Governance Now, editorial, May 1-15
All that could go wrong has gone wrong in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games.
When Michael Fennell, president of the Commonwealth Games Federation, expressed his concerns about preparations for the Games during his visit to Delhi last October and declared his intention to set up a technical review committee to monitor progress, organising committee chief Suresh Kalmadi was livid. He picked up an ugly fight with Fennell and declared that the Delhi Games would be the “best ever”. He repeated that boast to prime minister Manmohan Singh recently. Kalmadi’s lies are being nailed. Whatever could go wrong has gone wrong. On the finance front, it has proved to be a white elephant. From the initial estimate of Rs 1,899 crore in 2003, the cost of the Games has been officially revised to Rs 10,000 crore. Independent experts think the cost is several times higher because the government is hiding facts. For example, a non-government organisation has found out using the RTI that the Delhi government diverted Rs 265 crore from the scheduled caste sub-plan in 2009-10 alone to the Games but finance minister A K Walia feigned ignorance saying that he would have to check the records.
Last winter, night shelters were demolished on Pusa Road in the name of beautification, leaving poor people to die in the cold. Beggars have been hounded out. Many parts of the city have been dug up and most shops in the main city centre, Connaught Place, remain closed for renovation. All this is being done to deck up the city for the visitors but at a great cost to the poor and the commuters. That is not all. A couple of weeks ago, six colleges of Delhi University asked their students to vacate hostels so that these could be renovated for housing sportspersons. Fifty community halls of the city have been reserved for the paramilitary personnel between August and October, which happens to be the peak marriage season too. All schools have been asked to declare holidays during the Games in October so that the students would get to watch the events.
As far as the sports venues are concerned, the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium which will host the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics events and the Talkatora stadium which will host boxing and swimming events are not ready yet. The practice venues for badminton, squash and table tennis have not had even their layout plans approved. Work is on at a furious pace in the Games village being readied for the visitors. So we hope you understand, Mr Kalmadi, why we worry if the Games will be our costliest embarrassment.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Turning the PDS around
Governance Now, May 1-15
Chhattisgarh govt did not require a Right to Food Act to ensure grains reached the needy. It just set its house in order.
Dr Alok Shukla is among those civil servants who received awards for excellence in public administration from the prime minister on April 21. As secretary, food and civil supplies department, Chhattisgarh, he, along with two of his colleagues, has been credited with turning the much-maligned PDS into a success story. So much so that a sample survey of four districts by the Right to Food Campaign in November 2009 showed the consumer satisfaction level at 98 percent! How did he do it? Edited excerpts from an interview with Prasanna Mohanty:
How did the change in the PDS happen?
After I became the secretary, in February 2008, the chief minister (Raman Singh) asked me to run the PDS well. How do you do it? You monitor the scheme. This involves four steps: computerisation of the department, transparency of operation so that all are able to get information, community monitoring and social audit, and strict action against deficiencies.
The first task began with computerisation of the department’s operation. Every step of the operation, from procurement of food grain to actual delivery to the consumer, was computerised.
Transparency was brought in by putting all information on the department’s website which anyone could easily access. In the next step, gram sabha and other panchayat bodies, municipal corporations and citizens were involved. A citizen’s monitoring technique was also used whereby anyone could register on the website by providing his or her mobile phone number and the number of the fair price shop he or she wanted to monitor. Every time a truck carrying PDS left the godown, these persons received SMS alerts with details like the amount of food grain it was carrying and the fair price shop for which it was meant. Those persons then kept an eye on the operation.
But all these would have been meaningless without strict action to deal with deficiencies. The department’s website provided for registration of complaints. A toll-free number was also provided for the purpose. Every complaint was processed and strong punishments were given to send a signal that the government meant business. We started working on the (monitoring) mechanism in June 2008 and rolled it out in November 2008. Now, people are getting right quality and right quantity through PDS, at right time and at right price.
How did you ensure right quality of PDS supply?
We requested the government of India to let us use our own rice, which is better in quality. It also saves transportation costs. We also adopted quality control measures and good storage practices.
What were the key elements of success?
Transparency and community participation.
Every step of the operation is computerised. The date of procurement is announced in advance, the location is specified. At the time of procurement, weight of the grain procured, name and address of the farmer who sold it and the money he is paid, all these are fed into the computer and a cheque is generated towards payment to the farmer at the spot.
Our website lists every fair price shop and details of allocations (quantity of rice, wheat, sugar, salt etc supplied in any particular month). The name and identity of every BPL card holder is also listed. All fair price shops have been provided with computers.
Anyone can check the details and register a complaint or call on the toll-free number if there is any discrepancy.
As for community participation, why try to control everything from Raipur? Let people at the ground monitor it. We carried out campaigns, through advertisements and other measures, and people responded.
What difficulties did you encounter?
The biggest advantage was the full political support that I got. As I said, the CM wanted PDS to work well. Whatever problem came up could be easily overcome because of this support.
The main problem was that of connectivity. We have 1,600 procurement centres, of which one-fourth are in far-flung villages. We hired ‘runners’. These are pen-drive-carrying youngsters with their own bikes. They were trained and then given fuel and an honorarium of Rs 2,500 a month to go to procurement centres for details and uploaded them where internet facility was available.
Power was another area of concern, to overcome which we hired generators to run the computers. The exercise also involved training and recruitment of additional staff. Nearly 10,000 people were trained to run the operation, which included giving cheques at the spot (at the time of procurement). This also called for developing the software. Finally, it required a business process re-engineering to
ensure better service to the people. But the political support from the highest quarter meant that these issues could be resolved easily.
Improve PDS, don’t make a Quixotic rush to cash transfer: Jean Drèze
Governance Now, May 1-15
Jean Drèze is one of those development economists who have gone way beyond classrooms and seminars and helped shape policies. He has worked with Amartya Sen as well as served as a member of the previous National Advisory Council. Drèze shared his views on food security with Prasanna Mohanty:
Are you in favour of direct cash transfer to overcome problems in the PDS?
I don’t think that the system is ready for a transition from food-based transfers to cash transfers. The most needy people are also the most excluded from the financial system. Also, food is more likely to be well used than cash. Food grain is something everyone needs and the PDS infrastructure is largely in place – better improve it than make a Quixotic rush to cash transfers.
Will direct cash transfer in any way harm agriculture production, affect small and marginal farmers or hit our ability to intervene at the time of crisis?
There is no reason why cash transfers would be harmful in this respect, provided that buffer stocks and price stabilisation operations continue. But the fact is that these operations tend to be tied to the PDS, and to that extent, if the PDS were to be replaced with cash transfers, there could be adverse impacts on, say, the procurement system. But this is not the main issue – the main issue is the continuing relevance of the PDS.
What measures are needed to achieve food security?
Food security in the broad sense of nutrition security requires a wide range of interventions, concerned not only with food entitlements but also other requirements of good nutrition such as clean water, health care, effective breastfeeding and so on.
In a country where half of all children are undernourished, there is no quick fix.
The proposed Food Security Bill cannot address all these issues, but at the very least, it should guarantee substantial food entitlements, going much beyond existing schemes and Supreme Court orders. The current draft is a non-starter in that respect.
Jean Drèze is one of those development economists who have gone way beyond classrooms and seminars and helped shape policies. He has worked with Amartya Sen as well as served as a member of the previous National Advisory Council. Drèze shared his views on food security with Prasanna Mohanty:
Are you in favour of direct cash transfer to overcome problems in the PDS?
I don’t think that the system is ready for a transition from food-based transfers to cash transfers. The most needy people are also the most excluded from the financial system. Also, food is more likely to be well used than cash. Food grain is something everyone needs and the PDS infrastructure is largely in place – better improve it than make a Quixotic rush to cash transfers.
Will direct cash transfer in any way harm agriculture production, affect small and marginal farmers or hit our ability to intervene at the time of crisis?
There is no reason why cash transfers would be harmful in this respect, provided that buffer stocks and price stabilisation operations continue. But the fact is that these operations tend to be tied to the PDS, and to that extent, if the PDS were to be replaced with cash transfers, there could be adverse impacts on, say, the procurement system. But this is not the main issue – the main issue is the continuing relevance of the PDS.
What measures are needed to achieve food security?
Food security in the broad sense of nutrition security requires a wide range of interventions, concerned not only with food entitlements but also other requirements of good nutrition such as clean water, health care, effective breastfeeding and so on.
In a country where half of all children are undernourished, there is no quick fix.
The proposed Food Security Bill cannot address all these issues, but at the very least, it should guarantee substantial food entitlements, going much beyond existing schemes and Supreme Court orders. The current draft is a non-starter in that respect.
But is India ready for cash transfer?
Governance Now, May 1-15
Conventional wisdom says that withdrawal of state from PDS is dangerous for food security.
Now that the idea of replacing the public distribution system (PDS) with direct cash transfers (DCT) – in which the beneficiaries get the subsidy amount directly in their bank accounts – is gaining ground with the Delhi government poised to adopt it shortly and Bihar asking the centre to follow suit, it is time to take a good look at it. Especially the way it may impact the agricultural production and the food security scenario.
It is often overlooked that PDS is linked to the support price mechanism (that is the Minimum Support Price) and the procurement operations, which are massive (52 million tonnes were procured last year). Together, these measures form a system that ensures that food grain prices remain stable throughout the country; food grains are easily available and evenly distributed across the country, as only a handful of states like Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra are food surplus and the rest are food shortage states and, finally, the farmers are protected from the market forces. As would be clear, dismantling of the PDS will mean that this system goes.
