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Voters feel Jungle Mahal safer under Mamata

Last Updated 30 March 2016, 19:53 IST

Roti, kapda, makaan – food, clothes and a roof over the head, along with sadak-bijli-paani – roads, electricity and clean drinking water, have been the twin planks of campaign that helped win many an election in India.

With this at the core of the campaign, Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress have come down on the streets this polling season. All her electoral goals have been met and she deserves a second term, says the Trinamool Congress.

Opposition parties are involved in a shouting match, trying to drown each other’s voices, over who can drive home the message that Mamata has failed to usher in development or live up to her image of a change agent, given her much-advertised campaign of paribartan (change) during the last Assembly polls in 2011. Most people across Jungle Mahal, however, do not seem eager to buy the arguments put forth by the Left-Congress coalition or the BJP.

The Maoists were the scourge of Jungle Mahal, literally, the forested area, which stretches across the three districts of Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore, even till a few months after Mamata came to power.

 Since the ‘encounter’ death of Maoist leader Kishenji in November 2011, a claim contested by non-Trinamool political activists, the ultra Left outfit suffered a serious setback and withdrew from Bengal, leaving Jungle Mahal mostly violence-free, people said.

“It’s only because of Mamata Banerjee that we can move around without fear of being targeted,” said Chittaranjan Mahato from Belpahari in Purulia. Once a hotbed of Maoist activities, largely due to its proximity to Jharkhand, Belpahari and adjoining places have been mostly devoid of killings, a common place occurrence in the years between 2006 and 2011. Chittaranjan, a retired accountant with an Indian industry major, returned home to Belpahari from Jamshedpur sometime in 2006.

It was only in 2011 that he got the confidence to start his eatery. “Most people like us, who have some money, were afraid of being targeted by the Maoists. We felt more scared because local political leaders and activists, mostly from the Left, were being targeted and sometimes killed. After didi (elder sister) came to power, things changed,” he said.

For last five years, Chittaranjan has been able to keep his eatery open till 11 pm, something unthinkable earlier. Echoing similar thoughts, Shibu Majhi said that these days he does not worry if his son and daughter-in-law sometimes go to Purulia town to watch a movie or if his son returns home past 6 pm. Even at Lalgarh in adjoining West Midnapore district, considered the Maoist base of operations, or at Sarenga in Bankura district, the confidence is visible.

Locals pointed out that at places like Jhargram, the largest town in Jungle Mahal, which drew large number of tourists for its surrounding forests, or at Jhilimili and Mukutmanipur in Bankura, where tourists flocked from across Bengal to breathe in fresh air and enjoy natural beauty, occupancy rate at hotels had drastically dropped.

“Even though these tourist haunts were never really violence-affected, people stopped coming in fear. Occupancy in hotels and lodges dropped below 45%. Things have changed now and sometimes we find it hard to accommodate tourists,” said P K Dutta, president of Bankura Hotel & Lodge Owners’ Association.
DH News Service

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(Published 30 March 2016, 19:53 IST)

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