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H13987

Headlines : Corporations

Summary:

In tandem with India’s ruling elite, the CPM and the Left Front have since 1991 supported, in West Bengal and nationally, the drive to privatize, deregulate, reduce agricultural price-supports, and dismantle public services and social programs, so as to attract foreign capital and promote export-led growth.

So, few in Washington batted an eyelid when 14 peasants were killed by Bengal police while protecting their lands from forced expropriation. Beyond economic affinity, the “Left Front” in Bengal continues to prop up the Congress-led government in Delhi and hence is an important element in maintaining the alliance between India and the U.S.

[Posted By Szamko]

By Arun Kumar and Kranti Kumara
Republished from The World Socialist Website

Architect of the massacre of 14 peasants at Nandigram finds approval from the Bush administration

In what constitutes a resounding vote of confidence in the pro-investor policies of West Bengal’s Left Front government, the Bush administration has invited Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the state’s chief minister and a politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), to visit the US.

United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab issued the public invitation to Bhattacharjee April 14, after she and a high-level US business delegation had discussed trade and investment with the chief minister at his office in the state capital, Kolkata (Calcutta).

After noting that Bhattacharjee has already been invited to the US “by many US-based companies,” Schwab declared, “Today I add my voice to these invitations. We would like to hear about the political and development aspects of his success” (emphasis added).

The US invitation came exactly one month to the day after security forces, acting on orders from West Bengal’s CPM-led Left Front government, killed 14 peasants and wounded more than 70 in Nandigram. A rural area 150 km from Kolkata, Nandigram had been convulsed for months by protests against the state government’s plans to expropriate 10,000 acres of land for a Special Economic Zone to be operated by the Indonesian-based Salim Group.

[end excerpt]

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