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Government of India: Guilty as charged
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Here is a report from none other than a panel of the Planning
Commission of the Govt of India on the Naxalite violence in the
country. Its verdict for the Government of India is: GUILTY AS
CHARGED. |
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 There
is no end to the studies of popular discontent in
India, and the
Indian nation state is always eager to find ways to control such
uprisings of discontent. That it fails strongly is a moot point, for
it the main point is that it wins. It has the army, the police, the
required ability to brutalise its own people and the complete lack
of scruples. But after all that, New Delhi's writ still does not run
in nearly one-third of the country.
From time to
time, New
Delhi's rulers keep setting up committees to study the Naxalite
problems. And for India, the Planning Commission is one of the mo st
reliable repository of comprehensive information. That it is also a
helpless witness to the government’s unpardonable apathy to its
important proposals for remedying the situation all these years is a
separate story.
The government
however requires the Commission for hard statistical facts and
figures, and understanding of what is happening at the ground level.
That after all this, the GoI leaves all planning to the magnates of
the market economy is also a different story.
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Quite rightly, the report says that poverty does
create deprivation but other factors like denial of justice,
human dignity, cause alienation and this results in the
conviction that relief can be had outside the system by breaking
the current order asunder. |
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The story that
we are to tell you is based on a report now in the possession of the
WSN that was commissioned by the government to understand Naxal
problem. That even such a wonderfully produced report may also end
up with the usual obligatory list of remedial measures should not
reduce its importance since these measures have remained
unimplemented for years.
“Development
Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas”
is the title of
the report of an expert group set up by the Planning Commission of
the Government of India. Dated March 2008, the report contains
meticulously collected latest facts and figures, rigorously examines
the causes of the continuing economic exploitation and social
discrimination in the adivasi and dalit-inhabited areas even after
60 years of independence. It is significant that this particular
expert group was set up by the government in May 2006, in the
background of increasing Naxalite activities in Andhra Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh,
Bihar,
Jharkhand and Orissa.
 The
group consisted of a variety of people ranging from veteran
ex-bureaucrats (like D Bandyopadhya who chaired it, and is well
known for his implementing the Operation Barga land reform measure
in West Bengal, and S R Sankaran who heads the Hyderabad-based
Committee of Concerned Citizens which had been trying to bring the
Andhra Pradesh government and the Maoist rebels to the negotiating
table) to retired police officers like Prakash Singh, ex-director
general of police, Uttar Pradesh and Ajit Doval, former director of
the Intelligence Bureau. From the other end of the spectrum, we have
well known activists and academics like K Balagopal of the human
rights movement and Sukhadeo Thorat, chairman of the University
Grants Commission and a champion of Dalit emancipation, among
others.
That a mixed bag
of this nature, consisting of experts from different disciplines
with differing opinions, could prepare a consensus report on several
contentious issues and come up with a unanimously agreed set of
recommendations, suggests that all is not lost. But all will be,
given the Government of India’s ability at remaining deaf and dumb.
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While the official attitude is to blame the
Naxalites for violence, and call all actions "an act of
cowardice", this report talks about the structural violence
implicit in the social and economic system and underlines how
Naxalites have indeed carried out certain socio-economic reforms
in their areas of control. These are the reforms that the
executive ought to have implemented. The deep shade of Red is
replacing the judiciary and the police in ensuring law and order
for the poor and the oppressed. |
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Dalits, Adivasis
and Naxalites
Although the
terms of reference did not specifically mention Naxalites (or
Maoists), the group’s brief was to identify causes of unrest and
discontent in areas affected by “widespread displacement, forest
issues, insecure tenancies and others forms of exploitation like
usury, land alienation and imperfect market conditions…”. Clearly,
such areas fall in the above-mentioned five states – and
significantly enough, the group organised field visits in these
areas to observe the situation at first hand, on the basis of which
it has come out with stark revelations that expose the culpability
of the state in denying the poor their basic rights, the treachery
of a corrupt bureaucracy to implement the laws, and its complicity
with a trigger-happy police to suppress popular protest.
 Maintaining
that “the main support for the Naxalite movement comes from dalits
and adivasis”, the group concentrated on these two sections (termed
as scheduled castes and scheduled tribes respectively in official
parlance) which comprise about one-fourth of India’s population, the
majority living in rural areas.
Apart from the
high levels of poverty, the dalits suffer from various types of
disadvantages like limited employment opportunities, political
marginalisation, low education, social discrimination, and human
rights violation. As for the adivasi population, besides remaining
backward in all aspects of human development including education,
health, nutrition, etc, they have been steadily losing their
traditional tribal rights and command over resources. The report
points out in this connection the administration’s failure to
implement the protective regulations in scheduled areas, which has
resulted in land alienation, forced eviction from land, dependence
of the tribals on moneylenders – made worse often by “violence by
the state functionaries”.
