Multiple Violent Insurgencies Raging in India

[RiazHaq]

There are a number of violent insurgencies raging in several parts of India from Northwest to Central and Eastern India. Among those making news now are the bloody insurgencies led by the Maoists and the Nagas.

It is conservatively estimated that Maoists, also known as Naxalites, control almost 25% of Indian territory in eastern and central states. Indian defense analyst Bharat Verma claims that "New Delhi and the state capitals have almost ceded the governmental control over 40 percent of the Union's territory to the Naxalites". A Newsweek story last year quoted Deepak Ambastha, the editor of Prabhat Khabar, a Hindi daily newspaper in Jharkhand state, as saying that "the state's writ runs only within city limits." Similar situation exists in many of the 20 Indian states, home to nearly 80 percent of those 836 million Indians, where the Maoists dominate the rural landscape. Indian government knows that it can ignore the Naxal threat at its own peril.

Here's a BBC report about Manipur blockade by Naga insurgents:

India is flying in emergency supplies to the remote north-eastern state of Manipur after key roads were blocked by separatists from a neighbouring state.

Road links were cut off by supporters of Thuingaleng Muivah, a rebel leader from Nagaland who has been denied entry to Manipur by the state government.

Mr Muivah's home village is in Manipur, which says allowing him to visit would inflame ethnic tensions.

The road blockade has led to a severe shortage of fuel and medicines.

For the past five weeks, two highways which serve as the lifelines of this remote mountainous state on Burma's border have been blocked by supporters of Mr Muivah, the leader of India's longest running separatist insurgency.

Mr Muivah has been barred from visiting his home village, Somdal, which lies inside Manipur in an area dominated by members of his Naga tribe.

It is a bitter standoff between the Nagas and the Manipuris who share a history of animosity.

The blockade has had a massive impact on Manipur. Petrol stations have shut down, with no fuel available.

"The situation is dire. There is no petrol or cooking gas available anywhere. Whatever is available is on the black market at ridiculous rates," retired air force officer Rajkumar Ronendrajit told the BBC.

Hospitals are also running short of life-saving drugs and oxygen.

"We normally carry out 20 surgeries a day. We are down to about eight because our stocks of oxygen are fast running out," managing director of Shija hospital Dr KH Palin said.

Officials say cargo aircraft carrying rice and medicine have now begun arriving to try and ease the situation.

But with the blockade continuing, things continue to remain tense.

Chowk: Personal: India Wracked By Multiple Bloody Insurgencies

Haq's Musings: India Deploys 100,000 Troops Against Maoists Revolt

BBC News - Separatists blockade hits India's Manipur state

 

[new wave]

Poverty probably one of the main reason behind all these, whats else you expect when people are so poor and need to eat mud to fight hunger, obviously "a fight to survive"

BBC News - Diet of mud and despair in Indian village 15 May 2010


Children in Ganne have to eat dried mud and silica

By Chris Morris BBC News, Ganne, Uttar Pradesh

"We live on a day-to-day basis," Suraj says, as the faint sound of hammering echoes across the village. "What we earn is what we spend on our families in a day."

In Ganne, just off the main road about an hour south of the city of Allahabad, this is a simple fact of life.

It is home to members of a poor tribal community, who live in small huts clustered around a series of shallow quarries.

Inside one of the huts sits a little girl called Poonam. She is three years old, and in the early stages of kidney failure.

Like many children in Ganne she has become used to eating bits of dried mud and silica, which she finds in the quarry. Tiny children chew on the mud simply because they are hungry - but it is making them ill.

When reports first emerged of children eating mud here local officials delivered more food and warned the villagers not to speak to outsiders. But Poonam's father, Bhulli, is close to despair.

What can we do? We eat the mud from the quarry when we feel hungry

"What can I say," he shrugs. "We can't afford to eat properly, so how can I afford to buy medicines for her?"

"I am really worried about my daughter, but I don't know what to do next. The poor need the government's help - if we had it, we wouldn't be in such a desperate state."

People like Bhulli and Suraj make their money filling lorries with bits of rock. It takes about eight hours for five men to fill one load. They carry the stones up from the quarry in plastic washing-up bowls balanced on their heads.

One of the women in the village, Phulkari, approaches to tell us about her little boy.

