Mining and Movements - Causes of Tribal Militancy - Indian Social ...

MINING AND MOVEMENTS – CAUSES OF TRIBAL MILITANCY 221Mining and Movements – Causes ofTribal MilitancyFelix Padel*Causes of WarSocial anthropology has great potential for giving a holistic understandingof the momentous processes unfolding in tribal areas: a resource toolittle drawn on. M.N. Roy was one of India’s most influential socialists.Though socialism is hardly fashionable at present, but social anthropologyoffers a view of situations that is intrinsically social, and as such can beseen as socialist in the true sense of the word, in contrast to thedeterminist models that tend to dominate policy decisions, derived fromeconomics, engineering, or political and legal theory, that function withouta proper understanding of social systems.Anthropologists rarely have much impact on policy however, and tendto accept a very marginal role. World Bank anthropologists are removedfrom decision-making departments, and their words tend to function asa “Christmas-tree decoration” of politically correct phrases to embellishprojects that often cause social and environmental catastrophe.This paper emerges out of seven years’ work with Samarendra Dasabout the aluminium industry and its impact in Orissa/East India, thathas revealed an immense amount about the mining industry and itscentrality to events in India’s “tribal” or Fifth Schedule states, as wellas to issues about climate change, the military industrial complex, andthe world economy as a whole, and its links with war.The Maoist insurgency in tribal areas, and the war against the Maoists,often referred to as “Operation Green Hunt”, follows certain patternsof the worldwide “War on Terror”, despite the obvious difference thatthe war against Maoists/Naxalites targets a “communist” enemy,reminiscent of the cold war era, while the wider “War on Terror” is*Delhi School of Economics, Sociology department, currently (from September 2010) afellow at IRMA (the Institute of Rural Management in Anand, Gujarat). E-mail:felixorisa@yahoo.com

222SOCIAL ACTION VOL. 60 JULY – SEPTEMBER 2010mostly against Islamist militants. The Turkish situation, where the waragainst the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK), (fighting for basic selfdeterminationby the Kurdish population) is often made to fit the mouldof a war against terrorists, offers a closer parallel to the situation incentral India – a parallel too little known in India.Central India’s Maoist/Naxalite insurgency adds complexity to a complextapestry of countless local movements against enforced displacement –movements that are essentially non-violent. “Displacement projects” isa fitting name for the new mining and metal factory “developmentprojects”, considering the number of people threatened with removalfrom their land and communities. The movements are of globalsignificance for their assertion of people’s basic rights to life andlivelihood, and for resistance to capitalist growth-oriented devouring ofresources and wrecking of environment. Often these movements havebeen falsely branded as Maoist.When certain movements have received public support from the Maoists,this has often been a “kiss of death” to genuine, indigenous movements,by making a response of massive attack on communities by securityforces appear legitimate.So it is necessary to spell out that most local movements are not in anyway Maoist-instigated. For example, the movements in Orissa to saveNiyamgiri and the Puri area from Vedanta’s aluminium and universityplans, and the movement against giant new steel plants by Posco, theTatas and others all arise locally, in solidarity. The Kalinganagarmovement by the Bisthapan Birodhi Jan Manch (People’s PlatformAgainst Displacement) against a new Tata steel plant, is currently(since 27.3.2010) under attack by hundreds of police in collusion with‘goondas’ determined to mow down opposition to the Tatas.Similarly an Obey the Law movement in Birbhum district of WestBengal, organised by local Santal Adivasis along with Hindu and Muslimnon-tribals, is trying to stop several hundred illegal stone quarries thatare making their life hell. The mine owners, along with a section of thelocal administration and the media, have falsely branded the movement‘Maoist’.By contrast, certain other movements are essentially local, and non-Maoist, even though Maoists have expressed support, resulting in a

