The Red Menace

[Muppalla]

Jharkand and Orissa are the two states that are completely engulfed with Maoists. For all other states there are few districts that are affected.

If police targets the overground activists ( Civil liberty unions, proxys like Varavara Rao etc., Arundhoti types, softies towards Leftists) and decisively nutralizes them the rest of the movements will comedown. These overground folks provide the leadership.

[Singha]

looking at the list all usual suspects like mv ramana, angana chaterji have reported attendance. had a OMG moment on this:
Harish Karnick, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur, India

he was a all-round good guy and taught us several courses.

[sanjaychoudhry]

List of people who signed a petition protesting actions against Maoists

Amazing to see a long list of Gora professors from the US in the list. This shows who the real patrons of Maoists are. And it is these professors which Indian government wants to give permission to teach in Indian universities!! Most of signatories are Indian and American professors.

[Hari Seldon]

Muppalla saar,

kindly don't use as strong a term as "eliminate" when referring to the overgroundus by name. "neutralize" is prolly a better word. And also helps keeps BR neutral to BS.

[Rahul Mehta]

Dear Forum-Rakshaks,

Not withstanding the excellent posts that conclusively prove that all Indians are doing hunky dory, some REAL events like rise in Christianity, rise in Naxalism perhaps indicate that at least some poor are getting worse off. And two Forum-Rakshaks noted

... unless we find a way to connect the economically backward sections of desh to the booming growth engines (both are true, it's no use saying that only the progress/lack of it is the true story) our problems will only magnify.

(In Strategic Leadership thread) there is no doubt that social and economic deficiencies in the country has encouraged anti Govt forces to operate with impunity and even with support of those deprived.

So what do we do to "connect with poor"? To "connect with poor", shouldn't we at least have a thread on "How India can reduce poverty?" It should be GD forum, as topic is 100% political and has nothing to do with economics, but then I am not a Forum-Rakshak to decide that.

So may I start a thread with topic "How India can reduce poverty?"

Thanks

[Avinash R]

New Armed Wing of PCPA Behind Rajdhani Hijack Drama
Kolkata | Oct 28, 2009

A newly-raised armed wing of tribal agitators, aided by Maoists in West Midnapore district, were responsible for the seven-and-a-half half hour hijack drama of the Delhi-bound Rajdhani Express in a jungle area of West Midnapore district.

"The way the incident took place on Tuesday doesn't suggest that it was planned and executed entirely by Maoists. They were definitely present during the incident, but they didn't participate," a source in the joint forces engaged in anti-Maoist operations in the district told PTI on condition of anonymity.

"The Maoists also provided covering fire when the joint forces were trying to go from Jhargram to the trouble spot, Banstala. Their intention was to resist us so that the tribal agitators could leave the spot safely," the source said.

The name of the PCPA's armed wing, according to the district police, was 'Sidhu-Kanu Gana Militia'.

The militia, according to them, derived the name from Sidhu Murmu and Kanu Murmu who had led the Santhal rebellion (1857-1858) against the British and were later caught and executed.

Maoist leader Kishenji told PTI over phone, "We will provide strategic, technical and military support to the villagers so that they can combat the joint forces in West Midnapore successfully."

Talks after Naxals lay down arms: Acharya
Thursday, October 29, 2009 9:54 AM IST

BANGALORE: Home Minister Dr V S Acharya hinted that the government will hold talks with naxalities albeit only when they lay down arms. He was speaking after inaugurating the new office of Internal Security Division (ISD) at the KSRP first Battalion, which includes Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS), Coastal Security Force (CSF), Anti- Naxal Force (ANF) and Intelligence and Research Division.

“The government has taken up development works in the naxal infested areas to bring back people and naxal sympathisers to mainstream,” he said. He also said that naxal problem in the state is very negligible when compared to other states like Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Maharastra.

The state would form a separate special security force to tackle any kind of national disasters and terror attacks as the Central Government had denied setting up base for National Security Guards in Bangalore, Acharya said.

The special team will be called as Quick Rapid Protection Force with 200 reserve police personnel. The state government is very keen to have the NSG base in the state after the Mumbai terror siege, but it was denied, Acharya added. He added that Mangalore, Malpe, Bhatkal, Kumata and Karwar have the special CSF bases too.

Govt ready to rehabilitate naxals
TNN 29 October 2009, 03:15am IST

BANGALORE: The government will rehabilitate naxals who are willing to lay down arms, according to home minister V S Acharya.

At the inauguration of the Internal Security Wing office on Wednesday, Acharya confirmed that the government will help naxals who want to surrender.

According to him, naxal activity in Karnataka is lower than in other parts of the country. "The police are doing well to control sporadic incidents," he said.

ANTI-TERRORIST CELL

At least sixteen officers are working at the anti-terrorist cells. "The government will recruit more officers for the wing," Acharya added.

Also, 200 CAR personnel are being trained to be part of the striking force. "Their service will be extended to the Internal Securing Wing along with the existing KSRP force," he said.

NO THREAT TO GOVT

Acharya said he is confident that the B S Yeddyurappa government can overcome the ongoing political crisis. "I don't think the government will face any problem," he added.

On the Reddy brothers rebelling against Yeddyurappa's leadership, Acharya replied, "Everything will go well. Difference of opinion is present in every system."

He also said party leaders at the national level will intervene in state politics if required. "My meeting with assembly Speaker Jagadish Shettar was a courtesy call," Acharya said. As the home minister, he calls on the governor and the Speaker periodically. "There is no need to speculate," he summed up.

K'taka to set up Special Protection Force

Bangalore, October 28, 2009: The Karnataka Government will set up a Special Protection Force to combat terrorist activities and emergency requirements to maintain law and order in the State, Home Minister V S Acharya said today.

Talking to newspersons after inaugurating the Internal Security Wing (ISW) at KSRP first Batallion campus here, he said, for the proposed Special Protection Force, 200 personnel from City Armed Reserve (CAR) and Action Rapid Force would be imparted necessary training and provided with modern equipment. He said that all special forces including the Anti-Naxal Force, Coastal Security Force(CSF), anti-terrorist cell will be coming under unified command of ISW.

Replying to a question, he said since the Centre had refused to provide National Disaster Management Force to the State, it was decided to set up the Special Protection Force and already 100 KSRP personnel were shifted to it.

Dr Acharya said that the immediate concern of the government was to establish round-the-clock vigil over the 320 kilometre stretch of coastal waters in the state. "We have already opened six CSF police station and have a 30-member team in it including a superintendent of police, who heads it. There are 24 posts to be filled in the CSF. Besides the present three patrolling boats, the CSF will get two more soon," he said.

On the Naxal menace in the State, Dr Acharya said that the State Government is ready for talks with them provided they come to the negotiating table by surrendering their weapons. We have already initiated developmental activities in the naxal-prone areas in an effort to bring them into the mainstream.

Stating that the Anti-Naxal Squad was doing a commendable job, he said compared to Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and other naxal infested states, the situation in Karnataka was far better and the government would provide all help to further strengthen the squad.

