[Reader-list] Fwd: Kolkata Shramajivii Adhikar Yatra

[Nagraj Adve]

Date: Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 2:18 AM
Subject: Kolkata Shramajivii Adhikar Yatra





 Bengal's oppressed' demand their rightsTNN | Apr 10, 2011, 12.54am IST

 KOLKATA: A day after the common man won a resounding victory when the
Manmohan Singh government bowed to the public voice that rallied around
social activist Anna Hazare's crusade against corruption, Bengal's
oppressed' assembled in central Kolkata to press for their rights.

They were all there. From forest dwellers to fishermen; from sex workers to
farm labourers, joining hands to form a people's alliance that wanted the
two primary political alliances one led by CPM and the other by Trinamool
Congress <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Trinamool-Congress> to
listen to their voices that have been drowned by political slogans of
Paribartan' (change) and Pratyabartan' (return) in the run-up to the
assembly polls.

"In the din surrounding the polls, the voice of the marginalised seems
inconsequential. The constant bickering between rival parties in their
pre-poll campaigns overshadow the movements for rights of toiling people
struggling for survival. Apolitical organisations involved in movements have
therefore organised the Sramjibi Adhikar Yatra (Workers' rally) to get their
voices heard," said Naba Dutta, general secretary of social activist group
Nagarik Mancha.

Over the past two decades, several movements have acquired a significant
role in ensuring benefits for workers of closed factories; right of hawkers
to livelihood; generation of employment through employment guarantee scheme;
rights of forest dwellers; protection of livelihood of coastal fish workers;
establishment of the rights of tribals to their land; implementation of
minimum wages for workers. There have been movements against pollution by
sponge iron units, stone quarries and stone crushing units; rehabilitation
of evictees; and recognition of the right of sex workers.

On Saturday, nearly 15,000 people belonging to 43 organisations turned up at
Subodh Mullick Square, demanding mainstream political parties pay attention
to rights of the poor and working classes when voted to power and calling
for inclusive development.

"Whoever is voted to power, the working communities apprehend their
sufferings will continue. Except lip service, do politicians really care?
It's time they stopped taking people for granted and paid attention to what
the marginalised have to say," Dutta said.







If chimes change, remember the bell
- A story heard by those without choice RUCHIR JOSHI/ Telegraph/14-04-11

In 1972, the Congress defeated the United Front government and re-captured
Writers’ Buildings. A bright, young Bengali journalist buttonholed Kali
Mukherjee, the legendary Congress dock-workers’ leader, at the Press Club in
Delhi.

“Kali-da, what will happen now that your party has come back to power?”
Kali-da recounted the story of a wandering sadhu who’d set up stall under
the banyan tree outside a village.

“I can solve anybody’s problems!” the babaji declared, “just chant the
mantra I give each of you individually!” Among the people who lined up was a
recently married young woman who seemed unable to have children. The sadhu
pondered over her problem and then asked her to come behind the banyan tree
to receive her secret mantra.

Later the girl’s brother-in-law asked: “Boudi, what mantra did the babaji
give you?” The girl shrugged. ‘Oh, exactly the same mantra your Dada gives
me every night, except the babaji rang a bell afterwards.”

Kali-da grinned at the journalist. “*Ebaar ki hobey? Jaa aagey hochhilo
taai, shudhu ghonta baajiye!*” — What will happen now? The same as before,
except we’ll ring a bell as well.

It’s a story the few thousand-odd people gathered at Subodh Mullick Square
this Saturday afternoon seem to know all about. Here for the Sramajibi
Adhikaar Jatra, they’ve come from all over the state: from the Sunderbans,
from Mednipur, from the hill tracts up north, from the rolling graveyard of
the dead tea gardens in the Dooars, from Birbhum, Bardhhaman and Bankura in
the belly of Poschimbongo; and some have come from quite nearby as well, the
hawkers from the city’s streets and a union of sex workers from Sonagachhi.

Looking around, it almost seems as though this is a part of a makeshift
refugee camp put together after some natural calamity, except the variety of
the people gathered indicates that this disaster cuts across many different
geographies and, indeed, histories.

This is the human tragedy distillation, not only of three decades of Left
Front rule but also a few years of local Trinamul government. These are the
West Bengal customers who are not buying the tickets or the cable connection
to the ELL — the Election Lompho-Jhompo League or the Election Pantomime
League.

