is no need to panic and we are fully equipped to deal with the situation,” he added. “More than a dozen cases of suspected swine flu came to Chandigarh hospitals in the last few weeks but this is the first positive case,” Gera said. Seven members of the boy’s family too ahve been quarantined. “The condition of the family members is normal and they have not shown any symptoms of swine flu till now. However, we would monitor them for the next few days as a precautionary measure,” Gera said. The fifth case was reported from Hyderabad where a 15-year-old girl, who had come from Hong Kong via Singapore and reached the city June 19, developed complaints of sore throat, running nose and fever. She was admitted to an identified city hospital June 22. Her report confirmed Wednesday she was infected with the flu. Officials in Delhi said a 66-year-old woman, who was admitted to a hospital in the capital after her condition deteriorated, is now in a stable condition. The woman had contracted the flu from her son. She was put on ventilator after her condition worsened as she also suffered from chronic respiratory illness. Of the 73 cases in the country, seven have got the virus through human contact, the officials said. Of these 73 cases, 43 have been discharged and the rest remain admitted to the identified health facility, they said. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), at least 55,867 laboratory confirmed cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection have been reported from 108 countries. There have been 238 deaths worldwide, mostly from Mexico and the US. Hostage to Maoists: A first-hand account |
The Telegraph correspondent Naresh Jana had ventured into the forests off Kadashole, from where police were beaten back by Maoists recently, to interview Sidhu Soren, the secretary of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, along with a group of local journalists. Suddenly, as news reached that the police were marching towards Kadashole from Goaltore, the Maoists held Naresh and the others hostage for an hour. A first-hand account of the experience: It was around two this afternoon when a dozen local journalists, reporters and photographers included, camping here at Goaltore, decided to meet Sidhu Soren. We called him up and he asked us to come over to Mohultala, a village 3km into the jungle from Kadashole. We set off towards the forest on motorcycles. On the edge of Mohultala, where we reached around 2.30pm, we saw preparations were being made for cooking. A huge wok had been placed on a clay oven under a tree in the forest and about 10 people were busy cooking. A stray thought crossed my mind: Why was a meal being prepared for so many people when I couldn’t see that many people around? I asked a fellow reporter to call up Soren to tell him that we had reached. Soren asked us to wait. While we were waiting, we learnt that the police were on way to Kadashole. Then suddenly the atmosphere became tense. Out of nowhere, a motorcycle carrying three young men, all with rifles slung across their shoulders, screeched to a halt in front of us.“The police are making their way up,” the man who was riding the motorcycle shouted at us. “Don’t take your cameras out and switch off your cellphones, or else you will be shot dead.” With these words, the three rode off towards Kadashole. Within minutes, two more motorcycles, each carrying three armed persons, zoomed past in front of us. Then we realised that the Maoists had taken us hostage: the villagers who were cooking surrounded us and two young men, pistols in their hands, stood guard. “Don’t move, stay where you are. The police are moving up and there could be an operation,” one of the men said. “We’ll let you go when we get the signal to do so.” Within a few minutes, we heard shots from inside the jungle. We looked in that direction and found a dozen men, all armed and carrying two improvised explosive devices and a bag of ammunition, emerge from inside the forest. Then, about 50 armed people joined the dozen. At 4.15pm we were relieved to find Soren trudging towards us. We later learnt that it was a case of a “hoax call”. The police had started out from Goaltore, but after a brief recce, had returned. Once Soren started speaking to us, the guards and the villagers moved away. Soren tried to convince us that he did not believe in violence. We were then shown a path through the forest through which we could reach Goaltore. We got on to our bikes and left.
