The 'tornado' awaiting India
- Thread starter dabong1
- Start date
Spring Onion
PDF VETERAN
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2006
- Messages
- 41,403
- Reaction score
- 19
- Country
- Location
India's Maoist Revolution - India
http://www.jesaurai.net/jes/files/1/530px-India_Naxal_affected_districts_map_svg.bmp
http://www.jesaurai.net/jes/files/1/530px-India_Naxal_affected_districts_map_svg.bmp
Stumper
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2009
- Messages
- 1,226
- Reaction score
- 0
Indian Members: Lets take the post in the spirit of constructive critic. Whereas i don't adhere to the ways of this movement, we do need to accept that it is a threat that needs to be addressed NOW. And that i believe, is the nucleus of this post.
If this can grow from a small village of WB with hundred odd Maoist to a 20,000 Armed cadres in 20+ odd years, when do you expect to contain them ... when they have grown to 1Lac and spread across to all states?
Main problem, PC, has is of this radicals willing to come to main stream.
If this can grow from a small village of WB with hundred odd Maoist to a 20,000 Armed cadres in 20+ odd years, when do you expect to contain them ... when they have grown to 1Lac and spread across to all states?
Main problem, PC, has is of this radicals willing to come to main stream.
Spring Onion
PDF VETERAN
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2006
- Messages
- 41,403
- Reaction score
- 19
- Country
- Location
India anti-Maoist offensive draws applause, concern
Wednesday, 28 Oct, 2009
RAIPUR: India has decided to confront its Maoist insurgency head on, with a planned offensive that has been embraced by affected states but challenged over its impact on the people it aims to ‘liberate.’
Operation Green Hunt was drawn up by the central government as a concerted assault on the Maoist rebels’ jungle bases in the so-called ‘red corridor’ that stretches across more than half a dozen states in eastern India.
Regional security forces will form the frontline, but the massive operation, involving tens of thousands of paramilitary personnel, is being coordinated from New Delhi.
Official sources say the assault will begin in November.
While the government has ruled out using the military, it has promised the states significant resources and logistical support, as well as the deployment of elite border guards.
Observers say New Delhi’s leading role is aimed at galvanising individual states into action, after years of largely fruitless, piecemeal anti-insurgency efforts.
‘Past operations had been disjointed as no one was willing to deal with the insurgency in a coordinated manner and only took half-hearted measures,’ said Deepakankar Banerjee, director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies.
‘Growing Maoist activity in the last couple of years has raised central government concerns, and the new home minister has set this as a greater priority than his predecessors,’ Banerjee said.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram has publicly pledged to break the back of the Maoist insurgency which has claimed more than 600 lives so far this year.
‘We will provide all possible help to the state governments in their efforts to eradicate the left-wing extremists completely,’ he recently told reporters in Raipur, capital of eastern Chhattisgarh state — a Maoist hotbed.
The armed Maoist movement, which started as a peasant uprising in 1967, has spread to more than half of India’s 29 states. Its cadre strength has been variously estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has labelled the rebels the greatest threat to India’s internal security, and last month rebuked regional police chiefs for failing to stem their attacks.
Operation Green Hunt aims not just to flush out the rebels but to wrest back the large swathe of territory under their control and re-establish the state’s rule in what have essentially become no-go areas.
The leaders of the targeted states have welcomed the planned offensive following a spate of deadly attacks against their often ill-equipped police forces.
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh said it would be a carefully targeted operation.
‘It will be a selective assault, in which our forces will reach an area where the rebels have their presence or have weapons factories and drive them away,’ Singh told AFP.
‘It will be a guerrilla war against the Maoists,’ he said.
In the neighbouring state of Orissa, where officials have complained about the lack of federal support, police operations chief Sanjeev Marik said the offensive would be ‘long and decisive this time.’ Some, however, have questioned the nature of Green Hunt, saying such a large-scale operation would endanger the lives of millions of impoverished villagers in Maoist-controlled areas.
‘We feel this will be a democratic and humanitarian disaster,’ a group of activists and academics, including novelist Arundhati Roy, a winner of the Booker Prize, wrote in an open letter to the prime minister last week.
Human rights groups, while acknowledging India’s right to engage the rebels militarily, have also raised concerns over the possibility of civilian casualties.
