Institutional reforms can foster inclusion and decrease violence
Sixteen years after former Prime Minister (PM) Manmohan Singh declared Maoist insurgency to be India’s “single biggest internal security challenge”. Today, Naxalite violence is at its lowest level in decades. So, what led to the near-complete collapse of an active insurgency in 30% of districts just 10 years ago?
Some credit PM Singh’s “militarisation” of the counterinsurgency strategy, or the completion of new infrastructure projects in the rural areas of Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh for this. Others point to the brutal anti-maoist militia such as the Salwa Judum; while some claim people’s changing aspirations decreased support for the Maoists. Our research finds that institutional reforms accelerated the decline and suggests these reforms had a meaningful impact on the Maoists’ ability to launch attacks on security forces.
Our study focussed on violence in Chhattisgarh. Statistical analyses show that guaranteeing Scheduled
Tribes (STS) representation in gram panchayats played a prominent role in decreasing Maoist attacks on the security forces. We compared levels of insurgent violence in areas that instituted ST quotas in gram panchayats
against nearby areas without quotas.
The violence-reducing effects of these rules, initiated as part of an expansion of the Panchayati Raj in the 1990s, were large compared to violence in Chhattisgarh. By 2014, a decade after quotas were implemented, the average district with St-majority quotas had seen 89 fewer security force fatalities than it would have otherwise.
Quotas for ST representation in panchayats
which apply only in Fifth Schedule Areas, which include large swathes of the “Red Corridor”, were left out of the panchayat system in 1992. However, when added in the 1996 Panchayat (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, an additional requirement was put in place: Every sarpanch and half of non-sarpanch members in the Fifth Schedule Areas must be STS. The new rules were put into place in 2005. Since then, villages inside the scheduled areas have elections according to the new quotas.
ST quotas could have decreased violence in several ways. Other research has shown, for example, that St-majority panchayats have been more successful in administering the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme than their non-st counterparts. Although, more days of employment could, in theory, divert people from joining insurgent groups, a larger presence of members of STS in local councils could foster warmer feelings towards the government among tribal members.
The likeliest explanation is that quotas changed how the State gained tactical information about the Maoists. Quotas guaranteed that ST members would hold elected positions where they interact with State officials, especially the police. These relationships opened up a connection between ST communities and the security forces. The government may have used this connection to elicit information from civilians. The Naxalites felt threatened by this new information pathway. So, after the first panchayat elections, they started a campaign to assassinate sarpanchs for being “agents of the State.”
So, what lessons can we carry forward into the future? Quotas show that increasing inclusion and representation can affect a conflict. But, decreasing violence may not be the only effect of the quotas; the official bond between ST members of panchayats and security forces threatened the insurgents and encouraged rebel violence against sarpanches. Institutional reforms can foster inclusion and, in some situations, decrease violence. But, at the same time, these reforms are not a panacea for increasing perceptions of the government’s legitimacy. They may unintentionally increase the risk for people who participate in local politics in conflict settings.
Drew Stommes and Aidan Milliff are PHD candidates, department of political science, Yale University The views expressed are personal