[Reader-list] Nonadanga: Political Profiles of the Arrested Activists

[asit das]

 Nonadanga: Political Profiles of the Arrested
Activists<http://sanhati.com/articles/4891/>

www.sanhati.com

*April 17, 2012*

*The dispossessed of Nonadanga are now on hunger strike, staying in an open
field while facing constant police harassment. The demand is two-fold:
rehabilitation, and the release of seven arrested activists. In view of the
situation, Sanhati is publishing political profiles of the arrested
activists.*

***********

*Debalina Chakrabarty*, secretary of Kolkata based women’s organization
Matangini Mahila Samiti, has participated in the people’s movements of
Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh. She has been a member on many fora, such as
the SEZ Birodhi Prachar Mancha, resisting the aggression of neoliberal
capital in West Bengal. She has also participated on various fact-finding
teams, including one of the first reports to probe the socioeconomic
effects of the purported Jindal SEZ <http://sanhati.com/literature/1170/>in
Salboni, West Midnapur district, West Bengal.

*Samik Chakraborty* is an activist with the Mazdur Kranti Parishad and is
also a documentary filmmaker with the activist cinema group
Canvas<http://canvaspix.wordpress.com/>.
Earlier, Samik was the state secretary and president of the Progressive
Democratic Students’ Federation. Samik is currently a fulltime activist,
being involved in many of the peoples’ movements in the past decade ranging
from the movements in Singur, Laalgarh, lockedout factory workers’
movements in the Hooghly and 24 Parganas industrial belt, union struggles
of Hindusthan Motors, Gorkhaland agitations<http://sanhati.com/excerpted/966/>,
relief and rehabilitation demands for Aila affected people of the
Sundarbans and more recently the struggle of the slum evictees of
Nonadanga. As a member of Canvas, he was involved in shooting and producing
a host of documentaries. Samik is also an activist of the Sanhati
Collective.

*Manas Chatterjee* is a full time activist of CPIML Liberation. He is a
member of the Party’s Kolkata District Committee, and Secretary of the
Jadavpur local Committee. He is a veteran of many anti-eviction movements
in the past, and has been at the forefront of the organisation of rickshaw
workers in the Jadavpur region, as well as the organisation of workers in
the industrial complexes of the region. He is a district committee member
of Kolkata AICCTU.

*Debjani Ghosh* is one of the leaders of the student organisation USDF at
Jadavpur University, and has been actively involved in many political
struggles in and around Kolkata. She was one of the many students injured
during the lathicharge by police inside JU campus in 2010 November. She has
participated in the solidarity struggle for labourers at the Naihati Jute
Mill
<http://www.mail-archive.com/national-forum-of-india@yahoogroups.co.in/msg01753.html>in
2010. Recently, she had been arrested during the protests
<http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110727/jsp/nation/story_14294961.jsp>against
the TMC government’s failure to release political prisoners and withdrawal
of joint forces from Jangalmahal. She was also was one the 12 USDF
activists arrested while setting up a commemorative dais on Sidhu Soren’s
martyr day. She has been part of the protests against the arrest of PCAPA
leaders and is also part of the efforts to bring the land deal in Singur
back in focus<http://www.indianexpress.com/news/students-group-knocks-parthas-door-seeks-s/838651/>,
as recently as August 2011.

*Siddhartha Gupta* has been active in the anti-land acquisition movement of
Bengal since 2006, as part of Gana Pratirodh Mancha. Earlier he had been a
member of the Revolutionary Youth League. At the time of this arrest he was
employed as a physician at a hospital in Calcutta. He has been actively
involved in organizing several free medical camps and had also visited
Lalgarh for providing medical care to the people there. On one such visit
in 2011 August he along with Abhijnan Sarkar was
arrested<http://sanhati.com/articles/4045/>.
Siddhartha was also associated with Shramjibi Swasthya
Udyog<http://sanhati.com/excerpted/3938/>and has been one of the few
doctors who visited the POSCO resistance area
on health mission.

*Partho Sarathi Ray( now released on bail)* has been active in various
democratic rights struggles for a number of years, as a member of various
solidarity fora, both in West Bengal and across India. He has reported on a
wide variety of peoples movements, from Lalgarh
<http://sanhati.com/front-page/1083/>to
POSCO<http://sanhati.com/articles/2372/>.
He has also written a number of fact-finding reports, e.g. on Falta
SEZ<http://sanhati.com/excerpted/1942/>and South
City Mall <http://sanhati.com/excerpted/1183/>. He has also written a large
number of analytical articles, on the political geography of
SEZs<http://sanhati.com/excerpted/2896/>,
the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of
India<http://sanhati.com/excerpted/4523/>,
the penetration of corporations in retail
<http://sanhati.com/articles/325/>and the middle
class <http://sanhati.com/excerpted/743/>of India. He has also contributed
to various other magazines and journals, on similar issues. Partho is an
activist of the Sanhati Collective.

*Abhijnan Sarkar* has been a member of the student group USDF and has
actively participated in peoples movements in West Bengal for many years,
as part of different solidarity fora. He is the editor of the periodical
“Towards a New Dawn” in Kolkata. Abhijnan is also associated with the
Sanhati Collective and has reported on the police repression on the Nari
Ijjat Bachao Committee in Lalgarh.