The consequences can be damaging. For example, food prices in food-shortage states may go up because there would be no procurement at MSP or distribution through the Food Corp of India (FCI) and the PDS to strike a balance. Higher price in these states would mean a lower amount of food grains the DCT (which would be uniform) would fetch. Money supply by way of DCT in food shortage states would also add its own bit to the inflation. Secondly, market prices would keep fluctuating in absence of a price stability mechanism and may or may not provide farmers a reasonable price for their produce – which is important to the farmers to keep producing excess food grains that they sell to buy other items of their daily needs and which is also important for the rest of us because if the farmers make rapid transition to cash crops, it may lead to shortage of food grains.
Depending entirely on the market forces can be tricky. Dr Alok Shukla, the man who turned the PDS around in Chhattisgarth (see interview), says: “Empirical evidence shows the market price is never higher than MSP, except for items meant for export like basmati rice.” Had that not been the case, the farmers would have been happily selling their produce in the open market. Given the fact that our food production has stagnated or even declined in recent years and that of the pulses and the oil seeds have remained low for decades, there is a cause for concern if market is given a free run.
In a crisis, like drought or food inflation, the situation may worsen. In the absence of the PDS, no matter how much buffer stock the government keeps or imports from abroad the ability to reach the poor would be compromised. So would the ability for market intervention and price stabilisation.
In fact, Dr Shukla says, to dismantle PDS would amount to “throwing the baby with the bathwater”. In 2002, Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen also argued on similar lines in his report on “long-term grain policy.” Advising against dismantling the system in place, he wrote: “End of open-ended procurement at this stage would deal a severe, possibly a crippling, blow to the farmers which may be followed by a blow to the consumers in about two years time. Despite the many sources of inefficiency which we have identified, particularly in the functioning of the FCI and the PDS, we are convinced that it is reform and not annulment of the existing system that should be on the agenda.”
When it comes to food for the poor and the food security of the country it may not be a good idea to dismantle a system that actually delivers food grains.
Conventional wisdom says that withdrawal of state from PDS is dangerous for food security.
Now that the idea of replacing the public distribution system (PDS) with direct cash transfers (DCT) – in which the beneficiaries get the subsidy amount directly in their bank accounts – is gaining ground with the Delhi government poised to adopt it shortly and Bihar asking the centre to follow suit, it is time to take a good look at it. Especially the way it may impact the agricultural production and the food security scenario.
It is often overlooked that PDS is linked to the support price mechanism (that is the Minimum Support Price) and the procurement operations, which are massive (52 million tonnes were procured last year). Together, these measures form a system that ensures that food grain prices remain stable throughout the country; food grains are easily available and evenly distributed across the country, as only a handful of states like Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra are food surplus and the rest are food shortage states and, finally, the farmers are protected from the market forces. As would be clear, dismantling of the PDS will mean that this system goes.
The consequences can be damaging. For example, food prices in food-shortage states may go up because there would be no procurement at MSP or distribution through the Food Corp of India (FCI) and the PDS to strike a balance. Higher price in these states would mean a lower amount of food grains the DCT (which would be uniform) would fetch. Money supply by way of DCT in food shortage states would also add its own bit to the inflation. Secondly, market prices would keep fluctuating in absence of a price stability mechanism and may or may not provide farmers a reasonable price for their produce – which is important to the farmers to keep producing excess food grains that they sell to buy other items of their daily needs and which is also important for the rest of us because if the farmers make rapid transition to cash crops, it may lead to shortage of food grains.
Depending entirely on the market forces can be tricky. Dr Alok Shukla, the man who turned the PDS around in Chhattisgarth (see interview), says: “Empirical evidence shows the market price is never higher than MSP, except for items meant for export like basmati rice.” Had that not been the case, the farmers would have been happily selling their produce in the open market. Given the fact that our food production has stagnated or even declined in recent years and that of the pulses and the oil seeds have remained low for decades, there is a cause for concern if market is given a free run.
In a crisis, like drought or food inflation, the situation may worsen. In the absence of the PDS, no matter how much buffer stock the government keeps or imports from abroad the ability to reach the poor would be compromised. So would the ability for market intervention and price stabilisation.
In fact, Dr Shukla says, to dismantle PDS would amount to “throwing the baby with the bathwater”. In 2002, Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen also argued on similar lines in his report on “long-term grain policy.” Advising against dismantling the system in place, he wrote: “End of open-ended procurement at this stage would deal a severe, possibly a crippling, blow to the farmers which may be followed by a blow to the consumers in about two years time. Despite the many sources of inefficiency which we have identified, particularly in the functioning of the FCI and the PDS, we are convinced that it is reform and not annulment of the existing system that should be on the agenda.”
When it comes to food for the poor and the food security of the country it may not be a good idea to dismantle a system that actually delivers food grains.
I need food, not Right to Food
Governancenow, May 1-15
When we have a public distribution system as leaky as ours, Right to Food Act is a cruel joke on the hungy poor if not preceded by PDS overhaul.
Assamese people are lucky. Now they have the right to health. On March 31, the state assembly passed a “historic” Assam Public Health Bill 2010 which seeks to guarantee the right to health and well-being to the citizens. State health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma explained that the statute sought to “bind” the state health and family welfare department “legally” to meet its obligations, which, apart from ensuring good health services, involved coordinating with other departments to ensure people got “nutritionally adequate food, adequate supply of safe drinking water, sanitation through appropriate and effective sewerage and drainage systems and access to basic housing facilities”.
One may wonder why a government needs a law to do what it should be doing anyway. Hasn’t there been a health and family welfare department, for example, to take care of the health needs? Or a department each for food, drinking water, housing and sanitation? Why, there is even a section in the constitution, called the Directive Principles of State Policies, which seeks to establish social, economic and political equity that is considered fundamental to governance, and talks of right to education, right to work, right to equal opportunity, right to healthy living conditions, free legal aid, local self-government etc.
The ground reality, however, is different and so the government is adopting a
rights-based approach and converting the Directive Principles into Fundamental Rights, which are enforceable in the court of law. That is why we have seen a plethora of rights-based laws recently – right to education, right to employment, right to forest, right to information and, now, right to food. But do we really need the judiciary to ensure what is essentially the job of the executive or can there be a better way of bringing accountability into the system of governance? Before we seek to answer that, let’s see how the system has worked so far.
Take the education sector. Referring to education, the Directive Principles say: “The state shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years.” That was in 1950. Some of the states woke up after the deadline had long passed and made laws guaranteeing “free and compulsory primary education.” Which is why several new laws came into being – Kerala Education Act of 1959, Punjab Primary Education Act of 1960, Gujarat Compulsory Primary Education Act of 1961, UP Basic Education Act of 1972 and Rajasthan Primary Education Act of 1964.
By 1999, 15 states and four union territories had such laws. They were: Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal among states and Chandigarh, Delhi, Puducherry and Andaman and Nicobar Islands among the UTs. Did these laws help? To an extent, yes, but not sufficiently. Dismayed at the bleak situation, the Supreme Court was forced to remind in 1992 (in the Unnikrishnan, JP vs Andhra Pradesh case) that “the citizens of this country have a fundamental right to education”. But nobody really bothered about it for the next 10 years, and then, in 2002, the central government amended constitution to provide for “free and compulsory education” to all children between the age of six and 14 years.
This was followed up with what was billed as the flagship scheme of the NDA regime, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). No effort was spared. A special education cess was imposed to collect sufficient funds. An assessment done by Pratham, a leading non-government agency working in the field of education, gave a thumbs-up to the scheme in its report released in January this year. The report said the number of kids brought into the education system has gone up substantially (in rural areas only four percent kids are out of schools), the number of schools and teachers too has improved. Attendance and quality of learning though continue to be worrisome.
Instead of improving on it, the UPA brought in a new law, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which again focuses on the very same target group – six- to 14-year-old kids and has come into effect from this April. This law spares no thought for the huge adult illiteracy in the country – 25.95 crore as per the 2001 Census. Not even a fresh headcount has been done in the past 10 years.
Many civil society activists are, however, all for this rights-based approach. Food right activist Biraj Patnaik says that is because it makes the rights “justiciable”, which means the citizen can approach a court of law to enforce this right, unlike in the case of a scheme, like SSA. Secondly, he says, a legal right provides for a “redressal mechanism” not available otherwise.
Having fought by the side of Magsaysay awardee Aruna Roy for minimum wages in Rajasthan that eventually grew into a movement for the Right to Information, Nikhil Dey concurs. He says such a law provides a “structure” that brings accountability and transparency to governance. It binds everyone, from a sarpanch to the BDO and the commissioner and it is not easy for these officials to then wriggle out of their responsibilities. One may not actually go to the court to enforce the law, but the mere fact that it is there is enough to get the desired result, he asserts. He cites the case of NREGA to drive home his point. RTI, of course, has proved to be a game changer.
Pause for a moment. The right to employment, or the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act became a necessity because a host of employment schemes – Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojna, Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, National Food For Work Programme etc. – had failed to produce the desired result. And the RTI Act came in because the government forgot to amend the colonial law, the Official Secrets Act of 1923, which the bureaucracy had used to deny even harmless information.
Just as a host of employment schemes existed before NREGA came into being, a host of food schemes exists at present – Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Mid-Day Meal, Targeted PDS, Antyodaya, Annapurna Anna Yojana and so on – which are being monitored by the apex court (it has passed a series of interim orders since 2001 in what is known as the PUCL vs Union of India case to ensure that people have access to food) but as recent starvation deaths in Orissa show, none of these came to the help of the hapless family that lost five members to hunger. The government is now busy framing a right-to-food law.
Then there is the right to forest land, called the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, which is in the process of being implemented. This law was brought in after decades of systematic undermining of the rights of the tribals living in forests by declaring forests ‘reserved’ without verifying human habitations. Thus, the tribals became ‘encroachers’ of their own homes. This is being sought to be corrected now. Had the governments been sensible in the past, there would have been no need for this law.
