The CPM on Sunday called for bolstering the fight to save Bengal, urging the revival of the Left and the rebuilding of the dreams of former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya across agriculture, industry, education and culture, with communal harmony at the core.
The resolve was made at an event held to mark the 82nd birth anniversary of former chief minister Bhattacharya, where the party’s Pramode Dasgupta Trust initiated the first steps to set up a cultural centre in the name of Bhattacharjee. The centre will come up at 73, Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road, which was the venue for Sunday’s event.
“The immediate resolve we need to take is to revive the Left to save the state and the country as well. We need to protect the unity of the nation and resist the forces against harmony. To save Bengal, we will have to revive the state’s culture and literature, education, industry, and agriculture, while creating employment opportunities for the youth. Together, we need to join hands to save Bengal’s spirit of harmony. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee saw this dream, and he also made the people of the state see his dream of rebuilding Bengal,” said CPM state secretary Md Salim.
In the true spirit of the former chief minister’s cultural inclination, the programme started with a small programme in which an ensemble of songs, dance and elocution was presented by eminent artistes, including Urmimala Basu and Agnibha Bandopadhyay.
The performances were followed by Salim’s brief inaugural speech that set the tone for a panel discussion on “Bengal’s revival and alternative ideas”.
Taking part in the discussion, which was moderated by CPM Rajya Sabha MP Bikashranjan Bhattacharya, former bureaucrat Jawhar Sircar stressed the need for administrative officers to stand up to the state government’s autocracy, while political parties must resist the forces of corruption and communalism.
“In the coming elections, political parties should field one candidate. I do not know how it can be done. I am not a politician. The aim of these parties will be to get rid of the cancer of corruption that is destroying the state. But it also needs to be seen that in trying to achieve this goal, communal forces should not get any entry (in Bengal). That also needs to be taken care of. I know it is a job that needs to be done very delicately, but I appeal to the people of Bengal to do it,” Sircar said.
Economist Ratan Khasnabis, author Anita Agnihotri, and medical researcher Arun Singh were among the speakers.
Laying bare the
economic state of Bengal,
Khasnabis said that the state’s low annual per capita income revealed where
it stood in terms
of growth.
“Under the Mamata Banerjee government, the annual per capita income of Bengal is lower than that of Odisha. But we keep hearing stories about how well the state is doing. States like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are far ahead of Bengal on this count,” he said.
Along with Bhattacharjee, the birth anniversary of former state party secretary Anil Biswas was also observed on Sunday.