MINING AND MOVEMENTS – CAUSES OF TRIBAL MILITANCY 223spiralling escalation of attacks on tribal villages by the security forces.This applies to the Committee Against Police Atrocities organised bySantals in West Midnapore and neighbouring districts of West Bengal,and the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangho in the Narayanpatna area ofKoraput district in south Orissa, where tribal villages are under attackby security forces, especially since the Narayanpatna police stationfiring on 20 November 2009 that killed two Adivasi leaders.The causes of tribal militancy – i.e. the reason that in certain areas,such as South Chhattisgarh, many tribal people have joined the Maoists– can be given as follows:1. The vast extent of exploitation which tribal communities face: asystem of endemic exploitation that works at many levels and hasbeen extensively documented, e.g. in Orissa by Kishen Pattnayakduring his 1960s and 1980s campaigns against “starvation deaths”and by Gopinath Mohanty, P. Sainath, and others. This exploitationis compounded by the invasion of mining companies into tribalareas, and frequent suppression of local people’s non-violentmovements, standing up for the most basic of rights.2. The increasing scale of dispossession/displacement. A longtermprocess of displacement of Adivasis through money lendingand extensive purchases of tribal land that contravene the FifthSchedule constitutional guarantees, is accelerating through numerousindustrial projects that raise exponentially the number of tribalpeople being dispossessed. An estimated 60 million village peoplehave been displaced by industries and dams in India since 1950,about half of these Adivasis and a quarter Dalits, 3 million inOrissa alone. This displacement process has also been vastlyaccelerated through war and conflict – especially the “SalwaJudum” war against Naxalites/Maoists in Dantewara district insouth Chhattisgarh, where at least 200,000 tribal people have beendriven out of their homes since 2005; and the “ethnic cleansing ofChristians” that has displaced an estimated 50,000 people fromKandhamal district of Orissa in 2007-08 and 2008-2009.3. Atrocities committed with impunity by security forces/SalwaJudum, (SJ) Hiding behind the Armed Forces Special PowersAct (AFSPA), the special Chhattisgarh Security Act, etc. JavedIqbal’s and many other articles and several human rights reports

224SOCIAL ACTION VOL. 60 JULY – SEPTEMBER 2010have made clear a definite pattern of atrocities committed by SJand security forces during attacks on tribal villages in southChhattisgarh, involving killings, rape, torture and burning of houseson a horrific scale. It is clear (e.g. from Arundhati Roy 29.3.10recording frank talks with Adivasi Maoists in south Chhattisgarh)that these attacks are a motivating force for thousands of Adivasiswho join the Maoists. In other words, a main cause for militancy isquite simply injustice – the impossibility of redress for theseoutrages through the courts. Atrocities are fuelled by awidespread disrespect for tribal culture and norms. For instanceSantal elders at the start of the West Midnapore disturbances (endof 2008) demanded that senior policemen should make a properapology for widespread outrages, in the local tribal idiom. Whensuch an apology was not forthcoming, the militancy spread, andthe police atrocities increased.4. Polarization into two sides who believe in war. Everywhere,attacks on tribal communities are starting to resemble an attack ontribal society itself (as B.D. Sharma warned in 1990, when he wasCommissioner for Scheduled Castes and Tribes) – in effect,“Operation Tribal Hunt”. The war against Maoists and/or tribalpeople has the character of a war between rich and poor, andspecifically a war of state-facilitated mining companies againsttribal people in order to get hold of their land and resources. Butwhere the Maoist leadership exactly mirrors the mainstream militaryis in its belief in war, and in the necessity of mass-scale sacrificeof human life. Maoist attacks that kill police tend to instigate ahuge retaliation of security force attacks on tribal villages. Behindthese attacks is the military-industrial complex, and its thirst forminerals, and a mentality in which displacement of tribal people tomake way for industry seems a matter of course.5. Taking these factors together, Operation Green Hunt – thewar against the Maoists – is itself the main cause of tribalmilitancy – a situation similar to the worldwide war on terror,where attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan have killed, maimed andhumiliated so many thousands of people, that a ‘terrorist’ causewith very limited appeal has grown exponentially, as in the Greekmyth of the Hydra – every ‘arm’ the hero cuts off the Hydra is