All these details reflect that it is the failure of the executive, rather than absence of a law or policy framework which is to be blamed for all that ails the system. And that is why many don’t attach much importance to this attempt at making laws for everything. Subhash Kashyap, former secretary-general of Lok Sabha and an expert on constitutional law, says it is essentially a question of “bad governance”, not of lack of laws or policies. “The government is bound to provide basic services like education, healthcare, employment and so on. The laws, like welfare schemes, are nothing if not implemented and this can be done only by improving the quality of governance.”
What he means will be clear if we take a re-look at the Assam situation. Consider how things will pan out following implementation of the right to health. Assuming that the health department works as desired, other departments handling food supply, drinking water, sanitation, housing are bound to fail – for the very same reason that the health department failed without a right to health law. So, what will happen next? The state will be making more rights-based laws: right to safe drinking water, right to sanitation, right to housing, right to power/energy (Nepal has a right-to-energy law), right to roads and so on. It is difficult to say where it will end and also, if these laws wouldn’t meet the fate of the welfare schemes that they are replacing.
What is the answer then? Dr Alok Shukla, deputy election commissioner and former secretary of the Chhattisgarh government, has an idea: The day the citizens are so aware and able to demand and claim their rights, law or no law, the government will perform. So folks, rise and claim what’s yours!n
prasanna@governancenow.com
When we have a public distribution system as leaky as ours, Right to Food Act is a cruel joke on the hungy poor if not preceded by PDS overhaul.
Assamese people are lucky. Now they have the right to health. On March 31, the state assembly passed a “historic” Assam Public Health Bill 2010 which seeks to guarantee the right to health and well-being to the citizens. State health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma explained that the statute sought to “bind” the state health and family welfare department “legally” to meet its obligations, which, apart from ensuring good health services, involved coordinating with other departments to ensure people got “nutritionally adequate food, adequate supply of safe drinking water, sanitation through appropriate and effective sewerage and drainage systems and access to basic housing facilities”.
One may wonder why a government needs a law to do what it should be doing anyway. Hasn’t there been a health and family welfare department, for example, to take care of the health needs? Or a department each for food, drinking water, housing and sanitation? Why, there is even a section in the constitution, called the Directive Principles of State Policies, which seeks to establish social, economic and political equity that is considered fundamental to governance, and talks of right to education, right to work, right to equal opportunity, right to healthy living conditions, free legal aid, local self-government etc.
The ground reality, however, is different and so the government is adopting a
rights-based approach and converting the Directive Principles into Fundamental Rights, which are enforceable in the court of law. That is why we have seen a plethora of rights-based laws recently – right to education, right to employment, right to forest, right to information and, now, right to food. But do we really need the judiciary to ensure what is essentially the job of the executive or can there be a better way of bringing accountability into the system of governance? Before we seek to answer that, let’s see how the system has worked so far.
Take the education sector. Referring to education, the Directive Principles say: “The state shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years.” That was in 1950. Some of the states woke up after the deadline had long passed and made laws guaranteeing “free and compulsory primary education.” Which is why several new laws came into being – Kerala Education Act of 1959, Punjab Primary Education Act of 1960, Gujarat Compulsory Primary Education Act of 1961, UP Basic Education Act of 1972 and Rajasthan Primary Education Act of 1964.
By 1999, 15 states and four union territories had such laws. They were: Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal among states and Chandigarh, Delhi, Puducherry and Andaman and Nicobar Islands among the UTs. Did these laws help? To an extent, yes, but not sufficiently. Dismayed at the bleak situation, the Supreme Court was forced to remind in 1992 (in the Unnikrishnan, JP vs Andhra Pradesh case) that “the citizens of this country have a fundamental right to education”. But nobody really bothered about it for the next 10 years, and then, in 2002, the central government amended constitution to provide for “free and compulsory education” to all children between the age of six and 14 years.
This was followed up with what was billed as the flagship scheme of the NDA regime, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). No effort was spared. A special education cess was imposed to collect sufficient funds. An assessment done by Pratham, a leading non-government agency working in the field of education, gave a thumbs-up to the scheme in its report released in January this year. The report said the number of kids brought into the education system has gone up substantially (in rural areas only four percent kids are out of schools), the number of schools and teachers too has improved. Attendance and quality of learning though continue to be worrisome.
Instead of improving on it, the UPA brought in a new law, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which again focuses on the very same target group – six- to 14-year-old kids and has come into effect from this April. This law spares no thought for the huge adult illiteracy in the country – 25.95 crore as per the 2001 Census. Not even a fresh headcount has been done in the past 10 years.
Many civil society activists are, however, all for this rights-based approach. Food right activist Biraj Patnaik says that is because it makes the rights “justiciable”, which means the citizen can approach a court of law to enforce this right, unlike in the case of a scheme, like SSA. Secondly, he says, a legal right provides for a “redressal mechanism” not available otherwise.
Having fought by the side of Magsaysay awardee Aruna Roy for minimum wages in Rajasthan that eventually grew into a movement for the Right to Information, Nikhil Dey concurs. He says such a law provides a “structure” that brings accountability and transparency to governance. It binds everyone, from a sarpanch to the BDO and the commissioner and it is not easy for these officials to then wriggle out of their responsibilities. One may not actually go to the court to enforce the law, but the mere fact that it is there is enough to get the desired result, he asserts. He cites the case of NREGA to drive home his point. RTI, of course, has proved to be a game changer.
Pause for a moment. The right to employment, or the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act became a necessity because a host of employment schemes – Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojna, Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, National Food For Work Programme etc. – had failed to produce the desired result. And the RTI Act came in because the government forgot to amend the colonial law, the Official Secrets Act of 1923, which the bureaucracy had used to deny even harmless information.
Just as a host of employment schemes existed before NREGA came into being, a host of food schemes exists at present – Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Mid-Day Meal, Targeted PDS, Antyodaya, Annapurna Anna Yojana and so on – which are being monitored by the apex court (it has passed a series of interim orders since 2001 in what is known as the PUCL vs Union of India case to ensure that people have access to food) but as recent starvation deaths in Orissa show, none of these came to the help of the hapless family that lost five members to hunger. The government is now busy framing a right-to-food law.
Then there is the right to forest land, called the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, which is in the process of being implemented. This law was brought in after decades of systematic undermining of the rights of the tribals living in forests by declaring forests ‘reserved’ without verifying human habitations. Thus, the tribals became ‘encroachers’ of their own homes. This is being sought to be corrected now. Had the governments been sensible in the past, there would have been no need for this law.
All these details reflect that it is the failure of the executive, rather than absence of a law or policy framework which is to be blamed for all that ails the system. And that is why many don’t attach much importance to this attempt at making laws for everything. Subhash Kashyap, former secretary-general of Lok Sabha and an expert on constitutional law, says it is essentially a question of “bad governance”, not of lack of laws or policies. “The government is bound to provide basic services like education, healthcare, employment and so on. The laws, like welfare schemes, are nothing if not implemented and this can be done only by improving the quality of governance.”
What he means will be clear if we take a re-look at the Assam situation. Consider how things will pan out following implementation of the right to health. Assuming that the health department works as desired, other departments handling food supply, drinking water, sanitation, housing are bound to fail – for the very same reason that the health department failed without a right to health law. So, what will happen next? The state will be making more rights-based laws: right to safe drinking water, right to sanitation, right to housing, right to power/energy (Nepal has a right-to-energy law), right to roads and so on. It is difficult to say where it will end and also, if these laws wouldn’t meet the fate of the welfare schemes that they are replacing.
What is the answer then? Dr Alok Shukla, deputy election commissioner and former secretary of the Chhattisgarh government, has an idea: The day the citizens are so aware and able to demand and claim their rights, law or no law, the government will perform. So folks, rise and claim what’s yours!n
prasanna@governancenow.com
Jharkhand: Hurtling from one crisis to another
governancenow.com, May 25
The next crisis is over the choice of the new chief minister
Jharkhand may have come out of one crisis with the BJP finally deciding to withdraw support to the Shibu Soren government and paving the way thereby for the Congress to step in and try to form an alternate government in coalition with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), but this may turn out to be a crisis of another kind—finding a suitable face to head the new government.
For one, the Congress has to make a tough choice of letting the JMM, which is the larger partner with 18 legislators to their 14, lead the government. That is primarily because the incumbent chief minister Shibu Soren is out of contention. As a member of parliament, he must get elected to the state assembly within six months of heading the government—a time frame that expires on June 30—and this seems out of question now. And there is a deep fissure within the JMM and the Congress to let his son Hemant Soren, a first time legislator, become the next chief minister as the senior Soren would like to. There are many senior leaders in the rank, including Hemlal Murmu, Teklal Mahato and Simon Marandi, but not a commonly acceptable face.
Should the Congress decide to lead the government, it is handicapped by the fact that it doesn’t have a tribal face. The only two tribal legislators in the rank are Sawna Lakra and Geeta Shree Oraon--both are first timers and without any administrative experience. Former deputy chief minister Stephen Marandi lost the last election from Dumka. Given the general sentiment in favour of a tribal heading the government in the state, the Congress will have problem in going for a non-tribal chief minister.
The other option that the Congress has is to opt for Babulal Marandi, former chief minister who now heads the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) and a key ally. But with only 11 party legislators, JVM (P) will be a junior partner and may not find it easy for either the JMM or the Congress to accept him as the chief minister.
Babulal Marandi has another problem. Having been a chief minister, he cannot play second fiddle in the coalition. That is why, as of now, he is keeping himself out of the government, taking a stand that he would support the alternate government from outside.
In fact, he has set his eyes on the next round of elections which he thinks would be held sooner than later. In the midst of the political crisis in the state, he was busy galvanizing his party workers and held a party convention in Ranchi over the last weekend. The massive turnout only emboldened him to give a clear message that they should prepare for a mid-term elections. Given the fractured mandate that the last assembly election threw up, he remains skeptical of the stability of any government in the state.
