IS THIS THE DEMOCRATIC SETUP, LETTER TO P.Chidambaram.

To,
P.Chidambaram,
Hon’ble Home Minister,
India.

Sir,
First we would like to congratulate you for starting ‘operation green hunt’. India is on the verge of becoming a SUPER POWER, developed nation in near future. As Prime Minister stated few months before that the poverty will be rooted out from the country, we understand that their is an urgent need to eliminate the poor people and operation green hunt is a romantic idea to achieve it. We can understand that rebellion , that too rebellion by people who find it difficult to have stomach full of food is completely unacceptable.

 

We would also like to congratulate your obsessiveness for democracy and democratic setup in this era, where everyone is busy bringing their kins and relatives for politics. As you have stated many times violence is not acceptable in democracy; ofcourse it excludes state sponsored violence right?

 

As humble students of present day political and socioeconomical issues we have few , very few doubts. Recently there was MLC elections in Karnataka. Money ruled it from the beginning. The ruling party itself was a role model which shifted[ abducted] the voters to resorts and bribed. The case was very similar to earlier MLA elections where crores of rupees was distributed. Is purchasing voters and their votes a mandatory step in establishing democratic setup. If so what amount of money should one have to enter politics [ please mention the exact money as we have to arrange it by next elections]

 

And finally if this is your democratic setup should we [youth of india] accept it or reject it and die in green hunt??

 

I hope you will answer the above questions.

 

Your’s faithfully,

“MISGUIDED” YOUTH,

INDIA.

Farm suicides: a 12-year saga

The loan waiver year of 2008 saw 16,196 farm suicides in the country, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Compared to 2007, that’s a fall of just 436. As economist Professor K. Nagaraj who has worked in-depth on farm suicide data says, “the numbers leave little room for comfort and none at all for self-congratulation.” There were no major changes in the trend that set in from the late 1990s and worsened after 2002. The dismal truth is that very high numbers of farm suicides still occur within a fast decreasing farm population.

Between just the Census of 1991 and that of 2001, nearly 8 million cultivators quit farming. A year from now, the 2011 Census will tell us how many more quit in this decade. It is not likely to be less. It could even dwarf that 8 million figure as the exodus from farming probably intensified after 2001. The State-wise farm suicide ratios — number of farmers committing suicide per 100,000 farmers — are still pegged on the outdated 2001 figures. So the 2011 Census, with more authentic counts of how many farmers there really are, might provide an unhappy update on what is going on.

Focussing on farm suicides as a share of total suicides in India misleads. That way, it’s “aha! the percentage is coming down.” That’s silly. For one thing, the total number of suicides (all groups, not just farmers) is increasing — in a growing population. Farm suicides are rising within a declining farm population. Two, an all-India picture disguises the intensity. The devastation lies in the Big 5 States (Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh). These account for two-thirds of all farm suicides during 2003-08. Take just the Big 5 — their percentage of all farm suicides has gone up. Worse, even their percentage of total all-India suicides (all categories) has risen. Poor States like Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are doing very badly for some years now.

In the period 1997-2002, farm suicides in the Big 5 States accounted for roughly one out of every 12 of all suicides in the country. In 2003-08, they accounted for nearly one out of every 10.

The NCRB now has farm suicide data for 12 years. Actually, farm data appear in its records from 1995 onwards, but some States failed to report for the first two years. Hence 1997, from when all States are reporting their farm suicide data, is a more reliable base year. The NCRB has also made access much easier by placing all past years of “Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India” reports on its website.

The 12-year period allows us to compare farm suicide numbers for 1997-2002, with how they turned out in the next 6-year period of 2003-2008. All 12 years were pretty bad, but the latter six were decidedly worse.

