Nandigram -- A case study in fascism
The chief minister of West Bengal (Buddhadeb Bhattacharya) claims the mantle of modernizer. He does this as the leader of a party that has systematically dismantled West Bengal's industrial strength since Independence. But I could forgive him that -- till Nandigram. The Tata's plan for building a small car required land. Mr Bhattacharya promised it. There was a small problem -- thousands depended on this fertile land for their livelihood. Did Tata Sons pay the market price for this land to the owners by negotiating with them? No -- too prosaic for them. They just depended on the CPI(M) thugs to use rape and murder to cow the people of Nandigram. Liberals claim this is the face of capitalism, rightists claim these are the few eggs that must be broken for the Progress omelette (sp?). Seriously fellas! This is not capitalism -- this is naked fascism where the state machinery is used to undermine property rights. Capitalism does not succeed without property rights. So Nandigram is not the face of capitalism (Take that Libs!). If property rights are destroyed to start a business then the basis of future capitalist growth is jeopardized -- this is not a few broken eggs, it is killing the golden goose (Take that Rightists!).
The Stalinist goons in West Bengal (including the suave Bhattacharya) dont get it -- they cant, their brainwashed thought processes dont allow it. But Ratan Tata claims to run an ethical business -- he should have known better. I will certainly use his example in my class to illustrate how unethical behavior undermines capitalist progress. Thanks Mr. Tata -- no royalties are forthcoming though!
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1 comments:
Though not about NANDIGRAM, but about SINGUR, the issue, I think, is the same.
In his "Letter to the Editor" in The Statesman of 23 Sep, 2008,Mr. Datta has been naïve in drawing the conclusion that the Supreme Court ruling that “the government as a sovereign power can acquire land for public purpose" should set at rest the vexed Singur issue.
He has not noticed that the West Bengal Government acquired the land at Singur not for “public purpose” but, on the one hand, to gift it to the Tatas under a “secret” agreement to enable them to use it to profitable business and, on the other, to deprive the farmers of Singur of their land because they had voted for Trinamul Congress in the last election.
Now, one argument in favour of acquiring the multi-crop fertile land in Singur (on the strength of an archaic Imperialist British Act of more than 200 years old) is that West Bengal is in need of ‘Industrialization’, which seems to be the present-day catchword instead of the old-fashioned terms like ‘revolution’, ‘class-struggle’ and ‘building a class-less society’etc, that we had been hearing for the last seventy years. West Bengal was known as the most industrialized state before the Communists came to power. Then the CITU, the wrecking machine of the CPI(M) closed down sixty thousand factories in West Bengal to bring it to the present state. Now, if we want to talk about bringing West Bengal back to the same level of industrialization, we should either reopen the closed factories or acquire those to be run on a profitable basis. No one seems to be thinking on these lines.
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