Panchayat Poll ’08: A Preliminary Discussion on Strategies
Nothing can remain the same all through. The masses of rural toilers were summing-up the past experiences on their own and has been feeling betrayed by the party that once the masses themselves enthroned. The feeling of despair was giving rise to wrath. The first sparks of rural spontaneous outbursts were seen in only four or five villages in 2004, and in 2007 it surfaced again more widely in various districts of West Bengal apparently against the corruption of party–govt (including panchayat)–rural bigwigs. Also we saw the Singur-Bhangar-Haripur-Nandigram during 2006 and 2007, where the villagers united to fight govt-party-police-admin nexus attempted to grab land for foreign and native capitalists. In many of these struggles we saw the almost same trend (albeit weakly) that is being witnessed among the workers, i.e., unity of the rural masses irrespective of or cutting across their former party affiliation or adherence, their dissociation from old established parties spontaneously unsettling the power equation of the villages, doing things and achieving feats which they themselves would have thought to be ‘impossible’ few days before, taking the rein of their own fight and organisation themselves, rebelling against the agonising life, etc. This is an important phenomenon that must be kept in mind before thinking of the tasks ahead of the rural toiling masses in the ensuing panchayat polls.
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