Replying to a question regarding ongoing crisis in the government, Acharya said "we are confident that the government will overcome the ongoing crisis. There is always difference in opinion in every system and party leadership will sort out the current issues, he said adding that his call to speaker Jagadish Shettar was just a courtesy call. "As a home minister I call the governor and speaker periodically and there is no need to speculate," he said.

Rajdhani passengers recount horror of Naxal attack

Priyanka Dube / CNN-IBN

TimePublished on Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 01:53 in India section

New Delhi: It was perhaps the most traumatic train journey for a passenger on board the Rajdhani train hijacked by the Maoists in West Bengal's West Midnapore district on Tuesday.

Passenger Gautam Das found himself stuck at Bokaro, after a five hour hostage situation by the Maoitsts. It wasn't the fear for his life but that of his mother that tore through his heart during the traumatic crisis, said Das.

Das was on his way to Chandigarh to make payments for his mother's heart surgery.

"I need to deliver money fo my mother's operation. If I am unable to do so things can get worse," expressed Das to CNN-IBN.

But fortunately, after watching Gautam's plight on CNN-IBN, the hospital carried out his mother's operation successfully and even free of cost. But for several others on board the Delhi bound Rajdhani Express, it was a nightmare that knew no end.

A child who witnessed the turn of events as the train was forced to halt said, "Suddenly huge stones were hurled at the glass panes of the windows of the coaches. Number of people were injured in the process."

The attackers reportedly forced their way through the broken windows. They clarified, say some passengers, that they had no intention of harming anyone.

"They said we have a grudge against the Government. Get out, we will burn the train," recounted another passenger of the horror.

The Naxals took away the food and the bedding from the train, leaving passengers hungry and woefully short of amenities.

After five hours of being held up due to the attacking Maoists, the Rajdhani was stranded for another four hours till the machinery swung back into action. For the passengers, every second counted.

The agony of not knowing what will happen next added to their horror.

"There was no security with us, police got down at Kharagpur. Why did they make us the bait then? They (the Maoists) threatened us with swords, bows and arrows. What if someone died of a heart attack?" questioned a passenger on reaching Delhi.

The passengers on the ill-fated Rajdhani Express on Tuesday might have escaped with little injuries this time, but with the West Bengal government admitting to an understaffed police force this may not be the last violent train journey that the route has witnessed, fear many.

CPM accuses Trinamool of giving political patronage to Naxals

New Delhi: Sharpening its attack on union railways minister Mamata Banerjee over the hijack drama of Bhubaneswar Rajdhani Express, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM on Wednesday accused her of playing a part in the hijacking. ”The matter calls for a probe. The finger of suspicion for the incident points to Mamata Banerjee. One of the ministers from her very own party went on record saying that he had prior information about the attack. The leader whose release was sought by the tribals in West Midnapore yesterday was once a member of Trinamool Congress,” party politburo leader Sitaram Yechury said.

The Bhubaneswar Rajdhani Express was halted by ‘Maoist-backed tribal activists’ near West Midnapore on Tuesday but was freed by security forces after an over six hour hostage drama. They were demanding the release of PCPA (People’s Committee against Police Atrocities) chief Chattradhar Mahato who is under trial for supporting Maoists in Lalgarh.

The Congress, meanwhile, lashed out at the CPM for its ‘baseless’ accusations. “These allegations are meaningless, mindless and ridiculous,” party spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said. Meanwhile, criticism of the ‘hijack’ came in from various political quarters.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar—who is a former railway minister himself - condemned the seizure of train, saying it was wrong to target national property. “This act by Maoists is against the interests of the nation and cannot be tolerated. The people of the country will suffer if the Railways are made a soft-target,” Kumar said.

Calling the Naxal attacks a war with the country, the main opposition BJP on Wednesday demanded government to come out clear on the action plan against the Naxal threat. The party said it will raise the matter and demand concrete action in the ensuing Parliament session.

Mamata's Demand for Army in Naxal Areas Rejected

Defence Minister A K Antony today rejected his cabinet colleague Mamata Banerjee's demand for deployment of army in Maoist-affected areas of West Bengal, saying use of armed forces for internal security was the "last resort".

"Whether in West Bengal or any other area, our view is that employing armed forces for internal security is the last resort. Only as the last resort we will deploy armed forces in Naxal areas," he said.

His comments on Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee's demand in this regard came at a media interaction on the sidelines of a Coast Guard Commanders' conference here.

The Trinamool Congress chief had yesterday demanded that the Centre should use army to recover arms allegedly taken away by "CPI(M) goons" from the state armoury in West Bengal.

Antony said law and order issues should be handled by respective state governments and ruled out talks with Maoists before they abjure violence. The government would "not tolerate" attacks by the Left extremists, he said.

"What we are asking them is to abjure violence," Antony said replying to queries if talks with the Naxals should be unconditional.

Agreeing that Naxal violence was a serious threat to internal security, Antony said the Centre would render all help to the affected states.

He said the government was of the view that tribal and Maoist-affected states needed more development.

"But that is not an excuse for violence and bloodshed. The government will not tolerate anyone taking law into their hands," he said.

Antony said the government had already chalked out a plan to counter Maoists violence in affected states and was monitoring its implementation.

Following the recent spurt in Maoists violence and abductions, including that of a police officer in West Bengal, both Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Banerjee have met Home Minister P Chidambaram in the last fortnight to demand action against the Left extremists.

During her meeting with the Home Minister yesterday after two drivers of New Delhi-Bhubaneswar Rajdhani Express were kidnapped allegedly by Maoists in West Midnapore district in West Bengal, Banerjee had demanded that the Centre should use the army.

Cops destroy Naxal citadel in Bihar
Patna, DHNS: The Bihar police have decided to go the whole hog against the CPI (Maoist).

As a first step in this direction, the cops joined hands with the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and destroyed a full-fledged training camp of the Maoists in the dense forest of Munger district in central Bihar.

The police also recovered detonators, flash impoverished explosive devices, live cartridges, knives, Naxal literature, police uniform, generator sets, perfumes and cosmetics used by women activists from the training camp.

The camp was being run by the ultras at Bhimbandh.

On getting specific information about the Maoists’ camp, a joint police team of district police, Special Task Force and the CRPF was constituted under the leadership of Munger SP Sunil Nayak.

Though the police demolished Naxalites’ citadel, some 100-odd armed guerrillas managed to escape from there taking advantage of the topography of the area, said sources.

[Aditya_V]

Muppalla -> Jharkand and Orissa are the two states that are completely engulfed with Maoists. For all other states there are few districts that are affected.

Sorry dont agree , even these states many districts are Maoist free if we do a ditrict by district analyis.

[kmkraoind]

Maoists hack 2 CPI(M) workers to death

Hardcore moists are eliminating moderate moists.

[Sachin]

Maoists hack 2 CPI(M) workers to death

Actually it would be best if the police/CRPF give some time for the Mao fans and Stalin fans (CPI(M)) in West Bengal to fight it out between themselves. Let them kill and each other's hard-core workers, and the "mop up" operations can be later done by the forces .

[Yagnasri]

correct like two gangs of mafia killing each other.