Meanwhile, Shibu Soren and his son Hemant are supposed to reach New Delhi to hold talks with the Congress leaders about formation of the next government. The fate of the state will be decided over the next week here in New Delhi before Soren goes back to prove his majority in the assembly on May 31. The success or failure of this would depend on the choice of the chief minister.
The next crisis is over the choice of the new chief minister
Jharkhand may have come out of one crisis with the BJP finally deciding to withdraw support to the Shibu Soren government and paving the way thereby for the Congress to step in and try to form an alternate government in coalition with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), but this may turn out to be a crisis of another kind—finding a suitable face to head the new government.
For one, the Congress has to make a tough choice of letting the JMM, which is the larger partner with 18 legislators to their 14, lead the government. That is primarily because the incumbent chief minister Shibu Soren is out of contention. As a member of parliament, he must get elected to the state assembly within six months of heading the government—a time frame that expires on June 30—and this seems out of question now. And there is a deep fissure within the JMM and the Congress to let his son Hemant Soren, a first time legislator, become the next chief minister as the senior Soren would like to. There are many senior leaders in the rank, including Hemlal Murmu, Teklal Mahato and Simon Marandi, but not a commonly acceptable face.
Should the Congress decide to lead the government, it is handicapped by the fact that it doesn’t have a tribal face. The only two tribal legislators in the rank are Sawna Lakra and Geeta Shree Oraon--both are first timers and without any administrative experience. Former deputy chief minister Stephen Marandi lost the last election from Dumka. Given the general sentiment in favour of a tribal heading the government in the state, the Congress will have problem in going for a non-tribal chief minister.
The other option that the Congress has is to opt for Babulal Marandi, former chief minister who now heads the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) and a key ally. But with only 11 party legislators, JVM (P) will be a junior partner and may not find it easy for either the JMM or the Congress to accept him as the chief minister.
Babulal Marandi has another problem. Having been a chief minister, he cannot play second fiddle in the coalition. That is why, as of now, he is keeping himself out of the government, taking a stand that he would support the alternate government from outside.
In fact, he has set his eyes on the next round of elections which he thinks would be held sooner than later. In the midst of the political crisis in the state, he was busy galvanizing his party workers and held a party convention in Ranchi over the last weekend. The massive turnout only emboldened him to give a clear message that they should prepare for a mid-term elections. Given the fractured mandate that the last assembly election threw up, he remains skeptical of the stability of any government in the state.
Meanwhile, Shibu Soren and his son Hemant are supposed to reach New Delhi to hold talks with the Congress leaders about formation of the next government. The fate of the state will be decided over the next week here in New Delhi before Soren goes back to prove his majority in the assembly on May 31. The success or failure of this would depend on the choice of the chief minister.
So many rights – and none saved their lives
governancenow.com, May 25
Five deaths in an Orissa family provide a case study of how welfare schemes achieve anything but
Three members of Jhintu Bariha’s family died one after the other between September 6 and 9, 2009 – his three-year-old son Sibaprasad, seven-month-old daughter Gundru and 35-year-old wife Bimla. They were ill and died without getting medical care as the nearest primary health centre is 23 km away from their village.
A few days later, on September 15, the local newspaper Dharitri broke the story of “three starvation deaths” in Chabripali hamlet of Khaprakhol block in Balangir district—B of the KBK, the starvation death-belt of Orissa. It created a minor ripple, not a sensation that brought the infamous KBK into the national consciousness in the mid-80s.
By that time, the district administration had reacted. Forty-two-year-old Jhintu Bariha and his seven-year-old son Ramprasad, both of whom were also ill at the time, were taken to the district hospital in Balangir, about 90 km from their home in Chabripali. Both were diagnosed as suffering from “clinical malaria”. Ramprasad was given a bottle of blood because he was anaemic. Both responded to the treatment and were sent back. A few days later Jhintu Bariha fell ill again and died. Official records say he died of tuberculosis. That was October 8.
Two months later, a team attached to the Supreme Court-appointed Commissioners on Right to Food, made its second visit to Chabripali to check on the family and found his mother, 70-year-old Minji Briha, lying on the mud floor of their little hut with high fever. Her 80-year-old husband Champe Bariha said she had been ill for a month. With the help of the district administration, the team moved her to a hospital. She was found to be anaemic and suffering from malaria. On the morning of December 17 she was found dead in the hospital.
Chief District Medical Officer Dr P C Sahu, who had attended to Minji Bariha, says the woman was found to be “under-nourished” and her anaemic condition was “profound”. “It was a case of chronic starvation,” he concludes. About Jhintu Bariha too, his verdict was “chronic starvation.” As for Jhintu Bariha’s two kids and wife who had died earlier, he said by the time the medical teams reached them it was too late. They were long dead. “What we learnt was that the kids (Sibaprasad and Gundru) were very thin.”
Dr Sahu points at the widespread poverty and poor medical facility in the district and explains the situation: “My view is that poverty leads to under-nourishment and then illness. If not treated in time, illness – anaemia, frequent bouts of fever, pneumonia, tuberculosis and also malaria – continues and leads to death.”
To buttress his point, Dr Sahu says the district hospital treated about 15,000-16,000 pregnant mothers (that is, 50 percent of all those who report at the hospital) for severe anaemic conditions every year – with haemoglobin counts between 6 to 8 gm per decilitre, as against 12 gm per decilitre for a healthy woman. And, about 1,400-1,500 malnourished children reported at health camps organised in the district every month. The condition would be worse in “cut off” areas, the areas with no links to the outside world.
But District Collector Shailendra Narayan Dey has a different take. He says: “They (Jhintu Bariha and members of his family) died of malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases. There was not a single case of starvation death.” A report stating this was sent to the state secretariat in Bhubaneswar and the matter was dismissed.
Come to think of it, the central government and the state government run a host of welfare schemes on which thousands of crore of rupees are spent every year and none saved Jhintu Bariha.
For one, under the targetted PDS, every BPL family in Orissa is entitled to 25 kg of rice at Rs 2 a kg, 2 kg of sugar at Rs 13.50 a kg and four litres of kerosene every month. Though Jhintu Bariha was landless, partially disabled and reduced to begging towards the end of his life, he was not covered under the scheme. Orissa has not updated its BPL list since 1997 in clear violation of the PDS Control Order 2001 which calls for annual revision.
His father Champe Bariha does have a BPL card and gets 25 kg of rice every month. A family of eight (Jhintu Bariha, his parents, younger brother, wife and three kids) survived on this.
Under the Antyodaya Anna Yojna, poorest of the poor are entitled to 25 kg of rice at Rs 2 a kg every month. Jhintu Bariha’s family was not covered under this scheme either.
Under the Annapurna Yojna, destitute family receives 10 kg of food grain free of cost. Again, the family wasn’t covered.
In addition to these central government schemes, the state government has two more food schemes. One is the Gratuitous Relief (GR) scheme under which the panchayat provides 12.5 kg of rice free to the family. The family got it after three members were dead.
The other one is a Distress Card which the panchayat issues to a family in distress and entails 25 kg of rice at Rs 2 a kg. One such card has been issued to Jhintu Bariah’s surviving younger brother Brushav. Though the entries in the card suggest 25 kg of rice were issued from September 2009, Brushav himself said he started availing the benefit from January 2010 – a month after five of the family had died of hunger.
There are more central government schemes. As per the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), every settlement should have an Anganwadi centre, especially in SC/ST dominated areas (Jhintu Bariha belonged to SC) to provide supplementary nutrition to children up to six years, pregnant women and malnourished children. An Anganwadi centre existed a kilometre away from Chapripali but the villagers did not get any benefit. Another centre was set up in Chabripali on September 15, a week after Jhintu Bariha’s wife and two kids were dead.
The Mid-Day Meal Scheme provides for cooked meal to every child going to the primary school run or assisted by the government. Chabripali has a primary school but Jhintu Bariha’s elder son Ramprasad was not a regular, either because of illness or because of migrating out with the family in search of work.
The National Maternity Benefit Scheme is meant to provide cash assistance of Rs 500 to expectant mothers. Jhintu Bariha’s wife Bimla never got it. Her last child Gundru was less than a year old when she died.
Then there is a National Family Benefit Scheme, which provides that a BPL family will get Rs 10,000 within four weeks of the breadwinner’s death. The BDO publicly announced to give this money after Jhintu Bariha’s wife died on September 9. But the money had not reached the family until late December because of “lack of funds”. By that time Jhuntu and his mother too had succumbed to starvation.
Jhintu Bariha’s parents were entitled for the National Old Age Pension Scheme too. His father, Champe Bariha, was getting Rs 200 a month under this scheme and this was the only other source of livelihood for the family, apart from the ration his BPL card brought.
His mother Minji did not get the pension. The administration sanctioned it in October, two months before she died and one month after three of the family had died. The state government has its own pension plan, named Madhubabu Pension Scheme. This was not given to the old couple.
There is an Indira Awas Yojana under which the poor are given loan to build a house that Jhintu Bariha’s family needed desperately. But the panchayat woke up in late February when a team of the state’s human rights commission was to visit Chabripali. A 2.5 ft brick structure stands near Jhintu Bariha’s hut at the moment, which the villagers said was built by the panchayat officials themselves and then abandoned.
Apart from the food, pension and housing schemes, the government also runs NREGS to provide work. The scheme was implemented in Balangir district since February 2006. But for next two years no work was taken up. Two months after Jhintu Bariha’s death, work started on a kuchcha road, which goes from nowhere to nowhere, near his hut and abandoned soon after because the wages were not paid for one-and-half months.
