Naxalism, what is it-- a menace or a panacea? In its earliest avatar as Maoism it was a temporary panacea when Mao Dezong practiced it to purge China in the sixties & seventies. But China witnessed a savage annihilation of thousands of its citizens during this purge. Maoism fell into complete disfavor in China in 1978. China has since then publicly disowned Naxalism as...
Naxalism, what is it-- a menace or a panacea? In its earliest avatar as Maoism it was a temporary panacea when Mao Dezong practiced it to purge China in the sixties & seventies. But China witnessed a savage annihilation of thousands of its citizens during this purge. Maoism fell into complete disfavor in China in 1978. China has since then publicly disowned Naxalism as its progeny.
This rejected principle tragically became a tool in the hands of a small section of Indian intelligentsia- in West Bengal & later in the Telengana area. However Naxalism was thrown out twice from WB --first by Siddhartha Shanker Ray who matched ruthlessness with ruthlessness & threw them out in the early seventees. Thereafter the CPI(M) made their reentry impossible by strict village level control. But when the CPI (M) grip weakened, the Naxalites attempted a resurgence recently only to be operationally routed by excellent police action.
It was never a mass movement driven by the oppressed. The Maoist/ Naxalite movement has always been driven by revolutionaries from the Upper castes e.g. Ganapathy or Koteswara Rao, vicariously playing out their revolutionary fantasies through the lives of Adivasis .Naxalism, spread over 2000 police stations in 203 districts across 20 states (according to a study covering roughly over 40 percent of the country's area & 35 percent of its population) is a holocaust that has already claimed over 6000 lives in the 20 year period from 1990 to 2010. And they thirst for more. Baptism in bloodbath & an insistence on killing has become the defining feature of the Naxalite agenda.
Chhattisgarh, a predominantly tribal state, has about 3 dozen major & minor tribes, concentrated mostly in Bastar. Their tribal way of life was valuable to them. Raja Pravir Chandra Bhanj Deo of Bastar was their hugely popular spiritual & political leader & an icon. He championed the cause of tribal’s vigorously & fought against corruption in land reforms. His diabolic assassination with political overtones in 1966 left Bastar vulnerable & devoid of a masterful political presence. It was this vacuum that was fully exploited by the Naxalites from neighboring Andhra.
K Seetharamaiah the founding father of Peoples' War, had identified Dandakaranya as the area with immense strategic geo-political importance. Among other advantages, the one weighing most strongly in its favour was this area being a cluster of the remotest corners of the five adjoining states of CG, Orissa, AP,MP & Maharashtra. Dandakaranya roughly translates from Sanskrit to “The Jungle (Aranya) of Punishment (Dandakas)". It covers about 92,000 sq. kms. of land with Abujmarh hills in the North-West spanning about 320 km North to South & about 480 km East to West across five states with the largest chunk being in Bastar area of CG. Abujhmarh is the unsurveyed, densest & impenetrable area whose very name "Aboojh" portrays it aptly as an “unsolved riddle ". According to Ramayana exiled persons resided here. It was here that Surpnakha met Lord Rama & the epic took an ugly turn.
We must understand that social amelioration of the downtrodden is NOT their aim ( which is the true aim of the hundreds of Ram Krishna Mission workers actively engaged in social work in Bastar for decades ) it is just their game. The pattern in AP, CG, Jharkhand & Bihar has been roughly the same- studying the local problems & various issues and using it as a fodder to foster their endgame- seizure of power ! Their NGOs feast & flourish on local discontent just as a giant fly would feast on an open wound not allowing it to heal.
Kujur, a JNU scholar, after an on the spot study on Left wing extremism in CG wrote " Naxal topguns in CG ....have a vested interest in keeping poverty alive because it enables them to expand their territory...". No wonder the locals soon realize that social & economic issues take a back seat while the battle for supremacy with the State emerges as the primary motive of the movement. The tribals & the locals are actually the "guinea pigs of revolution".
They may make public postures against elections but in reality they are actively into politicking & the Panchayats in the guerrilla zone have been electorally captured by them primarily because a large number of Govt. schemes operate through them. Out of the three tiers of governance (the traditional tribal heads of the villages/ the Panchayats, the District administration & the political representatives) the tribal heads had over the years been systematically exterminated/ the panchayats had been captured, the district administration was in shambles & the politicians were a complete light weight! The vacuum had only to be filled now. The Naxalites presented themselves as the Messiahs of the downtrodden; only this Messiah was not speaking the language of love or persuasion but that of murder & mayhem!
