Kolkata, April 6 (IANS) Communist apparatchiks, who were once disdainful of technology and called it a "capitalist passion" designed to rob the masses of labour-intensive jobs, are now embracing it to keep abreast of the times, particularly when it comes to reaching out to younger voters in West Bengal.
Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will, for the first time, answer direct questions from the people through his newly launched website.
The website www.buddhdebbhattacharjee.net provides the people a unique opportunity to interact with the chief minister, who would himself reply to the queries posted by them, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) sources said.
The website has a section 'Face-to-Face', where the people can email their questions to the chief minister along with their phone numbers and addresses.
It also has details about the chief minister's personal and political life. There is also a list of some original writings and translated works of Bhattacharjee, known for his cultural orientation.
It also contains important speeches delivered by him on various occasions and highlights the important achievements of the seventh Left Front government.
Besides, the website lists the vision and mission of the Left Front for the upcoming six-phase polls.
The Front, which has been in power for 34 years since 1977, is facing its toughest battle in this year's polls.
"It is easy to deal with state players. But, as far as non-state players are concerned, the possibility of what they will do and how they will convert their own capability and their influences on the state to the detriment of the peace-keeping mission needs to be seen much more seriously," he advised the UN department of peacekeeping operations.
Peacekeeping operations were "becoming more complex...becoming more challenging", the army chief said.
"There are new additions to the challenges that both policy-makers and the people on the ground have to face," he said.
Singh noted that peacekeeping missions faced "a unique challenge" of implementing mandates that were "at times nebulous" or had aspects that may may not be "implementable or enforceable". This, he said, needed to be worked out between the UN department of peacekeeping operations and the troop contributing countries, or it could pose problems on the ground.
"More often than not, what we have found in some missions (is that) the UN comes under fire because it is not able to enforce the mandate that has been given. There are a lot of facets that come out of the situation, which are probably just outside the mandate, and the entire mission comes under great amount of scrutiny and criticism," he added.
Apart from peacekeeping and peace-enforcing, the UN missions are by and large made to carry out "peace-making" too, the general noted. He added that the missions have to "indulge outside military parameters to ensure that the various players are brought together on a platform where they can narrow down their differences..."
Over 8,000 Indian troops are currrently deployed on UN peacekeeping missions in places like the Congo, Sudan, Lebanon and the Golan Heights. India is the third highest contributor to such missions after Bangladesh and Pakistan.