Bengal CPM secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra on Thursday renewed a call to end Mamata Banerjee’s rule in Bengal for the government’s “failure” on the industry front that has created joblessness, and also revived a game-changing slogan of former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
“As long as she (Mamata) remains chief minister, no industrialist will dare to set up shop in Bengal, post the Singur episode,” Mishra told a gathering of 50,000-odd people, including farmers, agriculture workers, youths and students.
The meeting at Rani Rashmoni Avenue was the culmination of a Singur-to Raj Bhavan march the Left organised to highlight “agrarian distress” in Bengal.
Although many wondered why Mishra was stressing on industrialisation at a congregation of people primarily involved in agriculture, the CPM state secretary iterated former chief minister Bhattacharjee’s slogan before the 2006 Assembly elections: “Krishi amader bhitti ar shilpo amader bhabishyot” (agriculture is our base and industry is our future)”.
With this slogan on its lips, the erstwhile Left government, under the leadership of Bhattacharjee, had acquired around 1,000 acres in Singur for a Tata Nano factory.
The resentment among farmers from who land was acquired forcibly and Mamata’s spearheading of the agitation catapulted her to power in 2011.
The Tata Motors factory in Singur when it was coming up, in August 2008 Telegraph file picture
In several internal assessments of the CPM, the Singur experiment had faced severe criticism.
As Mishra spoke on Thursday and repeated the same arguments justifying the land acquisition, some CPM leaders wondered whether it was the right strategy.
“The rally was organised by the All India Kisan Sabha and the All India Agricultural Workers’ Union. The focus should have been more on the distress in the farm sector,” said a CPM leader.
Although Mishra spoke briefly on farm-related issues such as farmer suicides and attacked the Mamata government for “suppressing” the “fact” that 187 peasants had taken their life under the Trinamul regime, he kept attacking the administration for its perceived failure to bring in new industries.
Lower price realisation in agriculture and mounting debt for farmers did feature in his speech, but his reiteration of Bhattacharjee’s 2006 slogan and his criticism of Mamata for her anti-land acquisition agitation drew all the attention.
“This is a classic case of mistaken priorities…. He should have realised that a majority of the people in the audience would not have been happy with the acquisition of their land for industry. He should have focused more on farmers’ distress,” a CPM leader said.