[Onthebarricades] WEST BENGAL, INDIA: "Ration Strike agaist Ration Riot"

[Andy]

Ration Strike agaist Ration Riot
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto
Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone:
91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl at gmail.com
Watch: Kolkata bids adieu to Goddess Durga
http://www.ibnlive.com/videos/50912/watch-kolkata-bids-adieu-to-goddess-durga.html

Known for its magnificent illuminations on innovative
themes, the College Square Puja Pandal in Kolkata has
been a big draw for cricket lovers during the Durga
Puja festival this year. Cricket is mixed with
Hegemony Carnival. What a remix!Five-days of
celebrations of Durga Puja finally ended as West
Bengal bid a tearful adieu to the goddess and her
children Sunday, marking another yearlong wait for her
autumnal homecoming.
"We will continue the strike until we are satisfied
our people are safe. We cannot do business in the
present kind of atmosphere," said Mukshed Ali,
vice-president of the West Bengal Ration Dealers
Association.
Nearly 5,000 dealers - out of a total of some 20,370
dealers - have also given their licenses back as part
of the protest. The "rations shops" are the backbone
of the public distribution system in Indian
states.Analysts say the incidents are a source of
major embarrassment for West Bengal's left-wing
coalition government which usually prides itself on
the issue of food security in rural areas.
Mamata Bannerjee, challanger to Marxist Capitalist
Chief minister Buddha Deb calls it Second Food
Movement reminding sixties, paradoxically, with
Congress Rule. The food movement caused Vote Bank
mobilisation in favour of the Marxist which reflected
in 1967 general election. It was the beginning of
Change! Ironically Mamata fails once again to lead the
masses in agitation! The Congress today said the food
riots in Left-ruled West Bengal were a matter of
serious concern and reflected the enormous
deficiencies in the availability, distribution,
pricing and regulatory systems in that State.
In West Bengal, more than 20,000 ration shops were
closed on Monday.It was the first day of an indefinite
strike called by the West Bengal Modified Ration
Dealers Association and the All Bengal Ration Shop
Owner Association. Ration dealers facing public ire
for corruption in the Public Distribution System have
also demanded better security from the state
government. They have even offered mass resignations
and will meet Chief Minister Buddhadab Bhattacharya on
Tuesday.
At least 50 ration shop owners were assaulted in the
last few weeks.It was alleged that they were selling
off PDS grains in the open market at higher prices.
'At least one third of the total 20,370 ration dealers
have resigned Monday. The rest would resign tomorrow
(Tuesday) since owing to holiday not everyone could
put in their papers today (Monday),' West Bengal
Modified Ration Dealers' Association (WBMRDA) state
committee general secretary Jagannath Koley told IANS.

'We will call off our protest only if the chief
minister takes proper action and protects us from the
people's ire. The system should be immediately revised
with the formation of a high level committee with our
representation,' Koley said.

'The system is itself full of errors and we are facing
the peoples' wrath because of the government's bogus
rationing system. The age of the consumers has also
not been updated for the past 10 years and so many of
them receive lower quantity of rations,' he added.

'The bogus cards of the APL (Above Poverty Line)
should be scrapped and the BPL (Below Poverty Line)
people should be given cards afresh. Why should we
take the slur of government failure?' asked Koley.

'The government should also ensure that a dealer can
earn at least between Rs.10,000 and 15,000 a month. We
are meeting the food minister on Tuesday and hopefully
the chief minister would also meet us and take
suitable action,' he said.
Reacting to the resignations, N.K. Saha, a district
controller of food and supplies, said: 'We cannot
accept such a mass resignation letter because it is
completely illegal. There is no provision of such mass
resignation in the contract of licensing system
between the government and ration dealers.'

