For more read this.

It can also be remembered that within last three months on two occassions some on duty cops were given some editble stuff which put them to sleep resulting esacpe of convicts. See picture and links.

Now my analysis is on why cops in Bengal acts so stupid and naive. They did not used to be like that. In fact at one time they were most effective in the world right after the Scottland Yardhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottland_Yard.

But now even the ruling left front too sometimes crticize their own police. Not counting the constant criticism the police department gets from other politicos abd public.

What made them to fall from grace? Well I think it may be that cops are not recruited with respect to the right criteria like physical fitness etc. But corruption, political connection play a role on their recruitment. Once into the force they experience very poor working condition, outdated tools to do their job. They are not motivated to perform their duties rather very much motivated to collect a bribe at the first chance (courtesy poor salary). They often get mistreated by their officers, ministers and general public. Add no or very little job training to that. Their training must be an issue else why they would accept drugged food time and again from convicts or their accomplice.

Somebody made a good comment when he congratulated KP (on this monkey incident) as they could successfully bring the monkeys back from MP. At least on that part they did not create a mess!

Inadequately compensated, poorly trained, de-motivated and hence naive, stupid cops are definitely a burden to the people of Bengal.

First, Vedic Village plans a resort and that increases land prices in that area.

They build and get greedy for more land.

They hire local goons to help them on grabbing land. The local mafia leaders ‘Mati Gaffar’ (and his aide ‘Kalo Babu’ ) and the Vedic Village liaison (aka project manager) is one ‘Biplab’ who is a graduate from NIT, Durgapur and reportedly works at a salary of Rs. 50k per month work to-gether.

Police, local politicians all somehow are party to the exercise or too scared to take action. Intimidating villagers and Land-grabbing at little cost (remember ‘Dui Bigha Jami’? ha! why I’m feeling déjà vu?)  continue for the corporate till one day (Aug 24, 2009) …

The mafia go berserk and kill a guy getting involved in a football match imbroglio. At this  a mob (looks like the oppressed ones) think they have had enough and attack the mafia. The mafia flee but their office inside the resort and other resort properties are torched. Later piles of weapons get discovered inside the resort.

So what do these point to? I think it shows …

1. Law was bought by the mafia and resort folks (read the strong and moneyed ones).

2. Administration and cops were corrupt or scared. So no action gets taken  until all hell breaks loose and media attention is drawan.

3. Mafia leans towards the political party who it thinks will tend to be in power. It is reported that the mafia leader used to work for/with the ruling party but shifted allegiance to the opposition who got stronger in the area. That may be true as the opposition didi has not called for scrapping the government yet!

4. Govt. is totally incompetent … even if the mafia worked with the opposition (supposedly), Govt. could not handle it. This may be because the internal work style of all the entities involved is very distributed and are based on black money transactions.

5. Why a corporate had to go through this way of functioning? I believe they had little confidence in Govt. bureaucracy. Tying-up with local mafia made more sense for them and saved huge amount of time. They must have thought that they would lose competitive advantage unless they did not do it but their competitor did. By the way they used all modern tools for operation. Specially look the police helmets they acquired. (See picture below, the project management tools!)

I’m sorry for the corporate project manager. Reportedly he cried when asked whether he was being framed and being pushed to the forefront to hide wrongdoings of his bosses. But crime never pays, baby!

Don’t miss reading the account of the British Pilot who happened to be the wrong place. Courtesy ‘The Telegraph’. (See below)

And even if you are rich and can afford visiting a resort, think twice!

Here is location of Vedic Village on Google map and are some pictures.

Bengal has been a place with long history and huge natural resources. All that history and geography is very nicely stated in Wikipedia, so I’m not going to elaborate on that.

Rather I’d try to chronicle the present day events in West Bengal in a critical fashion. Warning : The reporting may sound negative and pessimistic at times. The reason I’m doing this is that, I feel (as of August, 2009) in spite of having tremendous potential, the state is on the path of decay and bleak future. My logging of events may influence somebody, somewhere to take note and bring about change either in his small way or collectively. Of course if I find some positive news I’ll bring that to the reader’s attention too.

This blog posts will be in English but some times may contain Bengali newspaper clippings.

Serious about reading my posts? Bookmark the page, keep coming back and keep posting comments.