Maoists winning the battle to control India

Friday’s train crash in India has been blamed on “sabotage” by Maoist rebels. It was the latest in a series of rebel attacks after the government launched an offensive against them. The BBC’s Soutik Biswas asks whether the rebels are gaining the upper hand.

It is not surprising that Maoist rebels are being blamed for the derailment of an express train in India’s West Bengal state, in which 71 passengers were killed.

The police claim they have found posters signed by a local Maoist militia claiming responsibility for removing part of the track, which led to the train skidding off and colliding with a freight train coming in the opposite direction.

West Midnapore district, where the incident happened, is the hotbed of Maoist rebellion in West Bengal, one of the states where the rebels have a presence.

Tribespeople dominate the district, especially the forested Junglemahal region bordering Jharkhand state.

They feel ignored and deprived by the Communist government which has been ruling the state since 1977. Most live in abject poverty. The only visible signs of “development” I spotted during a trip to the area some years ago were cheap liquor shops.

Strong support

Fed up with the state of affairs, Junglemahal’s tribespeople even agitated for a separate state.

When neighbouring Jharkhand was carved out as a separate state, their alienation grew and they were quick to welcome the Maoists, who wield most influence in areas which are poor and dominated by tribespeople.

The security forces are on the backfoot after a spree of rebel attacks
The Lalgarh area in Junglemahal is the rebels’ most formidable stronghold.
In February, they stormed a police camp in Lalgarh, killing 24 policemen.
Rebels love to describe Lalgarh as a “liberated zone” where the state has withered away – schools and medical centres have closed down because teachers and doctors are afraid to attend, and policemen are confined to the police stations fearing reprisals.

Friday’s incident in West Midnapore demonstrates how the rebels are taking the battle to their enemies ever since the federal government launched an offensive in what is known as India’s “red corridor” earlier this year.

This comprises 223 of India’s 636 districts in 20 states which the government says are “Maoist affected”, up from 55 districts in nine states six years ago.
Ninety of these affected districts, the government says, are experiencing “consistent violence.”

The rebels have been carrying out attacks with impunity in recent months – two major attacks Dantewada in Chhattisgarh state left more than 100 people dead, including 75 paramilitary troops.
But there are also theories that in this case the Maoist script went slightly awry.

Maoists frequently tamper with railway lines and often these lead to minor derailments; a number of such attempts have been caught well in time. There have been hijackings but no major attacks on civilian transport with such a death toll.

In the past year, Maoists have carried out 32 attacks on railways, mainly in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Chhattisgarh – but no major casualties have been reported.

Support for the Maoist cause across India generally will be dented by such an attack, just as it was after the assault on troops in Dantewada.

Following the twin Dantewada attacks, the government said it was reviewing its strategy for fighting the rebels, who have refused to respond to repeated government offers for talks.

Analysts say that the strategy of “clearing, holding and developing” rebel-affected areas evidently inspired by the US strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan is not working.

‘Visible retreat’

One reason, they say, is that the surge of security forces and resources on the ground are not sufficient enough to take on the rebels who are spread over a vast swathe of remote mineral-rich forest lands.

Maoists call Lalgarh a “liberated zone”

The government is now in a “visible retreat” after a spree of rebel attacks, says security analyst Ajai Sahni.
He believes that a lack of adequate forces, training and intelligence is leading to these “disasters”.

“Unless local capacities for intelligence and operations are enormously augmented, this [offensive] can go nowhere, and lot of lives are going to be lost for no useful purpose,” Mr Sahni says.

But the under-equipped local police and intelligence-gathering networks remain Indian security’ s weakest link, and there no visible efforts to bolster them.

The government appears to be confused over how the rebels should be tackled – there are differences in the ruling Congress party itself on whether the state should strike hard against it’s own people.

Recently federal home minister P Chidambaram requested wider powers to deal with the rebels, saying that he had been given a “limited mandate.”
He said the chief ministers of some of the worst affected states have asked for air power to be used against the rebels – a measure that the government has refused to sanction.

Analysts believe that many states are not doing enough to take on the rebels, leading to a “centralisation” of the problem.

The train ‘”sabotage” was one of the biggest attacks launched by the rebels
“The principal responsibility for dealing with the Maoists remain that of the states; the first responders, the local police stations, have to be strengthened and equipped to deal with the task on their own.”

Till that happens, the rebels will be seen to have an upper hand in what promises to be long drawn out and bloody conflict, the like of which India has never seen.

At least 35 die as Maoists blow up bus in India

RAIPUR: At least 35 people were killed after Maoist rebels blew up a bus carrying police and civilians in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh on Monday, an official said.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh told reporters in the state capital Raipur that the dead included 11 police personnel.

“Twenty-four civilians and 11 policemen have died and 15 persons including 14 police personnel were injured in the blast,” the chief minister said.

He said an unspecified number of bodies were still trapped in the mangled bus following the mine blast in Dantewada district, a Maoist stronghold where rebels ambushed and killed 75 policemen last month in the bloodiest massacre of security forces by the extremists.

Television footage showed bodies laid out on the road next to the wreckage of the bus. The front portion of the vehicle had been almost completely destroyed by the force of the blast.

“The killing and targeting of innocent civilians travelling on a bus is to be strongly condemned by all right-thinking people,” Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told reporters in New Delhi.