[Gagan]

Another map of Maoist affected districts in India. It seems another iteration of the wiki map.

http://www.sangam.org/2009/08/Notes_Corridor.php

[Gagan]

And another is here:

[Sachin]

In the last map (just above this post) Kerala seems to be totally clean of naxalites. Looks like the police operations of late 60s and 70s are still yielding fruits. No sensible person wants to follow the naxalite path.

[Neela]

Among the signatories is Mahmood Mamdani.
Professor at Columbia
http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/ ... 4-fac.html

His wife is Mira Nair, the film director!

[Roshan]

http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/orissa_w ... police.php

Can this news be true

my first post in BR

[Hari Seldon]

http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/orissa_w ... police.php

Can this news be true

Well, its from ndtv? what dyu expect? A not saying its false, just that its likely to be masaged exaggerated and plain falsified in large part onlee. Just like Arundhati's "fetuses torn outta wombs in 'em yindoo led riots onlee" rumors were given flight by Indexpress and ndtv.

[Roshan]

Well, its from ndtv? what dyu expect? A not saying its false, just that its likely to be masaged exaggerated and plain falsified in large part onlee. Just like Arundhati's "fetuses torn outta wombs in 'em yindoo led riots onlee" rumors were given flight by Indexpress and ndtv.

True, but these folks are giving their air time for their TRP rating

GOI should bring in some kind of regulation

[pgbhat]

Some more from Ms. Roy.
Mr Chidambaram’s War

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.

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.

Instead of narco-analysing Kobad Gandhy, the recently arrested Maoist leader, it might be a better idea to talk to him.

[Roshan]

Instead of narco-analysing Kobad Gandhy, the recently arrested Maoist leader, it might be a better idea to talk to him.

As long as people who romanticize Maoist exist in our society the Red menace is going to continue

[Rahul M]

what people like A Roy won't acknowledge is no one (but no one) in India does not admit that our tribal population hasn't been taken care of as well as they should have been.
The "cause" is well known and acknowledged by ALL sections of Indian society, it is not something new that A Roy is peddling.

The bald faced lie is the claim that maoism is the solution to the problem when it is the maoists themselves that are now the oppressors of the tribal people and it is them that obstructs every little development effort aimed at these populations.

people like khobad ghandy do not represent the victims, they are the kingpins of the oppressors.

[manish]

Yet another article on the Maoists in NYT - and it quotes the ARoy blabber from last week's ToI article that was posted here and over at the PsyOps thread.
Rebels Widen Deadly Reach Across India

BARSUR, India — At the edge of the Indravati River, hundreds of miles from the nearest international border, India effectively ends. Indian paramilitary officers point machine guns across the water. The dense jungles and mountains on the other side belong to Maoist rebels dedicated to overthrowing the government.

Will X-Post in the Psyops thread also for obvious reasons.

[arunsrinivasan]

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=1 ... &ref=share

Guys please see this event, I am the one posting against this, any dope on Guha and the rest I can post there?

Let me know what you guys think.

[Avinash R]

Some more from Ms. Roy.
Mr Chidambaram’s War

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’.’

Who are these people that she talks to?
Do they appear after she inhales herbal smoke?

the government has announced Operation Green Hunt, a war purportedly against the ‘Maoist’ rebels headquartered in the jungles of central India.

Conveniently not mentioned is the fact that govt invited maoists for talks which they haughtily rejected.
Maoists reject truce offer, govt ready to use force
Despite repeated calls for "dialogue" by the government, there seems to be a certain inevitability about a confrontation between the security forces and the Maoists.
...
"Law and order is the primary responsibility of every civilised state and whatever comes in the way of maintenance of law and order will be dealt with as it ought to be dealt with," said the PM during an interaction at a media summit.
...
However, with the Maoists showing no inclination to abjure violence, let alone lay down their arms, the government is running out of patience and options.

Instead of narco-analysing Kobad Gandhy, the recently arrested Maoist leader, it might be a better idea to talk to him.

Inadvertently she blurts out the truth, she calls him maoist leader instead of 'writer', 'intellectual' and other names being used to honour this blood thirsty criminal. And BTW the govt is indeed talking to kobad but since he grew up killing chickens by wringing their necks he finds it difficult to have a normal conversation and has to be sedated to make him speak.

[Rahul M]

avinash, please check gmail a/c.

[Stan_Savljevic]

It is a good idea to keep track of what dear leader Prachanda is doing. Maoist-outlets report the following. Cant trust its veracity given that GoI has been poking Prachanda & co in its eyes over the last few days, so this could well be propagandu to irk the GoI side.

The meeting between the leaders of Unified Maoists’ Party of Nepal and the representatives of Indian Communist Party-Maoists took place in an undisclosed location in India, between October 8-11, 2009. Indra Mohan Sigdel alias Basanta, the Unified Maoist Party politburo member led the Nepali team that held discussions with the Indian Maoists’ party team led by Kishanji, reports reveal.

The Unified Maoist Party Chairman, Pushpa Kamal Dahal in an interview with NDTV, India, had recently claimed that the ex-rebel party of Nepal was not ready to mediate between the outlawed Maoists’ Party of India and the Indian Government. {Maybe dear leader Prachanda would worry about what goes on inside his house given that even the tenuous hold he had before is now truly eff-ed.}

[vera_k]

Among the signatories is Mahmood Mamdani.
Professor at Columbia
http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/ ... 4-fac.html

His wife is Mira Nair, the film director!

Mira Nair is a signatory too. The good thing is that these people can officially be called terrorist sympathisers. It is eye-opening how American universities are full of people supporting terrorist groups in India. The least the GoI can do is put these folks on a watchlist and question them at the airport whenever they happen to visit India.

[vera_k]

Demand a stop to the Indian governments assault on the CPI-Maoist and adivasis people!.

Indian and inter-national intellectuals issue “Statement against Gov’t of India‘s planned military offensive in adivasi-populated regions“

19 October 2009. A World to Win News Service. The Indian government has announced that it is preparing a large-scale military offensive against areas in eastern and central India where adivasi (tribal) people and others have risen up under the leadership of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). (See AWTWNS 091912) Sanhati (www.sanhati. com), which describes itself as “a collective of activists/academics who have been working in solidarity with peoples‘ movements in India by providing information and analysis,“ drafted and circulated the following statement signed by many prominent Indian and international intellectuals demanding that the government offensive not take place. Dated 12 October, it is followed by a “Background note“ that, like the statement itself, reflects the views of that collective.

To Dr Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister, Government of India, South Block, Raisina Hill, New Delhi, India-110 011.
We are deeply concerned by the Indian government’s plans for launching an unprecedented military offensive by army and paramilitary forces in the adivasi (indigenous people)-populated regions of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa and West Bengal states. The stated objective of the offensive is to “liberate” these areas from the influence of Maoist rebels. Such a military campaign will endanger the lives and livelihoods of millions of the poorest people living in those areas, resulting in massive displacement, destitution and human rights violation of ordinary citizens.

To hunt down the poorest of Indian citizens in the name of trying to curb the shadow of an insurgency is both counter-productive and vicious. The ongoing campaigns by paramilitary forces, buttressed by anti-rebel militias, organised and funded by government agencies, have already created a civil war like situation in some parts of Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, with hundreds killed and thousands displaced. The proposed armed offensive will not only aggravate the poverty, hunger, humiliation and insecurity of the adivasi people, but also spread it over a larger region.

