Author: Pioneer News Service
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: August 26, 2007
Reflecting the increasing isolation of the
Left Front in the intelligentsia, West Bengal's eminent Leftist writer-activist
Mahashweta Devi feels that it has achieved "very little" in its
30 years of rule in the State.
Delivering the ninth DS Borker Memorial here
on My Vision of India: 2047 AD, she rubbished the Left Front Government of
West Bengal for non-performance and praised Narendra Modi's Gujarat for strides
made in grassroots-level development.
"I was deeply impressed to see how strong
the work culture is in Gujarat. The city and village roads are well-built,
even the remotest villages have electricity and drinking water. I was especially
impressed with the medical facilities in the panchayats and local-level health
centres. Not at all like West Bengal where, even now, villages and panchayat
areas have hardly any electricity and where the Government's so-called swasthya
pariseva (healthcare service) is totally non-existent," she said. "In
West Bengal, which has been under a CPI(M)-led Left Government for 30 years,
little has been achieved," the writer said. She also alleged that starvation
deaths and child mortality are "rampant" in West Bengal.
Calling herself a bookworm, the octogenarian
writer said she read books on history, folklore and folk proverbs. "One
needs to go to the villages and meet the villagers. Perhaps that is how I
started knowing India. Now, even at 82, I am still doing so through my visits
to Nandigram."
