Yippee, another attack at Dantewada.
Great, just another 999,998 to go.
Detest It, Hate It, Loath It
* God, we hate the three-letter word Mao.
* God, we hate the brute Mao who killed millions with his senseless policies that led to great famines and the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution.
* God, we hate the Communist ideology associated with the Maoists.
* God, we hate Mao because the Chinese Yellow Monkeys stole vast territory from the Indian pussies in the 1962 war.
* God, we even hate the stupid-looking Mao suit.
Traction, More Traction Needed
And yet we desperately want the Indian Maoist rebels insurgents freedom fighters who are waging an all-out war against the Indian state to gain traction.
Caveat: Significant traction but not enough traction as to succeed in toppling the state.
After all, the history of Communist states like the erstwhile USSR or China have been more than anything a cosmic catastrophe for their citizens with the state devouring tens of millions of its own.
Who would dare argue that Stalin and his terrified minions were less cruel than the Tsar and his officials. Or that Mao and his acolytes were better than Chiang Kai-Shek.
Why, Oh Why, Must Maoists Gain Traction?
Because the Indian state has been hijacked by vested interests to benefit the few to the detriment of the many.
To think we’re pouring countless millions on long-range missiles with boastful names like Agni and Prithvi but not enough on delivering basics like clean water and toilets both in rural and urban areas is utter callousness.
To think we’re expanding the number of IITs but not investing enough on primary education and vocational schools is nothing short of a travesty.
To think we’re still focusing our energies on software and biotechnology and ignoring low skill hardware assembly jobs is sheer madness.
There are plenty of other examples where the Indian state has willfully pursued policies that benefit only certain classes but leave out a large group to languish on the periphery and margins of existence.
So, the primary reason we want the Maoists to succeed is because these freedom fighters act as a powerful pressure group on the Indian state to pay at least some attention to the needs of the subaltern classes living in sub-human conditions both in remote hamlets in the hinterlands and urban hovels of our vast country.
Notwithstanding the babble of the chattering classes, it’s naivete to expect that those who benefit from the status quo will share even a wee bit of the spoils of the state with less fortunate beings unless compelled by the barrel of the gun, the sharp tip of the bayonet or the stealthily buried Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) to do so.
By any yardstick, it’s unacceptable that hundreds of millions are forced to live in animal-like conditions without food, clothing and shelter, subject to the vagaries of the elements and forced to bend their bodies to the whims of their human overseers.
What Gary Fields wrote three decades back in his book Poverty, Inequality and Development (1980) of poverty in India is still largely valid:
India is a miserably poor country. Per-capita yearly income is under $100. Of the Indian people, 45 percent receive incomes below $50 per year and 90 percent below $150. Of the total number of absolutely poor in the world…more than half are Indian. During the 1960s, per capita private consumer expenditure grew by less than 1/2 percent per annum. India’s poverty problem is so acute and her resources so limited that it is debatable whether any internal policy change short of a major administrative overhaul and radical redirection of effort might be expected to improve things substantially.
Fast forward three decades later.
Sure, there has been some reduction in the dystopian Indian nightmare of poverty and misery but nowhere near enough.
And there won’t be unless there’s a radical shift in state policies, which in a kakistocracy like India, will happen only when a powerful pressure group like the Maoists pushes the state to bend.
According to a World Bank study in 2005, 42% of India still live on less than $1.25 a day.
That accursed statistic may not be enough to ignite your fury but thank God it has roused the Maoists and led them to inflict repeated injuries.
God bless their violent souls!
Litany of Disgraces
* India has the highest number of people (803 million) living in the rural areas and yet rural infrastructure is abysmal to non-existent.
In Jharkand state, one of the strongholds of the Maoist liberators, 2/3rd of rural households did not have access to safe drinking water in 2001, according to a report prepared by the United Nations World Food Programme and MS Swaminathan Research Foundation.
* India still has the world’s largest chunk of poor.
* India still has the world’s largest number of illiterates with some 430 million people never having held a pen or pencil. Of course, the situation gets worse when it comes to females. Nearly 3.8 million primary-school-age girls are not in school.
* India still has the largest number of public shitters. A recent WHO study put the number of Indians who bare their bare-ass to public view every morning at 638 million.
* India still has one of the highest Infant Mortality Rates. As per World Bank studies, the Infant Mortality Rate per 1,000 births in India is 52. It’s 43 for Bangladesh and 6.7 for the U.S.
* India still has one of the highest malnutrition rates. At around 48%, it’s a disgracefully high number.
According to the FAO‘s The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009, India has 252 million undernourished souls. Surely, the highest in the world.
* India still has high income inequality. The top 20% have grabbed over 45% of the income while the bottom 20% get by with just 8% (source: World Bank)
* And to make all these depressing social statistics worse, India is one of the most corrupt nations in the world ranking 84th in the Transparency International report last year.
This means that very little of the allocated resources to the poor actually trickle down to them but seeps into the hands of the middlemen.
No More Waiting
The time for incremental growth and trickle down growth has long gone.