Grinding poverty and abysmal living conditions that has been the lot of India’s adivasi population has been complemented by increasing state violence since the neoliberal turn in the policy framework of the Indian state in the early 1990s. Whatever little access the poor had to forests, land, rivers, common pastures, village tanks and other common property resources has come under increasing attack by the Indian state in the guise of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and other “development” projects related to mining, industrial development, Information Technology parks, etc.

The geographical terrain, where the government’s military offensive is planned to be carried out, is very rich in natural resources like minerals, forest wealth and water, and has been the target of large scale appropriation by several corporations. The desperate resistance of the local indigenous people against their displacement and dispossession has in many cases prevented the government-backed corporations from making inroads into these areas.

We fear that the government‘s offensive is also an attempt to crush such popular resistances in order to facilitate the entry and operation of these corporations and to pave the way for unbridled exploitation of the natural resources and the people of these regions. It is the widening levels of disparity and the continuing problems of social deprivation and structural violence, and the state repression on the non-violent resistance of the poor and marginalized against their dispossession, which gives rise to social anger and unrest and takes the form of political violence by the poor. Instead of addressing the source of the problem, the Indian state has decided to launch a military offensive to deal with this problem: kill the poor and not the poverty, seems to be the implicit slogan of the Indian government.

We feel that it would deliver a crippling blow to Indian democracy if the government tries to subjugate its own people militarily without addressing their grievances. Even as the short-term military success of such a venture is very doubtful, enormous misery for the common people is not in doubt, as has been witnessed in the case of numerous insurgent movements in the world. We urge the Indian government to immediately withdraw the armed forces and stop all plans for carrying out such military operations that has the potential for triggering a civil war which will inflict widespread misery on the poorest and most vulnerable section of the Indian population and clear the way for the plundering of their resources by corporations. We call upon all democratic-minded people to join us in this appeal.

National signatories

Arundhati Roy, author and activist, India; Amit Bhaduri, Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, JNU [Delhi]; Sandeep Pandey, social activist, N.A.P.M., India; Manoranjan Mohanty, Durgabai Deshmukh Professor of Social Development; Colin Gonzalves, Supreme Court Advocate; Arundhati Dhuru, activist, N.A.P.M.; Swapna Banerjee-Guha, Department of Geography, University of Mumbai; Anand Patwardhan, film maker; Dipankar Bhattachararya, General Secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation; Bernard D’Mello, Associate Editor, Economic and Political Weekly , India; Dr Vandana Shiva, philosopher, writer, environmental activist; Amit Bhattacharyya, Professor, Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata; Paromita Vohra, Devi Pictures; Sunil Shanbag, theatre director; and 126 more people.

International signatories

Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, M.I.T.; David Harvey, Professor of Anthropology, The C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center; Michael Lebowitz, Director, Program in Transformative Practice and Human Development, Centro Internacional Mirana, Venezuela; John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review and Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Professor, Columbia University; James C. Scott, Professor of Political Science, Yale University; Michael Watts, Professor of Geography and Development Studies, University of California Berkeley, Mahmood Mamdani, Professor of Government, Columbia University; Mira Nair, Filmmaker, Mirabai Films, USA; Howard Zinn, historian, playwright, and social activist, USA; and 158 more people.

Background note

It has been widely reported in the press that the Indian government is planning an unprecedented military offensive against alleged Maoist rebels, using paramilitary and counter-insurgency forces, possibly the Indian Armed Forces and even the Indian Air Force. This military operation is going to be carried out in the forested and semi-forested rural areas of the states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Maharashtra, populated mainly by the tribal (indigenous) people of India. Reportedly, the offensive has been planned in consultation with US counter-insurgency agencies.

To put the Indian government’s proposed military offensive in proper perspective one needs to understand the economic, social and political background to the conflict. In particular, there are three dimensions of the crisis that needs to be emphasized, because it is often overlooked: (a) the development failure of the post-colonial Indian state, (b) the continued existence and often exacerbation of the structural violence faced by the poor and marginalized, and (c) the full-scale assault on the meagre resource base of the peasantry and the tribal (indigenous people) in the name of “development” .

Let us look at each of these in turn, but before we do so it needs to be stressed that the facts we mention below are not novel; they are well-known if only conveniently forgotten. Most of these facts were pointed out by the April 2008 Report of the Expert Group of the Planning Commission of the Indian Government (headed by retired civil servant D. Bandopadhyay) to study ” development challenges in extremist affected areas”.

The post-colonial Indian State, both in its earlier Nehruvian and the more recent neoliberal variant, has failed miserably to solve the basic problems of poverty, employment and income, housing, primary health care, education and inequality and social discrimination of the people of the country. The utter failure of the development strategy of the post-colonial State is the ground on which the current conflict arises. To recount some well known but oft-forgotten facts, recall that about 77 percent of the Indian population in 2004-05 had a per capita daily consumption expenditure of less than Rs. 20; that is less than 50 cents by the current nominal exchange rate between the rupee and the U.S. dollar and about $2 in purchasing power parity terms. According to the 2001 Census, even 62 years after political independence, only about 42 percent of Indian households have access to electricity. About 80 percent of the households do not have access to safe drinking water; that is a staggering 800 million people lacking access to potable water.

What is the condition of the working people in the country? 93 percent of the workforce, the overwhelming majority of the working people in India, are what the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) called “informal workers”; these workers lack any employment security, work security and social security. About 58 percent of them work in the agricultural sector and the rest is engaged in manufacturing and services. Wages are very low and working conditions extremely onerous, leading to persistent and deep poverty, which has been increasing over the last decade and a half in absolute terms: the number of what the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) called the “poor and vulnerable” increased from 811 million in 1999-00 to 836 million in 2004-05.

Since the majority of the working people still work in the agricultural sector, the economic stagnation in agriculture is a major cause for the continued poverty of the vast majority of the people.. Since the Indian state did not undertake land reforms in any meaningful sense, the distribution of land remains extremely skewed to this day. Close to 60 percent of rural households are effectively landless; and extreme economic vulnerability and despair among the small and marginal peasantry has resulted in the largest wave of suicides in history: between 1997 and 2007, 182,936 farmers committed suicide. This is the economic setting of the current conflict.

But in this sea of poverty and misery, there are two sections of the population that are much worse off than the rest: the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) population. On almost all indicators of social well being, the SCs and STs are worse off than the general population: poverty rates are higher, landlessness is higher, infant mortality rates are higher, levels of formal education are lower, and so on. To understand this differential in social and economic deprivation we need to look at the second aspect of the current crisis that we had alluded to: structural violence.

There are two dimensions of this structural violence: (a) oppression, humiliation and discrimination along the lines of caste and ethnicity and (b) regular harassment, violence and torture by arms of the State. For the SC and ST population, therefore, the violence of poverty, hunger and abysmal living conditions has been complemented and worsened by the structural violence that they encounter daily. It is the combination of the two, general poverty and the brutality and injustice of the age old caste system, kept alive by countless social practices despite numerous legislative measures by the Indian state, that makes this the most economically deprived and socially marginalized section of the Indian population.

