Naxalism in India
The attack in southern Chhattisgarh this past May 25 has
again raised questions — and some bogeys — about India’s internal conflicts and
the place Maoist rebels occupy in this universe. What’s the situation? And what
is likely to happen? The short answer is that over the past three to four years,
Left-wing rebels led primarily by Communist Party of India (Maoist) have been
severely depleted by the surrender, arrest or death of leaders and cadres.
Pressured by the onslaught, often knee-jerk, of both central and various state
governments, the Maoists’ effective area of combat has shrunk to southern
Chhattisgarh and adjacent areas of western Maharashtra and southwest Odisha
(known as Danda-karanya), Bihar, a few pockets in Jhark-h-and, a sliver of
Andhra Pradesh. While it is an emphatic weakening, the area is still vast, and
cadre numbers and abilities enough to inflict severe damage in areas of
strength. The Dandakaranya zone, where the attack on May 25 took place, is both
major Maoist sanctuary, and core laboratory for administration, education,
healthcare and way of community living and economic activity run by the Janatana
Sarkar, or people’s government. This remains among the most inaccessible and
forbidding policing and combat terrains in the country. This is where top Maoist
military leadership shelters. This is where some of the most battlehardened
cadres are.
Naturally, this is also where most government forces
combating Maoists are located. For Maoists, this region is also quite different
from the rough and tumble in Bihar and Jharkhand where Maoist rebels have for
long been less concerned with trying to provide an alternate grassroots model;
because of what can be called ‘objective conditions’ of rebellion, more engaged
in retribution and survival. The Maoists’ duress is manifold. Among other
things, they appear to be increasingly hard-pressed to communicate issues. There
is a core hard-Left-leaning pool in urban India that will continue to provide
recruits for on-ground action and eventual, ideological leadership. As ever this
core is driven by angry intellectualism, and can move easily, generationally,
from farmers’ rightsrelated land issues prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s to,
say, land-related issues of tribal rights, and callous, often-corrupt land
acquisition for various projects.
Former
Railway Board Chairman Vinay Mittal has been appointed as member of Union Public
Service Commission (UPSC).