Had NREGS been a regular affair, Jhintu Bariha would probably have stayed back, instead of going to Andhra Pradesh every year to work at the brick kilns where he received that crippling electric shock in 2008 that left a part of his body paralysed and forced him to beg for food. Who knows, had he stayed the fate of his family would have probably been different.
[Post script: Jhintu Bariha’s father Champe Bariha has been put in an old-age home by the district administration. A voluntary organisation, Biswa Nidam, has adopted his son Ramprasad who now stays in an orphanage managed by it and studies in class I in Arabinda Integral School. His brother Brushav stays in Chabripali and survives by doing odd jobs.]
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
It's high time PC got a free hand in dealing with the Maoists
May 18, 2010, governancenow.com
Should the commander's hands be tied?
Is the home minister fighting the “biggest internal security threat” with a hand tied to his back? That is the question being raised once again after the latest Dantewada massacre, when the security forces urgently needed quick logistic support both in terms of medical aid for the victims and reinforcements to track down the Maoists.
The main opposition party, the BJP, has posed several uncomfortable questions which the government needs to answer for once and all. Speaking to reporters today, Arun Jaitley, leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said home minister P Chidambaram’s remarks that he had only a “limited mandate” made a telling commentary on the state of affairs. “In the battle against Maoists, the security apparatus should act with full strength. If the government thinks air surveillance is required, we will respect their decision,” he said. He also demanded that the prime minister should clarify the government’s anti-Maoist strategy.
Chidamabaram told NDTV Monday evening that he had sought a “larger mandate” from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) but he was given a “limited mandate”. Though he did not specify what his larger mandate was, by all indications he was referring to the air force support in the fight against the leftwing extremists. He said security forces and chief ministers of West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh “want air support”. He also made his intentions clear by saying that the CCS would be approached again “to revisit the mandate”.
It is clear that Chidambaram does not have the full mandate to fight the Maoists. Now, is that how the home minister is supposed to tackle what the prime minister has described as the “biggest internal security threat”? Is he supposed to look back at every crucial moment for guidance from a body not concerned with the nitty-gritty of the battle, even if it were to be the CCS? Shouldn’t the commander be given a free hand, given the nature of the threat?
What is wrong with using the military might against the Maoists? It has happened in the past. And given the fact that the Maoists are waging an “armed struggle” to “capture political power” why shouldn’t the state use its might? There can’t be anything worse than a muddled approach to the issue when the battle is raging.
Not only Congress party apparatchiks like Digvijay Singh and Mani Shankar Aiyar, even party president Sonia Gandhi has jumped in to add to the confusion. In her message to party cadres recently, she talked of the need to “address the root causes” and went on to add that “the rise of Naxalism is a reflection of the need for our development initiatives to reach the grassroots, especially in our backward tribal districts.”
It is precisely this kind of double-talk that Chidambaram said in the interview was “weakening” the fight against the Maoists. Hasn’t the central government always had a two-pronged approach to the left-wing extremism -- remember the time when it reared its head in the late 1960s -- one of which being “development”? Moreover, aren’t there a large number of civil society groups saying the same thing to dissuade the government from continuing with the security operations against the Maoists?
The latest massacre in Dantewada shows the irony of the situation. While the Maoists on a killing spree, many in the government and the Congress are merrily pontificating about the "root causes." But who is paying the price? Civilians caught in the conflict zone and Chidambaram and his men, who are fighting with one of their hands tied to their backs.
Should the commander's hands be tied?
Is the home minister fighting the “biggest internal security threat” with a hand tied to his back? That is the question being raised once again after the latest Dantewada massacre, when the security forces urgently needed quick logistic support both in terms of medical aid for the victims and reinforcements to track down the Maoists.
The main opposition party, the BJP, has posed several uncomfortable questions which the government needs to answer for once and all. Speaking to reporters today, Arun Jaitley, leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said home minister P Chidambaram’s remarks that he had only a “limited mandate” made a telling commentary on the state of affairs. “In the battle against Maoists, the security apparatus should act with full strength. If the government thinks air surveillance is required, we will respect their decision,” he said. He also demanded that the prime minister should clarify the government’s anti-Maoist strategy.
Chidamabaram told NDTV Monday evening that he had sought a “larger mandate” from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) but he was given a “limited mandate”. Though he did not specify what his larger mandate was, by all indications he was referring to the air force support in the fight against the leftwing extremists. He said security forces and chief ministers of West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh “want air support”. He also made his intentions clear by saying that the CCS would be approached again “to revisit the mandate”.
It is clear that Chidambaram does not have the full mandate to fight the Maoists. Now, is that how the home minister is supposed to tackle what the prime minister has described as the “biggest internal security threat”? Is he supposed to look back at every crucial moment for guidance from a body not concerned with the nitty-gritty of the battle, even if it were to be the CCS? Shouldn’t the commander be given a free hand, given the nature of the threat?
What is wrong with using the military might against the Maoists? It has happened in the past. And given the fact that the Maoists are waging an “armed struggle” to “capture political power” why shouldn’t the state use its might? There can’t be anything worse than a muddled approach to the issue when the battle is raging.
Not only Congress party apparatchiks like Digvijay Singh and Mani Shankar Aiyar, even party president Sonia Gandhi has jumped in to add to the confusion. In her message to party cadres recently, she talked of the need to “address the root causes” and went on to add that “the rise of Naxalism is a reflection of the need for our development initiatives to reach the grassroots, especially in our backward tribal districts.”
It is precisely this kind of double-talk that Chidambaram said in the interview was “weakening” the fight against the Maoists. Hasn’t the central government always had a two-pronged approach to the left-wing extremism -- remember the time when it reared its head in the late 1960s -- one of which being “development”? Moreover, aren’t there a large number of civil society groups saying the same thing to dissuade the government from continuing with the security operations against the Maoists?
The latest massacre in Dantewada shows the irony of the situation. While the Maoists on a killing spree, many in the government and the Congress are merrily pontificating about the "root causes." But who is paying the price? Civilians caught in the conflict zone and Chidambaram and his men, who are fighting with one of their hands tied to their backs.
For Maoists, even children are no more than a “shield”
May 18, 2010
Did the Dantewada victims represent the "ugly face of state" or something like that?
When Arundhati Roy met a child, acting as a messenger for Maoists, she wondered if he was the biggest security threat to the Indian state. But don't stretch that forced irony to any children sitting in a bus carrying special police officers (SPOs). No point in saying “Do these children represent the ugly face of a hegemonic State?”
An unspecified number of children, not to mention women, were killed in Dantewada on Monday in a landmine explosion triggered by the Maoists. But people who can argue on behalf of the rebels blame it on the SPOs, who shouldn't have used them as a shield.
“Maoists are very principled. They don't attack civilians. SPOs were using civilians as a shield in their fight against the Maoists,” said G N Saibaba, a DU assistant professor who has been campaigning to stop anti-Maoist security operation. His remarks came on the sidelines of a press briefing by B D Sharma, a former SC/ST commissioner who has been working in the tribal areas for close to half-a-century.
Asked to comment on Monday's massacre, Sharma said he would prefer to wait for details. “I don't know the details. Whenever they (Maoists) made mistakes, they apologised.”
Sharma is among the three mediators Maoist leader Kishanji has proposed whenever the talks with the government were to take place (the other two are Arundhati Roy and Kabir Suman).
Sharma urged both sides to work for restoring peace first.
“Both sides should agree on a ceasefire. Peace must be restored. Talks can follow. I can't understand why the government is evading talks for such a long time by saying that the Maoists should abjure violence first. Both sides should abjure violence before talks can take place. That is the practice followed everywhere in the world,” he said.
Sharma, a retired IAS officer, said the central government had abdicated its responsibility in saying that it was for the states to deal with the Maoists, be it in terms of development or the security operations. “It is the centre's responsibility to administer the scheduled (tribal) areas as per the Fifth Schedule of the constitution, something that it has not discharged in the past 60 years or more,” he said.
He, however, was critical of the talk of “development" in tribal areas. “Don't talk about development of tribal areas. Get off out back, we don't want any development,” Sharma said, insisting how all his life he had been asking the government to leave the tribals alone.
Did the Dantewada victims represent the "ugly face of state" or something like that?
When Arundhati Roy met a child, acting as a messenger for Maoists, she wondered if he was the biggest security threat to the Indian state. But don't stretch that forced irony to any children sitting in a bus carrying special police officers (SPOs). No point in saying “Do these children represent the ugly face of a hegemonic State?”
An unspecified number of children, not to mention women, were killed in Dantewada on Monday in a landmine explosion triggered by the Maoists. But people who can argue on behalf of the rebels blame it on the SPOs, who shouldn't have used them as a shield.
“Maoists are very principled. They don't attack civilians. SPOs were using civilians as a shield in their fight against the Maoists,” said G N Saibaba, a DU assistant professor who has been campaigning to stop anti-Maoist security operation. His remarks came on the sidelines of a press briefing by B D Sharma, a former SC/ST commissioner who has been working in the tribal areas for close to half-a-century.
Asked to comment on Monday's massacre, Sharma said he would prefer to wait for details. “I don't know the details. Whenever they (Maoists) made mistakes, they apologised.”
Sharma is among the three mediators Maoist leader Kishanji has proposed whenever the talks with the government were to take place (the other two are Arundhati Roy and Kabir Suman).
Sharma urged both sides to work for restoring peace first.
“Both sides should agree on a ceasefire. Peace must be restored. Talks can follow. I can't understand why the government is evading talks for such a long time by saying that the Maoists should abjure violence first. Both sides should abjure violence before talks can take place. That is the practice followed everywhere in the world,” he said.
Sharma, a retired IAS officer, said the central government had abdicated its responsibility in saying that it was for the states to deal with the Maoists, be it in terms of development or the security operations. “It is the centre's responsibility to administer the scheduled (tribal) areas as per the Fifth Schedule of the constitution, something that it has not discharged in the past 60 years or more,” he said.
