President poll: Mamata Banerjee running out of options

Kolkata: Former President APJ Abdul Kalam's decision to withdraw from the Presidential race came as a huge shock to Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. This was the second blow in three days after her short-term friend Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav abandoned her to back Pranab. It now seems that the Trinamool Congress chief is running out of options.

The Trinamool Congress on Monday came up with a thinly veiled threat with party leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay saying, "We are with the government but can resign when the time comes."

After APJ Abdul Kalam himself ruled out his participation in the Presidential race, for Mamata, who was his most vociferous proponent, there was little to do but go back to political brinkmanship. Kalam's refusal is a big blow and Mamata wrote on Facebook, "Kalam Saheb...I have seen your statement that you are not contesting. This news has hurt us all deeply."

Having hedged her bets on Kalam, Mamata has already refused to back NCP leader PA Sangma's Presidential ambitions.

The Congress, meanwhile, is playing it cool. It even reached out by pulling up party general secretary Digvijaya Singh for criticising Mamata's stand on Pranab.

Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed said, "Mamata Banerjee was, is and will be a close ally of the UPA. I am hopeful that she will take lead in making Pranab Mukherjee victorious in President's race."

Mamata Banerjee is now left with few choices. Having said a firm no to Pranab Mukherjee, she can now either abstain from voting or side with the NDA, which also seems political improbable as she then would have to pull the plug on the UPA.

Mamata sweeps urban Bengal, but loses Haldia

Haldia verdict : Don't need new Lakshman

 Tanmoy Bhaduri

Haldia elected Lakshman Seth's wife but defeated someone who many feared would become his "worthy successor".
The biggest surprise of this round of civic elections is the inability ofTrinamul strongman Subhendu Adhikari to deliver the knockout punch on Lakshman, the toppled CPM satrap.

MAMATAA : SILENT PLEASE

Many hear in the stunning outcome an unmistakable declaration from Haldia that the industrial town does not want to risk the prospect of a new power centre replacing the already vanquished Lakshman who has been behind bars since March on a murder charge. Winning 15 of the 25 seats, the CPM has ensured that Lakshman's wife Tamalika Panda Seth will continue to head the Haldia municipality that has never been run by anyone else in the past 15 years.
This is not the ending that Subhendu, Trinamul's MP from Tamluk and the president of the party's youth wing, had envisaged as he piled one humiliation after another on the CPM since Nandigram erupted in 2008. Subhendu is part of the Adhikari political family whose presence is larger than that of Trinamul itself in East Midnapore. "Adhikari's attitude reminded us of Seth's dictatorial ways in his heyday. The people of Haldia did not want another Seth and it got reflected in the polls," said an industrialist who runs a business in petro-products in Haldia.
The Telegraph had reported last September how several industrialists had complained that the supporters of Subhendu were controlling the supply of manpower and materials to industrial units.
Two names that cropped up more than once then ' Azizur Rehman and Milon Mandal ' were among the losers in the civic elections. Subhendu as well as Rehman and Mandal had then denied any link to such activities and described the complaints as baseless.
The poll results reflect the depth of discontent in the factory belt: Trinamul has lost seven out of nine wards that comprise the industrial zone with units like Haldia Petrochemicals, Mitsubishi, Exide and Indian Oil.
In the 26-ward municipality as a whole, Trinamul, which had won six seats along with alliance partner Congress in 2007, has bagged 11 this time ' four less than the Assembly poll leads in the same wards.
Compared with the result in 2007, Trinamul has now gained in vote share. From 39.56 per cent that it got along with ally Congress, the share has gone up to 46.33 per cent.
But the failure in securing the civic board from the beleaguered Left stands out as a sore thumb in an otherwise unchallenged run by Trinamul.
"The victory in Haldia has come as a surprise to us… We had a tough time finding suitable candidates in all the wards as the organisational strength in our East Midnapore unit has depleted drastically in the past one year," said a CPM central committee member.

