Public money in private entertainment!

IPL(2014)victory celebration Kolkata Knight Rider (KKR) is one of the franchise teams of Indian Premier League (IPL), a T-20 cricket tournament. It’s owned by Bollywood star Shaha Rukh Khan along with Juhi Chawla and her husband Jay Meheta.It’s totally a private tournament and has, in fact, no connection with the state. Association of ‘Kolkata’ with the name of the team is only coincidental and does not mean it’s a Kolkata team either. However, incidentally King Khan is the brand ambassador Bengal.It’s, of course, altogether a different story. Nevertheless the state almost officially bash in the glory of KKR’s wining the IPL trophy. What’s more, the State celebrates the victory at the expense of public exchequer.This year CM will dash to Kolkata from Darjeeling cutting short her normal schedule to participate in the celebration even by a hiring a private plane that costs a few lacs of rupees. On earlier occasion even guv took part in the celebration.

Demonetization!

Though situation has improved post demonetization but perhaps we’ve a long way to go before things become normal. We have to brace for cash crunch for many more days to come as the quantum of money withdrawn for note ban will not be fully replenished to promote digitization So shortage of cash will continue The situation will gradually ease out with the progress of digitization. Admittedly, it’s a Herculean task to make digitization successful in a vast country like ours with many and varied problems but unless it is done whole efforts to minimize financial corruption and accumulation of black money would go to waste.All efforts are being made to encourage people to go in for electronic transactions.Govt has even offered many incentives in this regard and people are also responding favourably. Nevertheless growth of digital economy suffers badly for lack of infrastructure particularly in rural areas In large number of villages there’re are no banks, let alone internet services required for e-business. There villagers have never seen debit or credit cards, swipe machines (POS) and heard  of e-wallet either. So now Govt has the massive task of extending banking and internet services to them and train them how to carry out e-transaction.It will take a long time to perform this mammoth task. Internet services should have been made available in villages before demonetization, which Govt is now trying to  do on war footing. This lack of foresightedness adds to people’s hardships. But what’s very interesting is while most of the opposition parties are up in arms against PM for demonetization the common people stand by this stance though they miserably suffer for it. Time will tell how far Modi’s efforts to cleanse the Augean stable would be successful or turn out to be a futile exercise.

Singur

 After a decade the  Supreme Court has quashed acquisition of land at Singur for Nano car project of Tata Motors and instructed the Trinomool govt to return the land to both ‘willing’ and ‘unwilling’ land owners.Willng land owners are those who received compensation from the then Left Front govt and the unwilling ones refused to accept the cheques  for compensation. Then land was acquired based on the Land Acquisition law of 1894.This law framed by the British govt in India had hardly any space for the land owners to oppose land acquisition for ‘public purposes’. In apex court two judges(two-judge bench) however, differed on the point if the acquisition of land for car project of a private company like Tata Motors, constitute’ public interest’. What went against the L.F govt was their hastiness, arrogance, highhandedness with which they acquired land blatantly ignoring the voice of unwilling farmers, though their intention to bring in a heavy industry in the state for employment generation was unquestionable..That apart, multi crop land was also acquired and it grossly affected agricultural production

In Singur fiasco, so far  as the   the  installation  of  Nano car  factory is concerned that could have changed the industrial scenario of the state, all,  some way or other connected with the  project, have suffered  badly. Worst sufferers are those who refused compensation However, now based on the judgment pronounced by Supreme  Court  all land losers would  get back their land and ‘unwilling farmers’  would get  compensation too for their suffering for a decade. Happily, the present govt has promised to return the  acquired land to the farmers in cultivable state.However,Tatas  and those invested  in ancillary industries at the project site have a remote chance to get back their money.

In fact, riding on the wave of Singur movement Trinomool Supremo  Mamata Banerjee came to power. In her election manifesto she gave top most priority to return of  the acquired land to the farmers of Singur after assuming  power.True to her words she took initiative  on this count immediately after she  assumed her office as Chief minister.But to start with she suffered legal setback in the court of law but continued her efforts  with all sincerity and determination. After legal battle for a decade came the landmark judgment of the apex Court in favour of her govt  nullifying acquisition of the  land at Singur .It’s a political as well as moral victory of Trinomool supremo and  of farmers of Singur who lost their land

However, this historic  verdict of SC  might open  pandora’s box.It's very likely the  demand for return of land allegedly forcibly  acquired by the administrations in other states  also would follow soon..In our state shifting of Misti hub  from the selected location at Bardhaman in the face of the agitation  of the  land owners claiming their land was acquired without their consent  is a case in point. Regrettably, new site allocated for the hub is no single stretch of land. Hub would come up reportedly on two sites situated 1Km apart. It might hamper the business of the hub.If such things happen, developmental work and industrialization as well may suffer. So new land acquisition bill 1915 that has been passed in the Lok sabha and is waiting  for approval of Rajya Sabha needs to be reviewed to ward off any  legal hurdle in future

In short, Singur is a tale of both jubilation and frustration, victory and defeat as well.

Resolution to re-name West Bengal

,

The West Bengal assembly passed a resolution, though not unanimously, to rechristen the  state Bangla in Bengali, Bengal in English and Bangal in Hindi. In fact, renaming was necessary after the emergence of Bangladesh which was earlier called East Bengal in English and Purba Banga in Bengali.’West’ now stands irrelevant as there is no “East’.Change of name of a place, may it be a country , state or street,even though  it is associated with  a rich  heritage, is nothing new across the world..In the present instance no political motive, nor any  regional passion was involved. However,it would have been better if a single name Bangla were chosen in English and Hindi as well.Again, it would have been  decent if the resolution  could be passed  without  any dissent.

Human rights brazenly trampled upon!

                                                         

Recently Odisha has come to lime light for pathetically wrong reasons. A video clip of a poor man carrying the dead body of his wife for cremation at home, 60 Kms away from hospital where she died of Tuberculosis shocked one and all. He was accompanied by his young daughter who was sobbing. The man was refused an ambulance as he’d no money. This blood-chilling unbelievable inhuman clip went viral and hospital  staff was busy defending themselves claiming the man didn’t wait for the ambulance to come in, which was  in fact far from true. The poor husband was, however provided with an ambulance after he trudged 10 Kms, thanks to the initiative reportedly taken by some kind hearted youths in this regard. This incident bears testimony to the fact how poor people are sometimes treated like subhuman beings in our society

In another incident in Odisa  the dead body of a poor octogenarian woman  was crushed to fit it in a sack  at a hospital to facilitate carrying the corpse.It;s also an abjectly inhuman act that is unthinkable in a civilized society. More often than not the poor and the down trodden people are treated with equally similar cruelty and indignity when alive and even when dead. These incidents reveal how pathetically all norms of human rights have been  trampled upon. We should be ashamed and try to make amends.

Incidentally,just hard on the heels of macabre incidents that took place in Odisha, came the video clips of  some heart wrenching incidents in social media that laid bare how the marginalized people are treated in our society. In Madhya Pradesh a man along with his 5-day old baby, his old mother and his dead wife were  shoved out of  a bus  amidst forest in torrential rain .It happened immediately after his wife  who was  unwell died on the bus. In another incident in Tamil Nadu a boy was found begging to bribe an officer for sanction of money to cremate his father who had just passed away

Presumably, many more such heart-rending incidents are taking place but only a few are reported in press or social media.