He, however, was critical of the talk of “development" in tribal areas. “Don't talk about development of tribal areas. Get off out back, we don't want any development,” Sharma said, insisting how all his life he had been asking the government to leave the tribals alone.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Time for judicial reforms
Edit, Governance Now, April 16-30, 2010
Dinakaran episode exposes fundamental flaws in the self-appointing mechanism in the judiciary
The Supreme Court collegium has been under sharp focus for quite some time now, and for all the wrong reasons. The Dinakaran saga is the latest one. A couple of months ago, a retiring chief justice raised serious questions about its functioning, pointing out that there were basic flaws in the procedure and parameters it followed in appointing the higher judiciary. Its transfer policy has been questioned in the court through a PIL. A couple of months ago the central government sent back its recommendation to elevate three judges to the Supreme Court, again raising doubts about its selection process.
In the case of Justice P D Dinakaran, it was alleged that his antecedents were not checked before recommending his elevation to the supreme court. When newspapers went to town about how he had accumulated land disproportionate to his known income and, worse (he had allegedly grabbed public land in Thiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu which was found to be true in subsequent inquiries by the collector), the collegium refused to take back his name. Instead, it asked the central government to take a call. And months after an impeachment motion was admitted against him in the Rajya Sabha, the collegium asked him to go on leave. Dinakaran refused to do that, following which it has reportedly recommended that he be shifted as chief justice of the Sikkim high court, sparking protests there.
All these have led to questioning the very mechanism the apex court has adopted in matters of selection and transfer in higher judiciary. For one, the collegium system has no constitutional mandate. It was through three judgments, known as the Judges cases I, II and III, that this judicial self-selection process began. By defying its direction to go on leave and getting away with it, Dinakaran has revealed serious flaws in the way the system worked. If it can’t discipline a judge, what authority, moral or otherwise, does it wield in the fraternity?
Secondly, there is no transparency in its functioning. Why a judge is selected for elevation or rejected is never known. It has landed the collegium in so many controversies that the Law Commission took suo motu cognizance in 2008 and sent a report to the government asking it to seek a review of the judgements that led to the collegium system or passing a law to restore “primacy” of the chief justice of India and the executive power to appoint higher judiciary. The episode also reflects a lack of mechanism to punish judicial misconduct, the impeachment process having failed to do so in all these years. A piece of legislation to bring in judicial accountability is pending for some time. But more than that, the present state of affairs calls for a comprehensive judicial reform.
Dinakaran episode exposes fundamental flaws in the self-appointing mechanism in the judiciary
The Supreme Court collegium has been under sharp focus for quite some time now, and for all the wrong reasons. The Dinakaran saga is the latest one. A couple of months ago, a retiring chief justice raised serious questions about its functioning, pointing out that there were basic flaws in the procedure and parameters it followed in appointing the higher judiciary. Its transfer policy has been questioned in the court through a PIL. A couple of months ago the central government sent back its recommendation to elevate three judges to the Supreme Court, again raising doubts about its selection process.
In the case of Justice P D Dinakaran, it was alleged that his antecedents were not checked before recommending his elevation to the supreme court. When newspapers went to town about how he had accumulated land disproportionate to his known income and, worse (he had allegedly grabbed public land in Thiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu which was found to be true in subsequent inquiries by the collector), the collegium refused to take back his name. Instead, it asked the central government to take a call. And months after an impeachment motion was admitted against him in the Rajya Sabha, the collegium asked him to go on leave. Dinakaran refused to do that, following which it has reportedly recommended that he be shifted as chief justice of the Sikkim high court, sparking protests there.
All these have led to questioning the very mechanism the apex court has adopted in matters of selection and transfer in higher judiciary. For one, the collegium system has no constitutional mandate. It was through three judgments, known as the Judges cases I, II and III, that this judicial self-selection process began. By defying its direction to go on leave and getting away with it, Dinakaran has revealed serious flaws in the way the system worked. If it can’t discipline a judge, what authority, moral or otherwise, does it wield in the fraternity?
Secondly, there is no transparency in its functioning. Why a judge is selected for elevation or rejected is never known. It has landed the collegium in so many controversies that the Law Commission took suo motu cognizance in 2008 and sent a report to the government asking it to seek a review of the judgements that led to the collegium system or passing a law to restore “primacy” of the chief justice of India and the executive power to appoint higher judiciary. The episode also reflects a lack of mechanism to punish judicial misconduct, the impeachment process having failed to do so in all these years. A piece of legislation to bring in judicial accountability is pending for some time. But more than that, the present state of affairs calls for a comprehensive judicial reform.
Lessons from Dantewada
old editorials
Edit, Governance Now, April 16-30
Unless there is clarity on the objective and the way to go about it, anti-Maoist operation will remain a losing battle
When things don’t turn out as planned, what do you do? Obfuscate. That is what our security agencies did after the massacre of 76 CRPF jawans in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada. First, they claimed the Maoists rained bullets from hilltops
after the CRPF contingent was trapped and blasted in a narrow valley. When a TV channel beamed visuals of the massacre site and it turned out to be a plain, they said the insurgents fired from treetops. Similarly, they said at first that the CRPF had rushed to confront the insurgents without informing the local police.
Later, they changed it to suggest that it was a planned exercise and that the local police was very much part of that planning. All this, however, is not to suggest that the security agencies alone are to be blamed for the tragedy. It is merely a symptom of a larger malaise—a systemic failure.
The other day, Ajai Sahni of the Institute for Conflict Management said when the state does not have a strategy, it goes in for operations. The Dantewada massacre reflects that syndrome. Both the central and the state governments have been fighting the Maoists for years but there is no comprehensive plan, even when it relates to the short point of engaging and neutralising the insurgents. As any layman will point out, any engagement of this nature will call for building necessary capacity first – capacity in terms of understanding the mind of the
insurgents, developing sufficient intelligence about their activities and movement, knowing the territory in which they operate and raising a force that can match the guerrilla tactics and jungle warfare techniques they employ. As the Dantewada incident establishes, not one element was in place. Forget the operational details like the Standard Operations Procedure.
Take a close look. The CRPF contingent rushed in on the basis of a tip-off, not on the basis of intelligence inputs which would have meant the insurgents’ exact location, their numbers, the territory where they had holed up and the nature of weapons and explosives they were carrying etc. That these jawans were not trained in jungle warfare and knew little about the guerrilla tactics is also evident. Accounts of survivors suggest that the injured bled for eight hours before they could get medical help and that the villagers ferried many of the dead and the injured to the nearest police post 5 km away in their own vehicles. This would make it clear that there was absolutely no planning. In short, the CRPF contingent was miserably ill-prepared for the eventuality.
Look at the bigger picture. There is utter confusion. At the political level, some chief ministers, like Nitish Kumar and Shibu Soren, wouldn’t even attend home minister Chidambaram’s meet to work out a coordinated strategy, let alone launch an actual operation in their territories. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee tells Chidambaram to mind his language for saying that the buck stops at the CM’s table. Mamata Banerjee doesn’t know which side she is on.
At the civil society level, an important chunk of academics, intellectuals, writers and social activists doesn’t tire of screaming “genocide”, holding protests and rallies to condemn the anti-Maoist operation day in and day out, not even when the CRPF contingent was being butchered in Dantewada. All this cacophony eventually leads to the same old dilemmas; about who is a Maoist and whether his cause is right. Also, since the “root cause” of insurgency is lack of development, should development activities be carried out in tandem with the security operation? Or before the operation? Or after? It’s all as complicated as a 40-year-old unattended to problem will be. Unless there is clarity and consensus on the objective and approach at all levels – government, political parties and civil society— the anti-Maoist operation will remain a losing battle. The 76 CRPF jawans paid the price of that like hundreds before them.
Edit, Governance Now, April 16-30
Unless there is clarity on the objective and the way to go about it, anti-Maoist operation will remain a losing battle
When things don’t turn out as planned, what do you do? Obfuscate. That is what our security agencies did after the massacre of 76 CRPF jawans in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada. First, they claimed the Maoists rained bullets from hilltops
after the CRPF contingent was trapped and blasted in a narrow valley. When a TV channel beamed visuals of the massacre site and it turned out to be a plain, they said the insurgents fired from treetops. Similarly, they said at first that the CRPF had rushed to confront the insurgents without informing the local police.
Later, they changed it to suggest that it was a planned exercise and that the local police was very much part of that planning. All this, however, is not to suggest that the security agencies alone are to be blamed for the tragedy. It is merely a symptom of a larger malaise—a systemic failure.
The other day, Ajai Sahni of the Institute for Conflict Management said when the state does not have a strategy, it goes in for operations. The Dantewada massacre reflects that syndrome. Both the central and the state governments have been fighting the Maoists for years but there is no comprehensive plan, even when it relates to the short point of engaging and neutralising the insurgents. As any layman will point out, any engagement of this nature will call for building necessary capacity first – capacity in terms of understanding the mind of the
insurgents, developing sufficient intelligence about their activities and movement, knowing the territory in which they operate and raising a force that can match the guerrilla tactics and jungle warfare techniques they employ. As the Dantewada incident establishes, not one element was in place. Forget the operational details like the Standard Operations Procedure.
Take a close look. The CRPF contingent rushed in on the basis of a tip-off, not on the basis of intelligence inputs which would have meant the insurgents’ exact location, their numbers, the territory where they had holed up and the nature of weapons and explosives they were carrying etc. That these jawans were not trained in jungle warfare and knew little about the guerrilla tactics is also evident. Accounts of survivors suggest that the injured bled for eight hours before they could get medical help and that the villagers ferried many of the dead and the injured to the nearest police post 5 km away in their own vehicles. This would make it clear that there was absolutely no planning. In short, the CRPF contingent was miserably ill-prepared for the eventuality.
