Opinion View from the LEFT

The latest issue of CPI’s weekly mouthpiece New Age contains several pieces on the women’s bill and Mukherjee’s contribution finds a prominent mention in all of these,which argue that it was the CPI’s women’s wing that had first taken up the issue of reservation. A front-page article in New Age by CPI leader Annie Raja recounts the agitations waged by the party’s women’s wing over the years demanding 33 per cent reservation for women. “Gitadi is no more but her dreams have started blossoming into reality”,says another author.

Trashing Trinamool

The Women’s Reservation Bill also gave the comrades yet another chance to attack the Trinamool Congress on account of Mamata Banerjee’s surprising turnaround. In the lead editorial in People’s Democracy,the CPM asserts that the Trinamool has emerged as a party that opposes reservations for women.

In line with its strategy to never miss a chance to highlight the differences between the Congress and the Trinamool,the editorial argues that this is not the first occasion Banerjee has come in direct conflict with the UPA.

“On the issue of combating the Maoist violence,which the prime minister has repeatedly declared as the gravest challenge to India’s internal security,the Trinamool Congress has openly opposed the operations of the joint security forces,thus objectively patronising the Maoists,” it says. Banerjee’s objective,according to the CPM,is to use the “atmosphere of terror and violence” for her political and electoral advantage in West Bengal.

Maoists on backfoot

The Centre and the CPM have more or less been on the same page when it comes to tackling Naxalism. Now both the government and the CPM believe that Maoists are on the defensive and are hence offering the olive branch.

While the Union home ministry says the security offensive has done the trick,an article in People’s Democracy claims the “widening of people’s resistance” to the “left sectarian incursion” has put the self-styled “Maoists” on the defensive. “The Bengal unit of the CPM believes that the sectarians are meeting with such resistance in several areas of Midnapore West,Bankura and Purulia.” Political resistance,more than protest,is the order of the day in the laal mati areas of Bengal,it says. Adding to it is the arrest of top Maoist leaders by the Bengal police.

“Kishanji aka Koteswara Rao has stopped appearing before the television channels. He has started to cosy up to the Union home minister by putting forth his personal cell phone and facsimile number on the scroll of very many TV channels,with no response from the Union government,on the surface that is,” the article says. “The writing on the wall has been there for some time of late. The noxious game of the left sectarians of kidnapping villagers and minor officials and the calling for what these thugs term an ‘exchange of prisoners,’ has finally come to deserving and shamed halt,” it asserts.