For all who are defending the police killings in Nandigram yesterday, blaming it on law and order disruption created by the opposition and Naxalites, I need to ask you something.
For all who are students here.... Are you going to let your schools and colleges close if the authorities decide to shut it down to build a factory there? You know that, your only hope for a better future is studying, and you cannot leave it at any cost. They may pay you hefty compensations for your losses but will you stop studying for that?
For all who are working... I assume that you all are specialized in some domain or the other...and you know that the farmer's domain is farming.
Will anyone of you quit your job if you are forced to do so in the name of whatever it may be? You know that what you know is to work in your domain and if you quit, whatever money you may get as compensation, a day'll come when you'll starve.
I am sure the answer will be "NO"...none of us will be willing to sacrifice such things for any reason.
Sacrificing a house for land acquisition is easy since you know that you can build a new one with the money you get as compensation...but sacrificing the farming land is too hard when you know that what you know is only farming.
Will industrialization in any way help these farmers? It may help engineers, skilled labourers and a few other sets of people, but never these poor people (who sweat in the sun and drench in the rain all through the year to grow their crop and then fall into party-politics at the time of harvest, striving hard to sell their reap). If pushed into the factories, they can at most become unskilled labourers, which in no way is going to improve the condition in which they are living now.
Then why is this Industrialisation needed? Is it to improve the condition of the people who are already living a comparitively better life? Is it justified to throw 70% of the population(farmers) into darkness to improve the lives of the remaining 30%?
It's high time we stop thinking of our own selfish benefits and start thinking beyond that. Because, what is happening to those poor people might one day come uopn us. If we don't protest now, it may be too late.
And for those who think that, thinking of farmers will go against industrialization, I can assure you that, unless motivated by other unexplainable reasons, there are host of other ways, and acres of barren and not so fertile land there in West Bengal, which, if utilized optimally, can bring industrialization, svaing the poor farmers' cause too.
