REAL-LIFE THRILLER/3

Day 4: Protest rally - some 1000 people (mostly children) took part. When intercepted by the police, they sat on the road for sometime and then dispersed.

The protest was free of any violent streak. But the mood at the squatters' colony was of resolute defiance. Not a single person registered with the police, showing his willingness to leave the colony on his own.

Meanwhile, representatives of Kolkata police, Kolkata Municipal Corporation, Eastern Railway, CESC and Railway go into a huddle to thrash out details of the eviction drive.

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According to an estimate, the amount of land needed to rehabilitate the 30,000 squatters is only ten acres. While the state government is at the moment busy finding out 500-plus acres of land for the Indonesia-based Salim group of industries, it does not care a bit to offer as little as ten acres for its own people. What a shift in attitude of our Marxist rulers!

MRINAL BOSE