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Since as long ago as 1969, high-level government committees have emphasised that extremist violence of the kind perpetrated by the Maoists is not just a law and order problem but has deeper socio-economic roots. Yet the response of the Indian government has invariably been to meet violence with violence, with expectedly poor results, says K S Subramanian
The Maoist violence, which originated in one police station area in a single district in West Bengal, has spread to over 460 police stations, in 160 districts across 14 states, according to informed sources. This is despite the fact that the police budget of the union and state governments has reportedly gone up over a thousand-fold from 1967 to 2007. This makes it clear that state violence is not a fitting response to Maoist violence. On the contrary, it has only aggravated the cult of violence in the country. The managers of the Indian state would be well advised to do a rethink and reassess their present strategy of trying to suppress violence with violence, derived from colonial experience. The perception by the Congress party which leads the present government at the centre that Maoist (earlier ‘Naxalite’) violence is India’s “biggest national security threat” today tends to ignore the fact that the Naxalite movement was in its original form an outcome of the irreconcilable differences within the Indian communist movement on the nature and significance of the nationalist freedom movement and the transfer of power in 1947. The 1980s ‘subaltern’ school of historiography has explained that the arena of nationalist politics was a site of ‘’strategic manoeuvres, resistance and appropriation’’ by different groups and classes. Many of these contests are still unresolved. The 1947 ‘transfer of power’ to the mainstream elitist leaders of the nationalist movement led by the Congress party ignored the interests of large masses of peasants and workers, giving rise to the phenomenon of ‘dominance without hegemony’ by the dominant classes in Indian politics led by the Congress party. The resultant ontological divide in Indian politics led to intense debates and differences within the Indian communist party, culminating in the emergence of the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) and other Naxalite groups, which believed in armed peasant struggle for the capture of political power to usher in social justice in Indian society. Despite major divisions within the ‘Naxalite’ groups, two of them united in 2004 to form the CPI (Maoist) which, as distinct from the two mainstream ‘parliamentary’ communist parties the CPI and the CPI(M), believes in armed peasant struggles to capture political power. This background provides the prelude to the following discussion. Let us first examine the dominant official approach of repression of Maoist violence sanctified in police reports and then outline the alternative approach based on the recognition of the underlying social justice concerns of the Maoists explicated in some official but non-dominant reports. While ‘public order’ and the ‘police’ are state subjects in the Constitution of India, the ministry of home affairs (MHA) in New Delhi has been playing a key role in formulating government policy to deal with major violence in the country with the state governments generally falling in line. The prime minister, at a chief ministers’ conference in April 2006, stated that Maoist (earlier ‘Naxalite’) violence is India’s biggest national security threat. In saying so, he was probably guided by his national security adviser, who was earlier chief of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which has held, from colonial times to the present, that communism presented the biggest security threat to India. However, after the two major communist parties the CPI and the CPI(M) became believers in ‘parliamentary communism’, the IB has consistently projected the Naxalite movement, which believes in armed peasant struggle, as the major security threat. The union home minister followed the PM’s remarks by revealing that 26 CRPF battalions would be sent to affected states to suppress Maoist violence. He asked states not to enter into dialogue with the Maoists unless they gave up arms. “Local resistance” by vigilante groups such as Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh would be “up-scaled”, he said. Though the National Common Minimum Programme of the ruling formation in 2004 had mentioned that extremist violence was not just a law and order problem but had deeper socio-economic roots, the police agencies thought otherwise as shown in the document on left-wing extremism circulated at the conference of police chiefs in 2005. The MHA, influenced by police reports, geared up to deploy central paramilitary forces on a massive scale to crush the Maoist mobilisation in several states. Some 76 districts in the nine states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal were said to be affected. The level of violence was significant in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Maharashtra and Orissa. Violence was reported from 509 police stations in 11 states out of a total of 12,476 in 2005. The Constitution casts a special responsibility on the Indian state for the welfare, development and protection of dalits and adivasis (officially, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) who bulk large in the poverty population and constitute a strong base for the Maoist movement. Special provisions in law and procedure are made for these purposes. The home ministry, till recently, was in charge of the subject with two divisions dealing respectively with the SCs and STs. The ministry has tried to keep the developmental background in mind while suggesting measures to state governments. Discussion of Maoist violence also included discussion of violence against dalits and adivasis by upper castes and classes who inflicted the violence resentful of government’s proactive policies for SC/ST development. In the 1980s the ministry issued strong, detailed and comprehensive guidelines in this regard to the state governments. For