Mumbai Muslims targeted

With nearly three decades of Left rule in West Bengal, the one question Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has to answer — What’s the secret of the Left Front’s repeated victories in the state? So, when Bhattacharjee went to Chennai as part of the CPM’s ‘August Campaign’ against the UPA’s policies, he said at a rally: “Agriculture is our base and industry is going to be our future.” Asked how he balanced the two — proletarian dreams with hopes of an industrialised state — he said: On the one hand, his government gave a dole to all those thrown out of a job due to closure of industries and had introduced welfare sche- mes for workers in the non-formal sector, while on the other, the state was “soliciting” FDI for industrialisation. Then, on the subject of the August campaign, he said the rising prices of essential commodities reflected the “total insensitivity” of the UPA.Instead of punishing the hoarders, the UPA government had “enabled them to indulge in loot and plunder (of) the common man,” People’s Demoracy quoted Bhattacharjee. According to the West Bengal CM, quite clearly the leading voice of the Left, the “earnest effort” of the government should be to forge unity with countries like China and Russia to “withstand pressure from imperialist forces”.

Students’ wing for right to education

The SFI, CPM’s students’ wing, has been pushing for legislation on the Right to Education but feels the UPA government is subverting the whole issue. SFI general secretary K K Ragesh says the National Common Minimum Programme promises to universalise access to quality basic education but the Bill had been kept in abeyance because of opposition from the finance ministry and the Planning Commission. He says the model Right to Education Bill, sent to states, proposed that the burden of expenditure would be shared between the centre and the states and this was unacceptable. There were also several dilutions in the draft Bill, said Ragesh, like doing away with 25 per cent reservation for poor students in private schools. To prevent further dilutions and ensure introduction of the legislation, the SFI leader warns that “broad sections of the student community” would be organised to take part in agitations on the issue in the days to come.

— Compiled by Ananda Majumdar