Monday, September 14, 2026
- Article
- Comments (0)
Ray of light
There are 182 districts in India where the writ of the Indian state has ceased to exist. Ranjit Bhushan looks at the inner dynamics that govern the country’s ‘liberated’ districts
RANJIT BHUSHAN | New Delhi, November 2, 2012 18:12
Tags : violence | rural | development |
Tags : violence | rural | development |
The largeness of India is at once its strength, as well as weakness. Sitting in Delhi, with the incumbent pressures it entails, it is easy to forget what is happening in some place 1,000 kilometres away from your steady home and hearth.
That is the story of Indian Maoists, also known as Naxalites. Of a total of 640 districts that constitute the Republic of India, just under 200 (182 according to 2011 figures) are officially declared as Maoist-affected. What it means is that the writ of the government, its machinery, the mechanisms responsible for the social welfare of its citizens in these districts, have all ceased to exist under the onslaught of deadly Left radical violence.
For consequences that do not bode well, there is little unanimity among the central and provincial governments on how best to contain the Left radical movement. The reasons vary, from suggesting that it be treated as an outright law and order issue to a more moderate assessment that lays the blame for rising radical sympathies on the lack of development and all round governmental apathy.
But as is often the case in India, paradoxes coexist in harmony with contradictions. If it is only the lack of development which has provided the trigger to the growth of Left extremism, then why should radicals oppose the execution of central and state government plans, however shallow? The Integrated Rural Development plans, for instance, may have some efficacy if allowed to be implemented.
Any implementation of social welfare schemes of providing the lowliest of the low with the basic wherewithal of life, is possible only when a government machinery is in place; in the absence of one, a district is left exposed to the elements -in this instance, the Maoists.
It is no coincidence, however, that almost all the districts identified as Maoist-hit, are largely tribal. There is no cogent answer to this trend. Have tribal rights been infringed upon so badly that they have had to take up arms? Have their laws been tampered with post-1947? Has there been a general apathy towards a cultural group which does not have the characteristics of the Indian mainland?
The contrast becomes even more appalling when we consider that the tribal belt provides coal, iron and other minerals responsible for the backbone of India’s heavy industry, whether public or private. It is the country’s biggest mineral reservoir – yet a large part of it is out of bounds for the country. In other words, the richest region in India is also its poorest.
So merely saying that tribal areas have not enjoyed the fruits of development as much as some of the other parts of the country, is a large part of the answer but not the whole of it.
Beginning Charu Mazumdar in the late 1960s to the Maoists groups which are active in 2012, there is yet no known cogent economic policy of Left radicalism. How will districts be run, how will employment be generated in far flung areas of the country? What about schools, colleges, higher education, law and order issues? And resource generation? These questions have largely been left in the realm of speculation and ambiguity.
There is little point in parroting what Mao did or did not do in China after the revolution. It is equally self-defeating to pick up some fashionable European theory and impose it on the Indian situation, however, irrelevant. There is no political or economic blueprint in place which could offer an idea to Maoists’ future plans, if they ever come to power.
What is on offer is only a deadly spiral of violence in which it is the common man, the exposed lower element of society, who has been the victim of senseless and brutal slayings. It is ironically this segment of society which the Naxalites claim to represent.
Their victims in far flung and remote areas include lowly hapless villagers, petty government officials who continue to man their workplaces despite the threats, lower constabulary and magistracy and generally, the unsuspecting who unknowingly walk over sophisticated and intricately laid out improvised explosive devices (IED) and perish in their thousands.
The districts held under the thrall of Maoists, are a classic example of the ‘state withering away,’ to paraphrase Karl Marx. While official indifference and a deliberate ploy to keep depressed classes at the margins cannot be denied by strongly entrenched vested interests, equally regrettable is the attempt to keep them away from the fruits of development, however uneven, in the name of Maoism.
But even in this grand impasse, there is a silver lining. If bland government figures are anything to go by, the central and state governmental efforts to take development down to the bottom of the heap, are bearing dividends. From an all time high of 223 districts under Maoist influence in 2008, the number has shown a declining trend. In 2009, 208 districts were under Naxalite domination; it scaled down to 196 in 2010.
It is this strand that needs to pursued. Official neglect of tribal areas is legion, but if the extreme Left threat has somehow persuaded the state to come out of its cocoon, it can only be considered good news.
Issue Dated: Feb 5, 2017
