Naxalism... Is there a way out??

"Naxalism has increasingly become analogous to acts of terrorism which are characterised by outrightly irrational and heinous conduct, and are completely devoid of any semblance of human rationality." CCSR chairman Justice M M Punchhi.
This is the attitude that most government agencies and government officials have for the naxal issue. According to some, they are hardened criminals who can not join the main stream simply because of the long, never ending list of criminal charges against them. But it is way too easy to brand these people as terrorist than actually finding the issues that made these people convert to this dangerous and blood laid path.
In this write-up I will be focusing on the issues mainly at the current Naxal hotspot of Bastar area of Chhattisgarh. Let us start with a brief comparision between South Bastar district and India, it looks like we are looking at two totally unrelated places.

It is evident from the above data that with vast population of ST people who live in sparsely populated villages, with desperately low literacy rate.
In 1980s, the Naxalites, the ultra-left wing armed opposition group, made inroads into Bastar region from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. Then Madhya Pradesh government had little semblance of presence in the Bastar region. The plight of the dispossessed and exploited Adivasis provided the classical situation for starting a communist revolution. As the Naxalites took over the tasks meant to be done by the State and provided protection to the Adivasis against exploitation by the corrupt officials, police, forest department officials, timber mafia, money-lenders etc, it was not difficult for the Adivasis to relate to the ideology of the Naxalites. The Naxalites gradually increased their influence day by day. At present, at least nine out of 16 districts of Chhattisgarh are affected by low intensity armed conflict with the Naxalites.
Even after 60 years of independence and at the time when India is globally branded as one of the fastest growing economies, these areas don’t have the basic infrastructure in place. Till date the only lifelines for this district are two national highways NH 16 and NH 221. Leaving these two there are virtually no roads in the complete area. With lack of proper connectivity the other developmental activities also take a beating e.g. the district lacks doctors and hospitals, whatever hospitals they have are in desperate shapes.
With this kind of infrastructure in place and an eternal problem of caste divide, the problem of increased naxal activities can only grow bigger. With naxals the locals get sense of belongingness and pride, as the people who had been harassing them are now afraid of them.
If we look at how these Maoists work, it is quiet interesting that they have their own “Jantana Sarkar”, a parallel government. Staying in deep forests at all times they have proper well defined namely education and culture, finance, law, defence, agriculture, forest conservation, health and sanitation and public relations. They collect taxes from the local villagers based on the produces these villagers have, if there is low yield then they don’t collect taxes at all. With minimal infrastructure in place, they work with the mobile government and mobile departments.Comrade Pandu says no established offices exist yet, but their "mobile government" runs the show. "The Jantana Sarkar is in an embryonic stage but when the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army establishes control, we will form a regular government," he promises. He explains why there is no land department. "We have already carried out land reforms and redistributed land such that you will not find a single landless person here," says Pandu. The Jantana Sarkar also settles family disputes. "In the past three years we have settled about 200 disputes between brothers, husbands-wives, neighbours. In fact, if you check with the local police, you will not find a single FIR filed," he claims. Once the people's court pronounces a judgement, the guilty is held in custody and ''carried around'' in mobile jails till deemed fit to be released. The Maoists fund their government with tax collections from villagers. The amount is decided on basis of the crop. This year, for instance, no taxes were levied because the crop failed.
If we are talking about this kind of facilities and processes that are in place, local support is more than evident in it, as no mass movement can be sustained for aver 4 decades without support from local public. The kind of terrorising and brutal activities that government claims, naxals support and indulge in can surely not be the complete picture. Had that been the case then there should had been reduced support and reduced activities from the naxal front. As we can observe in the massive movements like one in Punjab area for formation of Khalistan, as the public support went down so did the movement. As to push any movement forward, one has to get at least some support at ground level in terms of infrastructure, information and financial aid. As naxals claim that they are getting taxes from locals and people preferring to go to them for justice than the government agencies proves it all.For past many years government agencies had been trying to handle this ever deteriorating situation of these areas by taking up various measures. But if we look at the government initiatives taken up for this issue are more focused on treating the symptoms of the problem and not the problem itself. They are considering them as armed terrorists and to counter them they are funding and supporting huge paramilitary and police forces. Till Supreme Courts ruling against Salwa Judum, the government had been openly supporting and helping these camps. If we look at some figures on the fatalities in states for past few years:

