The Left Front in West Bengal
There is an interesting study from the Indicus Analyticus, a think tank founded by Bibek Debroy. After being kicked out of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation for forgetting to mix politics with economics (he authored a study which placed Modi’s Gujarat atop of India’s states in facilitating industry), he has set up this think tank. While I am skeptical of the economists who sing hosannas about the growth rate while forgetting about the human misery it often unfolds, I admire his writings. They are at least always thought provoking.
This study available in the net at http://www.indicus.net/Media/index.php/2009/1324-transforming-west-bengal-changing-the-agenda-for-an-agenda-for-change , calls for an overthrow of the comrades. If not in so many words, he points out that West Bengal is ripe for change and in his own words “If it has not succeeded in the past, why should it succeed in the future?” There is statistical data to show that West Bengal is at best in the middle rank of the States of the Union. There is no reason for it to be so, considering that it was in the first rank in almost all parameters in the 1960s. To mention one or two, we have 24.7 % people under the poverty line (So much for the “we have looked after the poor, so the rich are after our blood” line of the comrades. We are behind states like Tripura, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in literacy. Our maternal mortality ratio is 194 (In Maharashtra it is 149).
The more important point that this study has made is that the Northern districts of Uttar Dinajpur, Dakhin Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar have fared far worse than the already miserable West Bengal state. In this they have company from the Western districts, Puruliya, Birbhum and Bankura. It does not need a master’s degree in social sciences to realize that these are the districts ,most affected by separatist political movements.
Living in North Bengal has opened my eyes to the discrimination that these districts face from the Kolkata centric administration. The State Highway linking Jalpaiguri to Cooch Behar has four wooden bridges (In 2009!), which often break down in the face of the traffic that they have to face. Recently a bridge which took some 40 years to build has made it possible to avoid these bridges, but this happened a good 30+ years after the Left front came to power assuring us of their love for the rural and undeveloped areas.
We have to face it. The left Front Government is a failure on all fronts. It has to go. They are incapable of running a municipality properly, not to speak of a state. If the alternative is chaos the s, so be it. As Gandhi said dug the Quit India movement," Leave us to Chaos if necessary, but go!"( though not of course in these words)
This study available in the net at http://www.indicus.net/Media/index.php/2009/1324-transforming-west-bengal-changing-the-agenda-for-an-agenda-for-change , calls for an overthrow of the comrades. If not in so many words, he points out that West Bengal is ripe for change and in his own words “If it has not succeeded in the past, why should it succeed in the future?” There is statistical data to show that West Bengal is at best in the middle rank of the States of the Union. There is no reason for it to be so, considering that it was in the first rank in almost all parameters in the 1960s. To mention one or two, we have 24.7 % people under the poverty line (So much for the “we have looked after the poor, so the rich are after our blood” line of the comrades. We are behind states like Tripura, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in literacy. Our maternal mortality ratio is 194 (In Maharashtra it is 149).
The more important point that this study has made is that the Northern districts of Uttar Dinajpur, Dakhin Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar have fared far worse than the already miserable West Bengal state. In this they have company from the Western districts, Puruliya, Birbhum and Bankura. It does not need a master’s degree in social sciences to realize that these are the districts ,most affected by separatist political movements.
Living in North Bengal has opened my eyes to the discrimination that these districts face from the Kolkata centric administration. The State Highway linking Jalpaiguri to Cooch Behar has four wooden bridges (In 2009!), which often break down in the face of the traffic that they have to face. Recently a bridge which took some 40 years to build has made it possible to avoid these bridges, but this happened a good 30+ years after the Left front came to power assuring us of their love for the rural and undeveloped areas.
We have to face it. The left Front Government is a failure on all fronts. It has to go. They are incapable of running a municipality properly, not to speak of a state. If the alternative is chaos the s, so be it. As Gandhi said dug the Quit India movement," Leave us to Chaos if necessary, but go!"( though not of course in these words)
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