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Royal Bengal Tigers` Life and Death Time | |||
| Published on June 19th, 2007 In Politics | Views 248 | ||||
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Royal Bengal Tigers` Life and Death Time Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551 Please read my Bengali article, AI MRITYU UPTYAKA AAMAR DESH BHARAT VARSHA ( This Valley of Death is My Country Bharat Varsha) IN AKKHA(R) JATRA`S LATEST ISSUE. Sorry, the little mag is not available on Net. Pl contact Mr Dibakar Sarkar for your copy. phone:033-25651329,9201492333,9339276044,9231636613. On the othre hand,Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has asked the government to help workers of closed tea gardens, who are suffering from starvation. She said the government is avoiding responsibility by saying the deaths have been caused by malaria or diarrhoea. The government says the deaths, which they have recorded to be around 570, are related to diseases, which are unrelated to starvation.She also said that the gardens can be brought back to life if the government grants 70 crore rupees. At least 700 tea workers have died from diseases linked with malnutrition over the past year after closure of tea estates left them with no income. Two years ago, poor production and low yields led to the closure of 16 tea estates in Jalpaiguri, a remote part of West Bengal, leaving plantation workers with no means of income.Investigations by the Supreme Court and tea workers" associations found this had directly led to the deaths, leaving hundreds more unable to feed themselves. India, the world"s largest producer and consumer of tea, has strong regulations in place to protect workers" rights and employees have powerful unions which often guarantee them free electricity, water and food as part of their salary packages. After Nandigram, Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has found another fresh front to launch against the ruling CPM government — the closed tea estates of Jalpaiguri. On Sunday, she called upon the workers of the closed Raipur tea estate and promised them all possible support if they took on the government. Mamata wants workers to break trade union loyalties and float an apolitical — Cha Bagan Pratiraksha Committee — on the lines of the Krishi Jami Raksha Committee in Singur for revamping the closed gardens. Addressing the workers at the tea estate on the outskirts of Jalpaiguri, she said: “It’s high time all tea workers united and launched a massive movement together to save the tea gardens. If you don’t do it now, the entire tea industry will die. You need not join Trinamul. You can form a Cha Bagan Pratiraksha Committee yourself and I promise every possible support to you." After Singur, Mamata reaches out to tea garden workers and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) patriarch Jyoti Basu said on Monday that the West Bengal government will take necessary action to curb any further violence by Trinamool Congress workers at the Tata Motors small car factory site in Singur. Meanwhile,The land acquisition agitation of Nandigram has begun spreading its dark shadow over other parts of West Bengal when villagers fought a pitched battle with police at Purushottampur in Asansol under Burdwan district on Sunday.The villagers who were protesting against the proposed Rs 10,000 crore expansion of the Indian Iron " Steel Company for the last two days, charged at the police on Sunday when the district administration deployed a massive force to acquire land. As soon as the land filling work began, hundreds of villagers whose land would be taken away due to the project, tried to stop the bulldozers, demanding permanent employment in the company. According to a Telegraph report, Lakshman Seth, the CPM MP from Tamluk and chairman of the Haldia Development Authority, today ruled out any chance of immediate peace in Nandigram despite party patriarch Jyoti Basu’s efforts. Biman Bose and Binoy Konar are also ready for a long war!However, Seth indicated that the CPM and the government would prefer to wait and watch rather than think of a police crackdown to end the stalemate in Nandigram, in view of the forthcoming municipal polls in adjoining port city of Haldia. The MP, known for his strong-arm tactics, today stressed that the land for a chemical hub in Haldia, originally planned in Nandigram, would be “acquired without bloodshed and tears”. In the wake of fresh violence in Nandigram, the Trinamool Congress has sought the intervention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to save the “Constitutional rights" of people there, with a warning that situation may worsen if “state-sponsored terrorism" was not stopped. TC General Secretary Partha Chatterjee has written to the Prime Minister three days after violence erupted in Nandigram over the SEZ issue. “Intervene and save the constitutional rights of the citizens of Nandigram and see that state-sponsored terrorism is stopped. Otherwise