Reading a ‘trend’ into a single year’s dip or rise is misleading. Better to look at 3-year or 6-year periods within 1997-2008. For instance, Maharashtra saw a decline in farm suicide numbers in 2005, but the very next year proved to be its worst ever. Since 2006, the State has been the focus of many initiatives. Manmohan Singh’s visit to Vidharbha that year brought the “Prime Minister’s Relief Package” of Rs.3,750 crore for six crisis-ridden districts of the region. This came atop Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s Rs.1,075 crore “CM’s relief package.” Then followed the nearly Rs.9,000 crore that was Maharashtra’s share of the Rs.70,000-crore Central loan waiver for farmers. To which the State government added Rs.6,200 crore for those farmers not covered by the waiver. The State added Rs.500 crore for a one-time settlement (OTS) for poor farmers who had been excluded from the waiver altogether because they owned over five acres of land.

In all, the amounts committed to fighting the agrarian crisis in Maharashtra exceeded Rs. 20,000 crore across 2006, 2007 and 2008. (And that’s not counting huge handouts to the sugar barons.) Yet, that proved to be the worst three-year period ever for any State at any time since the recording of farm data began. In 2006-08, Maharashtra saw 12, 493 farm suicides. That is nearly 600 more than the previous worst of 2002-2005 and 85 per cent higher than the 6,745 suicides recorded in the three-year period of 1997-1999. The same government was in power, incidentally, in the worst six years. Besides, these higher numbers are emerging within a shrinking farm population. By 2001, 42 per cent of Maharashtra’s population was already urban. Its farmer base has certainly not grown.

So was the loan waiver useless? The idea of a waiver was not a bad thing. And it was right to intervene. More that the specific actions were misguided and bungled. Yet it could also be argued that but for the relief the waiver brought to some farmers at least, the suicide numbers of 2008 could have been a lot worse. The waiver was a welcome step for farmers, but its architecture was flawed. A point strongly made in this journal (Oh! What a lovely waiver, March 10, 2008). It dealt only with bank credit and ignored moneylender debt. So only those farmers with access to institutional credit would benefit. Tenant farmers in Andhra Pradesh and poor farmers in Vidharbha and elsewhere get their loans mainly from moneylenders. So, in fact, farmers in Kerala, where everyone has a bank account, were more likely to gain. (Kerala was also the one State to address the issue of moneylender debt.)

The 2008 waiver also excluded those holding over five acres, making no distinction between irrigated and unirrigated land. This devastated many struggling farmers with eight or 10 acres of poor, dry land. On the other hand, West Bengal’s farmers, giant numbers of small holders below the 5-acre limit, stood to gain far more.

Every suicide has a multiplicity of causes. But when you have nearly 200,000 of them, it makes sense to seek broad common factors within that group. Within those reasons. As Dr. Nagaraj has repeatedly pointed out, the suicides appear concentrated in regions of high commercialisation of agriculture and very high peasant debt. Cash crop farmers seemed far more vulnerable to suicide than those growing food crops. Yet the basic underlying causes of the crisis remained untouched. The predatory commercialisation of the countryside; a massive decline in investment in agriculture; the withdrawal of bank credit at a time of soaring input prices; the crash in farm incomes combined with an explosion of cultivation costs; the shifting of millions from food crop to cash crop cultivation with all its risks; the corporate hijack of every major sector of agriculture including, and especially, seed; growing water stress and moves towards privatisation of that resource. The government was trying to beat the crisis — leaving in place all its causes — with a one-off waiver.

In late 2007, The Hindu carried (Nov. 12-15) the sorry result emerging from Dr. Nagaraj’s study of NCRB data: that nearly 1.5 lakh peasants had ended their lives in despair between 1997 and 2005. Just days later, Union Minister for Agriculture Sharad Pawar confirmed those figures in Parliament (Rajya Sabha Starred Question No. 238, Nov. 30, 2007) citing the same NCRB data. It’s tragic that 27 months later, the paper had to run a headline saying that the number had climbed to nearly 2 lakh. The crisis is very much with us. Mocking its victims, heckling its critics. And cosmetic changes won’t make it go away.

