From: Ashok T. Jaisinghani <ashokjai@sancharnet.in>
Date: Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 2:43 AM
Subject: Massive Naxal Challenge
To: Sankar Narayanan <psn.1946@gmail.com>, Sunita Narain <sunita@cseindia.org>
Cc: Prime Minister of India <pmosb@pmo.nic.in>, President of India <presidentofindia@rb.nic.in>, Sonia Gandhi <10janpath@vsnl.net>, "L. K. Advani - Former Deputy PM of India" <advanilk@sansad.nic.in>, "Pioneer (New Delhi)" <pioneerletters@yahoo.co.in>, Palash Biswas <palashbiswaskl@gmail.com>, ORGANISER Weekly <editor@organiserweekly.com>, Sudheendra Kulkarni <sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com>
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Bullets are not the answer to development
(Editorial by Sunita Narain)
====================================
The massacre of 76 policemen in Dantewada by naxalites is reprehensible. Yet we cannot brush aside the underlying poverty, deprivation and sheer lack of justice that are breeding tension and anger in vast areas of rural, tribal India. We cannot say that these developmental issues are long term—as the Congress spokesperson has reportedly said—while the immediate task is to annihilate the Naxalites. Because, unless we can fix what is broken here, let us be very clear, there is no real solution at hand.
I have written earlier about the devastating irony that vast parts of our country, that are the richest in terms of minerals, forests and water, are also where the poorest people live. Again I ask, again and again: what is wrong with our development model that the poorest people live in the richest lands of the country?
We know naxalites profit from the anger against the collective loot of the resources these lands possess. These are the lands we get minerals from; the electricity that lights our homes is enabled here. But the people who live there have no electricity. They should own the minerals, or forests; they should profit from development. But they get no benefit from the resources that are simply extracted. By policy and design, their lands are taken away, their forest cut, water polluted, their livelihoods destroyed. Development makes them poorer than they were.
But we want to hear none of this. A few years ago, in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, while releasing our detailed report on mining and environment, I saw how intolerant we have become. The state's governor was to release the report. But even before we arrived, there was a media buzz our critique of mining policies and practices meant we were partners with naxalites. At the release function, the room was "filled" with mining-at-all-cost supporters. They shouted down any voice that spoke of the problems, and poverty, mining had caused in the region. The governor was visibly in a bind. He could not deny our data and analysis. But he was also desperate to brand us as insurgents who raise uncomfortable issues.
The next day, the machinery whirred into action. It openly challenged us. It presented no data on how it had shared revenues of mining with people. It did not explain how it had controlled the enormous and deadly pollution from the sponge iron factories that encircled the region. It did not also explain why it was allowing open manipulation and misuse of laws to dispossess people from their lands, against their will. It only incited violence against us, saying since we had questioned mining policies and were seeking new answers, we were against development. The next step: we were against the state, so we were with naxalites. With us or against us. This is a Bush slogan, but also a war syndrome, which cannot buy us peace at any cost.
We have to rethink the development India has practised so far. Let's just think forests. These are the very lands where India's tree wealth exists. Some 60 per cent of the country's dense and most bio-diverse and economically rich forests are in these tribal districts. Think minerals now. The bulk of what we need for growth—iron ore for steel, bauxite for aluminium and coal for power stations—is located here. These are also the same districts—poor and backward—our beloved tigers roam in. Here's where the country's major watersheds are located.
How can we build a growth model which uses the wealth of the region for local development first? Such a development model would mean listening to people who live on these lands, about what they need and want for their growth. It means seceding to what people want: the right to decide if they want a mine in their backyard, or the forests cut. It means taking democracy very seriously.
If this is accepted, protests will have to be seen in a new light. There are no misguided people, or naxalites, holding up Vedanta in Orissa, or Tata in Chhattisgarh. These many, and there are many, mutinies will have to be carefully heard. This country cannot brush aside people's concerns, in the name of a 'considered' decision taken, in Delhi or somewhere else. Government must stop believing it knows what is best.
Once we accept local veto over development decisions, the tough part begins. For, this means seriously engaging with people to find ways that benefit all. It means sharing revenue from minerals with villagers, not the poisoned peanuts they get now. It means changing priorities: valuing, for instance, a standing forest as protector of water, wildlife, even a low-carbon future. It means paying directly to local communities so that they decide to protect forests, because it benefits them.
