By Ashis Biswas
In West Bengal, the controversy over what number of farmers have dedicated suicide in latest occasions is a settled difficulty. Regardless of strenuous efforts made by the state Authorities of late that no distressed farmer ever killed himself through the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) tenure, it’s common information that such claims fly within the face of established details.
The phenomenon is certainly not 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 through the previous decade or so, there was a rising tendency on a part of the west Bengal Authorities to minimize all destructive socioeconomic traits, 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 individuals struggling or dying from dengue fever, malaria and different seasonal illnesses.
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 had been reporting many extra deaths !
The rationale: West Bengal wished to assert that its file 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 ideas from senior officers concerning the harmful 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 injury attributable to the pandemic, with many deaths going unreported! Worse, because the centre despatched emergency medical provides and different assorted assistance on the premise of state reviews obtained, frequent individuals suffered woefully from a scarcity of brief provides of important medicines!
At current, seasonal dengue fever has damaged out in a significant approach, claiming some lives in Bengal already. There have been complaints from sufferers /frequent those that medical clinics run in Behala in South West Kolkata, as properly official hospitals in south Kolkata are in some way avoiding the point out of dengue of their reviews on sufferers!
To return to the farmers’ suicides: Current information 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 verify 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 through the TMC’s tenure!
As a senior scribe explains, it’s common for many ruling get together 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 previous, which have to be a brand new low even for up to date spin docs’, he mentioned.
There may be nothing stunning about the truth that in just one West Bengal district, West Midnapore, at the least 122 farmers dedicated suicide in 2021. Additional, the dreaded march of demise continues: this 12 months to this point, 34 extra individuals have killed themselves, in the identical district. So there have been 100-plus suicides final 12 months and these will likely be adopted by extra instances in 2022. Going by the stats on farmers’ suicides in different states, the figures for Midnapore should 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 accessible solely in response to a query put ahead by the RTI mechanism. Earlier, mediapersons probing the problem for years had been repeatedly fobbed off by stony-faced officers at varied 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 throughout the bigger Indian wasteland for farmers. In different main states 1000’s of peasants had been reportedly committing suicide yearly!
Media reviews highlighting the destructive 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.
Nevertheless, they fell silent once they learnt that official RTI-related workers had placed on the job police personnel of 23 thanas within the West Midnapore district, in search of particulars in regards to the farmers’ deaths. . The ultimate determine was labored out on the premise of inputs formally offered by the police personnel themselves. Certainly, one can’t get extra official than that?
However whilst a bit of pink 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 struggle was continued on the political degree by essentially the most senior TMC chief of the district, the veteran Mr Akhil Giri.
‘How may the police learn about these deaths? Do they know extra in regards to the farmers than us, grassroot degree leaders? I reject the RTI figures. It’s all part of the bigger political conspiracy to malign the TMC, the one get together that basically fights and beats the ruling get together on the centre, the BJP. ….’ mentioned Mr Giri.
Up to now nobody has contradicted MrGiri, mentioned to be one thing of a regulation in his residence district. None dared level out that within the on the spot case, he was not precisely combating the BJP or different political opponents, however solely rubbishing the efforts of the TMC-controlled state police drive. Once more, the state Dwelling 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)
The put up Peasants Suicides Persevering with In Trinamool Congress Dominated Bengal first appeared on IPA Newspack.