‘The forces should target only combatants... in a manner consistent with international laws,’ said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
And others have stressed the importance of having an accompanying development strategy, aimed at alleviating the chronic poverty that has fuelled the Maoist movement.
‘The response to the Maoists must be more nuanced than the approach India adopts when dealing with other groups,’ said Maoist expert Wilson John from the Observer Research Group, a New Delhi-based think-tank.
The Maoist influence is greatest in impoverished, remote areas, although analysts say their claims of support among the poor and dispossessed are often based on intimidation.— AFP
Wednesday, 28 Oct, 2009
RAIPUR: India has decided to confront its Maoist insurgency head on, with a planned offensive that has been embraced by affected states but challenged over its impact on the people it aims to ‘liberate.’
Operation Green Hunt was drawn up by the central government as a concerted assault on the Maoist rebels’ jungle bases in the so-called ‘red corridor’ that stretches across more than half a dozen states in eastern India.
Regional security forces will form the frontline, but the massive operation, involving tens of thousands of paramilitary personnel, is being coordinated from New Delhi.
Official sources say the assault will begin in November.
While the government has ruled out using the military, it has promised the states significant resources and logistical support, as well as the deployment of elite border guards.
Observers say New Delhi’s leading role is aimed at galvanising individual states into action, after years of largely fruitless, piecemeal anti-insurgency efforts.
‘Past operations had been disjointed as no one was willing to deal with the insurgency in a coordinated manner and only took half-hearted measures,’ said Deepakankar Banerjee, director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies.
‘Growing Maoist activity in the last couple of years has raised central government concerns, and the new home minister has set this as a greater priority than his predecessors,’ Banerjee said.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram has publicly pledged to break the back of the Maoist insurgency which has claimed more than 600 lives so far this year.
‘We will provide all possible help to the state governments in their efforts to eradicate the left-wing extremists completely,’ he recently told reporters in Raipur, capital of eastern Chhattisgarh state — a Maoist hotbed.
The armed Maoist movement, which started as a peasant uprising in 1967, has spread to more than half of India’s 29 states. Its cadre strength has been variously estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has labelled the rebels the greatest threat to India’s internal security, and last month rebuked regional police chiefs for failing to stem their attacks.
Operation Green Hunt aims not just to flush out the rebels but to wrest back the large swathe of territory under their control and re-establish the state’s rule in what have essentially become no-go areas.
The leaders of the targeted states have welcomed the planned offensive following a spate of deadly attacks against their often ill-equipped police forces.
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh said it would be a carefully targeted operation.
‘It will be a selective assault, in which our forces will reach an area where the rebels have their presence or have weapons factories and drive them away,’ Singh told AFP.
‘It will be a guerrilla war against the Maoists,’ he said.
In the neighbouring state of Orissa, where officials have complained about the lack of federal support, police operations chief Sanjeev Marik said the offensive would be ‘long and decisive this time.’ Some, however, have questioned the nature of Green Hunt, saying such a large-scale operation would endanger the lives of millions of impoverished villagers in Maoist-controlled areas.
‘We feel this will be a democratic and humanitarian disaster,’ a group of activists and academics, including novelist Arundhati Roy, a winner of the Booker Prize, wrote in an open letter to the prime minister last week.
Human rights groups, while acknowledging India’s right to engage the rebels militarily, have also raised concerns over the possibility of civilian casualties.
‘The forces should target only combatants... in a manner consistent with international laws,’ said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
And others have stressed the importance of having an accompanying development strategy, aimed at alleviating the chronic poverty that has fuelled the Maoist movement.
‘The response to the Maoists must be more nuanced than the approach India adopts when dealing with other groups,’ said Maoist expert Wilson John from the Observer Research Group, a New Delhi-based think-tank.
The Maoist influence is greatest in impoverished, remote areas, although analysts say their claims of support among the poor and dispossessed are often based on intimidation.— AFP
blueoval79
BANNED
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2009
- Messages
- 1,189
- Reaction score
- 0
third eye
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2008
- Messages
- 18,519
- Reaction score
- 13
- Country
- Location
On the contrary, good things shall emerge from this.
Law & Order being a state subject in the constitution , the state Govts are chary in stirring a hornets nest. More so when elections are not too far away.
