27 th year of degenerated Left Rule in West Bengal

From Land Reform to Land Scams

-- Sukanta Mondal

Land reforms is gone, land scam is on. Land has always been one of the core agenda for the left parties. But this time it is the other way round in the Left Front, ruled West Bengal. It is not the ‘Rural land for the poor’, but the ‘urban land for the elite’.

The irregularity in the allotment of a plot of land to a former Calcutta High Court judge out of the Chief Minister’s discretionary quota has invited the ire of the apex court. The court indicted the judge, Justice Bhagawati Prasad Banerjee for compromising judicial authority to get a plot in the Salt Lake area of Kolkata in 1986. The State Govt. has been asked to evaluate the property constructed over that plot of land and to give the corresponding money to him before taking over the premises within one year. The court has gone on record to comment that ‘there is undoubtedly an unholy nexus between the judicial orders and granting order of allotment’ by the State Govt. to him.

The court could unfortunately see only the unholy nexus between the judicial orders and the allotment of plots of land in Salt Lake out of the Chief Minister’s quota. But the unholy nexus between the chieftains of the chief constituent of the ruling Left Front in the state, the CPI (M) and urban land sharks, the real estate promoters and a horde of mushrooming gang of criminals who sustain and thrive on that nexus, escaped the notice of the court. Even a section of the sports fraternity has been roped into this nexus, who have chosen an alternative playground for themselves for multiplying their sports-gotten unaccounted money.

A series of such incidents hit the headlines recently. First it was the international gold-medal winner athlete-turned Member of Parliament Jyotirmoyee Sikder and her athlete coach Awtar Singh and now the national footballers like Bhaskar Ganguli, Sashthi Duley, Dipankar Roy et al, whose names have come to the fore for having nexus with the criminal gangs backed by the real estate promoters and CPI (M) leaders.

The drama which unfolded in connection with the arrest of notorious criminal hathkata Dilip has unraveled how criminals are exorcising undeterred sway over the affairs of the neo-urbanisation drive in the Dum Dum, Baguiati, Rajarhat, Mahishbathan and Salt Lake areas in the fringe of Kolkata with overt and covert political patronage from their local CPI (M) bosses.

It has also come to light that it is not only hathkata Dilip, but various organized gangs of criminals in different parts of the state, owing allegiance to different senior local CPI (M) leaders, have been working as the frontal force of the grass root state CPI (M) party apparatus for controlling all the profitable economic activities like real estate business, export-oriented fish culture, particularly growing of shrimps, lobsters, etc, brick-field operations etc. These activities involve illegal grabbing of land for which these criminals act as essential tools. And thus goes on the reversed land reforms in West Bengal under the LF rule. The peasants, the poor toiling urban population, the people on the margins are being forcibly evicted from the land in their possession to make room for so-called development and neo-urbanisation composed of high-rises, shopping malls, multiplexes, star hotels, private hospitals and elite schools and colleges to cater to the needs of the upstart rich which have become the new found class base of the ‘improved Left Front’ today. To appease the people in high places, the industrialists, the top bureaucrats, the judges et al, the LF govt. has distributed plots at lucrative places for a song out of the so-called Chief Minister’s quota, which got revealed in the Justice Banerjee-land scam recently.

The degeneration and corruption in party life found passive acknowledgement even in the 20 th West Bengal State CPI (M) conference document. It inter alia stated that:

“There is gap in being firm against the immoral activities connected with urban land, construction of buildings, rural properties; panchayet functioning etc. the question of morality has mainly remained an issue for abstract discussion, wherever specific complaints are received or noticed, there is hesitation or inertia in intervening, making efforts to rectify the things or taking preemptive actions.” It is all the more revealing later: “For some time there is an increasing tendency to form voluntary organisations as the own organisations of the party activists which run parallel to the party organisation. The party activists are themselves at the helm of these organisations but at no level – state, district, zonal or local – these are under the party control or leadership. Money is flowing, in big volumes … but the party is in the dark as to the fact that the same is happening in exchange of what. … And spent for what purpose and how much. As a result of being in power, apart from the ministers, there is no dearth of capacity to raise money even for the party leaders, if morality can be sacrificed. ”

Despites these pious admissions, things have only worsened during the last there years since the 20 th State Conference. Reports of worst kind of clash of vested interests are pouring in everyday during the local level conference hold prior to the 21 st conference which is just on the cards. Things have come to such a pass that murders are taking place even within the Conference itself. 27 years of Social Democratic rule is thus taking its inevitable toll.