A GIFT CALLED CHAOS

I am sick and tired of covering violence in Kolkata. In last week there were at least three incidents of violent clashes. And in last six months, I have covered countless ‘violence’. And the root behind all these violent agitations, I think and many would agree, is Singur and Nandigram. The police action in Singur started it all, the mass movement in Nandigram made people bolder and the police firing in Nandigram has grown a public hatred towards police and administration. After 14th March, police also are acting in a restrained manner. It is a standing instruction to them now. But if that leads to chaos in the civil life, there is more reason to worry.

This chaotic atmosphere is a joint gift from the ruling and opposition parties in form of Singur and Nandigram. The ruling front has handed over the weapon to the opposition parties and they are misusing it and not only the political parties, but also the ‘public’ are also taking advantage of the situation. There is an atmosphere of complete mistrust and intolerence everywhere. The opposition parties don’t trust the government. The government doesn’t trust the opposition parties. One opposition party doesn’t trust the other. People don’t trust the administration. The police don’t trust the ‘crowd’. And if we look deep, we can see the West Bengal is on the boil. Ironically it is the common people who suffer because of this unruly situation.

I can recall a series of incidents in last one and a half month where the agitation got violent. Be it the labour unrest in Hindmotor, be it the Jadavpur University or Presidency College elections, be it South City elections, be it Jalpaiguri or Midnapore, be it the agitation of the Jamiyet or be it the passengers’ unrest at Sealdah station, everywhere the language is the same. Yes, you can very well say we have seen such type of violent protests in the past too. But the attitude of the protestors has changed. Nandigram has fuelled the arrogant attitude of the protest. I have heard people asking us in this kind of demonstration, “cant you see what is happening in Nandigram?”, “where were you when the police killed innocent people in Nandigram”. And this tells us these people are aware and motivated by what is going on in the state. And I cant blame the police. How long can you tolerate the unruly crowd!

Here comes the role of the administrator. The people who are running the administration, giving orders to the police force and trying to manage things in the civil society. It is a complete callousness on their part. They are failing to find out methods to bring this state back to normalcy. I give you a small instance. On Saturday the drivers and the motormen in the Sealdah division went for a ‘flash strike’ (I am not going into the reason and justifiability of it). The trains stopped moving in and out of Sealdah station. Thousands of passengers got stranded. And there was no specific announcement from the railway authority. The passengers didn’t know what the reason was for disruption of train service, what was going on and when the train services would resume. They got angry and every crowd has some elements of hooliganism. So they went on rampage in the station. Police had to resort to lathicharge and many got injured. The whole incident would have been avoided if the administration would come forward maintaining some sort of transparency. This is a problem with everywhere.

This is high time the administration as well as all the stakeholders in this civil society should be more proactive to stop the effort to turn the state back to square one. And we the common people who suffer most should also contribute to the process with our little efforts. How? If you don’t have the answer, look for it from within.