Six plus decades of waiting under self-rule is long enough and the endless despair for countless millions must abate.
The Indian state must be compelled to radically alter the allocation of resources.
And that’s precisely what the Maoists are doing.
Forcing the Indian state to redistribute and reallocate resources in a less inequitable fashion and stop exploiting public resources like mineral deposits for private benefit.
If you thought India’s second generation political leadership (who came of age after Independence) was rotten and indifferent to the abject suffering of their fellow citizens the upcoming third generation is worse.
Often the progeny of the corrupt second generation political classes, educated at elite institutions and possessing an unseemly sense of leadership entitlement, this third generation of Indian netas has little in common, and scarce empathy, with the vast majority of Indians.
No more than a gangrenous appendix to the body politic, India’s so-called leaders are hopelessly impervious to the voice of reason or quite demands for justice.
Only the loud noise of a bullet exiting a gun or the chorus of wails of the ‘victims’ families will prod these modern-day Shaitans to action.
To think that the military or air-power can defeat the Maoist insurgents is to delude oneself.
Detente with the Maoists is not a policy of senseless surrender but a sensible inclusive policy.
The alternative is a calypso of violence in an endless sanguinary battle with no winners.
Mera Bharat Mahaan. Really!
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This is not the way to protest the govt., by killing innocents.. not by killing sleeping men… anyway I wouldnt know how to protest whatever they are facing but this is not the way. maybe they can just spend the money they spend on arms and teach the public, gain their confidence and maybe even have their own country.. nothing is going to come out of killing.
(BTW we dont need another country coming out of India , and in that case not another state needs to be formed.)
I had the opportunity to spend some years in N.E. India. Nice people Nice place.. but the Indian administration doesnt see past w.Bengal not much funds seem to reach the area. and the reservation for tribals is highly misused. The tribals who get higher education and higher posts never comeback to their native land. The land and people are under developed. There’s one thing positive. The land is virgin forest, baring a few roads and settlements, that can be called cities.
These people have also taken to armed struggle, and kill a lot of army people , extort money from other state people at high posts. I don’t know where it started and where its going to end, but it does nothing useful to the area or the people.
Only when sensitive and sensible people get up in our administration will anything be changed. look at the administrative and police services of india, dolls in the hands of politicians, and a few really shine. hmm. the shame.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You Write Above: This is not the way to protest the govt., by killing innocents.. not by killing sleeping men…
War waged by those who have nothing to lose is ugly.
would like to add ..
N.E. India gets attention only when something huge happens, like floods, earthquakes, or bomb blasts.. well its kind of like Kashmir (I’ve never been to Kashmir, just assuming) No news comes out, except few of Assam. Theres regular bomb blasts, ambushes, train delays due to suspected and real tampering with the tracks, DIGs shot down.. well think of anything ..it happens..
We never go behind Army vehicles , even in crowded market places, cause they can get blown away and we may become collateral damage. Theres sandbags everywhere with guns jutting, AK 47s armed soldiers. its a war zone.
Blasts that doesn’t kill a whole lot of people doesn’t get media exposure. and extortion.. well the rebels does extort.. if they know someone has money they can use..
Well still its a Beautiful place with beautiful, friendly people.. there’s been bomb blasts near our home, That DIG was someone we knew. Still I would say its a Beautiful place with beautiful, friendly people.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
NE has been in trouble since the Mizo and Laldenga days in the 1960s and 1970s. Then the Assam agitation and so on.
The history of modern India is one of agitations, Morchas, riots, bundhs, blasts, Hartals, lathi-charge, teargas, rape and Relay-Hunger strike punctuated by brief moments of peace.
Is india on the verge of becoming a failed state like pakistan? Manipur is burning for the past few days bcoz of naga blockade, maoist problem is leading to a civil war, kashmir problem, corrupt leaders but still some people dream that india will be a super power by 2020.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You Write Above: still some people dream that india will be a super power by 2020
Ha ha ha, we haven’t stopped laughing. 😆
Don’t be surprised if the borders of India are completely different by 2020.
@SI:
During my last visit to India about a year back I met with the founder of Parivaar, an IIT and IIM alumnus named Vinayak Lohani. Parivaar focuses on development of children from the weakest sections of society – children whose parents have abandoned them or cannot take care of them, children of prostitutes, those who have been forced to become beggars at stations etc. Parivaar basically brings in all the children to its Ashram, where it takes care of the entire growth and development of the children by providing them with food, housing and quality education at all levels. They have even opened a school on the premises and the children educated there compete quite strongly with others from mainstream schools.
In late 2008 Parivaar expanded its focus to the Sabar and Birhore tribes in Amlasol and Belpahari in the Midnapore district of Bengal. These places happen to be Naxal hotbeds and the two tribes are amongst the most backward in all of India, with the invariable conditions prevailing since thousands of years. The trouble is that even with the Naxalites in this region attempting their tactics of coercion and redistribution, there has been zero improvement in the situation of the tribes. Far from trying to “radically alter the allocation of resources”, the Naxalites have been doing everything they can to forward their agenda. When Parivaar went to bring the children from there the volunteers were held at gunpoint for a few days before actually being allowed to bring anyone. It was quite a harrowing experience for the volunteers and they had to pull a miracle to get out of there.