Look at the bigger picture. There is utter confusion. At the political level, some chief ministers, like Nitish Kumar and Shibu Soren, wouldn’t even attend home minister Chidambaram’s meet to work out a coordinated strategy, let alone launch an actual operation in their territories. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee tells Chidambaram to mind his language for saying that the buck stops at the CM’s table. Mamata Banerjee doesn’t know which side she is on.
At the civil society level, an important chunk of academics, intellectuals, writers and social activists doesn’t tire of screaming “genocide”, holding protests and rallies to condemn the anti-Maoist operation day in and day out, not even when the CRPF contingent was being butchered in Dantewada. All this cacophony eventually leads to the same old dilemmas; about who is a Maoist and whether his cause is right. Also, since the “root cause” of insurgency is lack of development, should development activities be carried out in tandem with the security operation? Or before the operation? Or after? It’s all as complicated as a 40-year-old unattended to problem will be. Unless there is clarity and consensus on the objective and approach at all levels – government, political parties and civil society— the anti-Maoist operation will remain a losing battle. The 76 CRPF jawans paid the price of that like hundreds before them.
So, what’s new comrades?
Edit, Governance Now, March 16-31, 2010
Maoists also happen to have an “alternative development” that looks suspiciously like the mainstream one -- except for the People’s Militia
The Maoists now claim to have developed an “alternative development model”. If you remember, while dubbing the Maoists as the biggest internal security threat since 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also been taunting the rebels and their civil society sympathisers by saying that they didn’t have an alternative vision or development plan. More than four years later, these sympathisers have come out with their alternative model and circulated it at a press conference in New Delhi on March 5.
The note, titled “What the State Wants to Destroy is the Alternate Development Model”, is unsigned but carries names of 38 ideologues and intellectuals. Most of them are unknown and hail from Sangrur, Patiala, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Taran Taran, Sirsa and Bhatinda. One or two are from DU sand JNU. The alternative model they talk of has been developed in the Dandakaranya, the forest spreading through Chhattisgarh’s Bastar into border districts of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. This is where the rebels run their Janatana Sarkars.
This is how the model is prefaced: “It will give us a glimpse of what the Maoists hold as a vision for the progress and development of our country—development which is indigenously and self-reliantly built, one which is people-oriented and is constructed in the course of the people’s democratic participation, and the one which cares for this land and its resources. ….such development will free us from the stranglehold of imperialist capital and its dictates….a course of action which can only be executed by the truly patriotic.”
What are the key points of this model? The note says lakhs of acres of land has been distributed among the peasants; women have been given rights over land; developed agriculture from the primitive form of shifting cultivation to settled farming; introduced a wide range of vegetables like carrots, radish, brinjal, bitter gourd, okra, tomato etc; planted orchards of bananas, mangoes, guavas etc; have built dams, ponds, water channels for breeding fish and for irrigation; dug wells for safe drinking water and set up rice mills.
Other elements include, running schools and hospitals, publishing books and magazines in Gondi language, providing remunerative prices for Tendu leaves, bamboo, timber and other forest produce; establishing People’s Courts to settle disputes; stopping sexual harassment and rape; and building up People’s Militia for defence in almost every village.
But hey, what the heck, every NGO worth its name has been doing all these! What is new in this list? Or innovative? Or alternative?
Besides, check out with the ministries of rural development, social welfare, tribal welfare, panchayati raj or agriculture, all these ministries run these schemes! Yes, their implementation sucks and corruption rules, but the point is, the model exists.
The only thing new with the Maoists’ alternative model then is the People’s Militia and that raises a simple question: In these model villages where everything is run for the people, by the people and of the people (there you go again, isn’t that what the rest of us call democracy?), who is the People’s Militia protecting from whom?
And how many villages have been blessed by this alternative model given that the Maoists control 40,000 square kilometres as Union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told a parliamentary panel last September? The Maoists’ note does not tell us that. And since none can enter the area under Maoist influence without their express clearance and escort, we have only their word for proof. Too bad if you can’t believe them, your problem.
At the said press meet Arundhati Roy openly admitted: “Yes, I am a Maoist sympathiser.” She also said the battle between the government and the Maoists is a clash of two “imaginations” and wondered how talks would help because they had no meeting ground. Is this “alternative development model” a third “imagination”?
Maoists also happen to have an “alternative development” that looks suspiciously like the mainstream one -- except for the People’s Militia
The Maoists now claim to have developed an “alternative development model”. If you remember, while dubbing the Maoists as the biggest internal security threat since 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also been taunting the rebels and their civil society sympathisers by saying that they didn’t have an alternative vision or development plan. More than four years later, these sympathisers have come out with their alternative model and circulated it at a press conference in New Delhi on March 5.
The note, titled “What the State Wants to Destroy is the Alternate Development Model”, is unsigned but carries names of 38 ideologues and intellectuals. Most of them are unknown and hail from Sangrur, Patiala, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Taran Taran, Sirsa and Bhatinda. One or two are from DU sand JNU. The alternative model they talk of has been developed in the Dandakaranya, the forest spreading through Chhattisgarh’s Bastar into border districts of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. This is where the rebels run their Janatana Sarkars.
This is how the model is prefaced: “It will give us a glimpse of what the Maoists hold as a vision for the progress and development of our country—development which is indigenously and self-reliantly built, one which is people-oriented and is constructed in the course of the people’s democratic participation, and the one which cares for this land and its resources. ….such development will free us from the stranglehold of imperialist capital and its dictates….a course of action which can only be executed by the truly patriotic.”
What are the key points of this model? The note says lakhs of acres of land has been distributed among the peasants; women have been given rights over land; developed agriculture from the primitive form of shifting cultivation to settled farming; introduced a wide range of vegetables like carrots, radish, brinjal, bitter gourd, okra, tomato etc; planted orchards of bananas, mangoes, guavas etc; have built dams, ponds, water channels for breeding fish and for irrigation; dug wells for safe drinking water and set up rice mills.
Other elements include, running schools and hospitals, publishing books and magazines in Gondi language, providing remunerative prices for Tendu leaves, bamboo, timber and other forest produce; establishing People’s Courts to settle disputes; stopping sexual harassment and rape; and building up People’s Militia for defence in almost every village.
But hey, what the heck, every NGO worth its name has been doing all these! What is new in this list? Or innovative? Or alternative?
Besides, check out with the ministries of rural development, social welfare, tribal welfare, panchayati raj or agriculture, all these ministries run these schemes! Yes, their implementation sucks and corruption rules, but the point is, the model exists.
The only thing new with the Maoists’ alternative model then is the People’s Militia and that raises a simple question: In these model villages where everything is run for the people, by the people and of the people (there you go again, isn’t that what the rest of us call democracy?), who is the People’s Militia protecting from whom?
And how many villages have been blessed by this alternative model given that the Maoists control 40,000 square kilometres as Union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told a parliamentary panel last September? The Maoists’ note does not tell us that. And since none can enter the area under Maoist influence without their express clearance and escort, we have only their word for proof. Too bad if you can’t believe them, your problem.
At the said press meet Arundhati Roy openly admitted: “Yes, I am a Maoist sympathiser.” She also said the battle between the government and the Maoists is a clash of two “imaginations” and wondered how talks would help because they had no meeting ground. Is this “alternative development model” a third “imagination”?
How not to fight the Maoists
Edit, Governance Now, Feb 28, 2010
In the fight against the red terror, some of the chief ministers are not on the same page as Union home minister P Chidambaram. This can seriously damage the chances of success
In our previous issue we dealt in some detail how the centre and the naxal-affected states have completely ignored a key aspect in the fight against the leftwing extremists: choking the finances of the rebels.
It is not a small matter considering that they mobilise thousands of crore of rupees every year (the Intelligence Bureau’s latest report puts it at
Rs 1,600-2,000 crore), all by way of extortions from industrialists, contractors and traders, even the government servants.
We also pointed out that unless the source of this money flow is checked, it would be very difficult to defeat the rebels.
The same is true of the arms and ammunitions too. The Intelligence Bureau reports show that nearly 90 percent of the arms and ammunitions with the rebels have either been looted from the police armoury or from the police party after an ambush. But what are the state governments doing to stop that? We have the sad spectacle of a police camp (Eastern Frontier Rifles) being run over in West Midnapore district of West Bengal recently by the rebels who shot dead or burnt alive 24 jawans. It is not clear how many of their weapons were looted but it is clear from the details available that these jawans were sitting ducks, untrained and grossly underprepared for engagement with the rebels. Newspaper reports since then have pointed out many more such camps in the state which are equally vulnerable.
The centre can help with its forces, as it is doing right now, but there are obvious limitations. The main battle has to be fought by the local police. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the worst naxal hit states have the lowest police-to-people ratio (half or less than the national average of 120 policemen per 100,000 population). Only Chhattisgarh, which also has a low police-to-people ratio, has taken pains to build up a fighting force by way of training and motivation.
Orissa is giving an impression of waking up to the challenge but states like Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal are still in deep slumber. Andhra Pradesh has shown the way by raising an effective force, the Greyhound commandos, to beat back the rebels, but these states are yet to follow that example.
Worse, Bihar and Jharkhand don’t even seem interested. When Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram went to Kolkata recently to work out a joint strategy with Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Orissa, the chief ministers of the first two states didn’t bother to attend it. He has now called for another round of discussion in New Delhi and we will have to wait and see how these chief ministers respond. The good thing is Chidambaram is making a concerted effort to fight the naxal menace. Under his leadership, the home ministry recognises and is fighting the big threat that the leftwing rebels pose to national security, and not treating it as a mere local law and order issue as his predecessor preferred to declare.
