Blood runs in India's red corridor ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ fuagf: rough, :), notes from ABC (Australia) radio on this cool, damp, clouded, but, of course, lovely (putting yesterday aside) Wednesday, December 2 morning.
The Naxalite movement is the manifestation of 3 basic issues: poverty, land and injustice. These, in most cases, of course, are born born from central government ignorance and neglect. Also, there is the omnipresent problem of corruption within state government officials. Many states have complete autonomy re security issues and much money from the central government meant to be used to that end ends up in state politicians panties.
The Indian government is paying the price of their neglect in Indian 'outer', rural, many heavily forested tribal areas. 'Inner' areas being urban areas. In the 1960s the tribal people, fought against industry moving to exploit their lands while not sharing the benefits of progress. Many tribes live on land rich in natural resources, timber, bauxite etc.
Beginning in 1967 in 3 villages the Maoist Naxalites now are involved, in varying degrees, from complete control in 30-40 districts, to in some half of India involving some 90 million people they travel in groups of 20-30 providing services to tribal people who have been stripped of dignity by persecution and neglect. When pressure is exerted from officialdom the Naxalites in these areas just move on. The tribal people have a rich culture. They speak different languages; they sing and dance to their own music. How do the Naxalites gain the support of those in 'outer' areas? In mono crop areas they say to farmers, "you can grow two crops, we will show you how to do it." They dig irrigation ditches. Many carry medical packs with them and treat tribal people who otherwise have to walk 2-3 miles to see a doctor. They rob banks, attack police stations, 'negotiate' extort protection money from doctors and other professional people, and from industry.
In recent months just as the government of Pakistan has moved troops from the Kashmir border areas with India to fight the Taliban/AQ/tribal people in other areas, the Indian government has moved troops from the Kashmir area to fight the Naxalites. While the declared method of the Maoist Naxalites is armed they are involved in negotiation with government officials and industry, see protection money mentioned above and within the movement there are those who believe that armed revolution could never be successful. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The sight of Indians voting may move outsiders to lyricism, but democracy here is limited, and violence begins to appeal
o Kapil Komireddi o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 April 2009
As millions of voters queued up in searing heat on Thursday to cast their votes in the first of the five-phase general election in India, across the region referred to as the "red corridor", armed insurgents detonated landmines, attacked polling booths, shot at police guards and civilians, seized several electronic voting machines and kidnapped at least three election officials. By the time the polls closed, in places that rarely appear in the news media of a west besotted with the "new India" of wealth and glamour, 19 people had been killed. Western reporters preparing platitudinous prelections about the world's largest democracy were forced to alter their scripts at the last minute.
Following last year's attacks in Mumbai, security was cast as a key issue in this election. But the source of Thursday's violence was not the familiar brand of militant Islam. Rather, it emanated from the frustrations induced by the brutality and venality of the Indian state, which justifies its worst excesses against those resisting its intrusions by invoking the legitimacy the democratic process has conferred on it.
Armed Marxist revolutionaries known as Naxalites – named after the 1967 revolt by farmers in the West Bengal village of Naxalbari – control the "red corridor" which spreads across some of India's poorest states. In the last decade alone, people in these regions were subjected to extraordinary injustices by the Indian state: their resources were depleted to fuel urban India's growth; their farmlands were forcefully appropriated and reassigned to wealthy corporations; and their protests were actively suppressed by India's ruling elite.
In 2007, as foreign dignitaries, including German chancellor Angela Merkel and former US treasury secretary Henry Paulson, descended on New Delhi to attend yet another conference on India's rise, thousands of tribal peasants and landless famers from 15 Indian states marched to the capital to register their peaceful protest and demand land rights. The rally's chief organiser, the Gandhian PV Rajgopal, described it as an unprecedented event. "Non-violent direct action has never been tried so effectively," he claimed. "These people are living, walking and sleeping on highways since we set out." But as soon as they arrived in Delhi, having walked over 600km to get there, they were herded into a roofless enclosure by the police and locked up for the rest of the day without any access to toilets or drinking water.
Contrast this with the outrage that was provoked just the previous year when Luxembourg attempted to thwart the Britain-based billionaire Lakshmi Mittal's bid to acquire Arcelor. Newspapers, television networks, columnists, businesspeople and politicians united to condemn Luxembourg. India's commerce minister, Kalam Nath, denounced European "discrimination" and Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, personally took up the matter with Jacques Chirac. Mittal got Arcelor, and there were loud celebrations in New Delhi. But in their collective mission to aid a fellow Indian who had been slighted by foreigners, indignant Indians seemed to put aside the fact that, other than his passport, Mittal has had little to do with India.
India today is home to the largest pool of the world's poorest people, but this reality is carefully concealed in the new narrative of "superpower India" that is aggressively promoted by its tiny elite. This myth is so heady that an expatriate billionaire's bid to acquire a foreign company makes the headlines, occupies the airwaves and keeps the prime minister awake at nights. But the physical detention of more than 25,000 protesters in the scorching heat of Delhi barely scratches the conscience of first-world India.
This delusion-fuelled triumphalism is precisely what Indian voters rejected in 2004. But the incumbent Congress-led government, which came to power on the promise of "inclusive growth", has proved itself an even greater failure.
The quinquennial sight of impoverished people casting their votes may move some to lyricism. But thanks to India's uniformly third-rate politicians, to a vast majority of Indians who actually live here, democracy means very little besides voting. As Jaideep Sahni has observed, electoral regularity seems to be the limit of Indian democracy. But these Indians – impoverished, abused and ignored – must not be taken for granted: they have brought down harsher adversaries and destroyed stronger structures.