This social discrimination, humiliation and oppression is of course very faithfully reflected in the behaviour of the police and other law-enforcing agencies of the State towards the poor SC and ST population, who are constantly harassed, beaten up and arrested on the slightest pretext. For this population, therefore, the State has not only totally neglected their economic and social development, it is an oppressor and exploiter. While the SC and ST population together account for close to a quarter of the Indian population, they are the overwhelming majority in the areas where the Indian government proposes to carry out its military offensive against alleged Maoist rebels. This, then, is the social background of the current conflict.

This brings us to the third dimension of the problem: unprecedented attack on the access of the marginalized and poor to common property resources. Compounding the persistent poverty and the continuing structural violence has been the State’s recent attempt to usurp the meagre resource base of the poor and marginalized, a resource base that was so far largely outside the ambit of the market. The neoliberal turn in the policy framework of the Indian state since the mid 1980s has, therefore, only further worsened the problems of economic vulnerability and social deprivation. Whatever little access the poor had to forests, land, rivers, common pastures, village tanks and other common property resources to cushion their inevitable slide into poverty and immiserization has come under increasing attack by the Indian state in the guise of so-called development projects: Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and other “development” projects related to mining, industrial development, Information Technology parks, etc.

Despite numerous protests from people and warnings from academics, the Indian State has gone ahead with the establishment of 531 SEZs. The SEZs are areas of the country where labour and tax laws have been consciously weakened, if not totally abrogated by the State to “attract” foreign and domestic capital; SEZs, almost by definition, require a large and compact tract of land, and thus inevitably mean the loss of land, and thus livelihood, by the peasantry. To the best of our knowledge, there have been no serious, rigorous cost-benefit analysis of these projects to date; but this does not prevent the government from claiming that the benefits of these projects, in terms of employment generation and income growth, will far outweigh the costs of revenue loss from foregone taxes and lost livelihoods due to the assault on land.

The opposition to the acquisition of land for these SEZ and similar projects have another dimension to it. Dr Walter Fernandes, who has studied the process of displacement in post-independence India in great detail, suggests that around 60 million people have faced displacement between 1947 and 2004; this process of displacement has involved about 25 million hectares of land, which includes 7 million hectares of forests and 6 million hectares of other common property resources. How many of these displaced people have been resettled? Only one in every three. Thus, there is every reason for people not to believe the government’s claims that those displaced from their land will be, in any meaningful sense, resettled. This is one of the most basic reasons for the opposition to displacement and dispossession.

But, how have the rich done during this period of unmitigated disaster for the poor? While the poor have seen their incomes and purchasing power tumble down precipitously in real terms, the rich have, by all accounts, prospered beyond their wildest dreams since the onset of the liberalization of the Indian economy. There is widespread evidence from recent research that the levels of income and wealth inequality in India has increased steadily and drastically since the mid 1980s. A rough overview of this growing inequality is found by juxtaposing two well known facts: (a) in 2004-05, 77 percent of the population spent less than Rs. 20 a day on consumption expenditure; and (b) according to the annual World Wealth Report released by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini in 2008, the millionaire population in India grew in 2007 by 22.6 per cent from the previous year, which is higher than in any other country in the world.

It is, thus, the development disaster of the Indian State, the widening levels of disparity and the continuing problems of social deprivation and structural violence when compounded by the all-out effort to restrict access to common property resources that, according to the Expert Group of the Planning Commission, give rise to social anger, desperation and unrest. In almost all cases the affected people try to ventilate their grievances using peaceful means of protest; they take out processions, they sit in demonstrations, they submit petitions. The response of the State is remarkably consistent in all these cases: it cracks down on the peaceful protestors, sends in armed goons to attack the people, slaps false charges against the leaders and arrests them and often also resorts to police firing and violence to terrorize the people.

We only need to remember Singur, Nandigram, Kalinganagar and countless other instances where peaceful and democratic forms of protest were crushed by the state with ruthless force. It is, thus, the action of the State that blocks off all forms of democratic protest and forces the poor and dispossessed to take up arms to defend their rights, as has been pointed out by social activists like Arundhati Roy. The Indian government’s proposed military offensive will repeat that story all over again. Instead of addressing the source of the conflict, instead of addressing the genuine grievances of the marginalized people along the three dimensions that we have pointed to, the Indian state seems to have decided to opt for the extremely myopic option of launching a military offensive.

It is also worth remembering that the geographical terrain where the government’s military offensive is planned is very well-endowed with natural resources like minerals, forest wealth, biodiversity and water resources, and has of late been the target of systematic usurpation by several large, both Indian and foreign, corporations. So far, the resistance of the local indigenous people against their displacement and dispossession has prevented the government-backed corporates from exploiting the natural resources for their own profits and without regard to ecological and social concerns. We fear that the government’s offensive is also an attempt to crush such democratic and popular resistance against dispossession and impoverishment; the whole move seems to be geared towards facilitating the entry and operation of these large corporations and paving the way for unbridled exploitation of the natural resources and people of these regions

[samuel]

Why are these articles showing up here?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/world ... ml?_r=1&hp

another map (click):
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/ ... aphic.html

So, there is a continuous axis right across India?

S

November 1, 2009
Rebels Widen Deadly Reach Across India
By JIM YARDLEY

BARSUR, India — At the edge of the Indravati River, hundreds of miles from the nearest international border, India effectively ends. Indian paramilitary officers point machine guns across the water. The dense jungles and mountains on the other side belong to Maoist rebels dedicated to overthrowing the government.

“That is their liberated zone,” said P. Bhojak, one of the officers stationed at the river’s edge in this town in the eastern state of Chattisgarh.

Or one piece of it. India’s Maoist rebels are now present in 20 states and have evolved into a potent and lethal insurgency. In the last four years, the Maoists have killed more than 900 Indian security officers, a figure almost as high as the more than 1,100 members of the coalition forces killed in Afghanistan during the same period.

If the Maoists were once dismissed as a ragtag band of outdated ideologues, Indian leaders are now preparing to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign to hunt down the guerrillas in some of the country’s most rugged, isolated terrain.

For India, the widening Maoist insurgency is a moment of reckoning for the country’s democracy and has ignited a sharp debate about where it has failed. In the past, India has tamed some secessionist movements by coaxing rebel groups into the country’s big-tent political process. The Maoists, however, do not want to secede or be absorbed. Their goal is to topple the system.

Once considered Robin Hood figures, the Maoists claim to represent the dispossessed of Indian society, particularly the indigenous tribal groups, who suffer some of the country’s highest rates of poverty, illiteracy and infant mortality. Many intellectuals and even some politicians once sympathized with their cause, but the growing Maoist violence has forced a wrenching reconsideration of whether they can still be tolerated.

“The root of this is dispossession and deprivation,” said Ramachandra Guha, a prominent historian based in Bangalore. “The Maoists are an ugly manifestation of this. This is a serious problem that is not going to disappear.”

India’s rapid economic growth has made it an emerging global power but also deepened stark inequalities in society. Maoists accuse the government of trying to push tribal groups off their land to gain access to raw materials and have sabotaged roads, bridges and even an energy pipeline.

If the Maoists’ political goals seem unattainable, analysts warn they will not be easy to uproot, either.