MINING AND MOVEMENTS – CAUSES OF TRIBAL MILITANCY 225replaced by countless new arms. “Terrorism” is essentially a creationof the “War on Terror” – not least because the use of terror bysecurity forces far outweighs the use of terror by “terrorists”.This applies very clearly to the situation in tribal areas, where bothsides use terror, but the main terror unleashed in tribal villages isby security forces, not by Maoists. In other words, terror tacticsby the security forces are a main cause of the spread oftribal militancy, alongside repression of genuine, non-violentmovements against enforced displacement.Invasion of Mining Projects: Cost-Benefit AnalysisUnderlying local causes is the invasion of mining companies, someIndian, some foreign, but most driven by, or at least supported by,funding from foreign financial institutions. London is a prime centre ofthe mining industry, with the London Metal Exchange fixing the price ofmain non-ferrous metals through trading five days a week, the city’s‘Big Four’ accountancy firms providing ‘legitimacy’ to mining companies,and DFID-sponsored privatisation and deregulation schemes carriedout in key mineral-rich states – a reform programme attuned to WB/IMF-imposed neoliberal policies. Vedanta’s bid for Niyamgiri and otherareas followed its registration on the London Stock Exchange inDecember 2003. Essar is currently trying to register in London. SirRatan Tata was clearly made a Knight Commander of the BritishEmpire (2009) for services to British business, and Tata’s buy-up ofCorus (British Steel, January 2007), Jaguar and Lan Rover (March2008) established London as a key base for the Tata group, and,presumably, its investors.A proper assessment of projects’ social and environmental impactsneeds to be made transparent. In other words, every project should bebased on a holistic cost benefit analysis, whose figures and terms ofreference should be brought into the public domain, so that people canunderstand clearly what is at stake on both sides. Where there is notransparency, companies’ enforced takeover of tribal property wearsan illegitimate character, e.g. regarding Tata and Essar’s Memorandaof Understanding (MoUs) signed with the Chhattisgarh government inJune 2005 – just when Salwa Judum was formed. Public hearings forboth projects have been a shameful scam, in a pattern repeated inhundreds of instances throughout the country.

226SOCIAL ACTION VOL. 60 JULY – SEPTEMBER 2010In brief, “benefits” of mining and metal projects pushed by Tata, Posco,Vedanta, Essar, Hindalco, Mittal, Jindal and others include huge sumsof foreign investment, the creation of numerous jobs, and the“development” of new roads and construction projects, including newports, as well as local projects, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)of local/peripheral development, to be paid for out–of– company profits.Against this is the mass displacement of small-scale skilled cultivatorswho are classed as “unskilled labour” and invariably lose to incomers inthe job market, as shown by a long history of demonstrations by localpeople on the jobs issue, in the Lanjigarh, Kashipur and perhaps everyindustrialising area. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) essentially buysup rights to India’s non-renewable resources (land, mountains, minerals),while the primary intention of new ports appears to be the mass-scaleexport of these minerals.The real costs of these projects need assessing in terms of huge subsidiesoffered to the industries for electricity, land, water, transport etc –costs, which are essentially borne by the local people and state, throughfurther loans aimed at financing the infrastructure for the mining industry– in a situation where Orissa is already India’s most highly indebtedstate.Also in terms of impacts on the environment in a situation where e.g.producing one tonne of steel consumes an estimated 44 tonnes ofwater, and producing one tonne of aluminium consumes an estimated1,378 tonnes of water. These figures underlie recent massdemonstrations by west Orissa farmers against the new steel plantsand aluminium smelters taking water from Hirakud dam at farmers’expense. Mines and metal factories damage the reserves and circulationof water at many levels, in a context where ground water is goingdown almost everywhere, and availability of fresh water is rapidlyassuming crisis proportions.The mining/metal’s industry’s “externality costs” are prohibitive, e.g.producing one tonne of aluminium emits between 6 and 20 tonnes ofCO 2, each tonne of which is costed at about $85. Attempts have beenmade to calculate some of these costs in monetary (chrematist) terms.But overall costs in terms of damage to the environment are impossibleto quantify or put a price on. Economists and engineers are not taught

