Bengal is chained to politics. Image by Photo by John Salvino/Unsplash

Last week, the world saw visuals of poor villagers, bleeding and being carried away after the police opened fire on villagers in Nandigram in Bengal. They were protesting against the acquisition of farmlands for industries. For anyone, it was revolting that a democratically elected government should shoot down its people because they were engaging in what appeared to be legitimate protest. Not surprisingly, the general reaction was one of indignation.

But in the universal expression of outrage the real story in Nandigram got dissolved, a story that is far more complex than television visuals would tell us. True, in any conflict between the mighty state and seemingly helpless villagers, sympathy would inevitably lie with the latter, but a closer look at the bigger picture would give us a nuanced understanding of how this came about.

Nandigram came into the news when it was identified as a location for a hub of chemical industries. The villagers did not want to sell their land and have been resisting its acquisition. Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had announced that there was a rethink on the issue and no land would be acquired if the villagers deemed so. There the matter should have rested.

But it did not. A mood of defiance was building up and in the last couple of months, gradually, an assorted alliance of busybodies apparently representing the local farmers but in reality a motley crew of several local interests, including some based on sectarian interests, emerged. The coalition included splinter groups of the Left, the Trinamool Congress, Naxalites and the Jamait-Ulema-e-Hind and taking advantage of the people’s resentment, set up an ‘autonomous’ zone where no member of the administration was allowed entry. In effect, Nandigram was cut off from the state.

Bhattacharjee’s offer to shift the chemical hub elsewhere met with no response. Nandigram remained inaccessible. Local people, cut off from all official information, were fed the spectre of a marauding government army that would take away land forcefully; while renegade local groups discreetly prepared to take up arms against the government. What complicated the issue was the entry of dissident CPM elements who were worried that their traditional rural strongholds would weaken if the party under Buddhadeb took a sharp turn towards industry.

No one pointed out to the locals that their ‘secession’ would invite a strong response from the administration. Political parties were fishing in troubled waters and civil society groups were conspicuous by their absence. The mood was frenzied. This was a conflict that went far beyond protests over land.

The inevitable conflict finally took place last Wednesday. While the government went to put Nandigram back on its administrative map, the highly charged local population thought that it had come to take away land. The result, as we saw, was mayhem. The police handled the situation very badly, and the ultimate responsibility rests with the chief minister, but surely efforts to subvert democratic processes, democracy itself, could never be acceptable.

Regrettably, Nandigram has triggered fundamental questions about land acquisition for industry. And Mamata Banerjee, whose only engagement with politics is to create disruption and disorder has found her brand of politics somewhat legitimised in this chaos. As for CPM’s partners in the state, they perform the same function as the Left does at the Centre — power without responsibility. They have no concrete initiatives and at the same time, share no liability, moral or political. But they were quick to bay for the CM’s blood.

The chief minister has now been put under the scanner by his allies and partymen and his zealous and aggressive pursuit of capital has come under scrutiny. Even the upwardly mobile middle class in Kolkata, which backed Buddhadeb in his new ‘capitalist’ ventures went into denial mode and showed a knee-jerk, anti-Buddhadeb response. They have retained a nostalgic sympathy for farmers’ rights, unmindful of the fact that Bengal’s economy desperately needs industry.

Buddhadeb has managed to survive this one, but he could be sent to the political gallows, to die alone. The shame is that just when Bengal was finally taking a positive turn out of the shackles of a ramshackle ideology, Nandigram has put back the chains once again.