The lack of organisational might was evident in the run-up to the elections. The CPM could not organise big rallies in the absence of leaders like Lakshman and Amiya Sahoo, the district secretariat member who has also been arrested. The party's campaign ' led by Tamalika ' was low-key with focus on door-to-door initiatives and small meetings.
"I thank the people of Haldia for standing by us and rejecting those who had created an atmosphere of terror here," Tamalika, who was overwhelmed by the victory, told ABP Ananda after the results were announced.
Tamalika is likely to retain her post, which will allow her to control the Haldia Development Authority (HDA) as well. Together, the two agencies have a combined annual budget of over Rs 100 crore.
Although Subhendu has never held any post in the party's district hierarchy, he has been running the show in Haldia since the Nandigram protests broke out and the Left lost the zilla parishad in 2008.
"His (Subhendu's) main aim, however, was to run the show at the municipality and HDA…. In preparation, he became the president in almost all the Trinamul-held labour unions and inducted his men as working presidents to control the key decisions in those units," said a businessman.
According to him, Subhendu was following the same model that Lakshman had fine-tuned as he rose from an ordinary party worker to the most influential leader in Haldia.
The slide of the CPM in Haldia ' and also in other parts of East Midnapore ' was linked to the politics of Lakshman, who had become a law unto himself.
The verdict showed the people of Haldia had rejected the same brand of politics, which Subhendu was accused of trying to champion."People of Haldia have disapproved Trinamul's high-handed approach and the results clearly reflect that," said Om Prakash Mishra, PCC general secretary.
The defeat is more likely to be attributed to Subhendu than Trinamul as, unlike in other places in Bengal, Haldia has not been under the direct control of Mamata Banerjee.
Some Trinamul insiders said Adhikari had a free run in Haldia as he had promised Mamata to take the civic board from CPM. During a public spat between Seuli Saha, the Trinamul MLA from Haldia, and Subhendu over nomination of candidates for the civic polls, the party backed the young MP and gave preference to his list of nominees.
"There are at least three wards where Seuli's candidates were replaced with those of Subhendu, and the party lost in all three of them. Internal feud cost us dear in Haldia.… Had we presented a united face, the results could have been different," said a party leader.
Subhendu conceded that internal differences ' which became public when Seuli held a media conference and spoke out against the MP ' did affect his party's fortunes in the civic polls.
"Public statements by some leaders have adversely hit our fortunes…. I didn't discuss it before and neither will I do it now," Adhikari said at a public rally in Haldia late this evening, where he said he wanted to resign as the president of the Trinamul Youth Congress.
"A lot of people had said that this election was my fight against the CPM and I admit it. But let me assure all of you that I will give a fitting reply in the panchayat polls," he said.


On the other hand, the Congress's Shankar Singh has "bounced back'' with the Cooper's Camp municipal election that has put 11 of the 12 wards into the Congress kitty. Singh's "achievement'', said a PCC leader, is all the more striking as the Congress had to face opposition from Trinamul. Here, the Left couldn't even hold on to the lone seat it had got in 2007.

Trinamul marches on, CPM still paralysed

Tanmoy Bhaduri

The results of the elections to six municipalities in Bengal show that the Left is not an option, at least not yet, in spite of perceived disenchantment among sections of society over some of the policies and actions of the Mamata Banerjee government.

PLAYING  BUDDHA

The cumulative outcome suggests that the Trinamul Congress is still riding on the graph that had emerged in the last panchayat elections, crystallised in the Lok Sabha polls and peaked in the Assembly elections last year. Haldia is an exception to the pattern, where Trinamul failed to take the civic body from the Left. The Trinamul setback is being attributed largely to a backlash from many voters who saw in Trinamul MP Subhendu Adhikari's rise the emergence of another Lakshman Seth. However, the overall results show that the Left continues to be in the middle of a losing streak and has not managed to make any turnaround in the past one year, having lost in five of the six civic bodies that went to the polls on Sunday. Not only has the Left lost the Panskura and Nalhati municipalities as it did in 2007, it also failed to retain the Dhupguri civic body and, more important, the Durgapur Municipal Corporation this time.

CPM state secretariat member Mohammad Salim said of the continued defeats that the Left has been facing over the last few years: "It's true that a pattern had come up in the 2008 panchayat polls and it has been going on in successive elections…. We have not been able to make any recovery in the last one year of Mamata Banerjee's misrule."

Salim sought solace in the Haldia win. "It at least put a pause on the Trinamul's advance, particularly given the political atmosphere in which we faced the elections there,'' the CPM leader said. In the 2008 rural elections, the Left lost as many as 50 per cent of the 50,000 odd gram panchayat seats and four zilla parishads to Trinamul and the Congress, although there wasn't any alliance between the two parties.