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Task force to mitigate tribal problems - Government blames unrest for slow pace in Lalgarh development - Watch on estates | |||||||||||||||||||||||
The Telegraph: Calcutta, June 24: The government today said it would revive a little-known task force to speed up development in the tribal regions, hours after admitting “certain sections” of the administration had failed to deliver in Lalgarh. The admission of failure and the announcement on the task force came from chief secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti a day after Left Front partners criticised Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for the problems. However, Chakrabarti, speaking in Lalgarh this afternoon where he admitted the shortcomings, said the failure didn’t justify the agitation. “Even if sections of the government machinery had failed to deliver, this is no way to protest,” he said when asked why there was no thrust for development in Lalgarh before the protests started. He appeared to blame the agitation for some of the problems, saying no development work could be done in the past five months because of the unrest. “The government machinery couldn’t function because of the reign of terror unleashed by the rebels. Over the past four days, police are trying to ensure law and order. We are also working towards winning the confidence of the people,” the chief secretary added. Chakrabarti, whose landed in a chopper near the Lalgarh police station around 1pm with other top officials, met BDO Saurav Barik and asked him to speed up development and create job opportunities. Back in Calcutta this evening, Chakrabarti claimed that the task force, which was almost unheard of so far but with a brief to kickstart development in the tribal belts of West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia, couldn’t do much because of the general elections. The panel itself and when it was set up seemed a mystery. At yesterday’s cabinet meeting, some of the chief minister’s colleagues, including some CPM ministers, told him they weren’t aware of such a panel. Bhattacharjee said the task force had been doing development work for the past one year and had spent Rs 13 crore on schemes. The task force was set up last December with him as the chairman.
The Telegraph: Calcutta, June 24: Gaur Narayan Chakraborty, the CPI (Maoist) spokesperson arrested last evening, was today remanded in police custody till July 6. His lawyer argued that he was just a sympathiser of the Maoists and that police had neither found any arms on him nor did they have any record of his “unlawful activities against the state”. “Only a few leaflets on Maoist literature were found on him. That does not prove he is a member of the organisation,” said Tapas Maity. The 73-year-old Chakraborty was brought to Bankshall Court around 1pm. In a white shirt, black trousers and leather sandals, he tried to present a composed face, but lost his cool as the magistrate announced his police custody. “The government of this state is fascist,” Chakraborty screamed while being pushed into a police vehicle. The state has slapped a slew of charges against him — like waging war, attempting to wage war or abetting war against the Government of India, collecting arms for the war, concealing facts to help a plot to wage war. The public prosecutor argued that since the CPI (Maoist) was a banned organisation, anybody associated with it should be considered an enemy of the state. “He is a law- abiding citizen,” said his lawyer. While he was being taken back to the central police lock-up at Lalbazar, a handful of people shouted slogans protesting the arrest. Asked who they were, they identified themselves as “protesters against police atrocities and CPM’s corruption and dictatorship”. The police raided Chakraborty’s home in Nadia’s Chakdah tonight.
PRONAB MONDAL, THE TELEGRAPH: Dharampur, June 24: Maoists knew the movement and mode of transport of the chief secretary. But chief secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti and police cannot be accused of getting distracted by such diversions as keeping track of Maoists while striving to bring normality to Lalgarh. Armed Maoists today organised a meeting of 3,000 villagers less than 5km from Lalgarh police station where the chief secretary reached today to hold a “strategy session”. Lalgarh town also hosts a huge security force. The Maoist meeting, full with loudspeakers blaring threats at the government, went on for two hours at Dharampur, the attack on which jolted the state government out of a seven-month stupor and forced it to call central forces. The venue was an open field opposite the CPM party office that had recently been gutted by the Maoists. Ringing the assembled villagers were armed Maoists, some craning their necks to look out for approaching “strangers”. The security at the meeting was so tight that the 500 metres leading off the metalled road — linking Lalgarh to Jhargram — to the venue was lined with about 150 members of the armed squad, some standing in clusters. At the meeting, watched over by Bikash, the Maoist in charge of Lalgarh operations, speakers urged the villagers to “gear up for war”. The Maoists made it clear that they were aware of the movement of the chief secretary. They accused him of “squandering” money by visiting Lalgarh in the helicopter to find out the state of the “deprived and destitute” people here. But Chakrabarti later said he was “unaware” that such a meeting had taken place. “I know nothing about this meeting,” he said before leaving Lalgarh. “But I have asked the police to tread with caution.” Midnapore DIG Praveen Kumar, who led the combined forces into Lalgarh, admitted: “I, too, don’t have any information on this.” But an officer of a central force now in Lalgarh said: “One of our problems here is lack of intelligence. If the Maoists were holding a large, open meeting within such a short distance, we should definitely have known about it. This is