Here in the state of Chattisgarh, Maoists dominate thousands of square miles of territory and have pushed into neighboring states of Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, part of a so-called Red Corridor stretching across central and eastern India.

Violence erupts almost daily. In the past five years, Maoists have detonated more than 1,000 improvised explosive devices in Chattisgarh. Within the past two weeks, Maoists have burned two schools in Jharkhand, hijacked and later released a passenger train in West Bengal while also carrying out a raid against a West Bengal police station.

Efforts are under way to open peace negotiations, but as yet remain stalemated. With the government offensive drawing closer, the people who feel most at risk are the tribal villagers who live in the forests of Chattisgarh, where the police and Maoists, sometimes called Naxalites, are already skirmishing.

“Earlier,” said one villager, “we used to fear the tigers and wild boars. Now we fear the guns of the Naxalites and the police.”

The counterinsurgency campaign, called Operation Green Hunt, calls for sending police and paramilitary forces into the jungles to confront the Maoists and drive them out of newer footholds toward remote forest areas where they can be contained.

“It may take one year, two years, three years or four,” predicted Vishwa Ranjan, chief of the state police in Chattisgarh, adding that casualties would be inevitable. “There is no zero casualty doctrine,” he said.

Once an area is cleared, the plan also calls for introducing development projects such as roads, bridges and schools in hopes of winning support of the tribal people. Also known as adivasis, they have faced decades of exploitation from local officials, moneylenders and private contractors, numerous government reports have found.

“The adivasis are the group least incorporated into India’s political economy,” said Ashutosh Varshney, an India specialist at Brown University, calling their plight one of the “unfinished quests of Indian democracy.”

The Maoist movement first coalesced after a violent 1967 uprising by local Communists over a land dispute in a West Bengal village known as Naxalbari, hence the name Naxalites.

Some Communists would enter the political system; today, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is an influential political force that holds power in West Bengal. But others went underground, and by the 1980s, many found sanctuary in Chattisgarh, especially in the region across from the Indravati River known as Abhujmad. From here, the Maoists recruited and trained disgruntled tribal villagers and slowly spread out. For years, the central government regarded them as mostly a nuisance. But in 2004, the movement radicalized, authorities say, when its two dominant wings merged with the more violent Communist Party of India (Maoist).

Authorities in Chattisgarh then deputized and armed civilian posses, which have been accused by human rights groups of terrorizing innocent villagers and committing atrocities of their own in the name of hunting Maoists. Now, violence is frequent, if unpredictable, like the ambush near the village of Laheri, in Maharashtra State, carried out by the Maoists on Oct. 8.

That morning, following a tip, a police patrol chased two Maoist fighters and stumbled into a trap. Two hundred Maoists with rifles and machine guns lay waiting and opened fire when the officers came into an exposed area of rice paddies. Seventeen officers died, fighting for hours until they ran out of ammunition.

“They surrounded us from every side,” said Ajay Bhushari, 31, who survived the ambush and is now the commanding officer in Laheri. “They were just stronger. They had more people.”

The Maoists felled trees across the only road leading to the village. The police, already wary of using roads because of improvised explosive devices, marched their reinforcements 10 miles through the jungle, arriving too late at the scene.

Officer Bhushari said violence in the area had risen so sharply that the police now left the fortified defenses of their outpost only in large groups, even for social outings. The Maoists also killed 31 police officers from other nearby outposts in attacks in February and May.

“It’s an open jail for us,” he said. “Either we are sitting here, or we are on patrol. There is nothing else.”

About 40 miles from Laheri, a processing plant owned by Essar Steel has been closed for five months. Maoists sabotaged Essar’s 166-mile underground pipeline, which transfers slurry from one of India’s most coveted iron ore deposits to the Bay of Bengal. “I’ve told my management that I’ll take a team and do the repairs,” said S. Ramesh, the project manager for Essar. “But I can’t promise how long it will last.”

The Essar plant is part of broader undertaking by the government and several private mining companies to extract the resources beneath land teeming with guerrillas. Mr. Ramesh said 70 percent of India’s iron ore lay in states infiltrated by Maoists; production in this area is stalled at 16 million tons a year even though the area has the potential to produce 100 million tons.

Mr. Ramesh fretted that India’s growth would be stunted if the country could not exploit its own natural resources. Yet he also cautioned that the counterinsurgency operation was no cure-all. “That alone is not going to help,” he said. “We are not fighting an enemy here. We are fighting citizens.”

With police officers dying in large numbers and Maoists carrying out bolder attacks, the debate around the insurgency has sharpened in India’s intellectual salons and on the opinion pages and talk shows.

The writer Arundhati Roy recently called for unconditional talks and told CNN-IBN that the Maoists were justified in taking up arms because of government oppression. Others who are sympathetic to the plight of the adivasis say the Maoist violence has become intolerable.

“You can’t defend the tactics,” said Mr. Varshney, the Brown University professor. “No modern state can accept attacks on state institutions, even when the state is wrong.”

Local people are caught in the middle. On a recent market day in the village of Palnar, women balancing urns of water on their heads and bare-footed, emaciated men came out of the forests to shop for vegetables, nuts or a rotting fruit fermented to produce local liquor. As peddlers spread their wares over blankets, the nearby government office was locked behind a closed gate.

“It’s a bad situation,” said one villager who asked not to be identified, fearing retribution from both sides. “The Naxalite activities have increased. They have their meetings in the village. They tell the people they have to fight. The people here do not vote out of fear.”

Another man arrived on a motorcycle from a more distant village. Several months ago, the police raided his village and arrested more than a dozen people after accusing them of being collaborators. A few were Maoist sympathizers, the man on the motorcycle said, but most were wrongly swept up in the raid. Now, Operation Green Hunt portends more confrontation.

“Life is very difficult,” the man said. “The Naxalites think we are helping the police. The police think we are helping the Naxalites. We are living in fear over who will kill us first.”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

[Jarita]

I have a hypothesis about Suzanne Roy which has a high probability of being right. Admins please remember, I am simply asserting my perspective.
Her brother committed suicide because of schizophrenia. This is a condition that runs within families and some have it to a larger degree than the others. Seriously, over the years her behaviour reminds me of a couple of schizos I know (they are siblings) who are on medication. The paranoia, facial expressions, bizarre and illogical statements (I remember some book where she heavily sympathized with the Taliban calling them boys who had troubled pasts and were victims etc).
I am sure a psychologist can verify this. But this woman should not be given any credence at all. Her statements are the rambling of a demented mind. We need to ignore her.
If it was not for her hate bharat persona, her mediocre book with incest and masala thrown in (and of course the caste system, it always gets the attention of these vested groups) would have won nothing.

[Hari Seldon]

Why are these articles showing up here?

Well, why wouldn't they? Whay would the well-governed west (so what if its gotten high-cost, high-debt and low-growth lately) want to have alternative seducers of capital who are acceptably ok on the law, order, social cohesion and stability parameters, eh?

In any case, as long as this press coverage serves to wake up an otherwise i9ndifferent urban middle class and keep GoI on the straight and narrow path of no-compromise with violent mass-murderers, more power to the negative PR I say.

