Rage and reason
NAXALITES, THE extreme leftist movement tracing their origin to a radical peasant uprising against landlords in West Bengal in 1967 (now called Maoist), today rule India’s best forests. Some 40 groups control a region that stretches from the IndoNepal border to coastal Andhra Pradesh—an area two-and-half times the size of Bangladesh. And they are spreading faster than forest fires: from a small village to 10 states in just 35 years. Since then, more people have been killed by Naxalites-related violence than in the 10-year-old militancy in Kashmir. Despite the massive police operations, they have continued to spread to new areas. And there is a reason.
By ensuring people’s access to forest and distributing forestlands for cultivation, Naxalites have established parallel governments. Willingly or hesitantly, the people too have begun to trust them instead of the government—more for livelihood than for Marx or Mao. The denser the forest, the more is the alienation—tribal people are refused entry into forests; they cannot cultivate lands they believe is theirs. It is simple. People want livelihood, government wants control over forests and Naxalites want “revolution” against this. “Naxalites have put their weapons at people’s service in face of such dilemma,” says K Balgopal, a civil rights activist in Hyderabad who recently wrote a book on the movement.
On one side is the elected government, which with its misplaced regulations has never addressed people’s needs. On the other,
NAXALITES PROFIT FROM PEOPLE’S ANGER AGAINST FOREST LAWS
is a band of armed people knocking on people’s doors to solve their problems instantly—at gun point. Caught between the warring groups, the people prefer the latter. “The parallel government is fast, accessible and gives people access to their livelihood sources,” admits a senior police official from Chhattisgarh who did not want to be named. For example, courts in the Naxalite-affected areas of Jharkhand have witnessed a drop in the number of cases—from 2,400 in 1996 to 1,600 in 1997.
Is there a way to reverse the trend of the spread of Naxalites? The experience of 46 villages in east Goodavari district and a stronghold of the People’s War Group (PWG) may have an answer. These villages managed to stop the Naxalites from entering their areas. Their weapon: a movement based on minor forest produces co-operatives. In 1998, when the Naxalites blasted the storehouse of the state’s Girijan Cooperative Society that buys non-timber forest products
(NTFPs) from the village cooperatives in Peddamallapuram village, the women came forward and spearheaded the anti-Naxalite movement. “Women are the worst sufferers of deforestation and all the curbs on access to forests as they collect these NTFPs,” says Bodeti Lakshmi, a resident of the village.
“Forest rights must be used as a weapon for tackling the problem,” says Ravi Rebbapragada of Samata, a Hyderabadbased NGO, who has been a victim of Naxalite threats. History has taught us that Naxalites wouldn’t have spread had successive governments learnt from their mistakes: in all the worst affected states, there were massive people’s movements for asserting their rights over forest and lands. Governments, instead of addressing the real issue, crushed these movements. As a result, when Naxalites stepped in, they faced little opposition from the people.
Even when governments reacted positively to such an uprising, their commitment never lasted beyond a few years. In the Fourth Five Year Plan, area specific development schemes like small farmer’s development agency, tribal development projects, forestry schemes were launched for the first time. But in the Ninth Plan, corruption and bureaucracy made such programmes ineffective. Forestry still remains a state monopoly. The Planning Commission in its observation of the Naxalites problem noted: “The forest departments in Naxalites-affected states do not seem to have any coherent policy.” It cites the example of Bastar district where 55 per cent area has been declared as a forest. This has led to the spread of Naxalites.