West Bengal Politics
After India gained independence from the British, Bengal played the most important role in emerging renaissance in the field of social, cultural, political and educational reforms. Reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose were at the forefront of the freedom movement.
When the Muslim League formed a government in the 1940s, Dalit leaders and Muslim league could easily dislodge the Congress. But since the LF assumed power, caste was obliterated from the collective psyche of people. But with Mamata Banerjee’s giving the Matua community, a Dalit kin group in Bengal who migrated from East Bengal up until the 1970s, enough representation with MLAs and ministers in her cabinet, the caste question is back in the picture again.
Khadya Andolan (Food Movement) of 1959, carried out in post-independence India, was the turning point in the history of class struggle in West Bengal. The food insecurity had reached alarming proportions in rural and urban areas. On 31st August 1959, a massive mass demonstration was organised in Calcutta where hundreds and thousands arrived from the villages under the leadership of Kisan Sabha. At the end of the meeting, 80 people died, and the violent action taken by police wounded many. The effect of the Food Movement was so intense that it changed the political scenario of the state.
State politics always revolved around a strong leader, irrespective of whoever is in power in the center. Post independence it was Bidhan Chandra Roy of the Congress who was the Chief Minister of West Bengal from 1948 to 1962 (after a small stint by P.C. Ghosh). After which it was P.C.Sen for 5 years. From 1967 to 1972, it was a chaotic period in West Bengal where two successive coalition governments were formed and fell.
The period of 1967 to 1972 was particularly trying as the state was reeling under the Naxalite movement and the effects of the Bangladesh war, with resultant refugees crisis in Calcutta. However, after the successful Bangladesh campaign, and especially under the strong Indira Gandhi wave, Siddharta Shankar Ray became the next chief minister for 5 years. He was seen as the person that stamped out the Naxal menace in West Bengal.
Naxalbari Movement is a movement of post-independence India. It was carried out in the year 1972 by the peasants of Naxalbariin Darjeeling district of West Bengal. The Naxalbari Movement tried to protect the interests of the peasant and the labouring classes and cover all ethnic (including tribes) and caste groups. It was mainly led by local tribals and the radical communist leaders of Bengal. This event created split in the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was born. The uprising got moral support from the communists of Nepal and China. The prominent leaders of this movement were Charu Mazumdar, Kanu Sanyal, Jangal Santhal, Mahadev Mukherjee, Vinod Mishra, Dipankar Bhattacharya, etc.
It was Jyoti Basu, who, riding the anti-Indira wave, defeated the Congress and became the chief minister of West Bengal in 1977. Again a huge personality during whose time West Bengal did not have a comparable political personality that could convincingly oppose the Left Front. It was during the later part of Jyoti Basu’s rule, that a political upstart called Mamata Bannerjee from Congress started an almost one person protest against the mighty Left Front.
West Bengal is an unusual, indeed unique state in the country. It is the only one of the states in India to have been ruled continuously (since 1977) by a Left Front government for more than a quarter of a century. This government in turn has been motivated by a vision of political, economic and social change that has been different from that observed among most other state governments or the central government. This vision determined a focus on two specific but inter-related strategies at the state level: land reform, including both greater security of tenure to tenant cultivators and redistribution of vested land; and decentralisation and people’s participation through panchayat institutions. The West Bengal experience is therefore especially interesting, as it provides an insight into the possibilities and limitations of a particular strategy of change at the state level, in a wider federal context of rather different orientation of both the central government and other state governments.
Nandigram Violence is one of the recent violent outbreaks of 2007 took place in Nandigram, East Midnapore, West Bengal. This event occurred in the aftermath of a failed project by the Government of West-Bengal, under the former Communist rule, to acquire land for a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The SEZ controversy started when the government of West Bengal decided that the Salim Group of Indonesia would set up a chemical hub under the SEZ policy at Nandigram. It was a violent movement in which police shot dead at least 14 villagers and wounded 70 more.
Singur Movement was carried out in the aftermath of an announcement of the small car factory by Tata Motors on 18 May 2006. Tata Nano Singur Controversy refers to the controversy generated by land acquisition of the proposed Nano factory of Tata Motors at Singur in Hooghly district, West Bengal, India. The project was opposed massively, and the unwilling farmers were given political support by West Bengals opposition leader Mamata Banerjee. The protest turned turbulent as many of the internationally framed social activists, and Bengali intellectuals like, Medha Patkar, Arundhuti Roy, Mahasweta Devi protested against the allocation of factor site which was fertile multi-crop land. Tata Motors then decided to pull off from Singur in October 2008 and a new factory in Sanand, Gujarat was established in subsequent years. In 2016, the Supreme Court quashed the West Bengal government's acquisition of 997 acres of agricultural land for Tata Motors and ordered its return to 9,117 landowners.
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