Campaign Wake Europe up to crimes of Indian State

Party of the Committees to Support Resistance – for Communism (CARC) – Italy

Via Tanaro, 7 – 20128 Milano – Tel/Fax 02.26306454

e-mail: resistenza@carc.it – website: www.carc.it

National Direction – International Relations Department

Tel. +39 0226306454 – e-mail: carc.ri@libero.it

25/01/2010

To Democracy and Class Struggle

And, for their information, to the other organizations and parties signatories of the campaign Wake Europe up to crimes of Indian State with Spring Thunder Europe 2010:

Maoist Communist Party of France,

(new)Italian Communist Party,

CARC Party (Italy),

Serve The People (Norway),

Co-ordination Committee of Revolutionary Communists of Britain,

Revolutionary Praxis – Britain.

WPRM Britain

And to all concerned parties and organizations

Dear comrades,

we congratulate you on launching the campaign Wake Europe up to crimes of Indian State with Spring Thunder Europe 2010. We invite other parties and organizations to join this campaign.

We propose the signatories constitute an International Coordination for promoting and spreading the campaign. We are thinking of something like the coordination promoting the campaign BDS (Boycotting-Disinvestment-Sanctions) against Israel (http://www.bds-info.ch), or the one here in Italy promoting the campaign for mobilize immigrants and autochthonous on 1^st March “A day without immigrants: 24 hours without us” (http://primomarzo2010.blogspot.cm.

We propose the International Coordination drafts a Call that every signatory will wide spread on international level and that everyone will translate and wide spread distribute in its own country. This Call should be addressed to Communists, vanguard workers, progressive and democratic people. It should shortly but effectively indicate 1. the objectives of the campaign, 2. the reasons why democratic and progressive people and Communists all over the world must demonstrate against the crimes of Indian Union government and against the war (the operation Green Hunt) it launched. We have to proclaim international solidarity with the targets of the criminal war launched by Indian Union government: the tribals (the Adivasis) and the Maoists. We have to indicate some main instruments of the campaign (conferences, local committees, articles and reports on newspapers, television, radio, Internet, initiatives as films, exhibitions, demonstrations, sit-in, etc.).

According to us, in this call we must describe the conditions of misery to which Indian Union government and British imperialism before it reduced Adivasis and backwardness and oppression they suffer more than 60 years after Indian Union independence on 1947, the expulsion of Adivasis from their territories the Indian Union and the federate State gave to the multinationals (nature, size and duration of ongoing operation, that is the source of Adivasis’ resistance, supported and promoted by Maoists), the destruction of (how many?) square kilometers of forest and following deterioration of the planet, the other wars Indian Union government is already waging for years in North Western and North Eastern India, US imperialists and Israeli Zionists’ role in Indian Union government’s criminal deeds, the merits of Maoists, already active in whole territory of Indian Union, who gave a progressive and effective direction to Adivasis’ resistance, etc. All these issues must be dealt synthetically but effectively in the Call.

We propose every one of the signatories indicate to the others 1. the instruments he has for the campaign (interviews, films, exhibitions, websites, blogs, etc.) and maybe the others can use, 2. the international contacts by which he thinks to extend the campaign, 3. the national initiatives (whom to contact for each organism, whom to mobilize, some public initiative we already are planning, etc.) he is going to promote (someway a first draft of campaign planning).

The CARC Party will publish an article on the issue on its monthly paper Resistenza. It is getting in touch with leaders of the movement defending human, civil and political rights in India and journalists in Italy for publishing interviews on Italian national newspapers.

It invites parties and organizations of the International Communist Movement to join the campaign. Particularly we invite to join it MLPD and KOE, which representatives participated in the meeting we held on the end of November 2007 in London, where many exponents of the international communist movement defined the lines of development of the campaign that there your organization Democracy and Class Struggle launched.