'If they do not take food materials and disturb the
public distribution system, the government can take
action against them,' he said.
The ration dealers' association had earlier sent a
notice to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya
informing hin that they would resort to mass
resignation Oct 22 onwards.
Making a counterattack on Left, the Congress today
suggested it to concentrate more on ration riot facing
West Bengal and leave the nuke deal for the time
being, Sahara Samay sources said.Interacting with
newsmen, the Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi
said in New Delhi that the Left should not give
priority to Indo-US nuke deal issue, which has been
raised by the Left saying that it would hit common
man.
The Left should first look into the food crisis which
is directly hitting the common man in a more intense
way that the nuke deal, they added.
On the other hand, the West Bengal government is
blaming the Centre for the ration riots that spread
across the state in the last one week.
Singhvi also dismissed as "baseless" the speculation
that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has threatened to
quit over the nuclear deal controversy, they said.
The assertion came amid reports that the Prime
Minister had told the meeting that he had felt let
down by the allies over the nuclear deal and was
feeling embarrassed.
A major chunk of the 20,370 ration dealers in West
Bengal Monday resigned en masse demanding protection
from violent mobs and a thorough revision of the
state's public distribution system (PDS).The Socialist
Unity Centre of India (SUCI) has called a 12-hour
statewide shutdown on Oct 30 to protest against the
deteriorating PDS in West Bengal. Dealers of
government-licensed "fair price shops" have begun an
indefinite strike in India's West Bengal state in
protest against attacks on them. Ration dealers across
West Bengal ~ facing public ire for over a month for
corruption in the Public Distribution System ~
launched an indefinite strike Today in demand of
better security. Thousands of dealers in the state,
including in Kolkata, were suffering from a sense of
insecurity since the beginning of the agitation by the
people in Bankura district on 16 September, West
Bengal Ration Dealers' Association vice-president Mr
Mukshed Ali said.More than 50 dealers have been
attacked by mobs complaining of corrupt practices. One
dealer took his life. Others have been forced to pay
up for allegedly selling subsidised grains meant for
the poor in the black market.The outlets, commonly
known as ration shops, are licensed by the state to
sell subsidised grain to India's poor. Tens of
thousands of ration shop dealers downed their shutters
on Monday in protest against the attacks.

But they have been accused of large scale pilferage of
food grains meant for the poor into the black market.
The government subsidises the cost of rice and wheat
for the poor.West Bengal's has the worst record on the
theft of public grain after the northern state of
Uttar Pradesh, authorities say. According to data
released by the federal government, wheat and rice
meant for rural poor worth more than $800m was stolen
in Uttar Pradesh in the last financial year. West
Bengal came next, with stolen rice and wheat worth
$467m.
Mob violence first erupted against dealers at
Sonamukhi in Bankura district on September 15. It has
now spread to at least six districts and sporadic
attacks have been reported from a few more districts.
Federal agriculture minister Sharad Pawar blamed the
West Bengal government for alleged failure to check
the pilferage of food grains - a large part of which,
he alleged, was finding its way across the border into
Bangladesh . The West Bengal government denied the
charge and said the present crisis is because the
federal government has not been supplying enough.
Statewide Rallies Call For Further
Strengthening Of The Ration System
A rally in Siliguri in defence of Public Distribution
System
B Prasant