A repeat performance unfolded in the 2010 municipal elections when, again without any alliance between Trinamul and the Congress, the Left's tally came down from 60 to 17 of the 81 civic bodies that went to the polls then. Results of this municipal poll reaffirm Trinamul's unrelenting march forward, that too without having the Congress as an electoral partner, while the Left continues to flounder in defeat. Buoyed by the success, Trinamul claimed it was toying with the idea of "going it alone" in the next elections. "We have won these civic bodies single-handed and can contest polls alone in the future," said  Mukul Roy, the Trinamul all-India general secretary. A CPM leader said although there was "discontent" among some sections of the people over certain actions of Mamata, the poll results did not reflect it.

State Congress general secretary Om Prakash Mishra said the results showed "all's not well". "It may be too early to say that there is disenchantment with Trinamul but there is little doubt that all is not well with the way they are running the show. The results indicate that the three major parties have proportionately distributed the pain and pleasure," Mishra said. Most worrying for the Left, Trinamul has shown that its earlier breach of Red Durgapur was not a flash in the pan. The Left had won the Durgapur Assembly bypoll in 2010 even after its humiliating defeat in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. However, in the 2011 Assembly polls, the Left trailed in as many as 33 of the 43 wards of the Durgapur municipal corporation and lost both the seats from the steel township.

This time, there hasn't been much of a change in the electoral graph ' the Left has lost in 32 wards after being in power ever since the corporation was formed 15 years ago.

In Panskura, a significant positive for Trinamul has been its ability to get a majority on its own by reducing the Left's tally and wiping out the Congress that has drawn a blank this time. Earlier, Trinamul was forced to form and run the Panskura board with Congress support.

Facts about Poverty

It is unbelievable but true! More than 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. One child dies of hunger-related causes every five seconds, taking a toll on 16,000 poor hungry children each day.

More than 1.4 billion people live at poverty line or below. According to a the World Bank report, there are over 1,345 million poor people in developing countries who live on $1.25 (about Rs 57) a day or less.
The top 1 per cent of the world's richest people earn as much as the poorest 57 per cent.
There are an estimated 350-400 million people living below the poverty line in India, 75 per cent of them in the rural areas. Acording to World Bank estimates, 80 per cent of India's population lives on less than $2 (about Rs 92) a day.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the 41 heavily indebted poor countries (with a population of over 567 million people) is less than the combined wealth of the world's 7 richest people!
In 2005, the wealthiest 20 per cent of the world accounted for 76.6 per cent of total private consumption.
Most of the decrease in hunger levels was in Asia, with 80 million fewer hungry, but progress was also made in sub-Saharan Africa, where 12 million fewer people are going hungry.

However, the number of hungry people is higher in 2010 than before the food and economic crises of 2008 09.
The percentage of Americans struggling below the poverty line in 2009 was the highest in 15 years. Four million additional Americans found themselves in poverty in 2009, with the total reaching 44 million.
Children are the most visible victims of under-nutrition. Children who are poorly nourished suffer up to 160 days of illness each year. Poor nutrition plays a role in at least half of the 10.9 million child deaths each year - five million deaths.
India accounts for 50 per cent of the world's hungry. Over 46 per cent of Indian children are undernourished. Health too is a major challenge - the very survival of India's women and children is threatened.
In 2006, on average 254 women died giving birth to a child for every 100,000 live births down from 327 in 1990. Across India 74 children died before they reached the age of five for every 1,000 live births in 2005-06 as compared to 125 in 1990.
India has been ranked 67, way below neighbouring countries like China and Pakistan, in a new Global Hunger Index by the International Food Policy Research Institute. The number of poor in 2015 is likely to be 279 million at all-India level.
China has made considerable progress in fighting poverty and especially hunger. In 2008, it stood at the 15th spot with a hunger rate of 7.1 points.

In 2009, it jumped up to the 5th position with a hunger rate of 5.7, even though it has a huge population. However, this year, it ranked 9th in the index. The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 per cent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 per cent population increase.This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day. The main problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food.

Malnutrition affects 32.5 per cent of children in developing countries. More than 70 per cent of malnourished children live in Asia, 26 per cent in Africa and 4 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean. One in seven Americans was living in poverty in 2009 with a family of four living on less than $21,954 a year, according to the US Census Bureau. The official poverty rate in 2009 was 14.3 per cent -- up from 13.2 per cent in 2008. This was the second statistically significant annual increase in the poverty rate since 2004.

Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.

Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water survive on less than $2 a day, with one in three living on less than $1 a day.

Rural areas account for three in every four people living on less than $1 a day and a similar share of the world population suffering from malnutrition.

Around 1.6 billion people, around the world have no access to electricity.