it may bring another disaster like that of March 14 when 14 people were killed in police firing," Chatterjee, also the Leader of the Opposition, said. Chatterjee led a delegation of Krishi Jami Rakya Committee, which also comprised some Naxalite faction, visited Nandigram during the day. Accusing Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee of promoting the violence, Chatterjee said he was speaking of peace in Kolkata while his party cadres here were attacking people of Nandigram in East Midnapore. INDIA: Reliance To Launch Food Processing Operations Dry spell in South India takes toll on tea output Purulia steel unit plan in last lap Labour reforms can generate 8 lakh jobs: WB The Bengal Tiger or Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is a subspecies of tiger primarily found in Bangladesh and India and also in Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and in southern Tibet.[1] It is the most common tiger subspecies, and lives in a variety of habitats, including grasslands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, scrub forests, wet and dry deciduous forests and mangroves. Its fur is orange-brown with black stripes, although there is a mutation that sometimes produces white tigers. It is the national animal of both Bangladesh and India.Please see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_tiger A Royal Bengal tiger was spotted dead near a railway bridge in north Bengal Monday.The incident took place near Dolong Railway Bridge between Ghokshadanga and Falakata railway station in Cooch Behar district. ‘After primary investigation we came to know that the tiger possibly came out of the Jaldapara wildlife sanctuary and was somehow run over by a train. I have already sent our officials to the spot and asked them to prepare a complete report determining the exact cause of this incident," West Bengal Forest Minister Ananta Roy told IANS. Local residents found the tiger lying dead near the railway tracks and informed the forest department officials. Roy said that in last few years it has been observed that there is a change in the nature of tigers and now they frequently come out of the forest area. ‘There"s no shortage of food for tigers in the Jaldapara wildlife sanctuary. The West Bengal Forest Department is trying to find out why they often come to areas inhabited by human beings in north Bengal," he said. Recently, a full-grown leopard was found dead in the Phulbari-Patan tea estate near Siliguri, about 600 km from the state capital.According to forest department officials, the leopard presumably died from poisoning as no external injury marks were found on its body. Royal Bengal Tiger: On Brink of Extinctionpowerful ones of the area. Environmentalists and tiger watchers here earnestly hope that the Royal Bengal tiger won"t become another extinct species as the … Searching for the near- extinct Bengal tiger in Wild IndiaOur final destination will take my husband Frank and I to Bandhavgarh National Park in search of the near-extinct Royal Bengal tiger. … Tigers-EndangeredThe Royal Bengal Tiger. Tiger, the arrogant and proud king of the jungle, … brink of extinction – may be extinct by the year 2010 – the Year of the Tiger! … Cinemax plans Rs 45cr foray into Kolkata India"s longest serving Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu served as the Chief Minister of West Bengal between 1977-2000. He is no less than any Royal bengal tiger.Did Jyoti Basu yield too much to Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee when she met the Marxist patriarch last week? The Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee camp thinks so! Now Basu comes with an aggressive stance against TMC! Earlier, not mentioning the name of Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee, he said the opposition was responsible for making the CPI(M) supporters homeless!Veteran CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu, on Friday, was all praise for the alternative compensation package prepared by state Industry Minister Nirupam Sen for the “unwilling" farmers! Whatever people say and analysise, Basu always toes the party line! Rejecting the proposal of Left Front partners for withdrawal of support to the Congress-led UPA Government, Veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu today said there was no alternative at the moment.Veteran Marxist Basu has welcomed the decision of the United Progressive Alliance and the Left to field Pratibha Patil as candidate for the Presidential poll. Mind you, the half-an-hour meeting late on Monday, 4th June evening between Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu and Banerjee saw the former agreeing “in principle" to ask the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Government to take a fresh stance on singur and nandigram. And he just turned U! Before taking an 180-degree turn from his stand at the meeting with Miss Mamata Banerjee, Mr Basu had concurred with the Trinamul chief’s views