You would have thought that for a group of people attempting to bring around equitable distribution of resources the Naxals would have supported a move for the betterment of the society whose plight they are trying to highlight. But the reality is quite different. At least in this case they seem to be beating the drums of their own political agenda more than anything else, and I am not sure how any government can tackle this situation.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. Look at it from the point of view of the Naxalites.
Given the underhand tactics of the Indian police and paramilitary forces like CRPF et al and their rampant use of encounters and infiltration to knock off ‘undesirable’ elements, it’s extremely hard for the Naxalites/Maoists to trust outsiders. India is the only democracy in the world where encounters a.k.a. cold-blooded extra-judicial killing by the law enforcement are an every-day phenomenon across the breadth of the land and yet draws little protests.
So establishing trust and rapport with those who have been oppressed and raped and duped for decades if not longer is not going to be an easy task.
2. Tackling the Naxalites/Maoists this time will be a Sisyphean struggle even if the Indian state brings in overwhelming force to the battle by way of the military and air-power.
Victory is not a certainty because the size of the alienated population has grown too large. Plus, the covert material support extended by China, Bangladesh (yes, the same monkeys we liberated in 1971) and Pakistan will make handling this crisis too daunting.
This article is no better than the Quran.. Too much gin, I suppose.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
When you have nothing concrete to say, tis’ better to say nothing.
Our central point that Maoist activities will act as a powerful pressure group on the Indian state to pay at least some attention to the needs of the subaltern classes living in sub-human conditions both in remote hamlets in the hinterlands and urban hovels of our vast country is hardly a dogmatic creed a la the Quran.
It’s 6:16PM now and if you’ll excuse us time to uncork our Gilbey’s. 😉
Engala vachchi kamady gimady pannaliyae? Where is Asha Tamponji when we need her.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write: Where is Asha Tamponji when we need her.
Given her temper tantrums and fierce hatred of the Maoists, we’re tempted to say that post-Dantewada II she must be in high dudgeon and
beseechingimploring the Lord of the Seven Hills to strike a fatal blow to the Naxalites with the sly hint of a clean-shaven head as a votive offering should the wish be granted. 😉Hi, a couple of things…
1) Naxals are hardly a true representation of the whole tribal population. Most tribals want nothing to do with them or the state for that matter.
2) There is considerable money involved. Tribals may be poor but the naxals threaten mining cos. for their monthly money fix which is large.
3) Your argument that the naxals find those that come to help them grossly underestimates their intellect.
4) There are tribals in every state, why are some states free of this problem? Certainly not because they were better off at the start.
5) Naxals are nothing but a bunch of jobless misguided idealogues at best or ruthless mercenaries who kill the people they claim to protect(thru kangaroo courts and blasts) and retard the process of development so that they can continue to rule over the powerless- at worst. Either way, they are no better than the allegedly scrupulous immoral insensitive tyrranical “state” that they fight.
6) The only way to deal with this problem is by brute force against naxals on one hand and development for tribals concurrently so they are not entrapped by their ideology.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. True, Naxalites are not the exclusive representatives of tribals.
But let’s not forget they’ve done more than anyone else to focus attention on the tribals, at least in the last 18 months.
2. Naxalites may be extorting mining/other firms. Organizations (even left-leaning ones) need money for survival. Ideological commitment alone cannot feed hungry mouths. At least, we haven’t heard of Naxalites living it up on extorted money.
3. You write: Naxals are nothing but a bunch of jobless misguided idealogues at best or ruthless mercenaries who kill the people they claim to protect (thru kangaroo courts and blasts) and retard the process of development so that they can continue to rule over the powerless- at worst.
History is replete with instances of condemnation of those who dared to challenge the status quo.
Bet Martin Luther (when he nailed his theses on the church door), Marin Luther King, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Mao, Che Guevara et al were all vilified and attacked in their times.
Retard the process of Development?
Hellooo? Can we please rewind 100 years. The Maoist freedom fighters are fighting precisely because there has not been any development to speak of in the area under their sovereignty.
4. You write: The only way to deal with this problem is by brute force against naxals on one hand and development for tribals concurrently so they are not entrapped by their ideology.
Hard to say if this is a viable solution at this juncture. Time for this may be past.
But of course we’ll never know until we try it.
Even if it’s tried and the Naxalites are crushed and development for tribals undertaken in the affected areas, it still means the Naxalities have won. After all, but for their immense pressure on the indian state it wouldn’t have happened.
Either way, the Naxalites have already won this round, big time.
5. You write: There are tribals in every state, why are some states free of this problem?
This is a function of several variables like political mobilization in the area, presence of Naxalites in the area, political leadership in the area, training resources available, capability/presence of the state in the region, forest cover et al.
What we are seeing in the affected areas is likely the outcome of several years of painstaking work by the Naxalites/Freedom Fighters and absence of the Indian state in any meaningful form there for decades.