someone with experience of working on such subjects while in the MHA, it was therefore surprising that the prime minister, at the 2006 conference in New Delhi, made his oft-quoted statement on Maoist violence without even a passing reference to the growing violence against the dalits and adivasis brought out in the reports of the National Commissions on SCs and STs. The recent Experts’ Group report to the Planning Commission on ‘Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas’ (2008) has come out unambiguously on the basic social justice issues behind the Maoist movement and violence. Interestingly, neither the newly created ministry of social justice and empowerment now entrusted with constitutional responsibility for the development and protection of the dalits and adivasis (in place of the home ministry), nor the National Commissions for the SCs and STs, was present at the 2006 meeting of state chief ministers. Constitutional imperatives made it necessary for them to be present. Participants waxed eloquent on the Maoist threat but did not have a word to say on the increasing violence against the dalits and adivasis by upper classes and castes often with the help of the police, especially in the Central Tribal Belt (CTB). Former Home Secretary L P Singh, uncomfortable with the reporting style of the IB (an ‘attached office’ accountable to the home ministry) and its tendency to over-classify its reports, had set up the Research and Policy Division in 1967. The seminal 1969 report by the Division, ‘The causes and Nature of Agrarian Tensions’, had been followed by a second report in 1972 and further reports in the 1980s. The 1969 report had warned that the green revolution could turn into a red revolution in the absence of agrarian reforms demanded by those behind the Naxalite movement, led by the then CPI (ML). The report pointed to the administrative obstacles in the implementation of agrarian reforms such as the lack of qualifications and integrity necessary for the administration of tenancy reforms on the part of civil servants who were overburdened with other responsibilities; insufficient coordination between the state agency for land reforms and the agriculture and cooperative departments; lack of correct and updated land records; weak budgetary support; illiteracy and ignorance on the part of tenants; dual role of landlords as moneylenders; heterogeneous interests of the village population; and the gulf in social status separating tenants from landlords, which influenced the administrative and judicial authorities handling land disputes. Another home secretary made efforts to set up interdisciplinary study-cum-action groups on conflict situations but he was discomfited by the obsession with secrecy on the part of sister agencies deployed in the Northeast. Unfortunately, the Research and Policy (R&P) Division was wound up in the 1990s despite its useful role. One of the ironies in the functioning of the MHA was its awareness of the deficiencies in its information system on conflict resolution. Though it set up the R&P Division in 1967, it failed to take further steps to institutionalise its reports in the policy process. It continued its reliance on police violence to tackle popular violence following the British colonial precedent. As stated by a former home secretary, the ‘‘available expertise at the bureaucratic level to understand, anticipate and evaluate an intricate problem was inadequate and amateurish. The situation in some cases was salvaged in the past because of the flexibility of the system, the sagacity of the political leadership and its openness to information from all quarters’’. The home secretary noted that while the political response to Maoist violence was based on the perception of the objective socio-economic conditions in breeding and sustaining it, once the intensity of violence abated, the political response took the standard administrative shape of deployment of central paramilitary forces in the affected areas. Allegations of fake encounters, illegal arrests and other misdeeds tended to be swept under the carpet. He said: ‘’In dealing with problems of societal transition, excessive preoccupation with peace and order, ignoring issues of law and justice, can prove expensive in the long run. Lack of steadfastness of purpose is not desirable in dealing with basic nation-building tasks.’’ Thus, when issues with long-term implications came up, the traditional responses of the MHA were found deficient. The ad-hocism and amateurishness in the field could only be remedied by ‘’additional inputs of knowledge, skill and vision through multidisciplinary research and policy analysis’’. The setting up of the Research and Policy (R&P) Division of the MHA coinciding with the emergence of the Maoist movement was a correct response but the mechanism became dysfunctional due to ignorance and neglect while the reports of the IB proved far from adequate. The Maoist armed struggle reached an advanced stage after the Naxalbari phase. It spread over a larger area and has survived for over two decades since the 1980s. The strongest guerilla zone remains the Dandakaranya forest region in central India covering 11 districts across the four states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Even though more widespread than before, the Maoists today have not been able to build powerful countrywide political movements. A relatively strong militant outfit with popular support in its areas of influence in the south, central and eastern regions, it is weak outside its core areas of influence. The commercialisation of forest resources has reduced the access of indigenous communities to them. Alienation of tribal land and their control by richer non-tribal elements from outside is a significant factor in tribal unrest. Displacement due to the construction of large dams and other industries has impoverished these communities and strengthened their demand for tribal self-governance. Government programmes for tribal development have had adverse consequences for tribal communities as is well documented in many studies. The extension of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) to