India's Silent War

A 40-year long civil war has been raging in the jungles of central and eastern India. It is one of the world's largest armed conflicts but it remains largely ignored outside of India.

Caught in the crossfire of it are the Adivasis, who are believed to be India's earliest inhabitants. A loose collection of tribes, it is estimated that there are about 84 million of these indigenous people, which is about eight per cent of the country's population.

For generations, they have lived off farming and the spoils of the jungle in eastern India, but their way of life is under threat. Their land contains mineral deposits estimated to be worth trillions of dollars. Forests have been cleared and the Indian government has evacuated hundreds of villages to make room for steel plants and mineral refineries.


The risk of losing everything they have ever known has made many Adivasis fertile recruits for India's Maoist rebels or Naxalites, who also call these forests home.

The Maoists' fight with the Indian government began 50 years ago, just after India became independent. A loose collection of anti-government communist groups - that initially fought for land reform - they are said to be India's biggest internal security threat. Over time, their focus has expanded to include more fundamental questions about how India is actually governed.

In their zeal for undermining the Indian government, Maoist fighters have torched construction equipment, bombed government schools and de-railed passenger trains, killing hundreds. In the name of state security, several activists who have supported the Maoists have been jailed and tortured. Innocent people have also been implicated on false charges. These are often intimidation tactics used by the government to discourage people from having any contact with the Maoists.

The uprising by Maoist fighters and its brutal suppression by the Indian government, has claimed more than 10,000 lives since 1980, and displaced 12 million people. Many of the victims are not even associated with either side. They are simply caught in the crossfire. And the violence is escalating as both sides mount offensive after counter-offensive.

Imran Garda in Al Jazeera. Here

Al Jazeera's Imran Garda travelled to the Indian states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal to get a secret glimpse into the world of the Naxalites and to meet with rebel fighters as well as those victimised by this conflict.

Majority of the people of Andhra Pradesh support Naxalites : TOI survey

 

India's biggest internal security threat, as the Prime Minister famously described it, may be worse than you thought. That's because even in Andhra Pradesh, where the battle against the Maoists has apparently been won, it turns out that the government is losing the battle for the minds and hearts of the people.

It's a debate that's been raging within the Congress, and outside it. Should the government adopt a largely law-and-order attitude towards the Maoists and deal with them like criminals or should the focus be more on cutting the ground from under their feet through a development agenda that wins over the population of the affected areas?

An exclusive survey of the once Maoist-dominated districts of the Telengana region by IMRB, well-known market research organisation, for The Times of India has found that while attitudes towards the rebels are ambivalent, the condemnation of the government and its means of tackling the problem is quite clear.

The findings raise disturbing questions about whether focusing largely on the policing aspects of the problem may be a flawed strategy in the long run. They also throw up another poser: Has the battle in AP truly been won or can the Maoists stage a comeback in a few years?

Tied to this is the question of how the Maoists are viewed by the populace of these parts. Are they perceived essentially as a bloodthirsty, extortionist bunch or as rebels standing up for people's rights?

TOI decided to do an opinion poll of the affected areas to find out. The problem, however, was that this was a region where pollsters found very difficult to enter. We finally decided to conduct the survey in those areas of Andhra Pradesh which were till not too long ago strongholds of the Naxalites but where their activities have been checked. The survey was conducted, therefore, in five districts of the Telengana region Adilabad, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Warangal and Khammam. These districts were chosen not only because they were till recently severely Naxal-affected, but also because of their proximity to current hotbeds in Chattisgarh and Maharashtra.

To tap into the mood of the aam admi in these areas, the survey was restricted to the not so well off socio-economic categories, SEC B and SEC C and to men and women between the ages of 25 and 50. What we found has come as an eye-opener for us and should be worrying for everybody. The state may have won the battle of the guns, but the Maoists are clearly ahead in the perception game. This is particularly true in the districts of Warangal and Nizamabad as the accompanying charts show only too clearly.

The root cause of the disaffection is the overwhelming feeling of neglect of the areas by the government. About two-thirds expressed this view and in Warangal the figure was as high as 81%. That, you might say, is hardly alarming. Similar figures would probably be thrown up anywhere in India. True. But when two-thirds also say that the Maoists are right in choosing the methods they have to highlight the neglect, it is difficult to dismiss it as normal.

Perhaps the most revealing answers are in response to questions on whether the Maoists — still better known as Naxalites in this belt — were good or bad for the region and whether their defeat by the AP police has made matters better or worse.

