Sanghti: I am growing up

Kolkata is one of metropolitan city like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, etc. now-a-days Kolkata’s population (15 million)  is one of the densest cities in the world.  So far less than two percent of people have cars, but as ownership rises like in the much of India cars pose a particular issue in Kolkata: there’s very little space to put them. Only 6% of land is road, compared to 23% in Delhi for example, a comparatively tiny amount of space to move millions of people. Add to this India’s only tram system, which has snaked through the narrow streets since the 1880′s but in more recent years has had to compete with cars, buses, and auto rickshaws – and it’s slowly but surely being nudged out of the right of way.

That strip of earth and grass basically said tramways belong to trams and the people that ride them. But these were ripped up in 2004 and paved over to make more room in the narrow streets for cars and buses – so the trams run in the middle of the road and people have to dodge traffic to get to them.  The photo below shows a stop where passengers have to stand to board the tram with hardly any physical separation from traffic.

Rajrhat past: The honorable Minister has not divulged all information on the Rajarhat New Town Project in the said booklet. His only intention was to expose the participation of the Opposition parties at different point of time, at different degrees in the New Town Project. As if by proving the participation of the Opposition all the immoral evictions and environment destruction that had gone on would find legitimacy. He has tried to justify the New Town Project by quoting from the survey report of a professional organization. But he has not made the entire survey report public. The report has quoted the census reports of 1981 and 1991 and described the 3075 hectares of area as ‘rural in nature’. It has been reported that the main occupation of the people is agriculture, only 1% of them have 3 acres of land or more, whereas 87% of the Project land is unirrigated land etc. There is no reference to the vast wetlands of Rajarhat in the Professional Report. -

Urbanisation is Not in the Interest of the Urban People, but for Globalisation: The urbanization drive at Rajarhat is not an isolated incident. The Left Front Government is a small perpetrator in the massive urbanization, effected through evictions and massacres which have been going on in different countries in the interest of world-wide globalisation, driven by the interest of big capital, along the path recommended by the World Bank. In India the central government is the main priest of globalisation, the state governments are its junior attendants. The Left parties are pretending to be anti-globalisation, anti-central policy. They try to fool people by organizing anti-centre, anti-globalisation meetings and demonstrations. Yet they invited promoters, corporate giants in every economic sphere in West Bengal. Wherever you look in this state the only signs you will see are those of Ambuja, Shrachi, DLF – the giant construction firms. The sources of livelihood of the common people are being gobbled up by the development business. Rajarhat is also part of the central urbanization project – the West Bengal Left Front Government is its architect. In accordance with the World Bank condition the urban land ceiling act’s application has been suspended in the New Town Project (actually for many years the determination of ceiling in urban areas has been stopped). It is the interest and support of the middle and upper class provide jobs to the lakhs of people whose livelihood has been snatched away. 

All agree that in the age of market economy there is little scope of high employment generation in the organization.

The data of production of crops in 1993-94 and 2000-01 in Rajarhat are as follows. 

Deduction as per ruling of Supreme Court in

Adinarayan Shetty case AIR 1959 SC 429
Koushalaya Devi Bogra case AIR 1984 SC 832 and other cases.

Sourav Saha

PGPMC

2nd sem