[Reader-list] "How Many Deaths Before Too Many Die" (the dantewada massacre by maoists)

Thu Apr 15 17:19:03 IST 2010

Dear Rajendra

I am glad you liked the article and found merit in what Shoma Chaudhury says

Kshmendra 

--- On Tue, 4/13/10, Rajendra Bhat Uppinangadi <rajen786uppinangady at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Rajendra Bhat Uppinangadi <rajen786uppinangady at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] "How Many Deaths Before Too Many Die" (the dantewada massacre by maoists)
To: "Kshmendra Kaul" <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com>
Cc: "sarai list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 7:35 PM

Kshemendra, very thought provoking excerpts and the article truly reflects average indian citizens mind in thoughts, that the party entrusted with governance in democratic rule, irrespective of the colour of the flag does nothing to care or govern the citizens by rule of laws.!
regards,
rajen.

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:

(weblink for this article, earlier posted here by anupam chakravartty)

Excellent article by Shoma Chaudhury (SC). The most sensible one I have read on the Maoist issue.

Any good article must be read in full since it would (as this article does) explore many aspects of an issue especially when it is as complex as the Maoist one.

The excerpts given below are not meant to convey a summary of the article but only some of contents that I found interesting.

Kshmendra 

EDITED/ PARAPHRASED EXCERPTS IN RANDOM ORDER:

- The truth is, as long as the poor suffer silently, Indian democracy chugs along, doing little. If people protest peacefully, no one cares: not the media, not the government. If they organise themselves in outrage, they are berated for being disruptive and crushed. If they have grown too powerful to be crushed, the State offers talks. - (SC)

- Few — positioned anywhere on the political spectrum — can deny that the Indian Constitution is a shining document and a real existential and political counter-challenge to the Maoists. Every deformity in the Indian polity today is a corruption of the Constitution. But as organising principles for society go, there can be very few documents in the world that are more sophisticated and far-seeing. - (SC)

-  Why doesn’t the Indian State follow the Constitution? Why doesn’t it act on its own Planning Commission Report on Naxal-affected areas which advocates a development-centric approach?  - (Lawyer KG Kannabiran, who was part of the Committee of Citizens that brokered the (failed) peace talks between Maoists and the YSR Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh)

- It’s like watching two locomotives hurtling towards each other. Bent upon colliding even when all the warning signals are clearly flashing. And you can do nothing to stop it. - (Binayak Sen, when asked what he thought of the Maoist crisis and the government’s response to it.)

- These 76 dead were just a punctuation: more jawans would be sent out, more jawans would be killed. The poor being set to kill the poor. If ever there was reason to rethink strategy, surely, here it was. - (SC)

- If you watched television studio debates that night or read many of the newspapers the next morning; Livid, one-sided conversations: ill-informed, deaf, uncurious. And, most damagingly, simple-minded. - (SC)  

- Are you on the side of the savages? Are you condoning Maoist violence? Why are you raising questions about police atrocities and State neglect? How can you equate our violence with their violence? How can you lump the good guys with the bad guys? - (SC describing the Anti-Maoist voices)

- On the other side, less loud but equally intractable are voices hurling blanket abuse at the State. Ignoring the slow fruits of 60 years of democracy; ignoring the genuine moral challenges the Maoists present; ignoring the inevitable corruptions of armed rebellion; willing to overlook the dangerous imperfections of one political position to vanquish the other. - (SC on the Anti-State voices)

- None of the public positions trotted out by its most voluble stakeholders really tell the whole truth. Anger then is inevitable: it arises out of each side finding itself willfully and inadequately described. - (SC)

- Drowned by the fierce volume of media debates, those who hold a third position feel an added helplessness — the helplessness of being strapped bang centre in the path of rushing trains. Yet if there is anything that can make the collision screech to a halt, it is this position: this saving in-betweeness. Which makes it imperative to outline what the third position is. And turn up its volume. (SC)

- What sort of a society are we creating? What sort of a society have we become? How will this cycle of violence end? The Maoists might have a lot to answer for, but where will we find the answers to the imperfections in ourselves? We can exterminate them physically, but what are we going to do with the big, rebuking questions they have unleashed around us? - (SC)

