Articles by Timir Basu

total number of living children. With the talk of high disincentives or com- pulsory sterilisation after three living children, who would report more than three children? Hence, it would be wise


be leaning more towards administrative- bureaucratic methods than political ones. For instance, instead of appreciating the fact that a large majority of the Naxalites have on the basis of their own self-critical exercises abjured the path of infantile and instant revolutionism, chief minister Jyoti Basu has chosen to publicly warn them that if "they go back to their old ways", the government "will have to deal with them firmly". He seems to have overlooked the fact that if the people of West Bengal as a whole have vindicated the CPI(M) against the Congress repression, the voters of Gopiballavpur have also similarly vindicated the Naxalites, against whom Basu as the home min- WHAT has come to be widely known as the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act came into force in 1970. The declared purpose of the Act was to regulate the employment of contract labour in certain establishments and to provide for the abolition of such labour in certain circumstances. The Act extends to the whole of India and it applies to "every establishment in which twenty or more workmen are employed or were employed on any day of the preceding twelve months as contract labour" and "to every contractor who employs or who employed on any day of the preceding twelve months twenty or more workmen".

January 22, 1977 realise that they had triggered off an uprising. After March 1970, there was no looking hack for the Madhuhan labourers. According to the present district administration, the labourers sought the assistance and support from political elements then quite active in the southern parts of Patnu district, covering Dhanarua, Punpun and Masaurhi blocks. Madhuban became a battlefield. Between the mid-sixties and the mid-seventies there were a number of violent incidents, including killings. The district administration records show that in that period nine murders took place. Many labourers left the village and some of them were reported to have gone underground.