even more surprising since the media got to know of it but we didn’t.” The police said even if they had the information, they would have had to travel either by foot or on two wheelers as the road to Dharampur has been dug up at three places. “Vehicles could have travelled only for 2km,” an officer said. “After that, we would have had to walk as it would have been difficult to organise so many two-wheelers. By the time we would have reached, the meeting would have been over and everyone would have dispersed.” But the central force officer said this could not be an excuse for not obtaining the information. “What is important is to get the tip-off,” he said. “What we do with it is another matter.” The Telegraph:Lalgarh, June 24: Thousands in uniform are camping in a 170sqkm area of West Midnapore, waiting for orders to march into the core areas of Lalgarh, where armed Maoists are believed to be holed up. On the face of it, the rebels’ firepower should be no match for the combined force of central and state personnel. But freeing the zone of the guerrillas is easier said than done. The Telegraph spoke to several key security officials involved in Operation Lalgarh to identify the challenges ahead for the forces. Tracking enemy If the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government decides to launch an assault on the Maoists, the most challenging task will be spotting the enemy. So far, the forces don’t have any clue about the number of battle-ready Maoists and their whereabouts. “It is not as if two sides are ready in a battlefield waiting to fight. The Maoists won’t engage in a face-to-face battle…. We don’t know where they are holed up and so we have to zero in on them to launch an assault,” said a senior officer. But finding out the armed Maoists on an alien terrain will be a tall order as the intelligence network has collapsed in the past few months. According to a senior West Midnapore police officer, the district intelligence branch and the Intelligence Bureau lost all their contacts in the area after the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities and the Maoists started running a parallel administration in the region. “A lot of Maoists have sneaked in from Jharkhand and other regions and have got mingled with the villagers. It is very difficult to identify them,” said a senior officer. That is why the cops did not release a single male member from among the 200-odd protesting villagers arrested from Goaltore last week. Till last month, the estimate on the number of armed Maoists in the region ranged from 90 to 120. But the police do not know how many local people they have trained in the past few months or how many Maoists may have sneaked in since the trouble escalated. The police have learnt that the Maoists possess Kalash- nikov guns, rocket launchers and “a lot of ammunition” but the information is neither specific nor credible. Confusion When the forces were moved into the troubled zone, they were given an impression that the Maoists would have to be annihilated. But less than a week into the operation, the mandate is changing, leaving the force in a state of confusion. “The chief secretary (Asok Mohan Chakrabarti) visited the area today and he told us to win over the local people. We still don’t know how we can win people’s confidence while doing area domination,” said a CRPF officer. Waking up from its slumber, the state administration is trying to finalise a number of development projects for the region and Chakrabarti today stressed the need to cut off the Maoists by ensuring development. “How can we do something (isolate the Maoists) that the government has failed to do in several years?” the officer asked. As the decision to launch the assault will be taken at Writers’ Buildings, the officers of the central forces at ground zero do not have a clue on when the operation will start. So the footsoldiers are loitering around in Lalgarh or Goaltore towns not knowing what is expected of them. Not just the confusion over the mission’s objective and timing, lack of co-ordination among the various central and state agencies — CRPF, BSF, EFR, Specially Trained Armed Company (Straco), RAF, Cobra and state police — involved in the operation has also started cropping up. Although Midnapore range DIG Praveen Kumar is leading the operation, the agencies are yet to draw up a concerted approach on how to go about the mission. Preparedness The men in command are planning to encircle the Maoist core area and launch an assault along the stretches between Lalgarh and Ramgarh, Ramgarh and Goaltore, and Goaltore and Pirakata. But forces are handicapped by the lack of enough minesweepers. They now have only two of them but an officer involved in the mission said the forces needed at least five to seven minesweepers to launch a multi-pronged assault on the core area. “The Maoists have perfected the art of laying mines. There is little doubt that they have laid mines along the routes we will be taking. But we don’t have enough minesweepers,” said the officer. The other constraint for the forces is little knowledge about the terrain, which the Maoists and their collaborators know like the back of their hands. The planning of the operation is based on a map available with the Lalgarh police, but senior CRPF officers said that map was not handy. “We are trying to get in touch with policemen who have experience of working in the area and trying to fill the gaps in terms of information on the terrain,” said a senior state police officer. Heat and hunger The extreme weather — temperatures ranging between 40 and 45 degrees Celsius and humidity beyond the 90-per cent mark — in the region has made the job manifold tougher for the forces. Cramped camps and poor arrangements for food and drinking water are further complicating the problem. “We should be provided with proper facilities to keep ourselves battle-ready. If conditions like this prevail, we will run out of steam even before launching the operation,” said a CRPF jawan.