[Hari Seldon]

^ Re ARoy, aren't we on brf taking her a wee bit too seriously? Why is she even considered worthy of mention? Even her nuisance values has fallen perilously low aajkal.

She's served her purpose in that she's helped expose this gora award-> to desi coward -> as a reward -> to be a ward -> for consistently anti yindia vitriol -> couched in lofty rights rhetoric (human/civil/ adivasi/minority etc rights) chain link.

[Avinash R]

‘Kishenji & Nepal’s Maoists met secretly in India last month’
Posted: Sunday , Nov 01, 2009 at 0417 hrs

Kathmandu : Despite repeated denials by top Nepali Maoist leaders that they have no “working relationship” with Maoists in India, there’s information that the two parties did meet — as recently as early this month. This has significant implications at a time when New Delhi is planning a concerted campaign against the Maoists.

Rajdhani, a national newspaper here, has reported that senior leaders from both sides, including Kishenji — CPI (Maoist) leader currently holed up in West Bengal and considered to lead the group’s operations in the east — and Indra Mohan Sigdel ‘Basanta’ from the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) met at an undisclosed location in India between October 8 and 11.

This is the first such meeting after the two sides met under the aegis of the CCOMPOSA (Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia), a grouping in which Indian and Nepali Maoist parties are the major constituents.

The meeting, according to the report, was a follow-up to a resolution of the CPN-M Central Committee three months ago to hold regular interactions between CCOMPOSA and its global umbrella group, the Revolutionnaire International.

While Indian Maoist leader Ganapathi recently termed Nepali Maoists as “revisionist”, Nepali Maoist leaders, including Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, have said there is no working relationship between the two parties.

The CPN-M has not yet said anything in public about the recent meeting in India. Sigdel, also a member of the CPN-M’s foreign cell, is now back in Nepal after participating in the meeting.

The daily quoted Sigdel as saying that “only routine issues” were discussed and that the two parties decided to “establish a relationship” to better “understand each other.”

Maoists use guns to enforce poverty
Sunday, November 1, 2009

Swapan Dasgupta

It is probably no coincidence that the state offensive against the outlawed CPI (Maoist) which controls a swathe of territory in the forested parts of central India has been accompanied by a focussed media intervention by human rights activists demanding an instant and unconditional cease-fire. That human rights groups make their appearance when state action is necessitated against terrorists and insurgents is all too familiar. This is not to suggest that all the earnest and well-spoken men and women who appear on TV chat shows to denounce “state terror” and shed tears on behalf of the poor constitute the overground faces of the underground. Yet, it is undeniable that these well-groomed ‘activists’ have a vision of India that is remarkably at odds with the national consensus.

It is a tribute to Indian democracy and the high level of social tolerance that there is a special attempt to accommodate dissenting voices, indeed put them on par with those who espouse common decencies. Despite assertions that India is a “sham democracy”, civil society treats contrarian positions with a degree of generosity that is sometimes absent from Western democracies. Unlike the boisterous protests that greeted the appearance of the leader of the racist British National Party on a BBC current affairs programme, no one bats an eyelid when the ‘activists’ emerge from the woodwork to defend either Islamist terrorists waging jihad on India or Maoists who behead policemen without inhibition and remorse. Likewise, despite the tut-tutting that greeted the outpouring of Marathi xenophobia through the ballot box, there were few who believe that legal activism is the way to check the forward march of Raj Thackeray.

However, it is one thing to accommodate ‘activists’ as talk-show guests, partly because they inhabit the same social circle as other media professionals, it is a separate matter to accept their earnest arguments.

The central plank on which Maoist-friendly activists rest their claim is the equivalence between the Indian state and the Maoist insurgents. By demanding an unconditional cease-fire, the champions of civil liberties have elevated a non-state player to the level of the state. Whereas all democratically-elected politicians assert a willingness to discuss all outstanding problems, as long as the Maoists abandon the gun, the activists deny the state a monopoly over violence. In short, they project the Maoists as a parallel Government exercising dual power in large parts of India. Conceding political parity to the Maoists would imply state recognition of dual sovereignty. It would open the floodgates of similar demands, not least in Jammu & Kashmir, the North-East and, who knows, even Azamgarh.

Accommodation of activists in TV chat shows is a measure of democratic generosity; acceptance of their demands is a recipe for national disaster.

The second point that is invariably made by the activists is that democracy and development have bypassed the poor and particularly the Adivasis. The marginalised have, consequently, risen in revolt against the state which, incidentally, has become an instrument of greedy multi-nationals and venal land sharks.

The most surprising facet of this caricatured projection of India is the number of gullible takers it has. The belief that the ‘roots’ of Maoism lie in poverty and underdevelopment is about as compelling as the belief that suicide bombers are actually protesting against social alienation (in the West) and an iniquitous world order (elsewhere). Left-wing extremism isn’t necessarily born out of poverty; it is sustained by those who take advantage of poverty. The Maoists have a direct political interest in preventing development works and improvement in communications. The common feature of Bastar, Gadchiroli and Jungle Mahal in western Midnapur is the systematic manner in which Maoist cadre have destroyed hand pumps, schools and prevented road-building. It is a combination of enforced impoverishment and physical isolation that create the conditions for Maoists to build a base. The fear of the gun does the rest.

There are a lot of things wrong with the Indian state and rapid industrialisation during the Nehruvian era was accompanied by Soviet-style disregard for those who were dispossessed by progress. However, political awareness and greater economic prosperity have contributed to some meaningful redistribution of resources that have benefited poor districts. In Orissa, for example, Kalahandi was the symbol of destitution in the mid-1980s. Today, it is one of the biggest contributors to the State’s rice economy. Would such a dramatic transformation have been possible if the Maoists had somehow managed to turn it into a red zone? On the contrary, every single development initiative would have been forcibly resisted and the state would have been painted as an instrument of oppression by the practitioners of ‘soft’ Maoism. Rolling back the Maoist menace is a precondition for progress.

Finally, it is important to stress that Maoism is addicted to violence as the means of political change. This is stating the obvious but it is worthwhile reiterating the insatiable Maoist thirst for human blood. An individual human life is viewed by the red terrorists as worthless in the context of the larger struggle. This callousness was a feature of Maoism in China and the spilling of blood is the thread that links the early-Maoism of Charu Mazumdar to the contemporary Maoism of the colleagues of Kobad Ghandhy. To some weirdos trigger happiness may seem utterly romantic; to decent Indians it is evidence of depravity, arrogance and inhumanity.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/212761/Maoi ... verty.html

Anti-naxal operations to be launched in states: Govt
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/antin ... vt/535833/
Posted: Sunday , Nov 01, 2009 at 1057 hrs

New Delhi:Tackling the naxals has emerged as the governments top most priorities in the rescent months.

As Maoists menace continued to be unabated, the government is all set to launch the much-awaited full-fledged anti-naxal operations at three different areas, considered tri-junctions of worst Naxal-affected states.

The tri-junctions which have been identified for the offensive are Andhra Pradesh-Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh; Orissa-Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh and West Bengal-Jharkhand- Orissa.

Home Ministry sources said around 40,000 paramilitary personnel will assist the respective state police forces during the operations that will be launched soon.

