Mamata at a rally in Nandigram in November: ‘Don’t worry, be happy’

Nandigram, Dec. 11: Nandigram now wants its reward.

Having catapulted Mamata Banerjee into the winning course, it wants her to ensure “development” by doling out railway jobs.

“We have given so much to her. Nandigram and its people ensured her victory across Bengal in last year’s panchayat polls and the Lok Sabha polls this year. Now we want her to change the fate of ordinary villagers here, giving our children jobs in the railways,” said Narayan Jana.

The 72-year-old lives in a village 4km from Nandigram town, an area that had risen in violence at the prospect of losing its farmland to industry.

A landless labourer, Jana knows there can be no “development without jobs” and that there can be no jobs without industry, against which his leader had waged war in Singur.

The anti-land acquisition activist today says “we need industry”, but with a rider: “Not on our land. Industries can come up elsewhere.”

“Didi has said she is not anti-industry. She should set up industries in and around Haldia without grabbing our land so people from here (Nandigram) get jobs,” said Jana.

He would not respond when told that the people of the other place, too, might oppose acquisition of their land and that there would be no new industries this way.

Jana should be counted among those Bengal parents who know best why there is no alternative to industry. None of his four sons is a farmhand and all of them live far from home. Two of them work as labourers in Guwahati and the other two in a hardware store in Calcutta. “Didi should ensure a railway job for at least one of them,” he said.

“If there are industries nearby, my sons can stay with me,” he added with a smile.

Unlike Jana, Biswajit Maity has half an acre of his own. But he, too, needs a job for sustenance.

“We want jobs because nothing much has changed in our lives since Trinamul swept the panchayat polls except that the clashes have stopped . We are still as poor as we were and we need jobs,” said Biswajit, 35, a Class VIII dropout.

A labourer, he earns about Rs 1,500 a month and is the sole earning member in a family of eight.

“It is very difficult to make both ends meet,” he said.

The “staunch Mamata supporter” did not go to hear her speech at Sonachura on November 2. The reluctance to lose a day’s wages kept him away. “Every day is a battle for survival for us,” he said.

Not much may have changed for the villagers since Trinamul snatched the Nandi- gram village bodies from the Left, but not much apparently remains the same at the block office.

An official said: “It is one-way traffic now. In the absence of any Opposition, the BDO’s office has been reduced to a place from where only funds are disbursed.”

The BDO (block development officer) is supposed to hold a meeting every week with the panchayat pradhans to discuss ongoing work. But the Trinamul leaders apparently did not turn up even once in over a year.

The official also alleged that “local leaders don’t let us inspect work on the projects”.

All 10 gram panchayats in Nandigram are controlled by Trinamul. Only four of its 27 panchayat samiti members are from the Left.

“Nandigram is now what Khejuri used to be. The CPM’s writ ran there until last year,” a senior block official said.