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Jun 25th 2009 | HARIHARPUR
From The Economist print edition
There are not enough brave politicians, honest officials and well-trained police to fight Indias Maoist insurrection
SQUATTING on a string bed in Hariharpur, a hamlet of West Bengals West Midnapur district, Chhatradhar Mahato does not seem a hunted man. He is skinny, soft-spoken and, in a bored sort of way, lists the demands issued to the states communist rulers by his group, the Peoples Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), which represents local adivasis or members of Indias tribal minorities. Above all, Mr Mahato wants the local police, who in recent months have ceded a vast area covering some 2,000 villages to a joint force of PCAPA and Maoist guerrillas, to atone for their abuses by crawling to Hariharpur on their hands and knees. Their commander, says Mr Mahato, squatting before a poster of Mount Cook with an image of a Hindu priestess pasted onto its snowy summit, will have to perform penitential sit-ups while clutching his ears.
A short walk (or 15-minute crawl) away, in the village of Lalgarh, along a road blockaded by a few felled trees, hundreds of state police and central-government paramilitary troops are massing. They reached the village on June 20th, during an operation to regain control of the area. Though Mr Mahato denies it, the PCAPA seems little more than a Maoist proxy.
It has brutally quelled local opposition to the Maoists. Mr Mahatos younger brother also happens to be a notorious guerrilla, wanted for the attempted assassination of West Bengals chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, in Midnapur last November. The PCAPA was formed within days of that landmine attack, ostensibly to protest against the polices heavy-handed response to it. The senior Mahato and his fellow committeemen may face arrest for murdering around 20 supporters of West Bengals ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), shot or beaten to death in the unrest. At least ten have been killed this month.
By the standards of Indias Maoist insurrection, which affects roughly a third of the countrys 604 districts and has claimed around 450 lives this year, that is a modest toll. Yet the events in Lalgarh have generated huge publicity in India. That is partly because West Bengal, where the Maoist insurrection was launched in 1967 in the village of Naxalbari (hence their nickname: Naxalites), has hitherto been resistant to it. This is in turn a result of the strict village-level control exerted by the CPI(M), whose leftist coalition has ruled the state for over three decades. But the CPI(M) is struggling to maintain its grip, leading to its disastrous showing in Indias general election last month. Now some fear the Maoists influence could quickly spread.
Poor, barren and largely neglected by the government, West Bengals tribal areas are just the sort of place where Naxalites thrive. The land around Lalgarh can be farmed for only three months of the year, leaving the locals heavily reliant on harvesting firewood, honey and tendu leaves, used for rolling bidis, crude cigarettes. Most are illiterate, and, owing to administrative corruption, incapacity and incompetence, see little benefit from welfare schemes earmarked for them. There are a lot of lacunas, admits Manoj Verma, Midnapurs police chief. The Maoists have sought to fill them. Even as its blockade has brought government schemes to a halt, the PCAPA has tried to launch others, such as irrigation projects, paid for by money extorted from businessmen and officialsincluding the formerly bunkered-down police.
As this should suggest, the Maoists could not have overrun the area around Lalgarh if the state government had tried harder to stop them. West Bengals policing is at best inadequate, with around 80 officers per 100,000 people, compared with over 250 in most developed countries. Yet the main reason for the governments failure is political. In the past two years, the Communists have been badly hurt by two protest movements against their efforts to acquire land for industrial development. In both cases, local resistance was fanned by their thuggish efforts to quell it and by their main political opponent, the Trinamul Congress party, as well as, to a lesser extent, by the Maoists. A third such debacle loomed after the attempted assassination of Mr Bhattacharya, who was returning at the time from the ground-breaking ceremony for a $7 billion steel plant in a tribal area near Lalgarh. The government therefore ordered Midnapurs authorities to go easy on the PCAPA/Maoists until after the election.
This has made shifting them from Midnapur harder than it should be. Mr Verma, the police chief, estimates that 300 Naxalites have entered the district and trained a similar number of locals in fighting skills. In three clashes, on June 19th and 20th, the advancing police and paramilitaries faced landmine attacks and ambushes by up to 150 guerrillas. But no policeman has been killed. As elsewhere, the Naxalites seem no match for a well-armed force.
Ridding Midnapur of them, however, will be hard. For a start, Mr Verma says the local police will be quadrupled. Plenty of economic development is also promised. But such plans often founder in India. Moreover, despite the renewal of a ban on the Naxalites by Indias central government on June 22nd, many Communist politicians are loth to condemn their fellows on the left. With a state election due by 2011, and vociferous Bengali intellectuals flocking to defend the PCAPA, West Bengals rulers could be tempted into another dangerous appeasement.