It proposes the coordination with the many initiatives already developing about the matter on European level. Firstly, we propose to contact ILPS that already launched an initiative of protest at La Hague, and plan to organize another one on March.

It proposes to invite an exponent of the movement of defense of human, political and civil rights of Indian people for a tour in many European nations.

It plans to deal with the matter in the international aggregations it participates in.

It plans to organize initiatives in coordination with other forces concerned or already operating here in Italy. First of all, the Proletarian Solidarity Association participates in the initiatives planned or to be planned, as it is particularly interested in the matter of repression and of political prisoners, as the repressive action of the Indian State is one of the cruelest and most barbaric of the whole world.

We also inform that the Anti-Imperialist Camp, whose Italian section we are in touch with, will send a delegation in India in the first days of February, as in next summer it plans to organize an intervention that gathers many people from our countries and sends them to India for some weeks in the areas the Indian Union government wants to attack.

This is a first draft of work plan s regards our Party on national and international level. We shall be glad to know as soon as possible what you think about our proposals.

With comradely greetings,

Paolo Babini

CARC Party – International Relations Department

Maoist information Bulletins.

MIB-10

MIB-11

MIB-12

MIB-13

Itching Towards Death

source
Endosulfan may be banned in more than 60 countries, but India is the world’s largest producer of the deadly pesticide, says BHAVDEEP KANG
image
Invisible killer Birth defects, skin diseases and motor ailments are linked to the use of endosulfan

THE KARNATAKA government acknowledged the link between the spraying of endosulfan in South Canara district and the incidence of congenital birth defects, skin diseases and motor ailments, saying victims would be given financial aid. The government was spurred into action when MLA and former minister Shobha Karandlaje presented disturbing statistics and pictures of deformed children in the Assembly.

Karandlaje’s report came in the wake of a declaration by Minister of Agriculture Sharad Pawar last month that the pesticide — a potent neurotoxin which can disrupt the human endocrine system — will not be banned in India. He was responding to a global campaign against endosulfan and increasing pressure from the EU to stop its use on cotton crops.

A couple of months ago in the UK, a “pants down” protest was staged by celebrities against endosulfan use on cotton crops after pesticide residues were allegedly detected in underwear. It was claimed that the underwear was itchy as pesticide residues lingered even after the raw cotton had been turned to cloth.

South Canara adjoins Kerala’s Kasargod, where aerial spraying of endosulfan on cashew plantations in the 1990s severely affected locals. Pictures of physically and mentally handicapped children shocked the world, compelling the Kerala government to ban endosulfan in 2001.

The pesticide is also used on cotton in Punjab’s Malwa region, known as the state’s “cancer belt”. Endosulfan was detected in measurable quantities in the blood of farmers from this region.

Karandlaje says its effects continue to be felt in the South Canara region many years after spraying was stopped. She has demanded that Karnataka, too, ban the pesticide. “In one village alone, I found 137 cases of severely affected children. Endosulfan persists in the environment for many years”.

The link between the health of farmers and the use of pesticides is well established worldwide. A study by Chandigarh’s Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research linked the incidence of cancer in the Malwa region to pesticide use. Most of the victims go to Bikaner’s cancer hospital for low-cost treatment. So high is the incidence of cancer in the region that the Bhatinda- Bikaner train has been dubbed the “cancer express”.

In Bikaner, an industry has grown around the cancer patients coming in from Punjab. There are thousands of laboratories promising “sameday” test results. “It is a racket. Imagine the authenticity of some of those tests, especially those for which results cannot be obtained in a day. We need to do an extensive study on the patients coming from Punjab,” says a senior oncologist of the Bikaner Medical College. Although it has not been proven that endosulfan directly causes cancer, it has been linked to a host of other ailments, particularly those of the nervous system, which afflict agricultural workers in Malwa.
The pesticide lobby maintains that withdrawing endosulfan will negatively impact agriculture

ENDOSULFAN HAS been banned in more than 60 countries. In 2007, the prime manufacturer, Bayer, withdrew it from the US market but continued to sell it abroad.