- How can one neutralise Maoist influence in India? Deeper answers than merely killing them; more sustainable strategies. Strategies more introspective and selftransformative. - (SC)

- The State has crushed the Naxal movement thrice before — in Bengal, in Bihar, in Andhra Pradesh. Each time thousands of Indian citizens have been killed; each time the Maoists have resurrected themselves. This is the fourth big wave. Are we finally going to accept their challenge and address “root causes”, or are we going to content ourselves with killing tens of thousands of our poor every decade? - (SC)

- “I am completely unequivocal about this, violence cannot be the answer. This growing militarisation cannot be the way forward.” - (Binayak Sen)

- “I have lived in the jungles. I have been in jail. I have been tortured by the police. And I have seen the idealism and zeal with which the Maoists work in the jungles. But I no longer believe violence can be the path.” - (a former member of the People’s War Group and close aide of their towering leader Kondapalli Seetharamaiah)

- It a measure of the deep scorn and distrust on both sides that even a hint of talks arouses two viscerally cynical reactions: the State says it’s merely a ploy on the part of the Maoists to gain time and regroup; the Maoists says it’s merely a ploy on the part of the State to bring them over ground and smash their hideouts.  - (SC)

- How can a State committed to parliamentary democracy (no matter how flawed) broker peace with an armed group whose stated resolve is to overthrow it and seize State power by 2050? - (SC giving example of reluctance-argument for the State talking to the Maoists)

- On the other hand, equally, the Maoists might ask, why should we lay down arms and join Indian democracy? Has the Indian State ever demonstrated that it speaks to peaceful people’s movements? The only reason tribal welfare has even entered contemporary national discourse — even as mere lip service — is because of the power of the gun. - ( SC giving example of reluctance-argument for the Maoists talking to the State)

- If the tribals lay down arms, will the State keep its promises, or will it ride like a storm over them, seizing their lands and stealing their resources as it has done elsewhere? And why does the Indian State have such a dismal record of speaking to people’s movements espousing just demands? The Bhopal Gas victims have never taken to arms. For 25 years they have walked the 800 miles to Delhi again and again, camping in Jantar Mantar and asking for justice: have they got it? - (SC)

- Were the people of Nandigram and Singur made stakeholders in the projects that would displace them from their emerald land? Why was the draconian Land Acquisition Act and malafide SEZ Act not thought through in equitable ways, on the sheer basis of the State’s benevolent intention? Why was the State ramming its projects through? Why did it take violent people’s resistance for these Acts to go back to the drawing board? Why are workers in Delhi being uprooted from colonies they have lived in for 30 years and being pitchforked into far-flung wastelands where there are no schools, no health centres, no toilets, no roads, no public transport merely to beautify the city for 12 days of Commonwealth Games? Why do the people of Sohanbadra in UP have to walk miles through arsenic sludge and breathe fly ash from thermal plants? Why is it that almost every industrial project in India turns into a human rights violation — either in terms of land or labour or
 environmental violation or human health? - (SC)

- We could choose the path of escalated violence that will lead to a bloody civil war in the heart of the country. Or we could step back and choose the long march to social transformations that will leach away the attraction the oppressed have for the Maoists. -(SC) 

- “Ultimately nobody wins a war. You can only win in an ideological and social domain.” - (GN Saibaba, a Delhi University professor and an activist)

- What is this third position then? The first and primary relief of the third position is that it is not a monolithic one: it is no soundproof room blocking out all argument that challenges its notions. It recognises that India is a complex country to run. It recognises that Home Minister Chidambaram is partially right in saying a State cannot let 234 districts slip out of its hands and some targeted use of force is called for to re-dominate those areas. But in the same breath it recognises that military action alone is suicidal. “Compassionate governance” cannot be a verbal frill attached to a machine gun. It has to be the primary soldier, the captain of the guard. In the third position, courage lies in rethinking fundamental directions of our society. It lies in acknowledging that Maoists are not merely demonic outsiders but a complex grid of Indians driven in equal parts by ideology, desperation and new political awakening. -(SC)