India's Naxalites: A ragtag rebellion | The Economist
From The Economist print edition
There are not enough brave politicians, honest officials and well-trained police to fight Indias Maoist insurrection
SQUATTING on a string bed in Hariharpur, a hamlet of West Bengals West Midnapur district, Chhatradhar Mahato does not seem a hunted man. He is skinny, soft-spoken and, in a bored sort of way, lists the demands issued to the states communist rulers by his group, the Peoples Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), which represents local adivasis or members of Indias tribal minorities. Above all, Mr Mahato wants the local police, who in recent months have ceded a vast area covering some 2,000 villages to a joint force of PCAPA and Maoist guerrillas, to atone for their abuses by crawling to Hariharpur on their hands and knees. Their commander, says Mr Mahato, squatting before a poster of Mount Cook with an image of a Hindu priestess pasted onto its snowy summit, will have to perform penitential sit-ups while clutching his ears.
A short walk (or 15-minute crawl) away, in the village of Lalgarh, along a road blockaded by a few felled trees, hundreds of state police and central-government paramilitary troops are massing. They reached the village on June 20th, during an operation to regain control of the area. Though Mr Mahato denies it, the PCAPA seems little more than a Maoist proxy.
It has brutally quelled local opposition to the Maoists. Mr Mahatos younger brother also happens to be a notorious guerrilla, wanted for the attempted assassination of West Bengals chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, in Midnapur last November. The PCAPA was formed within days of that landmine attack, ostensibly to protest against the polices heavy-handed response to it. The senior Mahato and his fellow committeemen may face arrest for murdering around 20 supporters of West Bengals ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), shot or beaten to death in the unrest. At least ten have been killed this month.
By the standards of Indias Maoist insurrection, which affects roughly a third of the countrys 604 districts and has claimed around 450 lives this year, that is a modest toll. Yet the events in Lalgarh have generated huge publicity in India. That is partly because West Bengal, where the Maoist insurrection was launched in 1967 in the village of Naxalbari (hence their nickname: Naxalites), has hitherto been resistant to it. This is in turn a result of the strict village-level control exerted by the CPI(M), whose leftist coalition has ruled the state for over three decades. But the CPI(M) is struggling to maintain its grip, leading to its disastrous showing in Indias general election last month. Now some fear the Maoists influence could quickly spread.
Poor, barren and largely neglected by the government, West Bengals tribal areas are just the sort of place where Naxalites thrive. The land around Lalgarh can be farmed for only three months of the year, leaving the locals heavily reliant on harvesting firewood, honey and tendu leaves, used for rolling bidis, crude cigarettes. Most are illiterate, and, owing to administrative corruption, incapacity and incompetence, see little benefit from welfare schemes earmarked for them. There are a lot of lacunas, admits Manoj Verma, Midnapurs police chief. The Maoists have sought to fill them. Even as its blockade has brought government schemes to a halt, the PCAPA has tried to launch others, such as irrigation projects, paid for by money extorted from businessmen and officialsincluding the formerly bunkered-down police.
As this should suggest, the Maoists could not have overrun the area around Lalgarh if the state government had tried harder to stop them. West Bengals policing is at best inadequate, with around 80 officers per 100,000 people, compared with over 250 in most developed countries. Yet the main reason for the governments failure is political. In the past two years, the Communists have been badly hurt by two protest movements against their efforts to acquire land for industrial development. In both cases, local resistance was fanned by their thuggish efforts to quell it and by their main political opponent, the Trinamul Congress party, as well as, to a lesser extent, by the Maoists. A third such debacle loomed after the attempted assassination of Mr Bhattacharya, who was returning at the time from the ground-breaking ceremony for a $7 billion steel plant in a tribal area near Lalgarh. The government therefore ordered Midnapurs authorities to go easy on the PCAPA/Maoists until after the election.
This has made shifting them from Midnapur harder than it should be. Mr Verma, the police chief, estimates that 300 Naxalites have entered the district and trained a similar number of locals in fighting skills. In three clashes, on June 19th and 20th, the advancing police and paramilitaries faced landmine attacks and ambushes by up to 150 guerrillas. But no policeman has been killed. As elsewhere, the Naxalites seem no match for a well-armed force.
Ridding Midnapur of them, however, will be hard. For a start, Mr Verma says the local police will be quadrupled. Plenty of economic development is also promised. But such plans often founder in India. Moreover, despite the renewal of a ban on the Naxalites by Indias central government on June 22nd, many Communist politicians are loth to condemn their fellows on the left. With a state election due by 2011, and vociferous Bengali intellectuals flocking to defend the PCAPA, West Bengals rulers could be tempted into another dangerous appeasement.
India's Naxalites: A ragtag rebellion | The Economist