Ultimately, listening to dissenters means reinventing development. Accept we cannot mine all the coal, bauxite, iron ore—whatever—that lies below forests people live in, and depend on. It will make us get careful about how to use less minerals for more growth? Can India do more with less? There's a lesson India's poor teach: walk lightly on the earth you have. Let us not riddle them with bullets.
Comment: http://cseindia.org/content/bullets-are-not-answer-development
Read this online: http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=1
CSE is an independent, public interest organization that was established in 1982 by Anil Agarwal, a pioneer of India's environmental movement.
CSE's mandate is to research, communicate and promote sustainable development with equity, participation and democracy.
This refers to the article 'India's gravest threat'. The writer will get all the choicest abuses from the 'informed' sections. The threat became graver when Dr.Manmohan Singh introduced the New Economic Policy of 1991 to save the affluent urban India from bankruptcy. Balance of payment crisis was averted.
All the 'Feel Good' achievements of the 'Shining India' were at the cost of rural Hindustan. Facelees and voiceless farmers, small traders, fisher folk, weavers, tribals and other artisans were ruined by the Manmohanomics.
Billionaires started mushrooming. SEZs were sorely needed by the neta-babu-bania troika to achieve faster growth. Mineral rich tribal lands became their favourite hunting grounds. Any one coming in their way automatically became the enemy of this nation. Draconian anti-people laws, Salwa Judum, SPOs, CRPF and Operation Green Hunt became absolute musts to protect Mittal, Posco, Vedanta, Tata, Salim etc from the ruined tribals. Maoism is only the effect. The cause is the Himalayan greed of neta-babu-bania JVC.
The writer says when Maoists held talks with AP government five years ago, two of their main demands were: (a) implementation of land reforms and (b) laws meant to protect tribals and their rights over land. If these two very genuine demands are met, there is no necessity for the all the costly security paraphernalia. Maoism, Arundhati Roy and CRPF will become redundant.
A senior police officer asked the writer: "What else do you think will happen when thousands of acres are given away to companies and lakhs of tribals are displaced? They are bound to fight back." The police officer also remarked that as long as Manmohanomics prevails, Maoism will survive, irrespective of how many forces you deploy and how many Naxalites you kill.
The writer poses the correct question to us: "Which is the gravest internal security threat-Manmohanomics or Maoism?" Why don't our netas, babus and banias let the tribals live on their lands?
Yours truly,
Sankaranarayanan,
Bhubaneswar.
India's gravest threat
http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/op-ed/india's-gravest-threat/166894.html
G S Vasu, 21 Apr
If Dantewada and Koraput are not mineral rich, neither Chidambaram nor Manmohan Singh would have cared to know/visit these places.
From: psn.1946 <psn.1946@gmail.com>
Subject: Ranjan's Rhetoric vs Reality at the site vs Missing actions
To: "IHRO" <IHRO@yahoogroups.com>, "group" <Chennai@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Thursday, 8 April, 2010, 9:08 PM
Situation at siteNaxal attack: Jawans scared to enter forest
http://expressbuzz.com/searchresult/ians
First Published : 07 Apr 2010 12:51:20 PM ISTRAIPUR: A day after 76 troopers were massacred in the worst ever Maoist attack, hundreds of para-military men and state police personnel assigned to track down the killers are scared to enter the jungles of Chhattisgarh Wednesday fearing a repeat of the 'bloody Tuesday' incident.
The shell-shocked police incumbent here have ordered nearly 40,000 policemen deployed in the restive Bastar region to retaliate.
But officials posted in the interiors of the region say: "The Tuesday attack has rattled the entire police force engaged in the anti-Maoist operation and they are now reluctant to enter the landmine protected jungle terrain".
"It's easy for everyone to dictate to us from New Delhi and Raipur sitting in air-conditioned chambers, but here the situation is completely hostile because Maoists rule the roost in jungles. The forces in Bastar now need urgent motivation," a police officer based in Dantewada told IANS on phone.
Police officers posted in the sprawling 40,000 sq km Bastar terrain made up of five districts -- Bijapur, Narayanpur, Bastar, Kanker and Dantewada where the Maoists staged a bloodbath in the Chintalnar hilly area say -- "policemen are suffering high casualties because of an absolute lack of co-ordination between state forces and para-military men who are put in difficult terrains in Chhattisgarh".
"Despite all efforts at the police headquarters and at the state government level, the CRPF is not taking local police and special police officers (SPOs) along while entering the Maoists' den and are thus getting killed without a fight," noted a senior official here.
