Terror In My Backyard- And Its Home Grown

The naxalite problem has been gnawing my mind for a few months now. What really triggered me to write is post was a comment by fellow blogger Wise Donkey on my post 'Death So Unlikely'.

Once I was travelling in a remote area of Andhra Pradesh. I had to come back late at night. The car's interior roof lights/reading light were switched on for about two hours in which we traversed through some villages, small townships and a forest clearing. Reason? It was a naxalite area and gun-toting naxals could watch our every move. They didn’t want to kill anyone who was helping the village people.

We were told by locals that since we did not have police or government officials accompanying us, we wouldn’t be harmed. Moreover we were doing something for the downtrodden and the naxals were quite happy.

On my way I passed a police station, bombed a long time ago and some bullet marks visible on what was left of the walls. Needless to say, I did not come across any police personnel in that area.

That’s when I decided to understand the dynamics behind the naxal problem and where it is heading now.

The name ‘naxal’ comes from the village of Naxalbari situated in the narrow corridor between Nepal and what is now Bangladesh. It connects mainland India with the northeastern states.

In 1967, when the leftists were forming the government in Calcutta, three sharecroppers with the help of members of the breakaway wing of the CPI–M, armed with sticks, bows, and arrows, removed the entire stock of grain from a landlord's granary in Naxalbari village. At that time, it was considered to be a socio-economic problem in one state of India.

It slowly spread to Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttaranchal, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh. With Maoist supporting (as media reports say) their cause the problem has become a security as well as socio economic problem.

If proper measures are not taken, this could take a deadly turn.

And as Wise Donkey said, if Professor Puri, was gunned down by Naxals would there have been so much hype? The answer is ‘NO’. Why? Because we don’t consider it as a security problem or the fact that it is home grown terror supported by poor and down trodden as well as some politcial parties in parts of this country? The poor have no choice sometimes. As for the political parties - if it serves their purpose, why would they stop such a thing?

The Naxalite problem is tackled at three levels - first at the state level in which the individual states deal with the problem; second at the union level, in which the union government provide funds and security forces to tackle the Naxalite groups; and third at the intrastate level, where the states cooperate with each other to deal with the situation.

Some examples of states making an effor tinclude –

In December 2000, the governments of Bihar and Jharkhand mounted a coordinated offensive against the Naxalites.

The AP government has also tried to win back the peasantry by redistributing some of the land in the north Telengana region and has initiated programs to lure the Naxalites into surrendering by helping them to reintegrate into the mainstream society.

In West Bengal, extremist tendencies have been brought under control through an effective socio economic program, including land reforms, and an effective (police) administration.

While at the center, it has been more ‘talk’ and less ‘action’. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that a line has to be drawn between violence that is a law and order problem only and violence that has socio-economic and political underpinnings. This complexity of countering Naxal violence is widely recognized and the committee has been set up which would need to address socio-economic, developmental and political factors.

How effective has that committee been? When a local leader is shot dead in West Bengal or a jail break been perpeterated, why has the Centre kept mum on the issue? Why has the Centre not accepted it as a ‘terror’ problem behaving like a pigeon with closed eyes? Why has the media not made a sincere effort to bring this to the fore? What if these were Islamic terrorists? What kind of action would have been taken then?

Since 1960s, it is known that Naxals thrive where there are no or less land reforms or there is a poor section of society, with no resources to meet their daily requirements. Then, why the delay (of about 35 years)?

Lest this problem grows bigger, the Government should wake up and take a long term action to solve the problem. A start has been made but sincere efforts have to be made to eradicate this problem. Since the remote contolled Prime Minster will not be able to do this own his own, I hope Sonia Gandhi thinks for the common man.

P.S: I would like to attribute the some facts to articles published by Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. Any opinion and error is soley mine.

Orignally posted on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 4:19 PM