India is the world’s largest producer of endosulfan. The pesticide lobby maintains that withdrawing it will negatively impact Indian agriculture, apparently by destroying bee colonies! The argument goes like this: endosulfan is less toxic to bees than other pesticides. If it is banned, farmers may opt for pesticides lethal to bees, thereby destroying colonies and preventing pollination, which would “harm our country’s natural wealth of flora and fauna”. It has also accused the EU of using NGOs to unfairly target endosulfan.

The Ministry of Agriculture has sided with the pesticide lobby, even blocking the addition of endosulfan to the Rotterdam Convention on hazardous chemicals. Itchy britches notwithstanding.

Haiti’s Story must be told

Haiti was the scene of the only successful slave revolution in history when the heroic descendants of African slaves drove out the strongest army in the world at that time, the French.

The French government forced Haiti to pay reparations of millions of dollars for daring to rebel.

FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES WANTED AN EXAMPLE MADE OF THIS AFRIKAN NATION TO SHOW WHAT WOULD LIE IN STORE FOR ANY OTHER REBELLIOUS AFRIKAN NATION

Tthe U.S., also at that time feared the influence of Haiti on the slaves in the USA, and with France embarked on a policy of isolating and impoverishing Haiti.

This established, Haiti’s destructive patterns of political violence and economic chaos continuing from then up to the present time.

Between 1915 and 1934 U.S. marines occupied Haiti, suppressing a liberation struggle and implanting puppets. The U.S. backed the infamously cruel tyrant Papa Doc Duvalier, and then his son Baby Doc in the middle of the century..

The US and French governments conspired to overthrow the popular president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the 1990’s and then again just a few years ago in 2004.

In Haiti’s hour of need the past must be remembered and the people of Haiti freed from the destructive power of Imperialism in the 21st Century.

Statement of the George Jackson Socialist League and Democracy and Class Struggle

The revolutionary movement led by the CPP-MLM will continue fighting till victory

“Failure is what the Oplan Bantay Laya 2 achieved thru the implementation of the 61st IB PA in southern Negros,” a statement from the Ka Roger Mahinay Command (RMC) said.

“The repeated statement of victory against the revolutionary movement by the military especially from the notorious 61st IB is an old broken record that even their shadows laugh over their wildest dreams thru recycled surender, intrigues, psywar activities and lies,” the RMC added in the statement.

According to the RMC they have preserve their forces and have initiated an ambush on fascist troops of the 61st IB PA in Sitio Indangawan, Brgy Manlocahoc, Sipalay City last December 9, 2009. The said ambush resulted in the deaths of three elements of the military in the first volume of fire by the Red fighters and the wounding of another who later died in the hospital. The bodies of the dead soldiers were hidden from public view by concealing it under the seats at the back of the Rio-truck used by the military in responding to the ambush in the area. These were brought to the Barasbarasan HQ, Brgy Manlocahoc, Sipalay City while a civilian woman was wounded by rock splinters far from the ambush site.

The RMC also pointed out primary gains like raising the levels of its mass organizations, increase membership of revolutionary mass organizations of peasants, women, youth and cultural activists, boosting prices of peasants products, wage increase for the farm workers, defending the peasants against landgrabbing and opposition against destructive foreign owned mining companies and also promoting anti-fascist mass movements in the area. They also serve punishments handed down by the revolutionary peoples’ court against criminal and bad elements in the area.

“Despite military operations, the RMC was able to accomplish the holding of the 41st anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines- Marxism-Leninism- Maoism (MLM) ceremonies inside a guerrila camp attended by more than 200 guests from the cities and the interior areas,” added the RMC.

“This 2010, the RMC will do it’s best in contributing to the national call of elevating the armed struggle to the strategisc stalemate in five years and victory in the next ten years,” concluded the RMC statement.

