After launching a statewide campaign in West Bengal to spread the word on the need to industrialise, the CPI (M) is now ready with a documentary to prop up that campaign.
The documentary has been readied to convince people in general and potential investors that the Communist government in Bengal is ready for the shift from agriculture-based development to one based on industry.
The 60-minute documentary would be distributed in high commissions and embassies, telecast through cable networks, screened in localities and also telecast through cable networks.
In May, two party affiliates, the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYF) and the Students Federation of India (SFI) entrusted well-known Kolkata-based documentary filmmaker, Soumitra Dastidar, to direct it.
The documentary, which has the violence in Singur and Nandigram as silhouette, is titled "Sondhikaal" in Bengali and "Transition – Journey to Towards Left Alternative Agriculture to Industrialisation’’ in English.
It is sub-titled in English and carries interviews of CPI (M) general secretary, Prakash Karat, politburo member, Brinda Karat, Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, also shown reciting Rabindranath Tagore’s poems, and state industry minister, Nirupam Sen.
"It deals with the industrialisation of Bengal in the perspective of mainstream Left politics and the national perception on it. It talks about many current issues like the agriculture crisis in Vidarbha, controversies over acquiring land in Noida and Gurgaon and the SEZ Act," said Pratim Ghosh of DYFI from Kolkata.
{{/usCountry}}"It deals with the industrialisation of Bengal in the perspective of mainstream Left politics and the national perception on it. It talks about many current issues like the agriculture crisis in Vidarbha, controversies over acquiring land in Noida and Gurgaon and the SEZ Act," said Pratim Ghosh of DYFI from Kolkata.
{{/usCountry}}The documentary also draws parallels between Left politics in India and Left politics in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and shows clips from another documentary, `Chavez in the Coup’. It quotes from the controversial book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" written by John Parkins.
Dastidar, who has directed documentaries on the Gujarat riot and the rape and murder of Manorama Devi in Manipur among others said the film takes a close look on the impact globalisation on India as well as on mainstream Left politics. It also offers an analysis on the alternative policies on industrialisation that the Left is offering.
The hazards that the process of industrialisation might face – like the violence in Singur and Nandigram – have also been looked at and analysed.
Veteran Communist leader Jyoti Basu is likely to release the documentary on July 8 in Kolkata.
spatranobis@hindustantimes.com