MINING AND MOVEMENTS – CAUSES OF TRIBAL MILITANCY 227to understand – let alone take responsibility for the impacts of theirprojects on the environment.‘Economics’ and ‘Ecology’ have the same root from Greek the word‘oikos’, meaning ‘house’, indicating the laws (nomos) or logic (logos) ofcorrect ‘housekeeping’. Yet ecology is not even part of economists’and engineers’ training. In fact, science of nature is split up betweendiscrete branches – geology, soil science, botany, hydrology, meteorologyetc., so even here the holistic understanding of ecology necessary foran appraisal of industrial impacts is lacking.This lack is all too evident in assessments of the impacts of big dams:what does it mean when rivers’ flow over the land is drasticallycurtailed? Obviously, fish populations and many other life forms die...What are the effects when industrial waste is released into rivers, ashas been well documented from Nalco’s Angul smelter, and already,within months of their starting up, from Vedanta’s Lanjigarh refineryand Burkhamunda smelter? Obviously, more fish and other life formsdie, and human communities that have always depended on these riversfor bathing, drinking and cultivation suffer immensely..... But are therivers themselves dying? The destructive effects of big dams, documentedat length by the World Commission on Dams, have not been officiallyrecognised in India. The country is trying to maximize its hydro-potentialby building a huge number of new mega-dams, including 150 in ArunachalPradesh alone, despite massive evidence of big dams’ destructive effectson many levels.This lack is also evident in the inadequacy of studies of the impact ofmining on the water regime of mountains. The drying of thousands ofstreams in iron-ore mined mountains in north Orissa is well known, andthe drying of perennial streams around Panchpat Mali, the mountain inKoraput that forms Orissa’s major bauxite mine, is attested by localAdivasis. But in its report on likely impacts of Vedanta’s OMC-Sterlitemine planned on Niyam Dongar, the Central Mining Planning and DesignInstitute made the absurd argument that micro-cracks forming on theside of the mountain during mining will “facilitate run-off” and help“recharge ground water”. When water runs straight off a mountainduring the monsoon, this means that streams will run dry in the hotseason, and indicates that the mountain as a reservoir and source ofperennial streams is damaged beyond repair.

228SOCIAL ACTION VOL. 60 JULY – SEPTEMBER 2010Bauxite deposits just below the summits of south Orissa’s biggestmountains hold monsoon water in suspension, releasing it slowlythroughout the year in perennial streams. When the bauxite is mined,this water runs straight off, and streams dry up. But bauxite is studiedalmost entirely from the point of view of extracting and processing it bythe mining industry – not its links with hydrology etc.Similarly with the loss of forest. A “Green Accounting Project”, forwhich Deutsche Bank was a main funder, calculates the ‘Net PresentValue’ of forests (NPV), but this economic value placed on foreststakes little or no account of forests’ biodiversity, cultural value andother features. The judgement in the case on Niyamgiri by the SupremeCourt (8.8.2008) simply asked the Special Purpose Vehicle (i.e Vedanta’ssubsidiary Sterlite with the Orissa Mining Corporation) to pay NPVreplacement costs. Interestingly, Deutsche Bank is a key investor inVedanta. So in effect the foreign banks indirectly buying up rights tokey resources are also funding “green” studies that facilitate thiscorporate takeover.In all these ways, these mining projects have intensely destructive allroundeffects on the environment. What is happening should properlybe termed Ecocide, defined as“the extensive destruction, damage to and loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory,whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peacefulenjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished”.(Higgins 2010)This destruction needs to be seen as damaging the “sacred trust” byGovernments to promote the well-being of inhabitants of non-selfgoverningterritories, as defined by the 1945 UN charter (Chapter XIArticle 73). Most lawyers and legislators have little knowledge of ecology:“at the moment the governance systems of most countries and of the international‘community’ actually facilitate and legitimise the exploitation and destruction ofEarth by humans.” (Cullinan 2002: 30).Ecocide being perpetrated by mining projects under a rationale ofeconomic growth means a destruction of the fabric of life, and is theprime cause of unrest throughout Central India.Impacts on human populations displaced or invaded by the industry arefrequently catastrophic, and should properly be termed as culturicide or