Incidentally,
every dalit and adivasi poor in
India have not
joined the Naxalite movement. There are many states with pockets of
high proportion of adivasis and dalits but little Naxalite
influence, as in Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Rajasthan. The report
quite rightly points out that “poverty does create deprivation but
other factors like denial of justice, human dignity, cause
alienation resulting in the conviction that relief can be had
outside the system by breaking the current order asunder”. It adds
that for such a violent upheaval to happen, there is the likelihood
of the “spread of awareness and consciousness”. And this is where,
as the report suggests, the Maoists have played a significant role
by stepping into the craters of dalit and adivasi deprivation in the
five states, and organising the deprived for their rights.
Its authors
situate the Naxalite movement in the historical context of the
“development paradigm pursued since independence”, which they
assert, has “aggravated the prevailing discontent among marginalised
sections of society”. While explaining the current surge in Naxalite
activities, they slam the neoliberal “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” as “an
important factor in hurting the poor in several ways”.
Following this
conceptual approach, they look at the Maoist movement in a way that
is different from the prevalent official attitude which primarily
blames the Naxalites for the violence. Instead, the present report
lays stress on the “structural violence which is implicit in the
social and economic system” and which in the opinion of its authors
prompts the radical groups to justify their own violent acts. The
authors of the report admit that the Naxalites have indeed carried
out certain socio-economic reforms in their areas of control.
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It is better that
India recognises this reality and legitimises the positive
Naxalite contribution to the implementation of the pro-poor laws
– which the state had failed to carry out. In other words, the
government should negotiate a settlement that allows the
Naxalites to run their administration in their pockets of
control. |
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Naxalites as a
Surrogate
State
The report
brings out that the Maoists are actually carrying out the reforms
that the executive ought to have implemented, and are replacing the
judiciary and the police in ensuring law and order for the poor and
the oppressed.
 In
the forest areas of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, the Vidarbha
region of Maharashtra, Orissa and Jharkhand, the Naxalites have led
the adivasis to occupy forest lands that they should have enjoyed in
the normal course of things under their traditionally recognised
rights, but which were denied by government officials through forest
settlement proceedings that have “taken place behind the back and
over the head of the adivasi forest dwellers”. While the government
remained indifferent to the need for paying minimum wages to the
adivasi tendu leaf gatherers in Andhra Pradesh, the Naxalites by
launching a movement have secured increases in the rate of payment
for the picking. The practice of forced labour in the same state,
under which the toiling castes had to provide free labour to the
upper castes, was done away with due to a “major upsurge led by the
Naxalites in the late 1970s and early 1980s of the last century…”.
Commenting on the “peoples courts” set up by the Naxalites in their
areas of control, the report observes that “disputes are resolved in
a rough and ready manner, and generally in the interest of the
weaker party”.
The report also
reveals how despite change of government, successive rulers suppress
the poor and the disadvantaged. There is a design behind this
continuity. The rulers, irrespective of party affiliations, are
lackadaisical and sloppy in implementing pro-poor legal measures.
But the moment the Maoists try to enforce those measures they are
quick to use against them with extreme efficiency another set of
laws – the draconian laws that have been enacted over the years (e
g, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act; Chhattisgarh Public
Security Act; Andhra Pradesh (Suppression of Disturbances) Act,
etc).
Asserting that
the Naxalite movement has to be “recognised as a political movement
with a strong base among the landless and poor peasantry and
adivasis”, the experts warn the government against resorting to
“security-centric” measures like setting up vigilante groups such as
Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh. Instead, they have called for “an
ameliorative approach with emphasis on a negotiated solution”, and
urged the government for a resumption of the peace talks with the
Naxalites which was initiated in October 2004, but broke down in
January 2005.
As for the
Indian state, the experts have been rather frank.
 They
have shown how, in quite a large swathe of inaccessible territory,
the state’s writ does not run, and the Naxalites have been able to
establish a parallel and alternative order that has largely
benefited the poor – especially the dalits and adivasis. It is
better that
India recognises
this reality and legitimises the positive Naxalite contribution to
the implementation of the pro-poor laws – which the state had failed
to carry out. In other words, the government should negotiate a
settlement that allows the Naxalites to run their administration in
their pockets of control – on the lines of the settlement arrived at
with the Naga rebels of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak
Muivah) who have not given up their arms and run a parallel
government in parts of Nagaland.
Referring to the
Indian government’s conciliatory approach to such insurrectionary
groups, the authors of the report raise the legitimate question:
“Why a different approach to the Naxals?” It is for the Prime
Minister to answer this, since he is the one who calls Naxalite
violence the most serious internal security challenge faced by
India.
25
June,
2008
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