http://pd.cpim.org/2007/1021/10212007_bengal_1.htm

FOR a week now, rallies are organised all over Bengal
at the behest of the different units of the CPI(M) and
the Left mass organisations on the rousing call for a
strengthening as opposed to the attempted decimation
of the system of rationing. The rallies called for
punishing the few corrupt ration dealers (perhaps less
than 5 per cent of the total number of such men and
women).
The people have also demonstrated clearly their deep
and burgeoning fury at the planned attack on the
public distribution system and the foray at causing
anarchy to raise its ugly head on a sensitive issue
concerning essential commodities.
The towns and villages of the affected districts in
particular have witnessed rallies and marches. Nalhati
in Birbhum saw marches and rallies by tens of
thousands of people throughout the past week as did
Rampurhat, Mallarpur, and adjacent rural areas.
Addressing the rallies and leading the marchers were
the comrades of the district secretariat of the
Birbhum unit of the CPI(M), including Dilip Ganguly
the secretary. A large protest rally was held at the
Sitala village where Trinamul Congress, Pradesh
Congress, and Maoists had forced a ration dealer to
commit suicide in front of his family who pleaded for
mercy.
The Jaipur block in adjacent district of Bankura saw
similar rallies and marches. Largest of the rallies
were held at Moynapore and Shyamnagar where planned
attackers had pounced on ration shops and on hapless
ration dealers, looting and pillaging. Strong
deputations were made at the offices of the food
department, block development secretariat, and the
local police stations, lodging protests against the
attacks on the public distribution system and on the
score of misinforming people about a purported
shortage of essential commodities in the ration shops.
In south 24 Parganas the local units of the CPI(M)
organised rallies in demand of keeping the ration
system going strongly as before. The supply of
essential commodities must be made more coordinated
and prompt. The distribution of 'blue dyed'
unadulterated kerosene oil available in the ration
shops has always been in great demand, in this
district as elsewhere in Bengal. The CPI(M) units have
insisted in their deputation to the administration
that the earlier regularity in the distribution of
kerosene oil (one litre per head) should be
reinstituted as quickly as possible.
The south 24 Parganas unit secretary of the CPI(M)
Santimoy Bhattacharya reports that such deputations
have been presented before administrative offices of
the district at places like Kultali, Mathurapur-1,
Canning, as well as Gosaba, Basanti, Kakdwip, Sagar,
Namkhana, and Patharpratima deep into the Sunderbans
area. Mass conventions have been held at Nadia,
Jalpaiguri, Murshidabad, and Maldah districts.
ROLE OF THE UPA GOVT
In a signed front page article in the daily organ of
the Bengal CPI(M), Ganashakti, state secretary of the
Bengal unit Biman Basu has written at some detail
explaining the ills that plague the ration system all
over the country. He also dealt on the role of the
incumbent Congress-led UPA government in the entire
sad episode of giving handle indirectly or otherwise,
to anti-socials in the pay of the Bengal opposition,
in disrupting the public distribution programme
itself, and causing panic amongst the people of the
state through a persistent lie campaign.
It is a well-known fact that Bengal is one of the very
few instances where the public distribution system
flourished under the aegis of the Left Front
government over the past three decades. That the
attack on the ration offices and on ration dealers in
general should be organised by the scions of the
opposition and the goons in their pay is hardly in
need of any explanation.
He said the ongoing mass initiative in defence of
public distribution system is greatly needed to keep
the mass distribution system of essential commodities
going. Biman Basu has sharply attacked the clear
unwillingness of the Congress-run UPA government in
Delhi to conform to the more popular aspects of the
Common Minimum Programme or CMP. He says that included
in the union government's dislike is the call for
augmentation and proper running of the PDS all over
the country. Bengal under Left Front governance has
fought off the attenuating supply of ration shop
commodities from the central allocation and has
bravely kept the ration system going, despite this
severe handicap.
Biman Basu has cited statistics to delineate the
picture as it exists in the ration system. For some
time now, the union government has cut down and
drastically, the allocation of wheat for those above
the poverty level (APL) from just over 1,02,000 metric
tonnes (MT) to just 49,000 MT. The per head wheat
allocation has come down to 250 grams.
Similarly, in rice, another staple cereal, the central
allocation has been reduced from just under 2,30,000
MT to a whisker over 7000 MT. The percentages in wheat
and rice currently represent 3.36 per cent of the
average offtake. The union government has also
apportioned a price differential on the kisans.
Foreign firms are allowed to enjoy a commissioned
price of Rs 1600 per quintal in wheat with the Indian
kisan having to languish at Rs 850 per quintal. The
union government has also ignored the repeated
exhortations made by the Bengal LF government to
increase the quota for kerosene oil.
SEVEN-POINT PROGRAMME
The squeezing out of the supply line has certainly
been made use of by the Bengal opposition. Wild
rumours about a widespread hoarding and
black-marketing by ration shop owners have been
assiduously spread, a willing and anti-communist media
ready to oblige to help propagation of the vilest of
untruths. Alongside the burgeoning mass movement
against all attempts at disruption of the public
distribution system, a seven-point programme has been
devised by CPI(M) to keep the rationing system going
strong.
Ration cards are personal possessions and must not be
transferred
Ration shops and offices must display the quantum of
essential commodities in stock every day and the
Panchayat bodies kept informed
Per head apportionment of rationed goods under the
various projects like APL, BPL, Annapurna, Antyodaya,
and Annayojana etc must be clearly displayed and
propagated
A strong campaign movement must be launched all over
the state against the union government's anti-people
step in the planned reduction of the supply of
rationed commodities to Bengal
The campaign-movement must also highlight the
discrimination from which the kisans suffer because of
differentiated procurement prices
Every effort shall be made to keep the ration system
going and to strengthen it wherever needed
Ration goods dealers must ensure 100 per cent supply
of essential commodities
LOOTED GOODS RETURNED
A welcome development recently has been the streaming
in of people to return the looted goods and this
happened in an increasing number of districts where
such looting had taken place. The people have also
brought in the criminals who perpetrated the evil
deeds including inducing and forcing ration shop
owners to commit suicide. As the days go by and the
state enters into the festival season, the attackers
have made to become isolated and the people are no
longer willing to tolerate the attacks made on the
ration system by clutches of motivated anti-socials
egged on by the worthies of the Bengal opposition and
the media.