MINING AND MOVEMENTS – CAUSES OF TRIBAL MILITANCY 229cultural genocide. Tribal communities in particular lose everything theytraditionally value when displaced: their social structure exists in relationto their land, environment, and identity as skilled cultivators. From beingin control of their own environment and social relations, they findthemselves swamped by outsiders, at the bottom of a cruel and corruptcorporate hierarchy. From being largely self-sufficient in terms ofproducing food on their own land by their own labour, they are reducedto an unskilled industrial labour force. Women and children, especiallyexperience a drastic drop in their standard of living, from a place ofconsiderable independence in charge of growing and selling. Materialculture is changed beyond recognition – from houses people made outof natural materials, people are placed in concrete shells. Traditionalartefacts – often collected into a “tribal museum” during thedisplacement process – lose their meaning and become relics of thepast. Tribal people’s traditional forms of knowledge are underminedand negated.Gap Between Projection and Ground RealityEven World Bank studies conclude that the vast majority of tribalcommunities displaced by dams and industry in India, as worldwide,experience a drastic fall in their standard of living. For almost everyWorld Bank funded project, “the first rule...that all parties to theproject should be better off” has been broken, and “projects meantto reduce poverty are the ones adding to the numbers of the poor.”In “packages” for the Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R & R) ofpeople displaced by dams and factories there is a reality gap: nocorrelation between theory and practice – between what is supposed tohappen and facts on the ground.This reality gap is evident at many levels. Models of economic growthreducing poverty in schemes funded by World Bank loans and “foreignaid” from the Department for International Development of the UKGovernment (DFID) are basically a con, showing a fundamentaldisjunction between theory and practice. Projects bringing in foreigninvestment distort the economy and induce unrepayable debt – Enronwas a noteworthy early example in India. This in a context where the“black economy” of bribes and underhand payments is little studied,and virtually absent from conventional economic models, yet has amassive effect in motivating deals for projects.

230SOCIAL ACTION VOL. 60 JULY – SEPTEMBER 2010The split between economics and ecology is a sign of a fundamentalimbalance in the western-imported model of development being imposed,based on models of growth and extraction of resources that are insanelyshort-term. “Sustainable Development” is supposed to be based onpractices that do not jeopardise future generations, but there aresupposed to be three criteria: ecology, society and economics, and byprioritising economics instead of ecology, the term has becomemeaningless and is often used of projects that can make an economicprofit for a few years.What about the next thousand years? The very tribal societies threatenedwith displacement by mining projects are based on long-termsustainability. How has an insane system that sacrifices these peopleand this principle of long-term sustainability managed to appear sonormal?The Roots and Funding of IndustrialisationBelief in “development”, defined around material constructs and economicgrowth, is basically a missionary concept. The East India Company hada complex relationship with Christian missionaries, basically forbiddingand then encouraging them to “civilise the natives” through schools andhospitals, but the administrative role – as in other colonial systems –basically internalised the missionary impulse, transforming the missionaryidea that there is only one “God” or “truth” or path to salvation, into theidea that social evolution follows a single line of development. This“social evolutionism” dates back to Herbert Spencer’s application ofDarwin’s theory of evolution of species to society: a theory that societyevolves in set stages. This theory has been extremely influential, notleast on Marxist theory. But the idea that societies evolve from “primitivecommunism” through feudalism to capitalism (and on to ‘advancedcommunism’ or not, as the case may be) ignores many levels.If the multitude of natural species have all evolved along thousands ofindividual paths, always in relation to each other, why should humansocieties evolve along a single path? If no such law exists, then howhas the World Bank (not to mention Marxist and many other regimes)assumed a kind of “divine right” to impose such uniformity, based onversions of this theory, onto “developing countries”? Even theclassification of countries into “developed” and “developing” begs thisquestion.