It can be noted that after the concept of Salwa Judum was started in the year 2005, there had been a marked increase in the number of deaths and activities in the state compared to any other part of the country. There had been a lot of reports about people using inhuman ways to bring villagers into Salwa Judum camps, torturing those who are not interested in joing the camp. These camps are also in pethetic shape, and all that inmates get in a square meal with waterry dal. With the inception of Salwa Judum, large number of young kids in mid teens had been recruited as special police officers. So kids who are not considered mature enough to vote, are holding weapons and are free to kill at will. Another question is that whom they are killing? With naxals using the policy to hire one comerade from each household, these SPO’s are mostly up in arms against their own familiy members and relatives.

From the graph above it can be observed that it has been a loss for all the three participants, with the locals suffering the most. These locals are in the “Lose-Lose” situation. They are getting killed by both Naxals and the government bodies. They have one of the lowest literacy rates in the country, and what can be worse it is actually going down by the day, as all the few school that these areas have are turning into refugee, relief camps or training camps for anti naxal forces. With no schools in place, the already backward area is getting pushed further into darkness.
With security forces facing this much heat and beating in the hands of naxals, there is a high amount of frustration amongst the forces which makes them do atrocities against the citizens The case like of Binayak Sen, a celebrated doctor and social worker has been put behind the bars for more than 22 months even when the forces have absolutely no evidence at all, against him. This is not the only case; there had been numerous cases like this one. Apart of this, there had been quite a few cases of fake encounters and custodial deaths in recent years.
This anguish is not only restricted to the government side, naxals also have lot of incidents against them.
The Adivasis became victims of gross violations of human rights such as “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; taking of hostages; outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment; and passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples”, at the hands of the Naxalites. Some of those who were injured in the landmine blast on 28 February 2006 at Darbhaguda village were allegedly stabbed and clubbed to death by the Naxalites. The policy of the Naxalites of forcibly recruiting one cadre from each Adivasi family compelled many families to give the female members to the Naxals. Hence, traditional Adivasi social taboos were challenged and destroyed by the Naxalites and resentment against the Naxalites grew. But, any rebellion against the rebels was quelled with brutality. In 1992-93, a rebellion against the Naxalites was silenced after the naxals killed 70 Adivasis.
I feel that government should use the money and machinery it has in place to create the basic infrastructure, like roads and electricity. As when these areas will have easy access to the world, not only the security forces can move easily, it will help the local people also. For example the dairy product that these local villagers produce, they have to sell currently at local market at very low prices of Rs. 3-4 per litre. If these villages have easy and regular access to cities in the area, their produce can be sold at the market price, so for the same milk produce without much investment they can earn up to Rs 20-25 per litre. With this, they will surely rise in economic condition. And milk is just an example; these areas are rich in other forest related products like Cashew, Chironji etc. which are of high value in the national markets.
And with this basic infrastructure in place, the policy makers should also focus on education, as due to the armed unrest for past 40 years, most centres of education had been destroyed or are being used for other purposes like relief camps or training camps etc. With increase in education levels, these tribal’s can also be empowered as today even if we have reservation for these tribes in whole country, these people who desperately need its benefits can not use it to their advantage.
Initially naxals will surly try disrupting the development work, but if government can use its forces efficiently in securing these developments, I feel the villagers will observe immediate benefits of these investments and will start supporting government against naxalites.

References
1. http://naxalwatch.blogspot.com/2009/01/naxal-problem-requires-attention-of.html
2. District Plan of Dantewada, Chhattisgarh submitted to Backward Regions Grant Fund. http://brgf.gov.in/brgfPlans/chattisgarh/Dantewada/Dist.%20Plan%20-%20Dantewada.ppt.
3. http://www.iloveindia.com/population-of-india/index.html
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India
5. http://www.iloveindia.com/population-of-india/sc-st.html
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India
7. http://www.achrweb.org/Review/2006/117-06.htm
8. http://naxalwatch.blogspot.com/2009/02/area-liberated-no-salwa-judum-here.html
9. http://satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/database/fatalitiesnaxal.htm
10. http://bastar.gov.in/forest/FOREST.HTML