Almost 7,000 specially-trained troops in jungle warfare are also part of the total strength of the central forces to be deployed for the task.

The Cabinet Committee on Security had already approved the government's new plan to counter Maoists under which the affected states will have an effective coordination and the police will take a lead role.

The anti-naxal plan also includes Rs 7,300 crore package for unleashing developmental works in areas cleared off the Left-wing extremists. Officials feel that Naxal menace, which now spread to 40,000 sq km area across the country, can be wiped out in a period of 12 to 30 months.

Around 25 lakh people live in areas where Maoists are now having a free run.

The Naxalites have killed more than 2,600 people, including civilians, in 5,800 incidents in last three years. The highest number of incidents of violence has taken place in four worst-affected states -- Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa -- where 2,212 people lost their lives from January 2006 to August this year.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had described Left-wing extremism as the gravest internal security threat and called for a nuanced strategy to tackle the Naxal violence. Home Minister P Chidambaram has said Naxalism has spread to 20 states with over 2,000 police station areas in 223 districts partially or substantially affected.

Maoists gun down villager in Belpahari

[Atri]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 192687.cms

Nepal Maoists admit link with Indian naxals - ToI

[Rahul M]

seldon saar, I agree, they are important only upto a point.

http://greatbong.net/2009/10/29/the-phantom-menace/

Yet what provokes me to post is that for many what she says about Naxals finds resonance in that Naxals are considered to be “independent” Robin Hoods fighting the system on behalf of the dispossessed, a militant reaction to state-oppression from tribals and other marginalized folks. This explains why the arrest of people like Chhatradhar Mahato is met with email petitions (like this one) [the argument being that Mahato is not a Naxal but a tribal leader even though Naxals were holding hostages demanding the release of "non-Naxal" Mahato) and people, like our prime minister, go to great lengths to point out that Naxals are not terrorists .

The argument as to who is a "terrorist" and who is "misguided youth" is a never-ending one (For instance, in the Western "liberal" media, the people who attacked WTC are terrorists but those who attacked the Indian parliament are "militants") that has been fought over so many times that it is not worth going into again. However what requires comment is that Naxals are anything but the "little guys fighting for justice pushed into a corner" that their PR people like Ms. Roy would have us believe. They are an organized army-like entity with a leadership structure whose principal goal is the destruction of the Indian state and the rule of law. They terrorize the populations they claim to protect, extort and appropriate resources from the dispossessed and engage in violence against people who do not represent the state. Their arms are sophisticated, they are financed by India's enemies and they are allied with SIMI tapping into their organization and their funding channels.

Read the full article.

[Aditya_V]

Dear Sirs, why is that media,communists,filmmakers and elite NGO's and thier spokespersons take a consistent anti national stance with respect to Pakistan, terrorism, North East Miltants and Maoists?

[sanjaychoudhry]

'Rights activists and film producers romanticise Maoists'
http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/nov/ ... aoists.htm

On the dire consequences of underestimating the Maoist threat:

"This is the greatest internal threat to India. The bigger problem is that the Maoists are tying up with anti-national forces in order to further their cause. The belief that Naxalites [ Images ] will not team up with anti-national forces is a myth. They will do anything and everything to ensure that India does not become a super power and the country is robbed of its democracy.

In order to further their cause, the Maoists are procuring weapons from outside India and they have tied up with Jihadi elements. Initially, politicians of our country termed them as patriots. I have gone through the literature of the Maoists in detail. They very openly state that the democracy in India is a sham and their main intention is to throw out democracy from our country.

We need highly specialised forces to deal with the sophisticated weapons they have procured through the Jihadi elements. The Maoists have mastered the strategy of tackling the security forces by outnumbering them in the jungles. While the threat looms large, the apathy shown by some of the state governments in dealing with this issue is terrible. Take Bihar for instance. There have been no fresh recruitments in the police force for 14 years. This means that there are no young cadres to fight the Naxals. The case in Jharkhand is similar.

The Maoists are adopting general warfare and their fight against our security forces is restricted to the jungles. Very few police personnel can fight in the jungle. The major difference between the police force and the Maoists is that the latter are ready to die for their fight, the policemen are not.

This is because our police personnel do not have the motivation that the Naxals do. Another issue that needs to be mentioned is the temporary tenure of a police man. His tenure is like a football; before a policeman can get accustomed to the situation, he gets transferred.

The biggest culprits who have given rise to this problem are civil rights activists and film producers who spare no effort to romanticise the cause of these Maoists. Movies are being made to depict them as heroes. What these people don't realise is that by romanticising the cause of the Maoists, they are only contributing to the bloodshed.

The war against these people is not easy. They are great strategists and after each incident, they analyse the pros and cons of it. They conduct extensive researches and after each incident, they learn from their mistakes and make amends during the next attack.

There are certain issues that one needs to bear in mind. We need to understand their ideology. We must realise that the Maoists are not friends of this nation. Whoever thinks in this manner is living in a fool's paradise.

It would be foolish to use the Indian Army [ Images ] to curb the Maoist threat. Our police forces should be upgraded to fight these people. Using the Army against them means we have lost the battle and accepted that our police are incapable of fighting these people.

[Yagnasri]

This is not something new. In Telugu for a long time Naxals are shown as heros. Not even a single movie has come showing naxals in a bad light till date. This when large areas in Andra are living under naxal terror for decades

[Aditya_V]

And yet millions of educated Indians can't see the link of aligning of anti national forces and psy-op operations run against and they vote accordingly. Instead of Ranting against A. ROY please ask yourself this. why is she saying this and why are the media giving her space to say whatever she says.

Has the media ever given space to what a nationalist has said?

The answer is simple they are paid to a job and thier bonuses is dependent on how many indians die in internal conflicts. for them there is no news as good as Humiliating and bad news for the nation

[rajsunder]

This is not something new. In Telugu for a long time Naxals are shown as heros. Not even a single movie has come showing naxals in a bad light till date. This when large areas in Andra are living under naxal terror for decades

u forgot the movie drohi stg: kamal hasan and arjun. Now the latest super hit from the south(three languages) of the original telugu movie Gamyam also showed these maoists what they truly are.

[Jarita]

This is not something new. In Telugu for a long time Naxals are shown as heros. Not even a single movie has come showing naxals in a bad light till date. This when large areas in Andra are living under naxal terror for decades

u forgot the movie drohi stg: kamal hasan and arjun. Now the latest super hit from the south(three languages) of the original telugu movie Gamyam also showed these maoists what they truly are.

The problem is the english speaking masses of India who are perpetuating and romanticizing this nonsense. I speak for myself as well- in th past. Everyone who goes to universities in India (non engineering/non medical) gets tainted with this disease. I can personally speak of Calcutta and Delhi universities. God forbid if you are doing Eco or liberal arts, your professors will get you.
The unbrainwashing happens through reading and we've got to spread the word otherwise we will have more idiots like Mani Ratnams puppy.
The first book and movie that completely unbrainwashed me was "To destroy you in no loss" - Khmer Rouge survivors and then the "The Killing Fields".
Sunsequently, I've read numerous books on the subject but this book was a witness account and really hard hitting. People need to read and understand how truly dangerous "genocide suzie" and her ilk are.