"My son's name is Suraj, and he's started eating mud too," she says. "What can we do? We eat the mud from the quarry when we feel hungry."

"Where do we get the money?" she asks. "We usually eat food only once a day. Last night we went to bed without eating anything at all."

Food protests

The World Bank estimates that one third of all the very poorest people in the world live in India, and stories like those from Ganne have now inspired a national Right To Food campaign.

There have been protest rallies in the heart of Delhi, as the Indian parliament prepares to debate a new Food Security Bill. It will dictate how many people in the country get access to massively subsidised food grain.

There's no doubt that India should be able to afford to feed its people. But the devil is in the detail.

"It'll only cost the government about 1.2% of GDP to universalize a system of giving food for all, cheap food for all," says Kavitha Srivastava, the national coordinator of the Right to Food campaign.

"They can do it, if they have the political will. It's prioritising - where do you want to put the money?"

"We think it should go in building people's nutrition levels. You can't have a country which is weak, which is hungry, which is anaemic. How can you have a nation like this?"

Now the government seems to be prepared to accept a new way of defining poverty, which will increase the number of people below the poverty line by more than 100 million to about 372 million.


If you simply throw money at this problem...you'll have to throw four times the amount to get the result you want. And the government of India can't afford that.

Dr Kaushik Basu
Finance ministry economic advisor

If international poverty standards were used, the number would be much higher still - and some Indian economists believe it should be.

But whichever figure is used, the poverty line feels like a rather fictitious divide because feeding more than a billion people is a massive logistical exercise. Vast quantities of food provided by the state go missing every day because of corruption and theft.

"Food ought to be a right," says Dr Kaushik Basu, the Chief Economic Advisor at India's Ministry of Finance. "And I believe this is a movement in the correct direction."

"But what worries me at times is that we're being too glib and quick about the delivery mechanism."

Official estimates are that right across the country 75% of subsidised grain does not make it to the intended target in villages like Ganne.

"So if you simply throw money at this problem, you'll have to throw four times the amount to get the result you want," says Dr Basu. "And the government of India can't afford that. The budget will go bust."

In other words, the delivery system needs to be reformed as well - and corrupt local officials need to be taken to task. There is a long way to go.

Daunting challenge

Jean Dreze, a highly respected Belgian-born academic who has worked in India for many years, points out that the current debate is only about the most basic levels of food intake.

"For a family of five to have reasonably good nutrition, nothing like meat or fish or any such thing, but just one egg per person per day, one banana, some dhal, some vegetables, a reasonably balanced diet - it would cost more than 200 rupees ($4.4; £3) per family per day," he says.

And that is far more than the amounts being discussed at the moment.

It is a sobering reminder that feeding India is a daunting challenge - the government knows it, and the prime minister says it must be a priority. But the Right to Food Campaign insists they are not doing enough.

The Indian economy continues to grow at impressive speed, and there is no shortage of food in the country. It just isn't reaching the people who need it most, on a consistent basis.

So in Ganne they continue to eat mud. And without finding a solution here in India, the world will come nowhere near the targets it has set itself for reducing global poverty.

 

[RiazHaq]

Over 100,000 Indian farmers have committed suicides in the last ten years, and it continues.

Here's a BBC story on a recent suicide:

In the cotton fields of Vidarbha in central India, grief is a constant companion. Wherever you turn, there are heart-breaking stories of suicide.

In the village of Mangi, friends and family are preparing the body of Laxman Tekam for burial. Women are wailing and men have tears streaming down their cheeks.

Laxman was a cotton farmer who hanged himself from the roof beam of his small house after his debts spiralled out of control. His young family will now have to fend for themselves.

"He borrowed money to buy genetically modified (GM) cotton seeds," says his neighbour Bapuji Atram. "There was no rain and his crop failed. So he killed himself."
Suicide epidemic

In this dry zone, life without irrigation is a struggle. Critics say GM cotton needs more water to succeed, a claim the seed producers dispute.

But the depressing cycle of failing crops and mounting debts is a lethal one. In the past few years thousands of farmers in this region have killed themselves in an epidemic of suicides.

And that awful statistic has given rise to a bitterly contested debate, at a time when the Indian government is considering authorising the commercial cultivation of the first GM food crop, aubergine.

