LETTER: Anand Patwardhan
Dear Vinod (Mubayi), Daya (Varma) and Sekhar (Ramakrishnan)
Your article “The Siege of Nandigram” in INSAF Bulletin Supplement (March 2007) is poorly thought out, perhaps born out of distance from the scene.
At first I thought you were being ironic but was dismayed to find that you were serious. Your defense of Budhadeb’s murderous attacks on Singur and Nandigram by characterizing the entire oppositional movement as some sort of rightist plot is just not based on facts, regardless of the Mamatas (Mamata Banaerjee of Trinamool Congress) in the midst.
That you believe the official party line reminds me of how some comrades in the past were great defenders of Pol Pot, using the untruths that the politburo of the day handed out to label all opposition as “right wing propaganda”. I thought we had learned to distrust politburos, or at least to subject their pronouncements to greater scrutiny.
The truth is that the war against forced acquisition of land in the name of SEZs is a new spontaneous class war raging all across this country and at least one dominant part of the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist) has clearly aligned itself with the haves and the grab-some-mores. You think these forces really oppose Modi (Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat)? Quite the contrary, the Modi model of economics has been hailed and copied!
Do you believe India’s path to progress lies in the manufacture of more petrol-driven automobiles, the “peoples’ car”? I feel sad if you do. We are being misled into thinking that growth of GDP and Sensex is a real gain, no matter what is being produced, no matter how and at what cost.
Anand Patwardhan
(Mumbai)