Reality Of Development: A Case Study In West Bengal
Souradip Pathak
Just a few years back, it was sheer current of political vendetta laid down by the reactionary unholy nexus of oppositions against the Left Front Government in West Bengal. Most importantly a chunk of Bengali intelligentsia played a dramatic role towards corroborating the fabrication of that nexus to oust the lefts from the government. Eminent figures like Mahasweta Devi who always penned the saga of marginalized people and nationwide acclaimed for the upliftment of the ethnic minority communities like Sabars, urged to see TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee as the next CM. Even aftermath of TMC grabbing the power of West Bengal in 2011 she perpetually offered her blessings to the newly elected CM before her demise. Many Bengali intellectuals like her enlightening the dais of TMC open meetings found the essence of good governance in the performance of the Mamata government in Bengal. But reality has marked a murky picture. Since the last few months, seven people belonging to the Sabar community in Bengal had been died of malnutrition. At the same time, government is busy to observe the food festival on the outskirt of the city of Kolkata in grandeur. Naturally, the questions got raised how activists like Mahasweta Devi will react after noticing such a plight of Sabar communities if she remains alive!
Purnapani, a remote village of Bengal where there resides 97 Sabar families. First two weeks of November marked four deaths and since the August the figure is seven. All of these were the cases of starvation deaths. It seems to be like that development has been paused before the Sabar village. According to the government’s scheme, they are under the facilities of National Food Security Mission. But reality marks a grim depiction. It is alleged that most of the times they do not obtain the food in sufficient amount which has been allotted for them. It has been revealed by local people before the media that most of the days they find difficult to make their ends meet. They are facilitated with rice at the rate of two rupees per kg by the government through public distribution system but the actual quantity they are getting is not sufficient to meet the hunger. Most of them depend on collecting woods from the jungle otherwise they work as the daily waged labourers. Half of the month they have to spend unpaid as they don’t have any option of employment. This incident also unleashes the glooms of discrimination on the grounds of education and public health also. Moreover, they have been deprived of the access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Each of the households was facilitated with a separate well for the access to water during the left regime. At present those wells are rendered in severely unhealthy condition as there is hardly any provision on behalf of the government to clean those and let the water back in potable condition. Constructions for the purpose of sanitation were laid incomplete as they were unable to donate bribe in the ruling party fund or simply failed to fill the pockets of the local ruling party leaders.
Like all other cases, as usual government and the local administration denied the news of starvation death. They are keen to masquerade the fact of starvation-death of seven Sabar people under the hide of alcohol addiction. If one accepts the fact that those Sabar people were alcoholic and there was hardly any food scarcity on the ground of argument, recent activities like food distribution, running community lunch on behalf of the government or rapid presence of government officials at that Sabar village abruptly after the recent deaths have further strengthened the very allegation of under-development. Instances of lacking access to the public facilities like education, emergency healthcare are prevalent on a large scale at those Sabar dominant villages. Even, the situation went worse while the fellow neighbours compelled to bury the dead body of Paltu Sabar simply becoming unable to meet the expenditure for the last ritual of him.
Since the Singur-Nandigram unrest, a fold of Bengali intelligentsia and academia were keen to project Mamata Banerjee as a face of subalterns. Thousands of newsprint was spent and millions of foreign money had been invested for the purpose of her ‘sub-altern’ cult building. A small section of social activists and human rights defenders were also part of that social engineering. Recently, while TMC regime in Bengal simply marks the denial of access to the democratic and fundamental rights of people, those people are maintaining radio-silence. Bengal has witnessed a grim violation of people’s rights during these seven years of TMC regime and this incident is just another instance of that. Those ill-starred people were not only deprived of their right to food or other livelihood rights but also of their right to life.
While the Sabar starvation-deaths are prevailing in the headlines, government is busy with its official annual food festival “Aahaare Bangla” (Bengal in food) on the outskirts of Kolkata, the left leaders including Dr. Sujan Chakrabrty, leader of left parties in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly were arrested by the police for committing peaceful demonstration protesting against this Sabar starvation-death in front of the venue of the food festival on the day of inauguration. Actually, government has forgotten to pay attention to the actual festivity of life rather being attentive to celebrate the cosmetic festivity of grandeur. It reminds us of the masterpiece by Ray, “Hirak Rajar Deshe” (Kingdom of Diamond), where the distressed people were forcibly incarcerated under ghettos while the ruler was observing the anniversary festival of his incumbency with thousands of foreign guests and invitees. While the roads and boulevards of Bengal are being decorated with gigantic hoardings of “Unnayan” (Development) at the same time hapless people from the Purnapani, the Sabar village from the newly born district of Jhargram, West Bengal unveils the daunting reality of development!