WB is ruled by a Communist Govt for two decades, they are dragging their feet in taking hard decisions with the Maoists. The recent hold up of the Rajdhani Exp in WB will further underscore the need for effective & quick decision making & stepping in of the central govt when things cross a point.
Not to mention a change in govt in the state during the next elections.
Moorkh
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2009
- Messages
- 655
- Reaction score
- 0
the claims are not totally unfounded.
even the PM claims that naxalism is the greatest internal threat to the country.
though the talk of a bloody revolution is still much too far.
the naxals have spread over a large part of india but they do not have the unconditional support of the people the kind of which mao had.
the naxals exist and are so far at the irritant stage, a long shot from bloody revolution.
also their actions of killing and terrorising people to ensure their cooperation is very very counterproductive.
even the PM claims that naxalism is the greatest internal threat to the country.
though the talk of a bloody revolution is still much too far.
the naxals have spread over a large part of india but they do not have the unconditional support of the people the kind of which mao had.
the naxals exist and are so far at the irritant stage, a long shot from bloody revolution.
also their actions of killing and terrorising people to ensure their cooperation is very very counterproductive.
lockh33d
BANNED
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2009
- Messages
- 596
- Reaction score
- 0
Ahhhhh, the Pakistanis are so assiduous in what they do, I mean look at them, going so far out just to find sources when the Indians ask for them. 
I think people should cut this "NEED SOURCE NEED SOURCE" crap out, most of the Indians just bring out Indian sources anyhow, so what is the point really? Isn't doing so extremely partial?
I think people should cut this "NEED SOURCE NEED SOURCE" crap out, most of the Indians just bring out Indian sources anyhow, so what is the point really? Isn't doing so extremely partial?
gogbot
BANNED
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2009
- Messages
- 2,201
- Reaction score
- 0
Ahhhhh, the Pakistanis are so assiduous in what they do, I mean look at them, going so far out just to find sources when the Indians ask for them.
I think people should cut this "NEED SOURCE NEED SOURCE" crap out, most of the Indians just bring out Indian sources anyhow, so what is the point really? Isn't doing so extremely partial?
I am sorry but i dont know what exactly it is you are referring to exactly
But considering this thread is about an Indian issue.
Shouldn't Indian Sources have some say it in.
And stop generalizing everything. Stick to specifics
On that note if people gave no sources, they could say whatever the hell they want, with no way of knowing weather its true or false.
Last edited:
DaRk WaVe
RETIRED TTA
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2009
- Messages
- 5,239
- Reaction score
- 0
- Country
- Location
Mr Chidambaram’s War
By Arundhati Roy
Saturday, 31 Oct, 2009
The low, flat-topped hills of south Orissa have been home to the Dongria Kondh long before there was a country called India or a state called Orissa. The hills watched over the Kondh. The Kondh watched over the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now these hills have been sold for the bauxite they contain.
Perhaps the Kondh are supposed to be grateful that their Niyamgiri hill, home to Niyam Raja, their ‘god of universal law’, has been sold to a company with a name like Vedanta (the branch of Hindu philosophy that teaches the Ultimate Nature of Knowledge).
It’s one of the biggest mining corporations in the world and is owned by Anil Aggarwal, the Indian billionaire who lives in London in a mansion that once belonged to the Shah of Iran. Vedanta is only one of the many multinational corporations closing in on Orissa.
If the flat-topped hills are destroyed, the forests that clothe them will be destroyed too. So will the rivers and streams that flow out of them and irrigate the plains below. So will the Dongria Kondh. So will the hundreds of thousands of tribal people who live in the forested heart of India, and whose homeland is similarly under attack.
In our smoky, crowded cities, some people say, ‘So what? Someone has to pay the price of progress.’ Some even say, ‘Let’s face it, these are people whose time has come. Look at any developed country, Europe, the US, Australia — they all have a ‘past’.’
Indeed they do. So why shouldn’t ‘we’? In keeping with this line of thought, the government has announced Operation Green Hunt, a war purportedly against the ‘Maoist’ rebels headquartered in the jungles of central India.
Of course, the Maoists are by no means the only ones rebelling. There is a whole spectrum of struggles all over the country that people are engaged in — the landless, the Dalits, the homeless, workers, peasants, weavers.
They’re pitted against a juggernaut of injustices, including policies that allow a wholesale corporate takeover of people’s land and resources. However, it is the Maoists who the government has singled out as being the biggest threat.