As the Delhi protesters dispersed that evening, having endured the humiliations first-world Indians inflicted on them, they looked firm in their conviction about the futility of non-violent struggle in making their voices heard. They looked ready for conscription into the Naxal forces. And they – or people like them – struck as India went to the polls.
The Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh had recently - and even earlier - described the Naxalites/Maoists as the "the greatest internal security threat to our country”.
This 95-page document says something just the opposite. Some excerpts: ---- # "India is today proudly proclaiming an above 9 per cent growth rate and striving to achieve double digit growth. But it is a matter of common observation that the inequalities between classes, between town and country, and between the upper castes and the underprivileged communities are increasing. That this has potential for tremendous unrest is recognized by all. But somehow policy prescriptions presume otherwise. As the responsibility of the State for providing equal social rights recedes in the sphere of policymaking, we have two worlds of education, two worlds of health, two worlds of transport and two worlds of housing, with a gaping divide in between. With globalisation of information, awareness of opportunities and possible life styles are spreading but the entitlements are receding. The Constitutional mandate (Article 39) to prevent concentration of wealth in a few hands is ignored in policy making. The directional shift in Government policies towards modernisation and mechanisation, export orientation, diversification to produce for the market, withdrawal of various subsidy regimes and exposure to global trade has been an important factor in hurting the poor in several ways....(p. 8)"
# "Much of the unrest in society, especially that which has given rise to militant movements such as the Naxalite movement, is linked to lack of access to basic resources to sustain livelihood... (p. 18)"
# "The development paradigm pursued since independence has aggravated the prevailing discontent among marginalised sections of society. This is because the development paradigm as conceived by the policy makers has always been imposed on these communities, and therefore it has remained insensitive to their needs and concerns, causing irreparable damage to these sections. The benefits of this paradigm of development have been disproportionately cornered by the dominant sections at the expense of the poor, who have borne most of the costs. Development which is insensitive to the needs of these communities has invariably caused displacement and reduced them to a sub-human existence. (p. 36)."
# "There are also large areas of labour not governed by the Minimum Wages Act. This includes categories where there is no discernible employer, which is for this reason included in the category of self-employment. Since the Naxalites are in any case not bothered whether or not there is a law governing the right they are espousing, they have intervened and determined fair wage rates in their perception in all labour processes in their areas of influence. This includes wages for washing clothes, making pots, tending cattle, repairing implements, etc. Naxalites have secured increases in the rate of payment for the picking of tendu leaf which is used for rolling beedies, in the forest areas of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand. This was a very major source of exploitation of adivasi labour, and while the Government knowingly ignored it, the Naxalites put an effective end to it. (p.57)."
# "However, the Naxalite movement has to be recognised as a political movement with a strong base among the landless and poor peasantry and adivasis. Its emergence and growth need to be contextualised in the social conditions and experience of people who form a part of it. The huge gap between state policy and performance is a feature of these conditions. Though its professed long term ideology is capturing state power by force, in its day to day manifestation it is to be looked upon as basically a fight for social justice, equality, protection and local development. The two have to be seen together without overplaying the former. Its geographical spread is rooted in failure to remove the conditions which give rise to it (p 66-67)."
# "The public policy perspective on the naxalite movement is overwhelmingly preoccupied with the incidents of violence that take place in these areas and its ideological underpinnings. Though it does concede that the area suffers from deficient development and people have unaddressed grievances, it views the movement as the greatest internal security threat to the country. Accordingly, the attention of the Government is concentrated on curbing violence and maintaining public order to achieve normalcy. While area development is also being speeded up, the security-centric view of the movement accords primacy to security operations. The contextualization of this violence is missing from this perspective. The scale, intensity and approach of security operations cause considerable collateral damage leading to greater alienation of common people. The strategy of security forces to curb violence has also encouraged formation of tribal squads to fight naxalites, with a view to reducing the security force’s own task and risk. This has promoted a fratricidal war in which tribals face the brunt of mortality and injury.(p. 83)"
# "The government’s Status Paper on the Naxal problem appropriately mentions a holistic approach and lays emphasis on accelerated socio-economic development of the backward areas. However, clause 4 (v) of the Status Paper states that “there will be no peace dialogue by the affected states with the Naxal groups unless the latter agree to give up violence and arms”. This is incomprehensible and is inconsistent with the government’s stand vis-à-vis other militant groups in the country.... The government has been conducting peace talks with the Naga rebels of the NSCN (IM) faction for the last nearly ten years, even though the rebels have not only not surrendered their weapons but continue to build up their arsenal. What is worse, the NSCN (IM) have taken advantage of the peaceful conditions to consolidate their hold and establish what could be called almost a parallel government. In relation to ULFA also, the government is prepared to have a dialogue without insisting on the insurgents surrendering their weapons. In J & K, the government has more than once conveyed its willingness to hold talks with any group which is prepared to come to the negotiating table. Why a different approach to the Naxals? The doors of negotiations should be kept open. (p 67-68)" ---- ...and before one concludes that this must be some propaganda material, or writings of some "bleeding-heart liberal/intellectual", I must also share that these excerpts are from a Planning Commission Expert Groups Report, entitled "Development Challenges in Extremist Areas, which was submitted to GOI in 2008. The document can be downloaded from: http://planningcommission.gov.in/reports/publications/rep_dce.pdf
This document was either not read by the Home Minister, or was just shoved aside for a trade-off, since as the Prime Minister told the parliament on June 9th, '09: "...if Left Wing extremism continues to flourish in important parts of our country which have tremendous natural resources of minerals and other precious things, that will certainly affect the climate for investment.'
... In the meanwhile, from 51 maoist-naxal affected districts in 2001, India has now 231 districts in the category (out of 640 or so)... (*_^?)\
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