- “It is ridiculous to attack everyone just because they have a view on the Maoist issue as anything more than just a ‘menace’. While there’s no alternative to a State defending itself to a challenge by insurgents, we have to ask ourselves why this insurgency is confined to 5th Schedule Areas (ie, tribal) areas. And as long as our ideas of development is restricted to gains for people like Vedanta and POSCO and Tata and Essar and the Mittals, and we allow them to exploit tribal resources, the tribals are bound to see this development not as desired but disruptive. The point is, we have to define the difference between ‘participatory development’ and ‘aggressive development’.” - (veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar)

- Read the 73rd Amendment along with Article 243G and 243ZD of the Constitution, he urges. Let all states governments implement PESA — (Provisions of the Panchayat [Extension to Scheduled Areas] 1996) — on the ground. Invoke the provisions of the Forest Act to give full ownership of forest produce to tribals. And watch the miracles start to flow. - ( Mani Shankar Aiyar's inspiring list of simple measures, constitutional provisions and visionary legislations that can begin to effect change.)

- For middle-class audiences, PESA is probably the least known piece of legislation, yet it is sheer genius in its simplicity. It prescribes that no proposal of a Panchayat, no disbursal of funds, and no use of common property resources can be sanctioned without the permission of the Gram Sabha. Unlike the Panchayat which has elected members, the Gram Sabha includes every adult member of a village community. This consultative process is the most elemental step of a democracy and it effectively ensures that tribals can take full control of their lives, finances and functionaries — cutting out the corruptions of an alien bureaucracy. - (SC)

- “It is misleading to suggest all these areas have slipped out of government control. Even in Naxal-affected areas, only some thanas are under their control. The rest are all under State control. We should immediately implement full-fledged Panchayati Raj and PESA in these thanas. We can win this only if we construct a real and shining alternative to the Maoist-led government.” (Mani Shankar Aiyar)

- “If the Tatas and Ambanis can own vast tracts of land and the government deems private property as sacred, how is it that we think of community property as something that the government can take over? The tribals have owned these forests since time immemorial. This tradition was only disrupted when the British entered the forests of Dandakaranya. Can’t democratic India restore the the rights over this forest back to its own people? Finally, if middle-class Indians can have shares in corporate projects, why can’t tribals be made stakeholders in projects that ursurp their land?” - (Mani Shankar Aiyar)

- “There is a failure of governance, a real crisis of credibility among the lower level functionaries. The whole judicial system, for instance, relies on the patwari and thanedar. If they tamper with an FIR or land paper, how can the system work? We have to think of alternative forms of governance. We have 32 states — let there be 10,000 forms of local government in them. We have to take the traditions of each community and work within that to implement democratic ideals.” - (Rural Minister CP Joshi, who was handpicked by Rahul Gandhi and whose ministry report on ‘State Agrarian Relations’ spoke of Operation Green Hunt as the “biggest land grab in the history of India”),

- “When governance fails to reach people, such movements are bound to gain strength.” - (Rahul Gandhi at a press conference in Chhattisgarh, asked about the Maoist crisis)

- So before the memory of the 76 jawans fades, here’s the question again: what route is India going to take now? - (SC)

- Barely weeks after her husband’s gory murder at the hands of Maoists, she was pleading with the government not for revenge but a non-military approach to resolve the Maoist crisis. - ( widow of beheaded policeman, Francis Induwar )

- It is futile to remind them that they are our elected representatives and democracy demands we hold them more accountable than the Maoists; futile to remind them that we expect the State to have a greater morality than the outlaws they are combating. Futile to assert that our constitutional concern about the nature of the Indian State does not equate to support for the Maoists. Violence can only legitimise itself by painting broad pictures of Good and Evil, by painting itself the Avenger. - (SC)

- A cardinal rule of leadership that leaders often forget is the powerful symbolism of taking the unilaterally ethical stand. Not contingent on the good behaviour of others. (SC)

EDITED/ PARAPHRASED EXCERPTS IN RANDOM ORDER from:
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main44.asp?filename=Ne170410how_many.asp

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-- 
Rajen.