that not more than 600 acres are required for the car project and the rest 397 acres can easily be returned to the erstwhile land-owners. In a sworn affidavit before Calcutta High Court, the State government also confirmed that some 326 acres are there for which compensation has not yet been paid to the land-owners as they refused to accept the money. This could easily be diverted to the farmers for their rehabilitation. Basu expressed satisfaction over the compensation package worked out by the West Bengal government for Singur farmers. The farmers will be given the compensation package in lieu of the land acquired for the Tata Motors project. “I am very happy with the package worked out by Industry Minister Nirupam Sen. Now it"s almost in the final stage. We will distribute the packages to the farmers soon after the matter is settled in the court," he told reporters. Commenting on Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee"s suggestion to acquire 600 acres of government land across the road in Singur to relocate the project there, Basu said the land “does not belong to the state government and it is owned by many individuals". “We will talk to (party chief) Mamata Banerjee and decide the next course of action," he said. Nandigram was witnessing violence for the past three days with activists of the CPI(M) and the Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee (BUPC), spearheading the anti-farmland acquisition agitation for an SEZ in the area, clashing with each other. Mamata’s tea bloopers It was the promise to take up the cudgels on behalf of the suffering tea workers and Tapas Pal’s songs that helped the Trinamul Congress chief win over the crowds. It even earned her several rounds of applause during her stopovers at two of the gardens today. “The CPM-led state government has sold Darjeeling hills to Subash Ghisingh. Now it is trying to sell the closed tea estates to promoters,” she said, addressing two gatherings at Raipur and Sikarpur-Bhandapur tea estates this afternoon. “We have formed Save Farmland Committees in Singur and Nandigram. Now, we call on every resident of the closed estates to form a Save Tea Garden Committee.” Emotional as the appeal may be, it did little to hide her ignorance, especially when she launched her tirade against the Tatas. “We have heard that Tata Group, which owns tea estates here, is closing down and exploiting workers,” she said oblivious to the fact that all the four Tata gardens are running well in the Dooars. Asked later, Mamata failed to name any of the Tata garden but said workers of these estates had written to her about being exploited. At the meeting in Sikarpur-Bhandapur, 30 km from Siliguri, Mamata calculated the tentative population of the garden as 80,000. She, however, rectified it to 8,000 after a party leader whispered the realistic figure on stage. The poor homework again came to the fore when she interacted with journalists. The Trinamul chief could not furnish any specific proposal that her party would pursue in the closed gardens but harped instead on the need for an extra allocation of Rs 70 crore from the state over and above the Rs 16 crore sanctioned for the first quarter of this fiscal. “We have heard that more than a thousand people have died in the gardens. A core group comprising 15 leaders of the region has been formed and they will soon send a report on the tea estates to me,” she said on her way to Shikarpur from Raipur. Gautam Deb, the Darjeeling district Trinamul president, has been made chairman of the core group. At the end of her speech in Shikarpur, actor turned Trinamul MLA from Alipore Tapas Pal took the dais and belted out: “Bashbo bhalo/ Rakhbo bhore (Will love you and keep you close to the heart)” from one of his films to a cheering crowd. He sung the same two lines in Raipur, 50 km from Siliguri, as well. Earlier, Mamata, too, had got her share of the applause when she said: “The state is spending Rs 135 crore as subsidy for the Tatas at Singur but is silent about extending financial help of Rs 70 crore which I know is enough to revive all the closed tea estates.” “In case a north Bengal-wide movement fails to attract government attention, we will hold demonstrations at the tea board and other government offices in Calcutta.” The Trinamul chief was vocal about women trafficking. “Hundreds of girls and women are being smuggled out of tea gardens. They are being made victims of poverty. It is a shame for the chief minister whose government has failed to stop the practice,” she told reporters. The party plans to demonstrate in front of the Jalpaiguri divisional commissioner’s office on July 9, demanding the reopening of the closed gardens. After Nandigram and Singur, it"s Burnpur Bombs " bullets fly, cops blame Maoists CPM activists continued their retaliatory strikes against the Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee, hurling bombs and firing across the Talpatti canal. The canal is a stone’s throw from Tekhali bridge, where