Shanties turn into hotbed of crime

bhatpara (north 24-parganas): a youth shot dead near the auto stand at shyamnagar station. a person, known to be a follower of a particular party, gunned down in broad daylight at authpur market. an income tax officer beaten to death by some locals, merely because he had asked one of them not to defecate on the wall of his house. a physician strangled to death in his house by unidentified assailants.truck hijacked on the kalyani-barrackpore express way. godown of a local factory looted in dead of night. such news, often splashed on the pages of daily newspapers, evoke little response from the people of this area nowadays. they have got used to it. once a part of the industrial hub of west bengal, the bhatpara-shyamnagar area has now turned into a breeding ground for criminals. with factories closing down one after the another, and political parties eager to offer patronage, there has been an alarming spurt in criminal activities. several industrial units in this belt have already downed their shutters. many others are downsizing and some are on the verge of closure. as is customary in any industrial belt, many of the labourers — laid-off or otherwise — are migrants, who left their homes in uttar pradesh and bihar to make a living. earlier, they would go back to their native places when the mills were closed. but now with agricultural resources back home shrinking fast, they tend to settle here for good. and in a scenario of large-scale unemployment, that is bad news. the number of permanent workers in the jute mills had also come down drastically, pointed out intuc leader ganesh sarkar. "from 90 per cent two decades ago, the number of permanent workers has dropped to about 30 per cent," he said. the rest were all casual labourers, he added. circumstances force a large number of the migrant workers to choose alternative means of livelihood. some have opened tea stalls and pan-bidi shops and others have become rickshawpullers. but the lure of earning fast buck has driven many of the younger ones to the underworld, admit police officials in private. "the area is definitely crime-prone," agreed sumit chatterjee, newly-appointed inspector in charge of jagaddal police station. "but crime has not reached alarming proportion," he insisted. haripada biswas, forward bloc mla of jagaddal, however, said, "the police will talk about statistics. but we can't deny that crime and anti-social activities are on the rise here. as the future of a large number of factories is bleak, no easy solution is at sight." unless some alternative arrangements of employment were made, it would be very difficult to put a stop to this, he said. the nexus between criminals and politicians is an open secret here and local criminals openly work for political parties, especially during elections. the political parties do their bit by merely calling a bandh after murders in the locality. influx of bangladeshi immigrants pose yet another threat, say the locals. with no secure means of earning, they often indulge in crime, further aggravating the situation. "the political parties, with an eye on the vote bank, are eager to provide them papers and ration cards," said samik de, a schoolteacher at shyamnagar.