Kolkata: Left Organisations Plan Huge Rally in Brigade Parade Grounds on Sunday

Kolkata: Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Grounds is getting ready to host a huge protest gathering on Sunday, April 20, of toiling people -- workers, farmers, agricultural labourers and slum dwellers.  The call for the rally has been called by Left mass organisations, namely, the West Bengal units of Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) and Bustee Unnayan Samity (a slum dwellers’ organisation).

“We will be braving the scorching sun for this rally, as our comrades, and workers of our organisations, who have been daily braving the onslaught of fascist TMC (Trinamool Congress) and communal BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) forces, have decided to come out and raise their voices in unison,” Subhas Mukherjee, CITU state president, told Newsclick.

Mukherjee claimed that Sunday’s rally would be an “unparalleled assemblage of toiling people from all over the state who are withstanding the oppressive policies of the BJP-led Union government and the nefarious designs of the TMC-led state government” to divide the working people in the name of identity politics. More than a lakh people have already entered Kolkata from North Bengal, and more are on their way,” he added.

With demands ranging from scrapping of the new labour code, Rs 26,000 minimum monthly wages for the working people, provision of health insurance for the workforce, guaranteeing a fair minimum support price (MSP) for agricultural produce in the state, the rally will also highlight the “nefarious designs” of BJP and TMC, both ruling parties, that are encouraging middlemen to reap the profits of a good year of harvest. It will also demand an effective state crop insurance scheme.  

Among other issues, the rally plans to take up the plight of teachers whose recruitment process is filled with corruption as well as demands of slumdwellers for ‘thika’ tenancy rights.

Speaking with Newsclick, Subir Ghosh alias Giri, a leading trade union activist, who works in the Garfa area of Jadavpur in the slum colonies of the erstwhile migrated people from East Bengal, said: “People are aghast at the scale of corruption in the state government, which is facing raps from the judiciary every day. In this background, TMC and BJP are trying to divide the working people by pursuing and fanning the agenda of identity politics and communalism.”  

Ghosh, who spends a considerable time in North Bengal, addressed street meetings ahead of Sunday’s rally, explaiingn to people how TMC and BJP were both pursuing the “identity agenda” in North Bengal to neutralise the fight of tea garden workers for fair wages.

“BJP is saying that a new state will be formed by bifurcating West Bengal drawing a straight line from the Farakka bridge in Murshidabad district and is fanning dangerous secessionist sentiments,” he said at the meetings.

Attacking TMC, Ghosh alleged that the ruling party in the state “quiet and not speaking out against the dangerous demands (of BJP) that aims to divide the people of state who culturally and culinary-wise “belong to the same stock”. TMC is taking advantage of the confusion.”

Ghosh said tea estate in North Bengal were being handed over to real estate developers, who were destroying the tea gardens and making tea workers redundant in the name of various projects.

On violence, Ghosh spoke about how in 2013 and 2014, “TMC hooligans” and police rained torture on him, beat him up mercilessly, due to which he had to be hospitalized. “The same police who aided those hooligans pressured me to withdraw police complaints against them, which I resisted,” he said.

Ghosh also alleged that “all those criminals who took part in the operation to beat up trade union activists” in Garfa region of Jadavpur were now roaming free.

Thousands of activists of CITU, AIKS and AIAWU are expected in Kolkata April 20, giving “much needed oxygen” to the working people’s fight for “roti, kapda, makaan” (food, clothing, shelter) in the state, said Ghosh.