How fast does news fly? In a flash I’d say. I happened to be searching Google News for other reasons, and then thought let me see what comes up for ‘Nandigram’. There are at least 335 articles for ‘Nandigram’, the latest being less than an hour old. Agencies like Reuters, AP and AFP continuously fork out news from every corner of the world, which are then picked up by Internet editions of newspapers across the globe.
Since Bengal is ruled by the left, there is in any case lot of interest for news emanating from here, especially when the state is trying to embark on rapid industrialization.
For example, reports by Manik Banerjee of AP and Kamil Zaheer of Reuters on the recent happenings in Nadigram have appeared in Houston Chronicle, Sydney Morning Herald, Forbes, BusinessWeek, Washington Post, and so on.
Not to be left behind, even Taipei Times’ report titled, Police, villagers clash in India, is already viewed 402 times at the time of this writing. One may ask is there other reason as well?
In my opinion, yes. The union government is about to finalize SEZ (Special Economic Zone) policy, a concept that has seen meteoric industrialization in China, and earlier in city-state Singapore as well as to some extent in Malaysia.
Global biggies are anxiously waiting to see what happens, and indeed big Indian industrial houses too are eyeing the opportunities that SEZs will provide through various incentives and tax sops. Not surprisingly, US’ Kolkata consul-general, Henry Jardine lost no time in meeting the state chief secretary soon after the Nandigram news broke out to assess likely fallout.
Be that as it may, here is another March 15 account of Nandigram, this one from AFP.
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