the CPM began its revenge attack yesterday.According to officials, the first shots were heard around 11 this morning. They were fired from an abandoned brick kiln on the Khejuri side.Bombs were also hurled across the canal and the volley continued till 12.30 pm. There were, however, no casualties. A CPM leader had said yesterday that the party wanted to avenge Friday’s “humiliation”. A Pratirodh Committee mob had gone on the rampage in villages in Nandigram, burning down CPM refugee camps and injuring five policemen. Over 600 CPM supporters were left homeless. The police today said Maoists were responsible for the mayhem. Yesterday, they had blamed “outsiders”, while claiming off the record that the Naxalites had led the attack. Around 15 to 20 Calcutta-based Maoists are still holed up in Nandigram, they added. The police found over 22 spent cartridges — some were 8 mm and the rest 12-bore cartridges — and used bullets of .315 rifles today. Boxes in which the 8-mm cartridges had been packed were also found on Bhangabera bridge. They had been manufactured in Pune. An official said some of the attackers were armed with sophisticated weapons. “Among the 300-odd people in the mob that day, around 50 were carrying firearms. Twenty of them were sophisticated weapons.” Boral said the police have requested CPM supporters in Khejuri to “lie low and not invite further trouble. There should not be any further provocation for more violence”. The Pratirodh Committee said the “battle” would continue till the committee’s demands are met. It wants punishment for those responsible for the March 14 police firing and compensation for the families of the dead. http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Jun182007/scroll200706188096.asp?section=frontpagenews However, farmers in Nandagudi are yet to come out on the streets to express their views. The nucleus of the issue in Nandagudi, unlike Nandigram, is the real estate potential because of its proximity to the upcoming international airport in Devanahalli. Nandagudi is just 20 km away from the airport site. Therefore, the value of land in all the 36 villages in Nandagudi, where the SEZ is proposed to come up, has reached a dizzying high: the cost per acre is around Rs 40 lakh to Rs 50 lakh. Many BJP leaders and a section of IAS officers have advised the government not to go ahead with the SEZ plan as Hoskote taluk is facing water shortage.But the State Government sprung a surprise after the Cabinet meeting last week by announcing the setting up of a fully private, multi-product SEZ covering 12,350 acres of land in Nandagudi hobli, in place of a township, as proposed earlier. The cost of the SEZ is Rs 15,000 crore and nearly 7,605 acres of farmers’ land will be used for the project. What has infuriated the farmers here is that while land-owners in villages surrounding Nandagudi are making a killing by selling land to developers, their hands are tied. In fact, the land prices in Nandagudi have begun falling ever since the Government announced the township and their apprehension is that it would fall further. “Land rates in all areas surrounding Nandagudi are steadily going up, while in Nandagudi it is falling. No developer is coming this way as they know that they cannot buy land here. If our land was free of any township or SEZ proposals, it would have fetched around Rs 1 crore per acre,” Lakshmish, who owns 20 acres of land, adds. In the neighbouring Sulebele and Kasaba hoblies, the developers are on a land-buying spree. The cost has crossed Rs 1 crore per acre in these places. Nearly 80 per cent of 36 villages, where the SEZ is proposed, is irrigated. It is one of the main suppliers of vegetables to Bangalore. “I am illiterate. But I am earning Rs 30,000 per month through farming. Will the people who are going to own SEZ give me a job matching the same income?… If my land is taken away then where will I work?,” asked Vijay Kumar, another farmer of Nelavagilu said. Meanwhile, the farmers affiliated to the Hitarakshana Samithi have planned a series of protests in the coming days, both in Nandagudi and Bangalore City. SEZ SAGA These are some of the questions posed by Deccan Herald to a cross-section of farmers in Nandagudi Q: Are you aware that the govt is planning an SEZ in your area? Q: Will you sell the land? Q: But by selling, you can get huge money… Q: But if the market price is offered by the promoter? Q: Will you sell off land to a developer, if not for the SEZ? This responsibility has been assigned to the industrialists who want to set up industries. The government’s nod will be given only after the industrialists meet the farmers directly, convince them, get their approval and purchase lands on agreeable terms. The government will not interfere, he said. Sougata Mukhopadhyay http://www.ibnlive.com/news/cpim-young–restless-at-30/43133-4.html PARTY RULES: CPM leaders have formed these rules for new candidates in the fold. |
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