India will be test-bed for emerging market countries fighting Maoist insurgencies

By Raghavendra Verma, in New Delhi

India is the latest example of a country struggling against a Maoist insurgency fuelled by rural inequality, showing how emerging market governments worldwide risk harbouring violent rebel groups while promoting economic development.

In Peru, the notorious Maoist guerrilla group ‘The Shining Path’ continue operations, funded by the illicit drug trade, after a major insurgency in the 1980s and 1990s failed to achieve its political ends. In Nepal, an armed insurgency was successful, ending with a peace accord in 2006, its Communist Party of Nepal (Unified-Maoist) (CPN-UM) joining the country’s parliament and briefly leading its government.

Other Maoist groups continue to operate in pockets worldwide, for instance in The Philippines, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. But it is maybe in India where the phenomena has most prominence today. The Indian government, for its part, has identified the Maoist insurgency as a leading domestic security concern and it is unclear how this insurgency will end.

India’s economic liberalisation has seen its urban classes to prosper but wealth is far from even across this most diverse country and its form of Maoism – called Naxalism – has been one result of unhappiness with this inequality. It has entrenched itself in the tribal and other poverty-rife areas and now poses a most serious challenge to the political, economic and social health of the nation. Though the ultra-leftist movement first surfaced in 1967 in a hamlet called Naxalbari (which gave it the name), it was short-lived and survived largely as an ideology in a handful of Indian states. During the last decade however it has spread under the wings of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) – a banned organisation – and its guerrillas have been consistently gaining ground in most of the 180 Naxal affected districts in central and east India.

Recently the Indian government launched a major offensive in the state of West Bengal and is now launching a much bigger operation in Chhattisgarh to flush out the rebels and regain control of Maoist controlled territory. With the help of the Indian Air Force, more than 100,000 central paramilitary forces from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Border Security Force (BSF), and some other special units have been mobilised as the local police have been incapable of tackling the militants head-on. Not only are these police units severely understaffed and undertrained but also hampered by some ambiguity within executive orders to suppress the insurgency made by local politicians wary of losing support in affected areas.

Maoists have spread their influence by taking advantage of government neglect of remote areas and the usual corruption and general apathy of local public administration. They have filled the resulting power vacuum, with populist initiatives such as peoples’ courts to settle local disputes, moving on to forceful redistribution of local wealth and then the total elimination of government infrastructure and machinery. The rebels have not only destroyed schools, health centres and other concrete structures but even dug up roads to keep police and administration at bay. After this scorched earth strategy, these groups have established their authority by smothering all dissent, creating an extortion network and controlling the daily life of the poor people. As per their new dictates, no villager is allowed to take up a government job and no child is allowed to study past fifth grade, to eliminate independent thought, claim their opponents.

Yet, one of the recently arrested ideologues of the Naxals belonged to a very affluent business family and had been educated in London. The Maoists have also been accused of taking full advantage of the liberal policies of the democratic system that they are determined to overthrow. They have urban sympathisers – including university students and professors – who help them in fighting through the criminal justice system, by flashing the news of police accesses in the media while remaining silent on their brutalities, and arranging for government aid for their supporters through NGO networks.

It is still not certain if the government and the administration have learnt the lesson that promoting inclusive growth is the key to sapping the strength of such rebellions. And it could be that such programmes can only now stand a chance after a very long and bloody struggle to clear the ground for government initiatives such as the “holistic approach” advocated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Photo: The communist monument in Naxalbari (West Bengal) to commemorate an uprising in late 1960s by farm workers against the landlords.
Photograph by RAGHAVENDRA VERMA
Date: October 2007