Two years ago, when things were nowhere near as bad as they are now, the prime minister described the Maoists as the ‘single-largest internal security threat’ to the country.
This will probably go down as the most popular and often-repeated thing he ever said. For some reason, the comment he made on January 6, 2009, at a meeting of state chief ministers, when he described the Maoists as having only ‘modest capabilities’ doesn’t seem to have had the same raw appeal.
He revealed his government’s real concern on June 18, 2009, when he told parliament: ‘If left-wing extremism continues to flourish in parts which have natural resources of minerals, the climate for investment would certainly be affected.’
At current market rates, the minerals in the region have been valued not in millions but in trillions of dollars.
Right now in central India, the Maoists’ guerrilla army is made up almost entirely of desperately poor tribal people living in conditions of such chronic hunger that it verges on famine of the kind we only associate with sub-Saharan Africa.
They are people who, even after 60 years of India’s so-called independence, have not had access to education, healthcare or legal redress. They are people who have been mercilessly exploited for decades, consistently cheated by small businessmen and moneylenders, the women raped as a matter of right by police and forest department personnel.
Their journey back to a semblance of dignity is due in large part to the Maoist cadre who have lived and worked and fought by their side for decades.
If the tribals have taken up arms, they have done so because a government which has given them nothing but violence and neglect now wants to snatch away the last thing they have — their land. Clearly, they do not believe the government when it says it only wants to ‘develop’ their region.
Clearly, they do not believe that the roads as wide and flat as aircraft runways that are being built through their forests in Dantewada by the National Mineral Development Corporation are being built for them to walk their children to school on. They believe that if they do not fight for their land, they will be annihilated. That is why they have taken up arms.
MoUist corridor
The forest once known as the Dandakaranya, which stretches from West Bengal through Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, parts of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, is home to millions of India’s tribal people.
The media has taken to calling it the Red corridor or the Maoist corridor. It could just as accurately be called the MoUist corridor. It doesn’t seem to matter at all that the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution provides protection to adivasi people and disallows the alienation of their land.
It looks as though the clause is there only to make the Constitution look good — a bit of window-dressing, a slash of make-up. Scores of corporations, from relatively unknown ones to the biggest mining companies and steel manufacturers in the world, are in the fray to appropriate adivasi homelands — the Mittals, Jindals, Tata, Essar, Posco, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and, of course, Vedanta.There’s an MoU on every mountain, river and forest glade.
We’re talking about social and environmental engineering on an unimaginable scale. And most of this is secret. It’s not in the public domain. Somehow I don’t think that the plans that are afoot to destroy one of the world’s most pristine forests and ecosystems, as well as the people who live in it, will be discussed at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Our 24-hour news channels that are so busy hunting for macabre stories of Maoist violence — and making them up when they run out of the real thing — seem to have no interest at all in this side of the story. I wonder why?
Perhaps it’s because the development lobby to which they are so much in thrall says the mining industry will ratchet up the rate of GDP growth dramatically and provide employment to the people it displaces. This does not take into account the catastrophic costs of environmental damage. But even on its own narrow terms, it is simply untrue.
Most of the money goes into the bank accounts of the mining corporations. Less than 10 per cent comes to the public exchequer. A very tiny percentage of the displaced people get jobs, and those who do, earn slave-wages to do humiliating, backbreaking work.
By caving in to this paroxysm of greed, we are bolstering other countries’ economies with our ecology. The mining companies desperately need this ‘war’. It’s an old technique. They hope the impact of the violence will drive out the people who have so far managed to resist the attempts that have been made to evict them.
Whether this will indeed be the outcome, or whether it’ll simply swell the ranks of the Maoists remains to be seen.
The real problem is that the flagship of India’s miraculous ‘growth’ story has run aground. It came at a huge social and environmental cost. And now, as the rivers dry up and forests disappear, as the water table recedes and as people realise what is being done to them, the chickens are coming home to roost.
All over the country, there’s unrest, there are protests by people refusing to give up their land and their access to resources, refusing to believe false promises any more. Suddenly, it’s beginning to look as though the 10 per cent growth rate and democracy are mutually incompatible.
