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| 'Electorate in West Bengal wants change' | | Q&A: Partha Chatterjee, an influential Trinamool Congress leader |
| Rajat Roy / New Delhi Nov 22, 2009, 00:36 IST |
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 Partha Chatterjee, an influential Trinamool Congress leader, tells Rajat Roy that his party wants balanced growth in industry and agriculture.
In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections and then in the 2006 Assembly elections, your party did not do well. How did it bounce back within three years?
It has been a roller-coaster ride. We have no doubt that we will be able to dislodge CPI(M) from power in the state in the coming elections. For that, we must give credit to the present leadership of CPI(M). Since 1998, the Trinamool Congress, under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee, had been trying to mobilise public opinion on various issues, but the Left’s supporters, the urban middle class and intellectuals, remained unconvinced. Much before the Singur-Nandigram agitations, on October 2, 2005, Banerjee gave a call to protect farmers’ land. She appealed to all sections of the society to form a coalition against this onslaught on farm land. But barring a few small organisations, hardly anybody came forward, not even the Congress. In May 2006, peasants in Singur formed a committee to protect their land. We joined them much later in September.
I still believe that September 26, 2006, when the state police forcibly brought Banerjee from Singur to Kolkata, was the turning point. That sparked a bigger movement and turned the Singur issue into a national one.
Could you or your party have visualised then that the Trinamool would transform politics in the state?
No. That time there was no such awareness. Police atrocities in Singur and Nandigram stirred a wider-section of people of West Bengal. It is to Banerjee’s credit that she consolidated it into an anti-Left vote bank.
Now that the goal of reaching Writers’ Buildings seems realistic, what are the challenges ahead?
We are aware that a huge wave of expectations is building up. Despite a number of centrally-sponsored pro-poor programmes, rural Bengal faces abject neglect. Health services and the education system have all but collapsed. Unemployment is soaring. The general mood of the electorate is that it wants change. The task is daunting as the state is burdened with a debt of Rs.1,70.000 crore. We need to have a balanced approach.
What sort of balance do you have in mind?
We want balanced growth in industry and agriculture. In infrastructure, we welcome public-private partnerships, but we are opposed to special economic zones. We will give priority to health, education, infrastructure, small-scale industry and agro-based industry. We will bring out a white paper on these issues as soon as we come to power.
But how is the Trinamool going to resolve the tricky question of land?
We don’t need to rush into that. In principle, we are opposed to acquisition of land against the wishes of farmers. There have been 5,848 approvals for setting up new units between 1991 and March 2009. We need to know the status of these projects as well as the land required. We will approach development differently. We want development with consensus. Mind you, in our state, the Tatas’ investment in Singur is the only instance in which a factory could not be set up because of the contentious issue of land. We need to make landowners stakeholders in projects.
But the government’s delivery system in the state is a shambles. There is no lack of money or pro-poor initiatives. Yet, nothing reaches the poor and the target. A lot of flak the Left is drawing from the people is due to that. How will your party be different?
It is not an easy task. I am sure we will also flounder on that. But, hopefully, we will be given sufficient time to correct ourselves and learn from experience. We will sincerely try to improve the delivery system. At present, we are collecting inputs about the urgent needs of the people. Experts from various industries and sectors have been approached and they have submitted their reports.
In the political arena, the Trinamool will inherit some of the legacies of the Left. For example, there is the issue of Naxalites. There is also the simmering Gorkhaland movement which will demand immediate attention.
On extremist politics, we have made it clear that we are against all killing, violence and armed struggle. The challenge is manifold here. The tribal belt in the western part of the state where this problem has raised its head is economically backward. There is an urgent need to ensure all-round development of the poverty-stricken tribes. We have already identified three extremely backward regions in the state — North Bengal, the western region of the state comprising West Midnapore, Bankura, Purulia and Birbhum, and Sundarban. Already, Banerjee has taken initiatives to ensure rail connectivity in distant parts of North Bengal. This will lead to economic activity and help the poor. We will have to make special efforts to develop these three regions to eliminate the sense of alienation from the mind of the people of these regions. Once that is achieved, all divisive movements will automatically lose their steam.
But the culture of political violence won’t go away.
It is CPI(M), not us, which has been in power for the last 32 years. The culture of violence is a lasting contribution by them. Banerjee has already demanded this, and once we are in power, we will start a drive to seize all illegal weapons from various political parties and their supporters. But it will take time to change the culture.
Assuming that in 2011, the Trinamool will be in power in the state, who will be the next railway minister after Banerjee comes to state politics?
It is difficult to say. Banerjee is also aware of that scenario. Perhaps that is why she is toying with the idea of having someone else as the chief minister and keeping the railway ministry herself. There are times when she thinks of giving up the responsibility of the railway minister and involving herself with party affairs alone, as Sonia Gandhi did. But people of West Bengal won’t accept that. She has become an icon of change now. People will definitely like to see her at the helm of affairs in these changing times.
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