The Moist Problem: An Issue of Social Justice

Tehelka has a hard-hitting interview with a former chief of BSF. He minces no words and states that it is first and foremost an issue of social justice. The interview is worth reading in full.

It is not about development. It is about rights. This government has to understand — how is it that land ceiling was implemented in Kerala? Why is there no Maoist movement there? You know what happened there? Under EMS Namboodiripad, the law was so strong that anyone who was a tenant farmer for 12 years, the ownership of the land passed to him without compensation to the owner. We are now in 2010, but in most parts of the country, we are behaving as though we are in 1610 or something. Do you know in Australia and the US now, they say that if any minerals or oil is found in the Reservation areas, that resource belongs to the Aborigines and Native Americans. In India also, the first thing that should be declared is that if minerals are found in the forest, it belongs to the people of that forest. The MOUs should be signed by all the people of that village with that company. After that, give them legal guidance and see that the profit comes to their accounts. Is the government in Delhi prepared to do that? Why should they? Every MOU has a Swiss Bank account attached.

Will he be invited on TV shows? Unlikely. All they seem to want is an eye for an eye, bullet for bullet and strafing the forests from the air. But the Maoists/Naxals don't seem to be in it for the money and are hence more dangerous. And the tribals have nothing to lose and all to gain.

When The State Gets Coercive

A letter to the Editor :

I would like the readers whose passions are running high in the wake of Dantewada II to go through Chapter IV of a 2009 draft report authored by Sub Group IV of the Committee on State Agrarian Relations and Unfinished Task of Land Reforms, set up by the Union Ministry of Rural Development, besides offering their suggestions to wipe out the Maoists. While addressing the question of large-scale acquisition of tribal lands in the mineral-rich area, the Report talks of the forcible evacuation of entire villages and herding the populace into camps, from which those who escape are branded as Maoists and wiped out. The Salwa Judum, which organised the evacuation, according to the report, was “created and encouraged by the [State] government and supported with the firepower and organisation of the central forces.”

S.V. Rajadurai,

Kotagiri

The report is here. An article from Outlook quotes a small paragraph:

This open, declared war will go down as the biggest land grab ever.... Tata Steel and Essar Steel...wanted seven villages or thereabouts...to mine the richest lode of iron ore available in India. (After) initial resistance from the tribals...the state withdrew its plans. A new approach was necessary.... (It) came about with the Salwa Judum...headed by the Murias, some of them erstwhile (Maoist) cadres. Behind them are traders, contractors and miners.... The first financiers of the Salwa Judum were Tata and Essar...640 villages...were laid bare, burnt to the ground and emptied with the force of the gun and the blessings of the state. (Some) 3,50,000 tribals, half the total population of Dantewada district, are displaced, their womenfolk raped, their daughters killed and their youth maimed. Those who could not escape into the jungle were herded together into refugee camps run and managed by the Salwa Judum...640 villages are empty. Villages sitting on tons of iron ore are effectively de-peopled and available for the highest bidder. The latest information being circulated is that both Essar Steel and Tata Steel are willing to take over the empty landscape and manage the mines.”

The Outlook reporter calls it 'devastatingly frank'. That it is without a doubt, though it's from a committee set up by the government and not by a group of some wild-eyed Maoist-sympathisers.

Scanning Pro-Maoists

From Deccan Herald:

A Home Ministry circular alerts heads of paramilitary forces and police in the Maoist-affected states that the CPI-Maoist has 57 “front bodies” of peasants, labourers, women, students, tribals and trade unions who have helped the banned outfit raise the level of its tactical warfare, including winning court battles and getting their arrested leaders released.

Apparently one of the 'front bodies' includes a group that has a former supreme court justice as a 'key member':

Among the groups being watched include People’s Union for Civil Liberties that has Justice (Retd) Rajinder Sachar as one of its key members. The group was formed in 1976 by Jaiprakash Narain.

If that doesn't tell the Home Ministry that it is barking up the wrong tree by targeting these groups and 'intellectuals' in general, I don't know what will. It's not only ex-Justices who are in the government's spotlight:

Blaming “unrealistic judicial activism” as the main reason for increased Maoist activities, the [Law and Justice] minister said: “If the courts had exhibited restraint and gone according to ground realities in the forests, the situation would have been totally different today”.

Here's another former Justice speaking out in support of dialogue & addressing root causes:

A group of 25 intellectuals and activists, including Justice V R Krishna Iyer and Arundhati Roy, on Monday welcomed the statement by Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi that the ''root cause'' of naxalism has to be addressed while decisively acting against them.

“We welcome the public statement of Sonia Gandhi that the extreme neglect of the tribal areas is at the root of the present crisis in those regions.

“We hope that this appreciation of the need to go deeper into the question would lead to initiatives for immediate cessation of hostilities and dialogue so that the process of people-oriented development can be made feasible,” they said in a statement.

As B S Raghavan argued in Business Line:

The so-called war on Maoism has fast degenerated into a war of words. This phony war is entirely the offshoot of the political establishment, governing class and security agencies unleashing their combined might against those whom they castigate as the apologists, accomplices and sympathisers of Maoists, defined as any group of balanced, thoughtful analysts who have the temerity to argue that full-throated, blood-curdling cries of a ‘fight-to-the finish' with all the forces at the Government's command are no answer to Maoism.