MEN WHO WALK THE RED LINE
Five intrepid district collectors from Naxalite heartland live and work without the fear of assassination or abduction
{ “Frankly, I was so happy to have made it to the civil services that I did not worry much about what cadre I got.” }
The threat of abduction is a living reality. Assassination is a distinct possibility. Every time they step out of their offices or homes, guards or no guards, the IAS officers responsible for governance in the heart of Naxalite country know they could be the next Alex Paul Menon or R. Vineel Krishna.
Meet the young district collectors of the Naxal districts of Dantewada, Bijapur, Bastar, Malkangiri and Koraput spanning the ChhattisgarhOdisha border. Omprakash Chowdhary, Anbalagan P., Rajat Kumar, Balwant Singh and Sachin R. Jhadav might have come from different parts of the country but they have two things in common— they are all prime Naxal targets and yet they are consumed by a missionary zeal to bring change to parts of the country still stuck in the bullock- cart age.
Take Omprakash Chowdhary, 30, the collector of Dantewada. OP, as he is called, has found his survival tactic: Driving at 100- plus km per hour. “At that speed, Naxals will not be able to time a landmine to blow me up,” he says. The 2005- batch IAS officer volunteered for a posting here after serving seven years in different parts of Chhattisgarh. “I am here by choice,” he says. His mission: A 150- acre education hub in Dantewada town.
A last- minute decision to swap cars saved Rajat Kumar his life. The 30year- old collector of Bijapur, a newly formed district carved out of Dantewada in 2011, was travelling on April 20 from Bhopalpatnam to Bijapur with the local MLA Mahesh Gagda. They took the first car of the convoy instead of the third. Minutes after setting off, the third car got blown up by a landmine, killing its three occupants. “I would be lying if I said I am never scared working here… but having worked in this region for three years now, I guess my mind has adapted to the fear,” says the man who has survived four Naxal attacks until now.
KUMAR ON A VISIT TO PAMED, A NAXAL HOTBED ON THE CHHATTISGARH BORDER
One- third of Bijapur is a Naxal haven and bereft of Government presence, and it is this zone he wants to bring winds of change to.
Anbalagan P., 33, did not know a word of Hindi when he passed his civil services exam. As collector of Bastar, this 2004- batch IAS officer now does all his official work in that language. “Here, all government work is in Hindi. So I read files, make notings, dictate letters, do everything in Hindi. But you could call my Hindi ‘prasashanic ( administrative)’, since I learnt it from the files,” he says. In Bastar, files can go back 100 years. Anbalagan has launched a project scanning and digitising land records from 1925 onwards. This, he says, will help settle disputes over who is a domicile and