Under a shamiana made from a patchwork of translucent, white cement bags
there are clusters of colourful synthetic clothes. The cover overhead seems
to trap heat rather than deflect it and the colours are drooping and still.
Unlike the buoyant party rallies that have criss-crossed the city of late,
the energy here seems low. Many of the people are lying down as they listen
to the speeches, some of them deep in sweaty sleep, as if the heat’s
hammered them into the ground.

At first glance you think this is exhaustion and despair, but if you look
harder you see that these people are here for the long haul, a life-long
haul if need be, because they have no other choice.

As the various marching groups trickle in from the entry points around the
city, Raj Kumar from Kurseong comes to the mike at the dais and speaks in
Hindi. ‘Saathiyo! Comrades!’ His voice is high already and climbing, like a
car starting in third gear. “There are arrangements!” He points to his
right, showing the way forward. “The toilets! For women! Are on the right,
over there!”

He then declaims even more steeply. “And! For the men! They are…over there!”
Then he says the same thing in Bangla and Nepali. My first reaction is to be
amused that this man has no mode other than the comically melodramatic one
favoured by most Bengali political leaders, even to make an announcement
about toilets. Later, I realise something different.

As speaker after speaker comes up and introduces their group, a different
map of Bengal starts to form under the hot shamiana, a barbed wire grid of
defunct factories and tea-gardens, the workers abandoned, marginal fishermen
displaced in Mednipur, city squatters evicted with no alternative housing
offered, people suffering on the pollutants from the sponge iron units in
Durgapur, tribals and scheduled castes all under the cosh, all these people
crushed by this “People’s Government”, yet none of these issues making it
into the Trinamul Congress manifesto or The Didi’s vision for a “new
Bengal”.

By the time Raj Kumar comes up to the mike again, I notice that there are no
middle-class leaders in sight, no one with a jhola of urban sophistication
and connections hanging off their simple kurta-pajama or handloom sari. “As
we stand at the gates of yet another election, the violence between these
two parties grows while they both ignore our problems.” Declaims Raj Kumar
and I understand that this is his only mode of speech because he has no PR
smoothness, no change of oratorial costume available to him — he is speaking
to get across a message, not to sell himself as a speaker.

Walking through the crowd, I notice more and more people are sitting up now,
some munching muri, some bananas, some drinking lebu chaa. As the azaan from
the mosque next door ends, another speaker’s voice becomes clear: “Aamaader
kono shelebrity nei!... — We have no celebrities. Those who work 365 days
for us, they are our celebrities.”

“We don’t want new laws, we just want you to implement the existing laws.”
And, “we want you to promise only what you can deliver!”

While they are asking for delivery, it’s clear these groups hold little hope
towards the mainstream parties. These people and their issues form the
unyielding ground that electoral politics has never tried to turn. The easy
promises that parties make bounce off the carapace of intractable problems.
These are the bonchito, shoshito, doridro, khetey-khaowa manush, the very
same “deprived, excluded, exploited, labouring people” the CPM has always
promised to liberate and empower and now it’s become a grim joke. No
election, and likely no mainstream political party will answer the
predicament of these “marginal” groups.

Yet they’ve come to this oven-like Calcutta in a defiant assertion of their
existence and struggle, to hold this demonstration in the season of
elections to remind the parties that they exist, they matter, and they are
not going away; to remind us all that elections are, finally, about lives
and livelihoods. Will they succeed in making a dent? Will they alter a
single candidate’s promise-making or post-election commitment? We’ll see
across the next month or so.

I notice a group of young tribals sitting with their drums. One of the drums
is worn through, the black leather disc at the centre almost completely
eaten away, and I have two contradictory thoughts. This is the Bengal that
is connected by the eight-lane national highway of deprivation to other
struggles in the country, to Kalinga Nagar in Orissa, to Jaitapur in
Maharashtra, to Maheshwar in MP. On the other hand that this is the
immutable Bengali Resistance Gene, the one that has survived through the
British Raj, the Congress years and the deadly CPM decades, and the one that
will likely remain resilient through the tenure of whoever’s coming next.

I don’t know how many years, if any, Trinamul will rule this state, but I
notice the date and realise that an old drum, if not a bell, is already
ringing on the current regime — from today there are probably only 34 days
left to the 34 years of Left rule in West Bengal.

-- 
Soumitra Ghosh
NESPON/National Forum of Forest Peoples and Forest Workers(NFFPFW)
5,Krishanu Dey Sarani
Babupara,Siliguri-734004
Siliguri,West Bengal, India
91-353-2661915/9194347-61915

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