Left finds bandh boot is on other foot

KOLKATA: West Bengal’s unalloyed passion for bandhs seems to be getting stronger by the day. As if the four-odd in calendar 2006 wasn’t enough, the bandh culture is back with a vengeance barely a week into the new year.

Both the Trinamool Congress and the Congress have called bandhs across the state on Monday following the alleged murders of seven people in Nandigram near Haldia in a series of violent clashes between two groups of armed villagers since Saturday night.

After being involved in a majority of the bandh calls last month, the Trinamool Congress announced that Monday’s Bangla bandh duration would be of 12 hours. But the Congress went a step ahead and gave the full 24-hour call. The SUCI and several Naxalite factions have also called bandhs while the BJP, which barely has a presence in West Bengal, has also lent its support.

Ironically, the latest bandh call came within 24 hours of the scathing criticism from British deputy High Commissioner Simon CH Wilson about “the notorious bandh culture in West Bengal” that was forcing some UK investors to reconsider their decision to invest in the state.

However, techies in the city’s Salt Lake IT hub have some reason to cheer. Both the Congress and Trinamool Congress have exempted the state IT sector from the purview of Monday’s bandh. While the ruling CPM is bracing up to foil Monday’s bandh, ironically, its labour wing Citu had ensured that the state IT/ITeS sector was not exempted from the purview of the all-India general strike last December.

Left Front chairman Biman Bose on Sunday urged the “people of the state to frustrate Monday’s bandh”. He claimed three CPM activists, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in the clash at Nandigram early on Sunday.

Evidently, there’s a lot at stake for the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee-led West Bengal government even as its prepares to put its industrialisation strategy into overdrive through big-ticket farmland acquisitions.

The latest bandh call comes in the wake of the politically-sensitive Singur developments whose aftershocks continue to be felt in surcharged Nandigram. It also comes days ahead of the eagerly awaited West Bengal SEZ Policy which is slated to address the crucial compensation and rehabilitation issues for displaced families in the wake of the state’s land acquisition drive.

So much so, it is to be seen whether the latest violence holds up future land acquisition for frontline industrial projects and compels the government to buy more time before unveiling the SEZ policy.