Reference :
Ka Roger Mahinay Command statement
Southwest Guerilla Front
Negros Island

Maoist information bulletin – 09

maoist information bulletin

The Youngest Maoist, two years old Madvi Mukesh nabbed!

Breaking news! Youngest Maoist nabbed!
Check out the murderous rage on his face!
Check out the hand that has bludgeoned many heads!
Check out the strained forehead that explain his years committed to bloodshed!
© Javed Iqbal
When Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh referred to Maoists as being the “single largest threat to the nation”, did he mean this child, whose fingers were brutally chopped off while his family was massacred?
Now, even before this ‘Maoist’ could be sent in for a narco-analysis, let’s understand where he comes from.
Name: Madvi Mukesh
Age: Two years old
Tribe: Muria
Residence: Gompad village, police station Konta, district Dantewada (on the Chhattisgarh-Andhra Pradesh border)
Family: Maternal grandfather Madvi Barjar (50) – dead; grandmother Madvi Subhi (45) – dead; mother Kartam Kunni (20) – dead; maternal aunt Madi Mooti (8) – dead; father (21).
Mukesh was with his family on the morning of October 1, 2009, when something unusual happened. Several men wearing military fatigues – SPOs (special police officers), police and other security forces – pointed their guns at these ‘Maoists’ and shot at them. Mukesh’s neigbours were killed – Muchaki Handa, Markam Deva, Tomra Mutta, newly-married couple Soyma Subba and Soyam Jogi.

Mukesh’s family was wiped out. He was found to be crying near a pool of blood, oozing from the chopped body of his aunt. His wails were uncontrollable – did he understand the meaning of the loss of his family, or was it because his three fingers were chopped during the carnage?
His ‘Maoist’ father wasn’t at home at that time. He was saved.
Houses were burnt down. Paddy, pulses, brass pots, poultry and cash were taken away. In all, the villagers found that 10 of their people were dead. Some youths were missing. Mukesh Madvi, the ‘Maoist’, disappeared into the jungles with his father.
About 200 kms north of Gompad, news about an encounter was being circulated in the press. Operation Green Hunt had officially begun on October 1, 2009, and it was declared that some Maoists were killed near the Andhra border. When questions were raised by some sceptical journalists about the bodies of the Maoists, they were told that the villagers had disposed them off.
On January 3, 2010, when I met Amresh Mishra, Superintendent of Police (SP) of Dantewada, and had asked him about the Gompad massacre, he clarified that it wasn’t a massacre. “There was only a firing from both the sides. There was no casualty; only some explosives were found.”
January 7, 2010, would have been the day when, like Mukesh, many other ‘Maoists’ would have come to Dantewada for a Jan Sunwai (public hearing), so that they could put forth their case. Home Minister P Chidambaram had promised Himanshu Kumar of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, who had planned the Jan Sunwai, that he would be present to hear the unending woes of the people. However, the Governor of Chhattisgarh ESL Narasimhan prevented the Home Minister from making that visit. The Jan Sunwai was bound to have opened a can of worms before the national media, if the Home Minister had attended the meeting.
Mukesh did arrive for the Jan Sunwai along with his father, and several other optimists, on January 5. They were about 25 of them. No sooner did they arrive at Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, they were surrounded by SPOs. About 30 minutes later, they were all packed into three Boleros which bore no number plates.
It has been 10 days since those ‘Maoists’ were taken to an undisclosed location and there has been no news about them.

© Javed Iqbal
So that is the government’s definition of a ‘Maoist’, whom I encountered personally – the tribal carrying logs of firewood who starts walking through jungles since 3 am, and reaches the nearest town by 7 am, to sell the firewood for Rs 60. The tribal who walks about 50 kms to reach the police station, to complain that the forces stationed in his village killed the only hen that he had, is a Maoist for the government. The two-year-old Suresh is a Maoist for the government.

