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Editorial
India On The Hunt, Media In Tow
Four months
back, India was struck by leaks from Home Ministry about Operation
Green Hunt. Now, it is clear that all it meant was application of
broad spectrum antibiotic of police, paramilitary and Special Forces
against the Maoists. Tens of thousands of security personnel have
been tasked to decimate ten thousand or so Maoist cadre.
The Indian media
is also going for the overkill, as is the Indian government. Since
the summer of 2009, the Ministry of Home Affairs has under the
tutelage of Chidambaram actively courted the media as a matter of
policy, and has played its hand in spades.
An impression
has been created that Maoists are for outright brutality and are a
bunch of frothing killers. Men like Kishenjee are only helping such
an impression. The beheading this past October of a police officer,
Francis Induvar, in Jharkhand; in mid-November causing the death of
several innocent passengers by blowing up tracks as a train passed,
also in Jharkhand; and in late-November, the beheading of a
pro-government schoolteacher in West Bengal, have eroded Maoist
claims that they are fighting a just war.
It is true that
brutality has always been part of the Maoist modus. But the problem
is that the problems of tribals are much more and important than the
cause of Maoism. Indian media is confusing the two. A system of
instant justice that has come to be known as people’s court and
severely punishes declared offenders, including landlords, suspected
police informers, and those who stand up to rebel might with death
and dismemberment is bad. So is the complete absence of justice in
the paradigm of Indian delivery system.
It is truw that
the state isn’t the only fallible entity but what is also true is
that New Delhi is flouting the Constitution as much as the Naxalites
are doing.
Maoists have
lost public relations ground among mainstream media and liberals but
it will be an error to accept this phase of conflict as an end-game.
There is no getting away from intense internal conflict for a
horizon that could, at the very least, extend to the next five
years.
India is wrongly
identifying Maoism as its greatest internal security threat; it must
recognise that poverty, non-governance and corruption continue to be
the greatest threats to internal security of the country. The
entrenched brahamanical powers' hold is a threat, the
marginalisation of minorities and dalits and tribals is a threat.
Maoist rebels
mirror India’s own failings as a nation. Their presence in an area
that equals a third of India proves abdication by Was it not the
Ministry of Home Affairs that said in its Annual Report for 2006-07:
‘Naxalites typically operate in a vacuum created by inadequacy of
administrative and political institutions, espouse local demands and
take advantage of the prevalent disaffection, perceived injustice
among the underprivileged and remote segments of population.’ And
so, such a war will not be won by the state by bulldozing rebels and
the desperately disaffected.
All that New
Delhi is talking about is an increase in recruitment of
paramilitary; exhortations to increase and modernize police forces
and police posts in rebel-affected states; and intelligence
gathering and sharing to attack rebels. The state is arming itself
with draconian laws. The government can use procedure to arrest and
implicate whomsoever it wishes for real and imagined crimes. There
is talk of ‘finishing off these guys once and for all’ ‘getting rid
of Naxalites like that Binayak Sen’ and what not, just as Maoists
talk of ‘punishing the most vile elements’ – suspected police
informers who typically have their throats slashed.
A large part of
the blame for escalation rather than meaningful resolution of
conflict will unequivocally remain the joint responsibility of
aggressive business and accommodating politics. Business interests
include some of the biggest names in India and globally: Vedanta
Resources, the Tata Group, Arcelor-Mittal, Essar Steel, Posco Group,
JSW Steel, Jindal Power – all engaged in either aggressive planning
or execution of a slew of projects ranging from mining of iron ore
to production of steel to generation of power.
Why is Indian
media now talking about these activities that typically involve
displacement of populations, snatching away a life style, killing a
civilization.
17
February 2010
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