Myth and Reality:
Agrarian Scene in Left Ruled Bengal (1977 - 2002)
(This article, first published in Liberation Annual Nutnebr 2002, has been updated on the basis of two important documents released
On 21 June 2002 the Left Front Government in West Bengal celebrated a record 25 years in office at a stretch. This occasion has also inspired a steady stream of
Three Pillars and Gaps Galore
RHETORIC APART, the immediate programme of social-democratic reform in post-Naxalbari, post-Siddhartha[1] Bengal is known to have rested on three main pillars. In this section we discuss
IN SECTION I we have considered the consequences of agrarian reform (and the lack of it). But these do not fully describe the goings on in rural Bengal. Closely related
“What governments gave out with a flourish they often took away by stealth.” Wrote William C. Thisenhusen, summing up his study of agrarian reforms in the Third World in general
THE FACT that West Bengal has seen not a single sustained movement of the rural poor over the last two decades despite our best efforts cannot be explained simply by
On the morrow of the May 30 panchyat poll of 1993, five agrarian labourers were butchered in Karanda village of Burdwan district (another died later at the hospital) and thirty