tribal areas can become an instrument of empowerment only after steps are taken to restore indigenous rights over land and forest. The setting up of the new states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttaranchal to enable tribal participation in governance and decision-making at decentralised levels, is largely ineffective due to the unchanged character and mindset of the administrative and police setup. B Mungekar, member, Planning Commission, is reported to have prepared a report showing that between 1951 and 1990, 40 million people were displaced as a result of development projects. Of these, 40% were tribal people. Only 25% of the displaced have so far been ‘rehabilitated’. The adequacy and quality of the rehabilitation has come into serious question especially in the context of the controversy over the Sardar Sarovar Project. In the light of this, it is not surprising that the Maoist movement has found support among those sections of scheduled tribes who became victims rather than beneficiaries of development. In this connection, the 28th report of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Tribes to the President of India in 1986 becomes relevant. It referred to the ‘’backlash of modernisation’’ in the tribal areas. Its assessment was that the outcome of the developmental measures taken plus the adverse forces already at work was a negative one and marked a ‘’slide back’’ in the fortunes of the dalits and adivasis notwithstanding some achievements in the sphere of reservations in government jobs. The report decried the ‘’omissions, distortions, subterfuges and the studied silence on vital issues’’ in government policies which protected vested interests. The concern expressed in the Constitution’s Fifth Schedule that the laws of the land should be suitably adapted in their application to Scheduled areas was violated. The effect of non-recognition of the rights of the local community’s command over resources had resulted in ‘’disorganisation, displacement and destitution’’ of the adivasis. There could be no peace in the Scheduled Areas so long as the confrontation between the people and the state continued on the issue of self-governance, particularly with regard to the question of the command over resources. In much the same vein, the 2008 Experts’ Group report to the Planning Commission makes a profound analysis of the socio-economic situation in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, and Jharkhand and suggests that the problem of violence and terrorism should be understood in the proper development perspective and handled politically and administratively rather than by using brute police force. Apart from the CPI (Maoist), which is the focus of official attention, there are a very large number of other groups whose methods of functioning differ on the extent of mobilisation of the people, role of the armed underground cadre etc, though they all agree on the need for revolutionary change. Some of them are represented in elected bodies such as panchayats and legislative assemblies. Mass unrest is not reducible to dramatic incidents of terrorism. Mass participation in militant protests has always been a feature of Maoist mobilisation. The ban on the Maoist party and its mass organisations and the informal prohibition of such activities by the police in the case of other groups often rendered such mass activity impossible. On the role of the police, the report states that the ‘‘methods chosen by the government to deal with the Maoist phenomenon (have) increased the people’s distrust of the police and consequent unrest. Protest against police harassment is itself a major instance of unrest frequently leading to further violence by the police in the areas under Maoist influence. The response of the Maoists has been to target the police and subject them to violence, which in effect triggers a second round of the spiral. The rights and entitlements of the people which give rise to the Maoist movement find expression in the Constitution, the laws enacted by various governments and the policy declarations. The administration should not have waited for the Maoist movement to remind it of its obligations towards the people in these matters’’. The report adds that the weaker sections do not have much faith in the police. They have no faith that justice will be done to them against the powerful. ‘‘Often it is as frustrating an experience to go to the police station as a complainant as it is fraught with danger to go as a suspect. One of the attractions of the Naxalite movement is that it does provide protection to the weak against the powerful and takes the security of, and justice for, the weak and socially marginal seriously.’’ The ‘para-militarisation’ of the union home ministry, partly due to its loss of the two developmental divisions dealing with SCs and STs to the ministry of social justice and empowerment, plus the subsequent winding up of the Research and Policy Division, has aggravated the policy crisis within the union home ministry. The report of the Experts’ Group to the Planning Commission, however, makes it clear that a ‘deliberative democracy’ such as India should adopt the method of politically resolving the violence of the Maoists. Does the present prime minister, Manmohan Singh, have the courage and wisdom to abandon the officially dominant, repressive police approach to Maoist violence and adopt the non-police and developmental approach advocated in the 26th report of the Commissioner for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes back in 1986 and forcefully reiterated in the 2008 Experts Group report to the Planning Commission, ‘Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas’? This is a key question in the ongoing debate on justice issues in Indian politics. (K S Subramanian was Director of the Research and Policy Division of the Union Home Ministry (1980-85) and retired as Director General of the State Institute of Public Administration and Rural Development. He is the author of Political Violence and the Police in India [Sage 2007]) Infochange News & Features, September 2009 |