MINING AND MOVEMENTS – CAUSES OF TRIBAL MILITANCY 231To put this another way, the system of beliefs and values drivingindustrialisation, being imposed in India’s tribal areas has foreign roots– basically, the history of industrialisation from Europe and the RobberBarons in the USA, through Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China, to WorldBank/IMF ‘moneylender colonialism’, enmeshing the world’s ‘developingcountries’ in unrepayable debt to pay for a process of industrialisationthat has caused one environmental and social catastrophe after another.In the early days of social anthropology, anthropologists invariably sawtribal societies as “primitive”, and colonial anthropology defined tribalpeoples as “primitive” in every domain – a perception that persists inIndia, on the left as well as right. This idea is at the root of imposing“development” on Adivasis and displacing them from their land.Modern anthropologists recognise that tribal societies are as highlydeveloped as mainstream societies – but in different ways. In terms oftheir knowledge of the environment, skills of living off it without damagingit, sophistication of social relations around a principle of sharing, subtletyof rearing children and so on, they are often far in advance of mainstreamsociety. Hence the enormity of what is sacrificed and destroyed whena tribal community’s land is invaded or taken away by a mining company:cultural genocide.But mining/metals projects are mostly funded from abroad, and foreigncities play an important role in their highly dispersed social structure.Several studies have been made of the foreign and Indian banks thathave invested in Vedanta and financed their projects in Orissa andChhattisgarh, and each of the world’s ‘Big Four’ accountancy firmshas given ‘Assurance Statements’ validating the annual reports ofVedanta Resources plc. Traders at the London Metals Exchange, whosedeals in future contracts fix the price of aluminium five days a week,gain huge salaries. Prime investors in mining projects and Indian portconstruction projects include secretive hedge funds and private equityfunds, while overall finance to mining projects has increased enormouslysince 2000, along with risk insurance and export credit guarantees.Orissa is one of India’s most highly indebted states precisely because itis one of the richest in minerals. The loans paid for a long line of dam,coal and other infrastrusture-for-mining projects, and built up unrepayabledebts, make the state dependent on further loans from the World Bankand other entities, have given leverage that allowed the WB and DFID

232SOCIAL ACTION VOL. 60 JULY – SEPTEMBER 2010to force through India’s first electricity privatisation programme andother neoliberal reforms. This brings in the history of “disaster capitalism”and World Bank complicity in aluminium projects around the world.When one comprehends the extent and complexity of exploitation in themining-metals industry and trade, it is clear why the world’s, or India’s,mineral-richest areas are the poorest. Far from the promised prosperity,wealth in minerals almost invariably guarantees a region’s remorselessimpoverishment by exploitation: the resource curse.Motives for War and PeaceToo often, the resource-curse spirals into the horror of resource-wars,and in many ways, the war against the Maoists is a classic resource–war: the invasion and takeover of tribal lands by mining companies,compounding already excessive exploitation. Non-violent protest issuppressed, and giving Maoists the chance to organise the dispossessedinto a desperate, yet highly organised and motivated resistance.The war in South Dantewada shows a definite pattern of “structuralviolence”. On one side, Maoist attacks. The one on 6 th April 2010, inwhich Maoists killed 76 CRPF jawans, is the culmination of a long lineof well-planned ambushes.On the other hand, no one disputes the figures of 644 tribal villagesburnt by the Salwa Judum militia in Dantewada district, and at least200,000 tribal refugees. All agree that MoUs were signed with Essarand Tata for a steel plants at Dhurli and Lohandiguda in mid-2005, justwhen Salwa Judum was formed and started its attacks on tribal villages,herding villagers into refugee camps, where youths were made to joinSalwa Judum through initiation into atrocities. The terms of these dealshave not been made public however.Human rights reports and courageous journalism have highlighted adefinite pattern of attacks on tribal villages, in which most of the villagesflee, and women, old and young who don’t get away are often raped,killed, tortured or taken away. The voices of young Maoists brought outin Roy’s article (March 2010) need to be heard, and show tribal Maoistsas highly conscious and likeable human beings, in contrast to the ‘mindlessterrorist’ image propagated in most of the media, that makes it easy forarmed policemen to dehumanize Maoists and kill tribal villagersindiscriminately as Maoist sympathisers. The young women and men