Most of the world's hungry live in the developing countries, accounting for 16 per cent of the poor.

PJ Tanmoy Bhaduri's Photography

PJ Tanmoy Bhaduri's photostream on Flickr.

Best Moments On My Lens

Didi sweeps out most dailies from public libraries

Mamata do the RIGHT thing in a WRONG way

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee feels some newspapers have become too political. So, the state government has banned several newspapers, including Hindustan Times, in the state-owned and state-funded libraries triggering protests from all sections of civil society.
 Protests have erupted from different corners, even from those intellectuals who support the Trinamool Congress government. Congress, the main ally of the ruling party, has criticised the decision too.
Following a government order dated March 14, 2012 the state directed that only eight selected
newspapers will be purchased by the state-owned and state-funded libraries in West Bengal. All the eight newspapers featuring in government list are vernacular – five Bengali one Hindi and two Urdu newspapers.
 This means, there will be no English newspapers in the 2,060 state-owned and 422 state sponsored public libraries across the state.
 The West Bengal library services minister Abdul Karim Chowdhury met chief minister Mamata Banerjee at the secretariat during the day and held a meeting over the waves of protests. Emerging out of the
meeting he clarified that the circualar will not be withdrawn.
 "In public interest, government will not buy newspapers published or purported to be published by any political party either national or regional as a measure to develop free thinking among the readers," the
circular stated.
The state government's hypocrisy has been exposed.
 

Bhaduri Family History and Origins

Bhaduri family history has a rich and complex origin of which the particulars can be pieced together by Bhaduri family researchers. The Bhaduri family name is an old family line that has migrated all across the world over time, and as the name Bhaduri has migrated, it has evolved making it's origin challenging to uncover. This page is the home for a detailed history of the Bhaduri family name, Bhaduri etymology, and history of people with the Bhaduri name.

Overview of the Bhaduri surname

        Bhaduri spelling variations

In early history when few people could write, names such as Bhaduri were transcribed based on how they sounded when people's names were recorded in court, church, and government records. This could have led to misspellings of Bhaduri. Researching misspellings and spelling variations of the Bhaduri last name are important to understanding the history of the name. Last names like Bhaduri vary in their spelling as they travel across villages, family lines, and countries across time.

        Surnames related to Bhaduri

Related surnames should not be confused with surnames related through marriage. Those kinds of unions are best expressed with a Bhaduri family tree, rather than the list format shown here. Sometimes surnames like Bhaduri can change into distinctly different names when they spread to other countries, cross language barriers, or split into different families because of any of a number of reasons.

        Bhaduri country of origin

The nationality of Bhaduri is often difficult to determine in cases which country boundaries change over time, making the original nationality a mystery. The original ethnicity of Bhaduri may be in dispute based on whether the surname originated naturally and independently in multiple locales; for example, in the case of last names that are based on a craft, which can appear in multiple regions independently (such as the name "Fisher" which was given to fishermen).

History of the Bhaduri surname

        Bhaduri family history & origin    

The background of surnames diverge through the ages and are not necessarily tied to blood relations because not all last names are passed down from parent to child. Actually, names like Bhaduri are taken because of non-hereditary reasons. The Bhaduri family has a rich history which reaches many generations. The early history of Bhaduri extends back to antiquity, making a lot of the details of the surname difficult to trace completely. Discovering the origin of any surname is a fuzzy, but extremely fascinating exploration. As a result, this page needs information from users like you to paint an accurate picture of the origins of this family name. By tackling the history of family names as such, a page like this becomes a living document cultivated by people researching Bhaduri history.

        Meaning of the last name Bhaduri

The meaning of Bhaduri come may come from a trade, such as the name "Fisher" which was given to fishermen. A lot of these trade-based last names might be a profession in some other language. This is why it is useful to research the country of origin of a name, and the languages used by it's family members. Many western names like Bhaduri come from religious texts such as the Bhagavadgītā, the Quran, the Bible, and so on. Often these family names relate to a religious sentiment such as "Favored of God".

        Evolution of the Bhaduri name

The evolution of Bhaduri begins with it's early ancestors, when the name came into existence. Even in the earliest days of a name there are variations in that singlename simply because last names were infrequently written down at that stage in history. As families, tribes, and clans emigrated between countries, the Bhaduri name may have changed with them. Bhaduri family members have migrated around different countries all throughout history. It was common for a family name to change as it enters a new country or language.

Source : Tanmoy Bhaduri