Militarisation
To get the bauxite out of the flat-topped hills, to get iron ore out from under the forest floor, to get 85 per cent of India’s people off their land and into the cities (which is what Home Minister Chidambaram says he’d like to see), India has to become a police state.
The government has to militarise. To justify that militarisation, it needs an enemy. The Maoists are that enemy. They are to corporate fundamentalists what the Muslims are to Hindu fundamentalists. (Is there a fraternity of fundamentalists? Is that why the RSS has expressed open admiration for Mr Chidambaram?)
It would be a grave mistake to imagine that the paramilitary troops, the Rajnandgaon air base, the Bilaspur brigade headquarters, the Unlawful Activities Act, the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act and Operation Green Hunt are all being put in place just to flush out a few thousand Maoists from the forests.
In all the talk of Operation Green Hunt, whether or not Mr Chidambaram goes ahead and ‘presses the button’, I detect the kernel of a coming state of emergency. (Here’s a math question: If it takes 600,000 soldiers to hold down the tiny valley of Kashmir, how many will it take to contain the mounting rage of hundreds of millions of people?)
Instead of narco-analysing Kobad Gandhy, the recently arrested Maoist leader, it might be a better idea to talk to him.
In the meanwhile, will someone who’s going to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen later this year please ask the only question worth asking: Can we leave the bauxite in the mountain?
By Arundhati Roy
Saturday, 31 Oct, 2009
The low, flat-topped hills of south Orissa have been home to the Dongria Kondh long before there was a country called India or a state called Orissa. The hills watched over the Kondh. The Kondh watched over the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now these hills have been sold for the bauxite they contain.
Perhaps the Kondh are supposed to be grateful that their Niyamgiri hill, home to Niyam Raja, their ‘god of universal law’, has been sold to a company with a name like Vedanta (the branch of Hindu philosophy that teaches the Ultimate Nature of Knowledge).
It’s one of the biggest mining corporations in the world and is owned by Anil Aggarwal, the Indian billionaire who lives in London in a mansion that once belonged to the Shah of Iran. Vedanta is only one of the many multinational corporations closing in on Orissa.
If the flat-topped hills are destroyed, the forests that clothe them will be destroyed too. So will the rivers and streams that flow out of them and irrigate the plains below. So will the Dongria Kondh. So will the hundreds of thousands of tribal people who live in the forested heart of India, and whose homeland is similarly under attack.
In our smoky, crowded cities, some people say, ‘So what? Someone has to pay the price of progress.’ Some even say, ‘Let’s face it, these are people whose time has come. Look at any developed country, Europe, the US, Australia — they all have a ‘past’.’
Indeed they do. So why shouldn’t ‘we’? In keeping with this line of thought, the government has announced Operation Green Hunt, a war purportedly against the ‘Maoist’ rebels headquartered in the jungles of central India.
Of course, the Maoists are by no means the only ones rebelling. There is a whole spectrum of struggles all over the country that people are engaged in — the landless, the Dalits, the homeless, workers, peasants, weavers.
They’re pitted against a juggernaut of injustices, including policies that allow a wholesale corporate takeover of people’s land and resources. However, it is the Maoists who the government has singled out as being the biggest threat.
Two years ago, when things were nowhere near as bad as they are now, the prime minister described the Maoists as the ‘single-largest internal security threat’ to the country.
This will probably go down as the most popular and often-repeated thing he ever said. For some reason, the comment he made on January 6, 2009, at a meeting of state chief ministers, when he described the Maoists as having only ‘modest capabilities’ doesn’t seem to have had the same raw appeal.
He revealed his government’s real concern on June 18, 2009, when he told parliament: ‘If left-wing extremism continues to flourish in parts which have natural resources of minerals, the climate for investment would certainly be affected.’
At current market rates, the minerals in the region have been valued not in millions but in trillions of dollars.
Right now in central India, the Maoists’ guerrilla army is made up almost entirely of desperately poor tribal people living in conditions of such chronic hunger that it verges on famine of the kind we only associate with sub-Saharan Africa.
They are people who, even after 60 years of India’s so-called independence, have not had access to education, healthcare or legal redress. They are people who have been mercilessly exploited for decades, consistently cheated by small businessmen and moneylenders, the women raped as a matter of right by police and forest department personnel.
Their journey back to a semblance of dignity is due in large part to the Maoist cadre who have lived and worked and fought by their side for decades.