Maoist death squads executed dozens around Lalgarh The Hindu: JHARGRAM June 25: Little pieces of glass still lie embedded in dry earth next to the cot where Abhijit Mahato fell. On the morning he was executed as an enemy of the people, Mahato had been drinking a cup of tea at the end of an eight-hour night shift guarding trucks parked along the Kharagpur-Ranchi highway — the job that paid for the college classes he would have made his way to an hour later. But then, six men arrived on motorcycles at the truck-stop, carrying automatic rifles. They announced to bystanders that Abhijit Mahato and his friends, Anil Mahato and Niladhar Mahato, were members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The punishment for this crime, the men announced, was death. The June 17 murder of Abhijit Mahato and his friends didn’t make it to the national press — or draw the attention of the growing numbers of human rights activists, who have arrived in West Medinipur district to investigate the ongoing confrontation between the West Bengal government and Communist Party of India (Maoist) operatives in Lalgarh. But the killings — and dozens like it — are key to understanding the still-unfolding crisis. District police records show that 111 West Medinipur residents have been killed by Maoist death squads since 2002. Most of the killings were concentrated in the twin blocks of Binpur and adjoining Salboni — the heartland of the Lalgarh violence. Seventy four of the dead were targeted because they were cadre or supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Twenty-three of the victims were police personnel; five were adivasis community elders; one belonged to the Congress; another was a former Maoist who had left the movement in disgust. Seventeen CPI(M) workers have been executed by Maoists since November alone. It is instructive to compare the murders in West Medinipur with those in India’s most violent State — Jammu and Kashmir. In the years from 2003, Jammu and Kashmir Police records show, 71 political activists from all political parties have been killed by jihadists. More lives have been lost in attacks by Maoist death squads by one single party in one single district of West Bengal. The data also shows the contest has been uneven: not one Maoist operative has been shot dead in West Medinipur until police moved into Lalgarh last week, either by the state or their political opponents. Most of those killed by the Maoist death squads come from the ranks of the rural poor; many of them from the same adivasi communities whose name the Maoists have invoked to legitimise terrorism in Lalgarh. The only son of his widowed mother, and one of five children, Abhijit Mahato was the first member of his extended family to succeed in gaining admission to a college degree. In photographs his mother, Savita Mahato, recently had taken at a local studio, to be shown to the families of prospective brides, Mahato can be seen posing against a movie set-like backdrop. “I cannot understand”, Savita Mahato says, “what kinds of people would kill a boy who did them not the slightest harm”. Many others have died in similar circumstances. Karamchand Singh, a noted chhau-dance performer, was executed in front of his primary school students at Binpur last year. His crime was to have campaigned for the CPI(M) despite Maoist warnings to dissociate himself from the party. Pelaram Tudu, a locally renowned football player who supported the CPI(M), was shot dead in another death-squad attack. So, too, was Kartik Hansda, a folk artist. Honiran Murmu, a doctor working in the Laboni area, was killed along with staff nurse Bharati Majhi and driver Bapsi in October, after an improvised explosive device went off under their car. No explanation was offered by Maoists for the attack, why the vehicle was targeted, but Laboni residents say the attack was intended to punish Mr. Misir for renting out vehicles to the police. In May, Maoists executed Haripada Mahato as he was bathing in a pond outside his home in the village of Bhumi Dhansola. A former activist with the Maoist-affiliated Kisan Mazdoor Samiti, Haripada Mahato had left the movement in disgust a decade ago. He had since then