Let it be known to all, that the propaganda/media machinery of the Naxalites is more powerful than their war machinery. Their NGOs & activists wage a non- stop propaganda war in the national capital & in major towns, against any Govt. step that weakens them, eg. the deployment of the Naga Battalion in CG from 2005 to 2007 that for the first time ever sent shivers down their spines. Nagas were adept in jungle warfare & were the most fearless of warriors, who gave hot pursuit to the Naxals & hunted them out mercilessly from their inaccessible hideouts.
Their cadres had started deserting them in hordes. So obviously all the propaganda might of the Naxalites was pitched (successfully) towards getting the Nagas out of the Naxal theatre in CG. The lesson that was not learnt was that the police needs to have a propaganda machinery of its own. Not a hapless police PRO but a highly budgeted & highly professional media management. It is also well known that the Naxalites, as a matter of strategy, try to besiege major media houses & entice media personnel all the time. They are also reputed to have secret sleeping cells in select media houses.
Salwa Judum was the biggest target of the Naxalite propaganda blitzkrieg. It is an ancient form of "collective hunting" or "collective problem solving platform". It is believed to have been initiated by a school teacher. It spread like wildfire & assumed the form of a mass movement against the atrocities committed by naxalites. It was soon joined by Mahendra Karma, the lion hearted tribal Congress leader. For those of us who watched the movement from close quarters it was truly spontaneous, peaceful & involuntary. It gathered momentum & was getting bigger! It was a classic text-book case of public uprising against insurgency. It was Gandhian in approach & execution. The churning of Salwa Judum was throwing up young new leadership in much the same way as the Indian freedom struggle threw up real leaders, men of substance & genuine proven mettle.
Shri Sharda Prasad Mishra, a retired IPS officer of Raipur, when on deputation to the CRPF in the mid seventies, combated Naxalism first hand in West Bengal & thereafter summarised his views in a brilliant report in which he says ".....Thus the counter fight has to be conducted among the population and through the population ". A public uprising would have sounded the death knell of Naxalism in Bastar, something they could never afford since Bastar had become their biggest bastion after they were hounded out of AP. The uprising had to be crushed at ANY COST.
A two pronged policy was immediately adopted: the emerging leadership of this movement was immediately executed & its biggest protagonist Shri Mahendra Karma was relentlessly hounded but the brave tribal leader refused to be intimidated. Secondly their entire propaganda machinery, NGOs & activists were ordered to go on an overdrive & throttle the Salwa Judum movement in its infancy. In a mistaken gesture the police along with the Govt. sat on the band wagon of Salwa Judum's popularity. After having successfully snuffed out Salwa Judum, the morale of the Reds rose astronomically & the morale of the adiwasis which rose as a groundswell against the Reds was crushed completely.
Let Salwa Judum go down in history as the first freedom struggle of the Adivasis. The then HM, Ram Vichar Netam informed the State Legislative Assembly that between 31st Jan & June 2006 the CPI(M) cadres killed 95 villagers who were involved in the Salwa Judum !!! 95 killed!!! And the hardened pro- naxal intellectuals & activists sitting on TV debates in Delhi would not even blink an eye-lid! No wonder for they are only educated, not civilized.
The Naxalites' belief that power flows through the barrel of the gun has been so tragically proven by their brutal carnage of the democratically elected peoples' representatives in the Darbha Valley of Sukma in Bastar yesterday. In order to establish their sway over the populace they first executed all the traditional tribal village heads over the last two decades (the most recent example being the brutal murder of Modiyam Budhram the tribal sarpanch of village Mankeli Distt. Bijapur, CG in March 2013) then butchered the sole defenders of Democracy - the policemen & now with thousands of crores of rupees in their coffers, weapons of mass murder in their arsenal, powerful NGOs & media management techniques to back them, powerful legal cells in New Delhi & other metros to provide legal umbrella, they have now blown the conch of war against the State. This is a declaration of war from their "liberated zone" - Dandakaranya !
The declared objective of the Reds is now clear as daylight -" establish a powerful peoples' army with strong base areas in the countryside, encircle the urban areas after liberating the countryside & finally to capture the cities and establish political authority of the people by decisively destroying the State power ".