Almost 60% said the Naxalites were good for the area and only 34% felt life had improved since they were beaten back. As for whether exploitation has increased after the Naxalite influence waned, 48% said it had against 38% who said it hadn't, the rest offering no opinion.

Equally importantly, 50% of the respondents felt the Naxalites had forced the government to focus on development work in the affected areas. What these responses show is just how negative the perception of the government is in these parts.

That the people here are not entirely comfortable with Naxalite methods is also quite clear. Even a question on what explained their strength in these parts showed that very few attributed it to popularity alone, a majority saying either that it was due to fear or that it was a combination of approval and fear. That despite this ambivalence there is a sympathetic view of the Naxals only betrays the people's desperate search for any means to shake shaking up the state.

The government may say, and with some justification, that the Maoists represent the biggest threat to India's internal security, but what this poll shows is that the aam admi in these parts views government apathy as the biggest threat to his wellbeing.

The towns in which the poll was conducted were Kamareddy in Nizamabad district, Gudi Hathnoor in Adilabad, Sirsilla in Karimnagar, Mahbubabad in Warangal and Palwancha in Khammam. A total of 521 people were polled in these five towns, a statistically robust sample size. 

 

From a report in Times of India. More Here.

Maoists, Mining and the Great Indian Loot!

To understand how mining policy has actually helped the Maoists, let’s take the specific case of iron ore — crucial for Chhattisgarh and Orissa and not insignificant for Jharkhand, all states with a serious Maoist problem on their hands.

At the turn of the millennium in 2001-01, India exported iron ore worth a measly Rs 358 crore. By 2008-09, that figure was up to Rs 21,725 crore, a sixty-fold jump in just seven years.

Driving this export of ore were several factors. One was the decanalisation of exports of ore with an iron content of 64% or less in the late 1990s. The other was China’s seemingly insatiable appetite for iron ore in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As a result, the international price of ore — with 63% iron content — soared to $200 per tonne in March 2008, more than four times the price five years ago. 

Indian ore exporters thus had a ready and profitable market. The icing on the cake was provided by the royalty rates charged by the government. The rates fixed in October 2004 varied from as little as Rs 4 per tonne for low-grade ore to a maximum of Rs 27 per tonne for the highest grades. There was also no export duty. 

To see what this meant, check out what the Karnataka Lok Ayukta had to say on the allegations of illegal mining in the Bellary region of the state. Its report submitted in December 2008 pointed out that when the export price was hovering around Rs 6,000 to Rs 7,000 per tonne, the state government was getting between Rs 16 and Rs 27 by way of royalty. The extraction cost to the miner was, by the state’s own admission, of the order of Rs 150 per tonne. The Lok Ayukta noted that even if the transportation cost was estimated at Rs 250 per tonne, the total cost for the exporter would be not more than Rs 427 per tonne. 

Since the export price of the ore even in a slump was never lower than Rs 1,500 per tonne, that would leave a neat profit of Rs1,073 per tonne. Out of this, the state was getting at best Rs 27. 

So outraged was the Lok Ayukta by these calculations, that the report went on to advocate a complete ban not just on export of ore but also on its trading, saying it should be reserved only for captive mining by domestic steel producers. 

It took another two years before the ministry finally notified the new rates in August 2009. But there was a catch. The “sale price” which was to form the basis for the ad valorem rates would be determined by the Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) on the basis of the average of sale prices reported by non-captive producers. 

To see why this made a mockery of the 10% rate, just look at the numbers for February 2010, the last month for which the IBM has put up the sale prices on its website. The all-India sale price average for lumps of 62-65% iron content was Rs 1,760 per tonne. The highest sale price for any state for this grade of ore was put at Rs 1,949 per tonne. 

Against this, the average international price prevailing in February for Indian ore of 63% iron content bound for Chinese ports was $128 per tonne, which is closer to Rs 6,000 per tonne. Even allowing for transportation costs, which can be significant, clearly there is a wide gap between the price at which the royalty rate is being applied and what the exporter is actually getting. 

Why do these details of iron ore extraction and sale matter? Because the enormous margins involved — in exports as well as domestic sales — mean that the scope for sleaze and the temptation for illegal mining are huge. 

And this is where the connection with Maoists lies. Not only has rapacious mining turned the tribal away from the state, it has reportedly provided a steady source of funding for the Maoists through extortion. In short, by promoting this variety of crony capitalism, the state has shot itself in the foot.

From Shankar Raghuraman's article in Times of India Read More