worked as a night watchman and polio-immunisation campaign volunteer at the Medinipur Medical College. “The Maoists said he was an informer for the police”, says Haripada Mahato’s wife, Padmavati Mahato, “and we swore he wasn’t. But who can win an argument with a gun?” “All the world’s a stage” — Shakespeare once wrote. Today, he may have wanted to change the word “stage” to “reality show,” had he watched Prashant Tamang win in the music reality show, Indian Idol 3, two years back. Tamang, an unknown police constable, became quite a ‘known’ face overnight after he won the show through an enormous number of audience votes in his favour. But his victory had other, more far-reaching, consequences. A campaign launched to help him win the competition later became the cradle for the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha. Not a play, not a film, but a television reality show, gave birth to a socio-political movement. Was the victory a result of a strong provincial sentiment? Tamang, who is originally from Darjeeling, had been publicly backed by the GJM president, Bimal Gurung, along with a large part of the Gorkha community. Kapil Thapa from Dehradun, a contestant of the same show a year later, was also backed by the GJM. So, was that show being manipulated by a political sentiment? Perhaps not, as Indian Idol 4 was won, not by Thapa, but by Sourabhee Debbarma. This time, it seems, support for women’s liberation won over provinciality as Debbarma became the first woman ‘Indian Idol’. Again, Shilpa Shetty won Big Brother as an Asian being ‘victimized’ by racism. Then Poonam Jadav, the Sa Re Ga Ma Pa contestant, who came with a ‘below the poverty line’ tag, seemed to earn the sympathy of the audience with her social status. Reality shows very frequently have contestants who embody a popular social sentiment. It may not be entirely wrong to suggest that these contestants are chosen very consciously by the television channels. At least, Rupankar Sarkar, a retired bank officer who takes a keen interest in reality shows, thinks so. “My gut feeling is that the curricula vitae of the contestants are closely scanned to elicit some positive or negative aspects which are likely to prompt a huge number of SMS votes,” he said. If this ploy fails, ‘plan B’ is generally a mild or severe ‘rebuke’ by a judge after a seemingly good performance that helps evoke a huge wave of sympathy — and votes — in favour of the contestant, according to Sarkar. Each three-rupee SMS would contribute to a turnover in millions — a fact that the sponsors of these shows keep in mind. How ‘real’ are these reality shows, then? Adris Biswas, a professor and a researcher in popular literature, said that reality shows portray the ‘ideal’, rather than the ‘real’. According to him, what the audience wants to see is a ‘dream-come-true’ situation, in which it can identify itself with the winner of the show. A ‘marginal’ identity is mostly necessary, Biswas said, to make a contestant popular, as the audience sees in his victory a remedy of its own ‘deprivations’. But the well-known musician and actor, Silajit, who has also judged quite a few reality shows, puts forth a different angle. According to him, within the boundaries of a reality show exists a capsular form of society. Victories and defeats in these shows are sometimes manipulated and sometimes ‘real’ — which is also the case in society, where a performer, in order to gain a platform, may explore both his talent and his connections. But victory in these cases may be momentary, and keeping the audience interested afterwards is a different ball game altogether, Silajit said. “The real question is, where is the reality show going? What other realities are going to be shown on television?” he wondered. Following the logic of his remarks, one may ponder whether news itself may be packaged into a ‘reality show’ one day, in which wars and riots will become sponsored events. The reality of the television screen is limited to the frame of the camera. But what the frame shows us often becomes our social, political and even personal reality, such is our unquestioning submission. |
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