If the tribals have taken up arms, they have done so because a government which has given them nothing but violence and neglect now wants to snatch away the last thing they have — their land. Clearly, they do not believe the government when it says it only wants to ‘develop’ their region.
Clearly, they do not believe that the roads as wide and flat as aircraft runways that are being built through their forests in Dantewada by the National Mineral Development Corporation are being built for them to walk their children to school on. They believe that if they do not fight for their land, they will be annihilated. That is why they have taken up arms.
MoUist corridor
The forest once known as the Dandakaranya, which stretches from West Bengal through Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, parts of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, is home to millions of India’s tribal people.
The media has taken to calling it the Red corridor or the Maoist corridor. It could just as accurately be called the MoUist corridor. It doesn’t seem to matter at all that the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution provides protection to adivasi people and disallows the alienation of their land.
It looks as though the clause is there only to make the Constitution look good — a bit of window-dressing, a slash of make-up. Scores of corporations, from relatively unknown ones to the biggest mining companies and steel manufacturers in the world, are in the fray to appropriate adivasi homelands — the Mittals, Jindals, Tata, Essar, Posco, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and, of course, Vedanta.There’s an MoU on every mountain, river and forest glade.
We’re talking about social and environmental engineering on an unimaginable scale. And most of this is secret. It’s not in the public domain. Somehow I don’t think that the plans that are afoot to destroy one of the world’s most pristine forests and ecosystems, as well as the people who live in it, will be discussed at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Our 24-hour news channels that are so busy hunting for macabre stories of Maoist violence — and making them up when they run out of the real thing — seem to have no interest at all in this side of the story. I wonder why?
Perhaps it’s because the development lobby to which they are so much in thrall says the mining industry will ratchet up the rate of GDP growth dramatically and provide employment to the people it displaces. This does not take into account the catastrophic costs of environmental damage. But even on its own narrow terms, it is simply untrue.
Most of the money goes into the bank accounts of the mining corporations. Less than 10 per cent comes to the public exchequer. A very tiny percentage of the displaced people get jobs, and those who do, earn slave-wages to do humiliating, backbreaking work.
By caving in to this paroxysm of greed, we are bolstering other countries’ economies with our ecology. The mining companies desperately need this ‘war’. It’s an old technique. They hope the impact of the violence will drive out the people who have so far managed to resist the attempts that have been made to evict them.
Whether this will indeed be the outcome, or whether it’ll simply swell the ranks of the Maoists remains to be seen.
The real problem is that the flagship of India’s miraculous ‘growth’ story has run aground. It came at a huge social and environmental cost. And now, as the rivers dry up and forests disappear, as the water table recedes and as people realise what is being done to them, the chickens are coming home to roost.
All over the country, there’s unrest, there are protests by people refusing to give up their land and their access to resources, refusing to believe false promises any more. Suddenly, it’s beginning to look as though the 10 per cent growth rate and democracy are mutually incompatible.
Militarisation
To get the bauxite out of the flat-topped hills, to get iron ore out from under the forest floor, to get 85 per cent of India’s people off their land and into the cities (which is what Home Minister Chidambaram says he’d like to see), India has to become a police state.
The government has to militarise. To justify that militarisation, it needs an enemy. The Maoists are that enemy. They are to corporate fundamentalists what the Muslims are to Hindu fundamentalists. (Is there a fraternity of fundamentalists? Is that why the RSS has expressed open admiration for Mr Chidambaram?)
It would be a grave mistake to imagine that the paramilitary troops, the Rajnandgaon air base, the Bilaspur brigade headquarters, the Unlawful Activities Act, the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act and Operation Green Hunt are all being put in place just to flush out a few thousand Maoists from the forests.
In all the talk of Operation Green Hunt, whether or not Mr Chidambaram goes ahead and ‘presses the button’, I detect the kernel of a coming state of emergency. (Here’s a math question: If it takes 600,000 soldiers to hold down the tiny valley of Kashmir, how many will it take to contain the mounting rage of hundreds of millions of people?)
Instead of narco-analysing Kobad Gandhy, the recently arrested Maoist leader, it might be a better idea to talk to him.
In the meanwhile, will someone who’s going to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen later this year please ask the only question worth asking: Can we leave the bauxite in the mountain?
Similar threads