He remarked that CRPF men are all outsiders and know nothing about the difficult jungle terrain. They were reminded several times by officers at the police headquarters to take along at least the SPOs who are locals but the CRPF men neither followed this suggestion nor did they stick to the 48-point guerrilla warfare manuals.
Empty Rhetoric
We will continue to hit the Maoist heart: DGP
http://expressbuzz.com/nation/we-will-continue-to-hit-the-maoist-heart-dgp/163695.html
First Published : 08 Apr 2010 01:40:42 PM IST
Last Updated : 08 Apr 2010 01:44:38 PM IST
NEW DELHI: Ruling out a change in the central and state forces' strategy in the anti-Maoist operation, Chhattisgarh Director General of Police (DGP) Viswas Ranjan Thursday said the security forces would "continue to hit the Naxal (Maoist) heart" and the rebels will have to pay for Tuesday's massacre.
"We will continue to hit the Maoist in the deep. We will continue to hit the Naxal heart," said Ranjan in an interview to NDTV.
Asked if there would be any change in the anti-Maoist operation's strategy, he said: "I don't think so. We will have to learn from this experience. We have to be more vigilant."
Maoist guerrillas ambushed and killed 76 security personnel - 75 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers and one policeman - in the dense forests of Chhattisgarh in the worst such attack.
Multiple blasts rocked the convoy and tossed their armoured vehicles into the air as simultaneously over 700 Maoist fighters opened indiscriminate fire from a hilltop in Dantewada district.
Ranjan said the Maoists would have to pay for what they had done.
He said the CRPF-state police co-ordination in the area was fine and all operations were conducted jointly. "Joint operation basically means meeting of the minds."
The top cop said the CRPF team failed to spot the ambush points.
They were "not able to anticipate the ambush point. The whole company walked into the trap. They were completely boxed in...couldn't escape from any side," he said.
Ranjan said many of the answers "so desperately needed" lie with a group of injured troopers, now being treated in hospital for serious injuries.
He stated that "once these jawans (troopers) recover from their trauma, their information will be used to reconstruct the ambush to figure out basics like how long the attack lasted."
He said their burn injuries suggest "molotov cocktails (petrol bombs) were used".Missing actions:1. Dantewada is the poorest district of the nation.2..
http://expressbuzz.com/searchresult/The-New-Indian-Express
Fight Naxalites on all fronts
First Published : 08 Apr 2010 10:55:00 PM IST
Last Updated : 08 Apr 2010 12:29:17 AM IST
Never underestimate your enemy, says a military maxim. The CRPF jawans deployed in Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh seem to have overlooked this cautionary saying when they virtually walked into the death trap laid by the Naxalites. Union home minister P Chidambaram's claim that there was no intelligence failure is like claiming that the operation is successful, though the patient is dead. Who knows, his recent boastful claim that the Naxalite menace would be finished in three years might have provoked them to strike.
Whether it is the failure of the CRPF commanders or the lack of appropriate intelligence input, the fact is a large number of CRPF personnel have been killed and their immediate families have lost their sole breadwinners. The report that the security personnel are scared of going into the jungles in hot pursuit is proof that the Naxalite strategy has, alas, succeeded. Chidambaram should remember that loud-mouthed empty rhetoric is not a substitute for action and if he persists with it, his continuance in office may even become untenable. While the nation's whole-hearted sympathies are for the bereaved families, it is time the anti-Naxalite strategy is revisited to make it more effective.
What the massacre highlights is that the CRPF is ill-equipped to deal with the problem. Drawn as its personnel are from various parts of the country, it is not surprising that they do not know the topography of the area unlike the Naxalites who know it like the lines on their palms. That the reinforcement sent to the area after the first attack also came under heavy fire reveals the CRPF's operational bankruptcy.
There is now a growing demand that the army should be deployed. Fortunately, Chidambaram has ruled out such an option. The IAF chief has also spoken against dragging the force into the operation. They are combat forces and internal security is not their cup of tea. Operations like the Green Hunt in which poor tribals are killed in retaliation only strengthen the hands of the Naxalites. The strategy should be to win the confidence of the people so that intelligence necessary to isolate and finish the Naxalites is obtained. This has to be combined with an onslaught against the backwardness of the area and the poverty of the people from which the Naxalites draw their primary sustenance
--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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