The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : ‘Nandigram issue being used to bring down Government’

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Saturday, Nov 24, 2007
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‘Nandigram issue being used to bring down Government’

Special Correspondent

Policies of Left Government in West Bengal no different from that of other States: writer
Ramakrishna warns against tendency to blame Government for ‘all things that have gone wrong’

Bangalore: A discussion on the Nandigram issue provided the platform for a larger debate on Left politics and neo-liberal economic policies here on Friday.

Speaking at the programme organised by Samvada Vedike, G. Ramakrishna, intellectual and editor of Hosatu, warned against the tendency to blame the CPI (M) Government in West Bengal squarely for “all things that have gone wrong.”

While admitting that the idea of a Special Economic Zone was unacceptable under all circumstances, he said that the Nandigram issue was being increasingly used by “interest groups” to bring down the Left Government in West Bengal. “When the project that was the original reason for protest has been dropped, it is important to ask what the struggle is now for,” Dr. Ramakrishna said.

It was unfortunate, he said, that “hair-splitting over ideological differences by factions of the Left” had provided fertile ground for other political interests to take root.

Shivasundar, writer and columnist with Lankesh, said that the meaning of Left politics needed to be re-defined in the context neo-liberalism. The economic policies of the Left Government in West Bengal, he argued, were no different from that of other States at this point in time.

Citing examples, he argued that the West Bengal Government in the post-nineties had been giving into the policies of economic liberalisation calling them “inevitable.” This needed to be recognised as the root cause of discontentment, though there was no denying that other political formations had taken advantage of the situation, Mr. Shivasundar said.

G.N. Nagaraj, State secretary of CPI (M), who was slated to participate in the discussion, was not present.

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