The Reds number around 20000-30000 spread over 203 districts (80 of which are in the grip of acute naxal violence) with unknown thousands of village militias assisting them. They are in active collusion with all the enemies of the Indian nation. Their close nexus with the ISI was further cemented when they allegedly gave shelter to Islamist terrorists after the attack on the US consulate in Kolkata. Even though the fight is to capture power in New Delhi with the Red flag flying atop the Red Fort, for which the Reds have joined ranks & fight the State with a unified strategy, it is ironically left to the states faced with grave naxal menace to tackle them individually with no common strategy.
From where did the Reds get their crores of rupees to wage their war against the State? Dandakaranya provides both mineral wealth & rich forest produce.In tendupatta (bidi leaves) trade, the extortion or "chauth" is through contractors who buy the green bidi leaves through societies. This income is to the tune of 8-10 crores. Other forest produce like bamboo is also transported through contractors who pay chauth upto 10,000 per truck. Districts of Bastar like Sukma, Bijapur, Kanker, Narayanpur on the Maharashtra border are rich in teak while the rest of Bastar has Saal forests. In the guerilla zone entire timber felling is done illegally and cut timber floated down the Indrawati River & collected downstream to be transported to illegal saw mills on the Andhra border.
Cannabis, sown in Malkangiri in Orissa, is illegally transported through CG to international markets. 32.7 tons of cannabis was seized by CG police alone over the last 5 years. Naxalites extort chauth during transportation. In interior ares where their writ runs, they distribute "pattas" of forest land for tilling purposes & 10 percent of the paddy produced is collected in kind or cash. PDS shops which were being looted earlier are now being treated as free grocery collection points. Moreover, disparate policies regarding support price of summer paddy has generated smuggling of paddy from Orissa to CG.
Smugglers are required to pay protection money. Liqour contractors, road contractors (PWD, RES, BRO) & private bus/ truck operators are coerced to pay protection money. Sometimes dumpers & machinery are burnt to cow down noncomplying contractors or to send a confusing signal of noncompliance when there is actually compliance! About 10 crores are collected from transporters alone. Contractors & bus-truck operators are thriving.
The existence of rich mineral resources along the red corridor is a major factor amongst the causes of enduring conflict. In Bastar both public & private players operate. Private players, after paying protection money to the Naxalites, reap additional advantage of excavating at will ( not withstanding the mining inspectors ) robbing the State of royalty & taxes derived from minerals & filling the coffers of Naxalites to the tune of 20-30 crores.
Ironically Govt schemes such as MNREGA & IAP too end up benefitting the Naxalites. In MNREGA, contractors are banned but the panchayats & rozgar sahayaks, through whom the scheme operates; work hand-in-glove with the reds in the guerilla zone. Each district is allotted around 50 crores annually. Huge amounts are being siphoned off by the Reds. Similarly IAP scheme, launched for infrastructure development in naxalite affected districts, works through the district administration via contractors, who in turn succumb to naxalite demands.
This thus becomes a vicious circle when State funds are looted by the Reds to fund its war against the State itself. It is the primary responsibility of the Govt to starve the Reds of their sources of income. All this loot is used to purchase ultra sophisticated arms & equipment from abroad including equipment that allows them to intercept all police communication systems, to establish safe houses in major towns, to purchase weapons of mass murder & explosives eg the most sophisticated "paper bomb" which is paper thin & can't be easily differentiated from ordinary paper, to engage costly lawyers in New Delhi, finance NGOs & international activists etc.
Way back in 2008 the “Economic Times" had estimated the total collection at 1000 crores (Jharkhand 350 crores, Bihar 200 crores, CG 150 crores, AP 100 crores ). Present day collections have more than quadrupled and come from Karnataka & Maharashtra too.
So what is it that the Govt of India, the prime target of the Reds, needs to do ? It may not be able to declare Naxalism as a "national problem" due to constitutional constraints but it can : use the mighty reach of the electronic media at its disposal to counter the propaganda onslaught unleashed by the Reds; encourage all the left-wing effected states to first of all formulate a common strategy to confront a common foe; speed up the land reform bill; give speedy clearance to all proposals in the guerilla zone involving forest land; raise more & more India Reserve battalions with 80 percent of the financial burden borne by the GoI; provide satellite cover to the affected states for communication, location & search purposes; encourage the states to iron out disparities in policies & taxation rates etc being exploited by the naxalites; to identify all sources of illicit funding of the Naxals & starve them with a vengeance; to help the states in cracking open the communication channels of the Reds; to help identify their moles in various organisations & unearth their safe houses; to expose the sources & quantum of foreign funding; to increase the Security Related Expenditure & Police Modernisation funds to the affected states from the present 4.4 percent level to at least 15-20 percent of the developmental funds being given to the states & to facilitate a uniform command structure for operational advantages.