Has the introduction, and monopoly, of GM cotton seeds contributed to this tragedy? As ever, it depends who you ask. There is little middle ground.

The companies which produce the seeds emphatically deny it. They say there are broader social issues which have to be addressed.

But some farmers emphasise that the price of seeds has risen dramatically, and they now need more water... which leaves no room for manoeuvre when times are bad.

"When we used the old seed our production levels were a bit lower, but it cost us an awful lot less," explains Suresh Ganganna, as he watches cotton being picked in his field.

"We used less pesticide and less fertiliser as well. Now with the GM crop, the costs keep on mounting."
Passionate

At the local market, bullock carts piled high with cotton are lined up in long rows. This is where farmers come to auction their crops and it soon becomes clear that some of them hold a different view.

They love GM seeds, and their profits are up.

"GM cotton is good, I like it," says Laxman Shambarna. "Our yield used to be much lower with the old seeds - now it's two and half times higher."

Countrywide India has doubled cotton production since the introduction of GM seeds, to become the second largest producer in the world.

And that has helped persuade the authorities in Delhi to think about the next step - a GM version of a food crop, in this case aubergine.

The government is now considering allowing commercial cultivation of a GM aubergine seed known as BT brinjal. But the campaign against it has been organised and passionate.

For weeks protesters disrupted meetings addressed by India's Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, the man who has to decide on the future of GM crops in this country.
'Deprived of technology'

The intensity of the opposition gave him pause for thought. In February he delayed a decision on BT brinjal even though India's Genetic Engineering Approval Committee had already recommended going ahead.

But big business is confident that in the end Mr Ramesh will rule in its favour.

"He has clearly said he's supporting the science and he's acknowledged that biotechnology will play an important role in improving productivity in agriculture," says Gyanendra Shukla, a director of Monsanto India.

"Farmers cannot be deprived of technology," he argues. "Our land is limited, we have limited water and we have to produce more for every crop.

"Tests are being carried out on a variety of crops - brinjal just happens to be one of the early ones."

In a small lab on the edge of the Vidarbha region, run by a company called Ankur seeds, you can see the science in action. An experiment is taking place on a GM version of rice. They're also looking at okra, cabbage and cauliflower as well as brinjal.

"It has been proven beyond doubt that it is absolutely safe for human beings," says VS Dagaonkar, the vice-president for research at Ankur seeds.

"And food security is one of India's biggest issues. GM can help us feed our people."

Others have put forward similar arguments. The British government's chief scientist Sir John Beddington has said that GM crops will have a vital role to play in feeding billions around the world.

And the Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates made the same point during a trip to India this month.

"Technology properly applied," he said, "is the reason, if you like, why nine billion people can live on this planet without destroying it."
'Killing itself'

But in Vidarbha's cotton region, there are still people who will fight against GM technology in all its forms. Their experience with cotton, they say, must not be repeated elsewhere.

"The government's own survey says most of the farmers are in distress and despair," points out an angry Kishor Tiwari, who runs a farmers' advocacy group, Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti.

"People are crying and people are dying. But still the government is promoting this killer seed.

"We have been demanding that it be banned from this area, to save the farming community from killing itself."

Many environmental groups agree. Mr TVidarbha Jan Andolan Samitiiwari says 416 farmers have committed suicide so far this year in Vidarbha alone.

So this polarised debate will rage on.

But it's too late for farmers like Laxman Tekam. His body now lies buried in his field, which failed to give him the means to live.

BBC News - India embroiled in bitterly contested GM debate

http://www.riazhaq.com/2009/12/climate-change-worsens-poverty-in-india.html

 

[RiazHaq]

Conventional Western understanding about modern India has recognized a degree of political instability, and the persistence of armed insurgencies in the country’s Northeast and Northwest regions. However, there has only been a slight awareness of the rural insurgencies and challenges to the state’s writ in the heartland of India. These have rarely been seen by outsiders as a systemic challenge to the dominant narrative of a democratic society engaged in economic and social development. The recent trajectory of India’s economic development has created an optimistic narrative that rarely includes discussion of internal instability. While there is focus on a small section of the urban elite, not much attention has been given to growing rural poverty, mass farmers' suicides and increasing rich-poor gap. Meanwhile, Maoists have gained significant momentum in rural India.

Haq's Musings: Grinding Poverty in Resurgent India