According to official estimates, fourteen villagers were brutally killed by state police forces in Nandigram, West Bengal on March 14. Events in recent months have seen battlelines being drawn in Nandigram, with the local population coming out in protest at land acquisition plans by the West Bengal Government for the setting up of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the area. To frame the debate in simplistic terms of being for or against industrialization does great disservice to the democratic struggle of the people of Nandigram who are justly concerned with protecting their source of livelihood. When a state government, instead of empowering its citizens, orders a 2000-strong police force into a village, resulting in the maiming and killing of men, women and children, there is something rotten at the very core of Indian democracy. This outrageous suppression of citizens' rights is a severe blight on democracy and raises afresh questions about the cost of an economic policy in which state-corporation nexus trump people's rights at every turn. And when Maoist rebels killed a group of 55 sleeping policemen, as it happened in Chattisgarh on March 15, it shows the degeneration of our society. There is no place for the use of excessive force against citizens protesting government policies, just as there is no place for violence on the part of Maoists. We strongly condemn the police action in Nandigram and the violence by Maoist rebels in Chattisgarh.

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Supriya Kumar, Chicago