Veteran questions Maoist fight

October 4, 2009

SANKARSHAN THAKUR
Kumawat, the former BSF chief
New Delhi, Oct. 3: One of India’s topmost anti-Naxalite strategists has questioned the Centre’s new “crackdown-first development-later” credo and warned that any use of air power against Maoists could saddle the nation with “Afghanistan and Iraq-like” security liabilities.
“Development must go hand in hand with the fight against Naxalites; deprived people in the heartland cannot be expected to wait on their misery until the government is done with its long-haul campaigns,” Mahendra Kumawat, who retired as director-general of the BSF last month, told The Telegraph today.
“The government is going to lose more hearts and minds to the Maoists if it forges ahead with a strike policy that brings nothing but bloodshed and disruption to people in the affected zones. That is going to multiply our problems, not solve them. I wish the government all the best, but it isn’t going to work.”
The scorch-then-salve policy, advocated for long by hardline think-tanks, has found favour with home minister P. Chidambaram, but it has also alarmed sceptics within the security establishment who believe strictly police solutions are a “counter-productive half measure”. Recently unshackled by retirement, Kumawat may be articulating their concerns.
Kumawat speaks from a decade’s “on ground” experience of dealing with Naxalites in the Andhra-Orissa-Chhattisgarh triangle. Before assuming command of the BSF, he was also chairman of the national anti-Naxalite task force in the Union home ministry during Shivraj Patil’s tenure as internal security boss.
Kumawat wouldn’t take names, but he made it apparent that his experience as head of the national co-ordination desk in North Block did not inspire too much optimism over the anti-Naxalite offensive in the works under Chidambaram.
“We may think nationally but we do not act nationally,” he said. “There is little or no co-ordination between states which are actually as big as countries. West Bengal, for instance, would not share information with Jharkhand. There are debilitating turf battles between various agencies, intelligence is routinely held back or delayed, and most of the intelligence and documentation we have is poor in any case. All that needs to change if the government is to have half a chance of success.”
The retired top cop was critical of the manner in which governments approached the “very alarming” Naxalite challenge, saying: “We don’t prepare well enough. Information is critical and it is not available in the market, it has to be gathered and analysed all the time and over a long period of time. How many of our states have done that? Probably Andhra Pradesh, and they have had some success to show for homework done. But the same cannot be said for the rest. We are ill-prepared.”
Asked whether there was virtue to Chidambaram’s argument that Naxalite-dominated areas first needed to be “cleansed” of their “disruptive dominance” before development initiatives can be effectively mounted, Kumawat said: “Well, the home minister has himself said this will be a long battle, how long are people to wait for the welfare state to come to them? The challenge and the ingenuity of governance lies is doing both at the same time, the security component will have to be built in to development projects, as has been successfully done in parts of the Northeast. It may be tough to do, but that is what governments are about.”
Cautioning against using too hard a hand, Kumawat said: “We are hearing things about the use of the Indian Air Force, but the government should be extremely careful it is only logistical use, nothing else. And even so, the Naxalites are very capable of trapping the air force in ugly situations where they will have no option but to retaliate. Once that begins to happen, there will be the huge risk of collateral damage to populations and further alienation. The Naxalites are clever tacticians, they will engage and scoot, innocent people will get killed, you will have mess on your hands. Look at what the drone attacks are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
He sounded utterly unsurprised by indications emerging from Naxalite circles that they plan a bloody cat-and-mouse with security forces in the weeks and months to come.
“If they are talking of encircling the government rather than getting encircled, it is nothing to scoff at or be smug about. That is classical Maoist tactic — you go looking for them in their strongholds and you find they have melted away, their mobility is an advantage they employ to the hilt,” Kumawat said, adding that this Naxalite tactic, too, bedevils government plans.
“They will melt away, or just merge with populations. An operation, even if it is based on good and specific tip-offs, can end up hurting innocent people and creating greater disaffection against the state.” TT