Home Page of Dr. Saumitra Mohan

Working Out Rehabilitation Package for Land-Losers *Saumitra Mohan While the negativism surrounding the land acquisitions for developmental purposes around the country may have hogged newspaper headlines in recent times, a huge land acquisition success story in Darjeeling-Jalpaiguri region for a new township has escaped deserved media attention. The reason for the same seems to be the fact that the entire range of issues relating to land acquisition and rehabilitation of the land losers has been executed and handled too well to warrant salacious banner headlines. Even though the entire land acquisition process here actually started much earlier than the ones at Singur and Nandigram, still the land acquisition process at Kawakhali, Porajhar, Tiknikatha, Boro Potturam, Chhotto Potturam and other adjoining areas at the intersection of these two districts of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri for the proposed new township ...

Tackling Naxalism in West Bengal *Saumitra Mohan Amidst so many of our internal security problems, the home-grown naxalism, prodded and abetted by external forces, keeps rearing its head from time to time in the most uglier ways than we can imagine. And all these expressions of their nefarious intent to tear down our painstakingly-built liberal democratic edifice have made it imperative for us to fix this problem right away without wasting anytime. One such expression of Naxal’s evil design on Indian state was the recent attack on the convoy including the Chief Minister and the Union Steel Minister at Salboni in West Medinipur in West Bengal in November last year. The blowing up of a railway station by the Maoist Communist Centre on the Orissa-Jharkhand border and the relatively less damaging attack on another may are other significant expressions of Naxal fury. Outrage on obscure wayside stations, whether in Bengal’s P...