Now what is it that the effected states can do? I would propose that for starters the States should bifurcate developmental activities into two major heads--without financial implication & those with a financial implication. Land reforms,totally non financial in nature, should be carried out at top speed. Exercise due care in implementing schemes with financial implications. In the secure zone let all the development schemes of GoI & the State govt. go in full swing to show-case the welfare face of the Govt. to the tribals.
In the semi-secure areas only strategic works such as construction of police stations/ out-posts, barracks, strategic roads/ culverts, schools & hospitals should be taken up either under a hawkish monitoring system or be executed departmentally eg. a police Engineering Wing could be created on the same lines as an Army Engineering Wing. In the guerilla zone all developmental horses should be put on hold, the area should be secured block by block & only then measured doses of development should be given.
When their aim is to capture power in New Delhi why are we hesitating to put the emphasis on where it is really needed - in police action? Give a huge boost to the police budget. Remember the Army gets about 17-18 percent of the national budget to combat external threats. Your police forces are fighting a battle every day. Do they lag behind their army colleagues in sacrificing their lives for the state? Definitely not! So why this hesitation? Why make them fight battles with a measly 3 to 3.5 percent of the state budget in their pockets? Look at any aspect of policing & it is reeling under a severe financial crunch, be it police to population ratio or policemen to geographical area ratio.
The nation & the States need to sit up & realize that wars are not necessarily being fought on the borders but are being transported to the hinterland. Police is facing multi-dimensional challenges including international proxy wars. It needs a visionary transformation to enhance it's fighting capability, it's numerical strength, it's selection process & it's training, it's professionalism, division into specialized units with unique expertise, a global mindset & above all a trustworthy PPP (Police Public Partnership ).
Moreover, the states need to: evolve a coordination formula with the Central Armed Police Forces ( CAPFs ); create a Unified Command backed by a central intelligence agency; lessen their dependence on central forces; launch guerilla operations with compact parties in the jungles; reorganise the Thana ( covering smaller geographical areas as was done in the Chambal region to combat Dacoity in the sixties); design it like a fortress to withstand a concerted attack; give teeth to the fighting forces; bring down the average age of the fighting forces from 40s to early 30s; give air support; make the police heavily officered like the army; build a super- speciality hospital nearest to the guerrilla zone to provide quality & speedy medical treatment to injured soldiers, launch anti-malaria drives in the fighting zone; launch confidence building measures among locals preferably by police personnel speaking Gondi or Santhali language and create special cells in state capitals & in New Delhi to counter naxal propaganda as also to handle all legal cases filed by them in the state High Courts & the Hon'ble SC of India.
If the malady has come from Andhra, seek solutions from Andhra! I would, on operational grounds, strongly recommend taking a huge section of officers & other ranks from the AP police with rich anti-naxal experience on deputation to CG to fight the menace together.
The Reds should know by now that they will never be able to capture the imagination of the nation. It is & will continue to be an aberration & an ostracized extreme view that has been shown the door even in China in the present climes of capitalist market values. All it is achieving is killing thousands of innocent policemen, wrecking their homes & spreading spine-chilling terror all around. It is a cure that is deadlier than the disease. Their "liberated zones" are controlled at gun point. The tribals have succumbed to submission only due to lack of state protection. All that the state needs to do is provide them a protective umbrella.
In a mature democracy the media too needs to show restraint in publishing any news that they somehow obtain regarding anti-Naxal drives. The battle is already lost & the force becomes totally vulnerable when all its secrets are out in public domain. We need to learn to keep some secrets.
Let us all salute our martyrs Late Shri Mahendra Karma, Shri Nand Kumar Patel, Shri Mudliar & many others who laid down their lives on the altar of Democracy. We must never forget that they have died so that we may live in a free & democratic India. The importance of freedom is so often realized when it has been lost.