The View from the Left

From the front page This week’s editorial “Peace offensive needed to curb terrorism” explains the serial bomb blasts in Delh...

From the front page

This week’s editorial “Peace offensive needed to curb terrorism” explains the serial bomb blasts in Delhi as being indicative of the growing frustration among terrorist groups in the face of peace moves between India and Pakistan. It describes the decision of the two governments to allow people along the LoC to cross the border at five points as a “welcome development” and says India acted responsibly by not allowing the blasts to derail the peace moves. But, Pakistan must do its bit to curb the activities of terrorist organisations, the editorial says.

The Iran vote

The weekly quotes CPM general secretary Prakash Karat as saying during his speech at a rally on an independent foreign policy on October 29 that the prime minister and the foreign minister alone could decide on India’s foreign policy, and that the Iran issue would be raised in Parliament. The Committee for an Independent Foreign Policy comprises the four Left parties, Samajwadi Party and the Janata Dal (S), and Karat minced no words in pointing to their collective strength of more than 100 MPs to pressurise the government on the issue. According to Karat, India needed gas which Iran had promised and not nuclear energy which the US was offering. “We have become a junior partner of the US,” he said.

Case for Buddhadeb’s Bengal

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A article on Bengal’s development builds a case for Bengal’s industrialisation and argues that the model of development adopted by the state is appropriate for the present as industrialisation alone can show the way ahead. Author Benoy Konar notes how China’s per capita income is twice that of India’s, and this has been possible through industrialisation. “There is no possibility of socialist industrialisation in West Bengal at the moment….capitalist industrialisation is better than having no industries at all.” Konar says that projects like those involving Indonesia’s Salim group cannot be built by completely avoiding good agricultural land for reasons of contiguity but claims the positive impact of the project will compensate for the loss. Konar favours urbanisation and planned townships and says “we do not engage in the peasant movement to keep peasants as peasants forever.”

Media matters

An article on state vs private media debate, claims that despite the growth of the visual and print media “we have more of the same thing rather than a variety to read and watch.” But, more worrisome, according to the author Nalini Taneja, are instances of irrationalism and religious fundamentalism —- like the widely reported case of a local priest in Betul who foretold his own death and waited for it (unsuccessfully) as television channels ran the story live through the day. Curiously, she suggests “intervention by the government” when Betul-like stories are shown on TV —- perhaps she does not believe this qualifies as government control of the media. Incidentally, The Indian Express had reported on the media hysteria surrounding the man’s so-called encounter with death. Taneja says fundamentalism and commercialisation in media reporting began after L.K. Advani became I&B Minister during the Janata regime, which she says also saw the “infiltration of pro-RSS elements into media set-ups”.

In the days ahead

The party will observe November 18 as All India Demands Day to demand that the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill be tabled in Parliament in the coming session.

(Compiled by Ananda Majumdar)