Peasants Suicides Persevering with In Trinamool Congress Dominated Bengal

By Ashis Biswas

In West Bengal, the controversy over what number of farmers have dedicated suicide in latest occasions is a settled situation. Regardless of strenuous efforts made by the state Authorities of late that no distressed farmer ever killed himself throughout the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) tenure, it is not uncommon information that such claims fly within the face of established information.

The phenomenon is in no way distinctive. It’s merely a sign of how points thought-about awkward for the administration are dealt with within the state. On this context, it wants stressing that throughout the previous decade or so, there was a rising tendency on a part of the west Bengal Authorities to minimize all unfavorable socioeconomic developments, incidents and occasions .Simply because the state Authorities adopts a complicated stance on the query of farmers’ suicides, it tries to suppress the variety of folks struggling or dying from dengue fever, malaria and different seasonal ailments.

Its ham-handed efforts to maintain the variety of Covid 19 pandemic deaths to solely 3 whereas the illness was raging for over three weeks a 12 months in the past, created a scandal within the medical career in addition to amongst highest administrative circles within the nation. The Authorities caught to its determine whilst many hospitals and clinics have been reporting many extra deaths !

The explanation: West Bengal needed to say that its report in coping with the corona pandemic and its aftermath, was one of the best in India! State Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, additionally Minister for well being, personally shot down recommendations from senior officers concerning the damaging unfold, mounting deaths and public fears over the raging Corona pandemic.

It mattered little that the state’s model of the illness as reported to public and referred to the centre significantly understated the harm brought on by the pandemic, with many deaths going unreported! Worse, because the centre despatched emergency medical provides and different assorted assistance on the idea of state studies obtained, widespread folks suffered woefully from an absence of brief provides of important medicines!

At current, seasonal dengue fever has damaged out in a serious method, claiming some lives in Bengal already. There have been complaints from sufferers /widespread folks that medical clinics run in Behala in South West Kolkata, as effectively official hospitals in south Kolkata are in some way avoiding the point out of dengue of their studies on sufferers!

To return to the farmers’ suicides: Latest data point out there have been suicides amongst poorer Bengal peasants since 2011, the very 12 months the TMC was elected to energy. Such suicides have continued thereafter throughout its 10 year-plus tenure. Unknown apparently to the serving state Authorities officers,, there are official figures to substantiate this.

Their repeated assertion on the contrary is wonderful in its brazenness, in that the current claims denying the very fact of poor farmers’ suicides belie previous admissions by their predecessor officers/leaders throughout the TMC’s tenure!

As a senior scribe explains, it is not uncommon for many ruling occasion apologists to rewrite historical past to go well with their political ends. ‘However pro-administration propagandists right here have now begun to rewrite (falsify?) even historical past not more than a decade outdated, which have to be a brand new low even for modern spin docs’, he mentioned.

There may be nothing surprising about the truth that in just one West Bengal district, West Midnapore, at the very least 122 farmers dedicated suicide in 2021. Additional, the dreaded march of demise continues: this 12 months to date, 34 extra folks have killed themselves, in the identical district. So there have been 100-plus suicides final 12 months and these might be adopted by extra circumstances in 2022. Going by the stats on farmers’ suicides in different states, the figures for Midnapore are usually not shocking.

A lot for the West Bengal Authorities’s declare that no farmer within the state has dedicated suicide!

The Midnapore figures by the way, weren’t launched by the well being division, any Authorities company or district officers. They grew to become obtainable solely in response to a query put ahead via the RTI mechanism. Earlier, mediapersons probing the difficulty for years have been repeatedly fobbed off by stony-faced officers at numerous ranges, who denied information about any farmer in financial misery killing himself.

By implication, the narrative was, West Bengal was a cheerful rural financial oasis inside the bigger Indian wasteland for farmers. In different main states 1000’s of peasants have been reportedly committing suicide yearly!

Media studies highlighting the unfavorable RTI figures naturally put the proverbial raiding cat among the many Nabanna-based state Secretariat pigeons (officers) on this occasion. Reacting angrily, officers questioned the supply of the RTI figures.

Nonetheless, they fell silent once they learnt that official RTI-related employees had placed on the job police personnel of 23 thanas within the West Midnapore district, looking for particulars in regards to the farmers’ deaths. . The ultimate determine was labored out on the idea of inputs formally supplied by the police personnel themselves. Absolutely, one can’t get extra official than that?

However whilst a piece of crimson confronted officers stored quiet, their political masters proved to be a more durable breed. Political leaders are by no means out even when seen to be down. So the combat was continued on the political stage by essentially the most senior TMC chief of the district, the veteran Mr Akhil Giri.

‘How might the police learn about these deaths? Do they know extra in regards to the farmers than us, grassroot stage leaders? I reject the RTI figures. It’s all part of the bigger political conspiracy to malign the TMC, the one occasion that actually fights and beats the ruling occasion on the centre, the BJP. ….’ mentioned Mr Giri.

To this point nobody has contradicted MrGiri, mentioned to be one thing of a regulation in his residence district. None dared level out that within the immediate case, he was not precisely combating the BJP or different political opponents, however solely rubbishing the efforts of the TMC-controlled state police pressure. Once more, the state Residence Minister was none apart from the Chief Minister Banerjee herself!

So whom was Mr Giri actually concentrating on? There was no reply but. (IPA Service)

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