The security men among the dead and injured were special police officers, who are recruited from the civilian population to help security forces in anti-Maoist operations, said S.R. Kalluri, deputy inspector general of police.

The left-wing guerrillas have stepped up attacks in response to a government offensive against them that began late last year in the forests of the so-called “Red Corridor” that stretches across north and eastern India.

The insurgency began in the state of West Bengal in 1967 in the name of defending the rights of tribal groups, but attacks have since spread to 20 of India’s 28 states.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has labelled the insurgency the biggest internal security threat to India.
Tribal groups and many rural areas have been left behind by the country’s economic development, and the poverty and discontent with local government corruption is seen as a major source of Maoist support.

UN hunger index: India is 66th among 88 countries

Nineteen-month-old Nanchu died barely 15 months after his elder brother Chhangu’s death in December 2008.

Records of the Madhya Pradesh (MP) women and child development department say both the deaths were due to malnutrition.

Nineteen-month-old Nanchu died barely 15 months after his elder brother Chhangu’s death in December 2008.

Records of the Madhya Pradesh (MP) women and child development department say both the deaths were due to malnutrition.

Shaken by Chhangu’s passing away when he was 18 months old, parents Kamlesh and Savitri had Nanchu, severely malnourished, registered with an anganwadi, a government-supported child- and mother-care centre, located at a distance of 6 km from their village, Kirahipok-hari. However, Nanchu too did not survive beyond March 19, 2010. The village is in Satna district, 500 km northeast of Bhopal.

The family belongs to the Mawasi tribe, which subsists on agriculture and hunting.

With India’s food-subsidy bill poised to double to Rs 1,00,000 crore per year if every family below the poverty line gets 35 kg of wheat or rice, up from the current 25 kg, Satna shows how it could be wasted if the corrupt bureaucracy isn’t reformed.

Kamlesh and Savitri, both landless labourers, have a ration card for those below the poverty line, fetching them only 20 kg of wheat and/or rice a month at Rs 5 per kg. When that is exhausted, they eat mahua dhubari (boiled mahua fruit) or some leafy forest vegetables with chapattis. Though eligible, they do not have an antyodaya card, for the poorest, most vulnerable people, who can get 35 kg of grain, rice at Rs 3 per kg or wheat at Rs 2 per kg.

The National Commission for the Protection of Children’s Rights recommended opening at least one anganwadi in the village, which reported five deaths a little more than a year ago. The commission held a public hearing in February last year after five malnutrition deaths in the village. Deepa Dixit, a member of the commission, told Hindustan Times that the district administration did not respond to its recommendations.

MP has a bleak child-care record, India’s worst, comparable to Ethiopia and Chad. Within the country, it’s ranked below Jharkhand and Bihar.

More than half a million children below five died in MP between 2005 and today.

At 60 per cent, the state has India’s highest proportion of malnourished children (India has the highest number of malnourished children in the world). It also has the highest infant mortality rate in the country (70 per 1,000 births), and for tribals, the figure is 95.6 per 1,000, according the National Family Health Survey III.

India is 66th among 88 countries on a United Nations hunger index, worse than many African countries. In South Asia, India is only better than Bangladesh.

In rural MP, anyone who earning less than Rs 327.78 per month is below the poverty line; in urban areas Rs 570.15. According to a central government estimate, 37.43 per cent of MP’s population is below the poverty line.

The Integrated Child Development Scheme, the world’s biggest programme for the health of children under six, is stuttering in MP, which has 69,738 anganwadis when it should have 136,000. About 20,000 are in various stages of establishment.

Satna Collector Sukhveer Singh admitted the delay and said Kirahipokhari would have an anganwadi in a month.

Singh said the village representatives were not doing enough to tackle malnutrition. “The administration alone can’t curb the menace,” he said.

Other programmes are failing as well.

Although Kamlesh and Savitri have a job card under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, they have not got work for one year. Though the law guarantees 100 days of work each year, violations are rampant.

In the remote areas, sarpanchs (headmen) and panchayat secretaries often hold back payments to tribals citing data and other delays. Sometimes, sarpanchs say they did not receive job applications.

In some way, this is true. A flawed system discourages job applicants.

Kamlesh and Savitri were not fully paid for their job two years ago.

About 10 km east of Kirahipokhari, nine children below three died of malnutrition between June last year and March in Madulihai village, where the staple diet is chapatti and salt. Sometimes, when available, they add chana (gram) leaves and other leafy vegetables.

Malnourishment is a feature of Majhgawan block (in which Kirahipokhari and Madulihai are located), where 25 per cent of the population are tribal. Dependent on forests for livelihood, the tribals struggle to feed themselves and their children.

Only 150 of the 3,400-odd tribals who claimed rights to forest land have received papers. No one from Kirahipokhari or Madulihai, both forest villages, is among them.

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Forest Dwellers Act gives tribals forest land and resource rights. In MP, more than 60 per cent of tribals’ claims have been rejected, mainly on the grounds that they could not prove residence for 75 years on the lands they claim, or could not establish that they held the land before the cut-off date of December 13, 2005, under the Act. Sravani Sarkar, Hindustan Times
Email Author, Satna, May 04, 2010

This is how well-meaning laws, enacted in distant Delhi, change nothing here in the heart of India.