Cries from killing fields of Chhattisgarh are too loud to ignore now
The hinterlands of India are in crisis. Away from the glare of the national media, some of the most serious issues facing the country are becoming ever more pronounced due to misdirected action by the BJP government.
The reason I can safely arrive at this conclusion is due to the lessons drawn from the BJP-ruled states, where this deplorable nexus between the ruling party and a few elites at the cost of many has long become the norm.
The case in point is Chhattisgarh where the BJP has managed to cling to power with wafer thin electoral margins. The state is plagued by very serious and endemic issues such as drought, farmer suicides and agricultural distress, mass discontents on questions of national resources like land, water, forests and to top it all the overarching crisis resulting from the government’s complete inability to handle the Maoist insurgency.
The BJP government in the state of Chhattisgarh has become so compromised by serving only vested interests that it has lost all control over the situation. Thus it has now started resorting to various methods of completely distorting the administrative and constitutional structures. Moreover, this has begun affecting what was supposed to be the backbone of the country: central services such as the IAS and the IPS.
Chhattisgarh has been in the news recently for three reasons and they all are connected. They are:
a) Attacks on journalists and activists at the behest of the police and the government;
b) Maoist attack on March 30, which killed seven of our brave men in uniforms and left many more injured;
c) The ICIJ leaks and foreign investments by one Abhishek Singh, purported to be the son of Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh (address mentioned in the leaked #PanamaPapers documents is the same as filed by Raman Singh in one of his election affidavits.
On the first issue, the Chhattisgarh government and the police now stand exposed due to the latest exposé carried out by India Today, establishing a direct connection between vigilante groups and senior police authorities. It was these vigilante groups that had threatened and humiliated human rights activists and lawyers working for the welfare of local adivasis in the Bastar region.
Interestingly, when the attacks took place over a period of two months, the cops claimed these were independent groups acting on their own. Once the connection was firmly brought to light by the sting operation, one of the vigilante outfits and the one at the centre of all the distress against the activists and journalists, Samajik Ekta Manch, quickly and publically dissolved itself the very next day, that is, on April 15.
It was hastily done, probably as a measure of face-saving for its creators, the government and police in Chhattisgarh. But, in fact, its dissolution further establishes the close connection between the government/police and the vigilante group.
I personally find this very disturbing as it reflects very badly on some members of the Indian Police Service of which I was once a proud officer. To think that the senior officers from this service would use local zealots and miscreants to target human rights activists is extremely disconcerting.
Bureaucratic and law and order services, such as the IAS and the IPS, are the backbone of our country and were designed to function independently, in order to uphold our constitutional values. It’s the heights of irony that services that are supposed to maintain the constitutional and the administrative structures are themselves embroiled in attempts to subvert the Indian Constitution.
The social workers and activists who were attacked were persons of great repute, including some who in the past have worked for the now dissolved Planning Commission of India. Activists such as Bela Bhatia and Malini Subramaniam had highlighted certain incidents of sexual violence and fake encounters carried out by the forces in the state before they were attacked by the vigilante groups.
The common argument that is being peddled by the authorities is that the Maoists are on the back foot and thus the allegations regarding fake encounters, custodial torture and sexual harassment, among others, are being put forward by the Naxals themselves through the human rights activists.
This argument is flawed on two counts.
Firstly, if the police have any evidence of wrongdoing on part of any activist or an NGO, it can very well take action as per law and arrest them. But, they certainly cannot use vigilante groups to target them.
Secondly, as can be seen from the March 30 incident, the Maoists still retain the ability to strike randomly at the cost of lives of our brave men in uniforms. Thus, the theory being forwarded by the state government and the police, that the Maoists are on back foot, cannot be easily accepted in the face of such gruesome strikes wherein we lost seven men in one attack.
Let me also put forth something from my own experience. It would be good for the state government to remember that the Maoists are experts at asymmetrical warfare and thus can escalate and de-escalate the conflict to suit their ends. So a mere de-escalation in violence should not be seen as the Naxals admitting defeat.
The reason I point this out is because one of the most important factors in taking on the Maoists should be to remove any kind of support base that they might enjoy. In Chhattisgarh, the conflicts around land, forests and mining rights have been going on for quite some time, especially in tribal regions like Bastar.
If the BJP government in its effort to please a section of elites continues to take away the resources from the people without providing them adequate opportunities for the betterment of lives, its leaders might be able to generate lot more of foreign investments in Panama but are unlikely to win this battle against the Maoists.
If the government and the forces act in a just and constitutional manner, it is more likely to help them in winning these battles than would the curbing of freedom of expression by targeting outspoken journalists and selfless activists.
Congress party, during the UPA rule, had taken steps to resolve such conflicts through various progressive measures like the Forest Rights Act, MNREGA and Right to Food, Right to Education, etc. These steps were taken to alleviate rural distress and give the first rights of community resources to the people themselves.
Communities were made active participants in the decision-making processes through Schedule V and PESA Act, with gram sabhas being allowed to take the most important choices and thus letting the people feel connected to the national mainstream. Such steps were taken to inspire the confidence of the people in the democratic traditions of our great country.
Therefore, it would do good do for the Chhattisgarh government to start listening to the voices of its own people. At the same time it’s clearly an important time for introspection into their own functioning for the police and the officers of the Indian Police Services. How can we allow such officers, who use vigilante groups to promote their own perceived interests, to continue in their plum posts?
The killing fields of Chhattisgarh are crying out to all of us. The real Bharat needs to be saved before we can all say Bharat Mata ki jai.