MINING AND MOVEMENTS – CAUSES OF TRIBAL MILITANCY 233interviewed by Roy joined up after witnessing close friends and familyraped and killed. After such loss and horror, if there is no chance ofbringing the perpetrators to account, Maoists’ offer of comradeship andguns is bound to be very tempting.Yet Maoist ideology and leadership promotes war. War has an attraction,as peace does not. Though this is basically a war over resourcesbetween the rich and the poor, the ideology of both sides is similar interms of a belief in war that leaves no space for neutrality, truth andpeace. The police, like Maoist fighters, are pawns in a fight overideology and land. The more sensitive police officers, such asE.N.Rammohan, former Director General of the Border Security Force,who investigated the 6 th April attack, are forthright in highlightingunpunished police atrocities as a principal cause of war.The difference is, armed policemen have signed up for a job thatinvolves a high risk of killing and/or being killed. This is not true of thetribal villages they terrorize. Even if villagers often support the Maoists,this follows from their experience of invasion and atrocity, in whichthey lose everything – land, food family, culture, security.... Only a tinynumber of the atrocities against Adivasis are reported in the press orofficially investigated, while most killings by Maoists get high publicity.So to bring peace, one essential step is repeal the Armed ForcesSpecial Powers Act (AFSPA), often invoked, especially from the Northeastto Kashmir. The immunity from prosecution of security men whocommit atrocities swells support for the Maoists.The underlying reason that anyone inflicts pain and terror is that theyare terrorised: a terrorist is someone who has been terrorised; andrather than deal with that, he or she turns the feeling outward andinflicts it on other people – the basic rationale of the projections andcounter-projections that cause and fuel war.Police also live in terror. Seeing bodies of comrades, knowing an IEDcan explode under their vehicle any time, what is easier than to demonizethe Maoists? And in a situation where women are also Maoists, everytribal woman becomes a potential Maoist and a “justified” victim forrape and worse. For traumatized tribal survivors of attacks, the solidarityand comradeship offered by Maoists fulfils a desire for revenge for along history of atrocities carried out with impunity.

234SOCIAL ACTION VOL. 60 JULY – SEPTEMBER 2010The history of police intimidation includes behaviour at a succession of‘Public Hearings’ for Tata, Essar and many other mining/factory projects,that has been extensively documented – a farce of “manufacturingconsent” repeated in numerous other areas. Roy’s article shows thatmany tribal children are motivated to carry guns long before the Maoistsallow them to. In this context, a note of reassurance is India’s AirChief Marshal P.V.Naik’s statement that he is not in favour of usingthe Air Force to attack Naxalites, and that this strategy carries a highrisk of extensive collateral damage.Human rights work is a prerequisite for peace. Tribal culture places ahigh value on justice and truth. Some kind of truth and reconciliationprocess will have to take place if the escalation towards war is to behalted. Responsibility lies on both sides. Where it does not lie is with thetribal communities, and when they know they can get justice, peace willprevail.Based on M.N. Roy Memorial Lecture, at the Society of Radical Humanists, Kolkata27.3.2010REFERENCESCaufield, Catherine 1998 [1996]. The World Bank and the Poverty ofNations. London: Pan.Central Mine Planning & Design Institute August 2006. Interim Reporton the Hydrogeological Investigations, Lanjigarh BauxiteMines, submitted to M/s OMC Ltd, Bhubaneswar. Ranchi:CMDPI (a subsidiary of Coal India Ltd).Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) 2008. Rich lands, poorpeople: Is ‘Sustainable’ Mining Possible? Delhi: CSE.Cernea, Michael 2006. ‘Resettlement Management: Denying orconfronting risks,’ in Mathur ed. 2006.Campaign for Peace and Justice in Chhattisgarh (CPJC) August 2007.Salwa Judum: Civil War in Chhattisgarh. Delhi:www.cpjc.wordpress.comChaudhury, Shoma 12 th June 2010. ‘Bringing on the Army Against theNaxals will be a Disaster.’ Tehelka Magazine, Vol.7, Issue 23.Cullinan, Cormac 2002. Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice.Totnes: Green Books, with the Gaia Foundation,www.thegaiafoundation.org

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