It is important that the chief ministers of Bihar and Jharkhand are on the same page as Chidambaram as the naxals are known to cross over to another state when the going gets tough in a particular state and hence the states must coordinate their operations. Bihar may be reluctant as elections are round the corner (so could be the case with West Bengal where elections are due in 2011) and wouldn’t like bloodbath to queer the pitch but it is precisely this kind of prevarications and lack of clarity which have helped the rebels to spread their terror to 223 districts of 20 states.
The other worrisome aspect in the fight against the red terror is the lack of a firm hostage policy. True, we don’t have a national policy to deal with hostage situation, even after the brouhaha following the Kandahar plane hijack episode. But that is no reason why we can’t have one now. The way the West Bengal government and then the Jharkhand government bent backwards to secure the release of a cop and a BDO, respectively, would only encourage the naxals to repeat their action. That should be another area for Chidambaram to focus on: to work out a firm hostage policy.
In the fight against the red terror, some of the chief ministers are not on the same page as Union home minister P Chidambaram. This can seriously damage the chances of success
In our previous issue we dealt in some detail how the centre and the naxal-affected states have completely ignored a key aspect in the fight against the leftwing extremists: choking the finances of the rebels.
It is not a small matter considering that they mobilise thousands of crore of rupees every year (the Intelligence Bureau’s latest report puts it at
Rs 1,600-2,000 crore), all by way of extortions from industrialists, contractors and traders, even the government servants.
We also pointed out that unless the source of this money flow is checked, it would be very difficult to defeat the rebels.
The same is true of the arms and ammunitions too. The Intelligence Bureau reports show that nearly 90 percent of the arms and ammunitions with the rebels have either been looted from the police armoury or from the police party after an ambush. But what are the state governments doing to stop that? We have the sad spectacle of a police camp (Eastern Frontier Rifles) being run over in West Midnapore district of West Bengal recently by the rebels who shot dead or burnt alive 24 jawans. It is not clear how many of their weapons were looted but it is clear from the details available that these jawans were sitting ducks, untrained and grossly underprepared for engagement with the rebels. Newspaper reports since then have pointed out many more such camps in the state which are equally vulnerable.
The centre can help with its forces, as it is doing right now, but there are obvious limitations. The main battle has to be fought by the local police. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the worst naxal hit states have the lowest police-to-people ratio (half or less than the national average of 120 policemen per 100,000 population). Only Chhattisgarh, which also has a low police-to-people ratio, has taken pains to build up a fighting force by way of training and motivation.
Orissa is giving an impression of waking up to the challenge but states like Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal are still in deep slumber. Andhra Pradesh has shown the way by raising an effective force, the Greyhound commandos, to beat back the rebels, but these states are yet to follow that example.
Worse, Bihar and Jharkhand don’t even seem interested. When Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram went to Kolkata recently to work out a joint strategy with Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Orissa, the chief ministers of the first two states didn’t bother to attend it. He has now called for another round of discussion in New Delhi and we will have to wait and see how these chief ministers respond. The good thing is Chidambaram is making a concerted effort to fight the naxal menace. Under his leadership, the home ministry recognises and is fighting the big threat that the leftwing rebels pose to national security, and not treating it as a mere local law and order issue as his predecessor preferred to declare.
It is important that the chief ministers of Bihar and Jharkhand are on the same page as Chidambaram as the naxals are known to cross over to another state when the going gets tough in a particular state and hence the states must coordinate their operations. Bihar may be reluctant as elections are round the corner (so could be the case with West Bengal where elections are due in 2011) and wouldn’t like bloodbath to queer the pitch but it is precisely this kind of prevarications and lack of clarity which have helped the rebels to spread their terror to 223 districts of 20 states.
The other worrisome aspect in the fight against the red terror is the lack of a firm hostage policy. True, we don’t have a national policy to deal with hostage situation, even after the brouhaha following the Kandahar plane hijack episode. But that is no reason why we can’t have one now. The way the West Bengal government and then the Jharkhand government bent backwards to secure the release of a cop and a BDO, respectively, would only encourage the naxals to repeat their action. That should be another area for Chidambaram to focus on: to work out a firm hostage policy.
Where is public accountability of our intelligence agencies?
Editorial, Governance Now, May 1-15
The vice president has cogently argued in favour of a Standing Committee of Parliament on Intelligence to check potential abuse of power while ensuring national security
Intercepting communication is intrinsic to the functioning of any intelligence agency tasked with the responsibility of ensuring national security and public order, and so is the possibility of misuse of this power as the telephone tapping controversy shows. This is not the first and will surely not be the last incident of its kind but the most reprehensible aspect of this episode is that the way the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO) went about the task – thanks to the technical advances – it renders useless all checks and balances. As the Outlook report says, with an off-the-air GSM/CDMA monitoring system, you don’t need a service provider any longer to facilitate interception legally or otherwise. You just “grab” the signals from the air in a radius of 2 km and nobody, save for those snooping around with this device in a car, knows a thing! Nothing then matters – whether you have an antiquated Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 or a Information Technology Act of 2000 or the elaborate set of conditions laid down by the Supreme Court in 1997 (PUCL vs Union of India case) before privacy of an individual can be ignored for the larger goal of ensuring national security and public order. A new problem calls for a new solution – a radical one at that given the fact that our intelligence agencies are, for all practical purposes, accountable to none.
But first, what is NTRO and what is its mandate? Why has it been snooping around political tattle of Sharad Pawar, Prakash Karat, Digvijay Singh and Nitish Kumar that can hardly pose a threat to national security or public order. Known earlier as National Technical Facilities Organisation, this body came into being in 2004 after the Kargil mishap to provide technical intelligence to prevent another Kargil (cross-border infiltration) and terror or insurgency strikes. It functions under the National Security Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office. This agency has now earned what can be considered a “dubious” distinction in India of being the first intelligence agency to be subjected to scrutiny by the Comptroller General of India (CAG) and has been accused of nepotism and corruption. That it failed in its main task, that is to prevent 26/11 Mumbai terror attack or a series of terror attacks in Bengalore, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Pune etc is not entirely surprising.
It is precisely this kind of situation that Vice President Hamid Ansari alluded to when he called for public accountability of our intelligence agencies in his R N Kao Memorial Lecture in New Delhi in January this year. He wondered aloud: “How shall a democracy ensure its intelligence apparatus becomes neither a vehicle for conspiracy nor a suppressor of the traditional liberties of democratic self-government?” He was clear that “the traditional answer and the prevailing practice – of oversight by the concerned minister and prime minister and general accountability of the latter to parliament – was accepted as adequate in an earlier period but is now considered amorphous and does not meet the requirements of good governance in an open society.” The Kargil Review Committee had, as he pointed out, exposed the fallacy of this traditional answer by pointing out flaws and the absence of checks and balances and governmental correctives.
The vice president argued for a Standing Committee of Parliament on Intelligence, on lines of the committees in the USA, the UK and many other countries like Canda, Australia, Germany etc to ensure nation’s security and check potential abuse.
While stating that operational secrecy was essential for intelligence agencies, the vice president, nevertheless, insisted that the legislature was “entitled to insist on financial and performance accountability” because of the fact that it is the organ of the state that allocated funds to these agencies.
It is time for our public representatives to take the vice president’s views seriously and think of bringing public accountability to our intelligence agencies. This will not just ensure that the money we spend on intelligence is actually spent on intelligence but also raise the general efficiency of our intelligence gathering agencies.
The vice president has cogently argued in favour of a Standing Committee of Parliament on Intelligence to check potential abuse of power while ensuring national security
Intercepting communication is intrinsic to the functioning of any intelligence agency tasked with the responsibility of ensuring national security and public order, and so is the possibility of misuse of this power as the telephone tapping controversy shows. This is not the first and will surely not be the last incident of its kind but the most reprehensible aspect of this episode is that the way the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO) went about the task – thanks to the technical advances – it renders useless all checks and balances. As the Outlook report says, with an off-the-air GSM/CDMA monitoring system, you don’t need a service provider any longer to facilitate interception legally or otherwise. You just “grab” the signals from the air in a radius of 2 km and nobody, save for those snooping around with this device in a car, knows a thing! Nothing then matters – whether you have an antiquated Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 or a Information Technology Act of 2000 or the elaborate set of conditions laid down by the Supreme Court in 1997 (PUCL vs Union of India case) before privacy of an individual can be ignored for the larger goal of ensuring national security and public order. A new problem calls for a new solution – a radical one at that given the fact that our intelligence agencies are, for all practical purposes, accountable to none.
But first, what is NTRO and what is its mandate? Why has it been snooping around political tattle of Sharad Pawar, Prakash Karat, Digvijay Singh and Nitish Kumar that can hardly pose a threat to national security or public order. Known earlier as National Technical Facilities Organisation, this body came into being in 2004 after the Kargil mishap to provide technical intelligence to prevent another Kargil (cross-border infiltration) and terror or insurgency strikes. It functions under the National Security Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office. This agency has now earned what can be considered a “dubious” distinction in India of being the first intelligence agency to be subjected to scrutiny by the Comptroller General of India (CAG) and has been accused of nepotism and corruption. That it failed in its main task, that is to prevent 26/11 Mumbai terror attack or a series of terror attacks in Bengalore, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Pune etc is not entirely surprising.
It is precisely this kind of situation that Vice President Hamid Ansari alluded to when he called for public accountability of our intelligence agencies in his R N Kao Memorial Lecture in New Delhi in January this year. He wondered aloud: “How shall a democracy ensure its intelligence apparatus becomes neither a vehicle for conspiracy nor a suppressor of the traditional liberties of democratic self-government?” He was clear that “the traditional answer and the prevailing practice – of oversight by the concerned minister and prime minister and general accountability of the latter to parliament – was accepted as adequate in an earlier period but is now considered amorphous and does not meet the requirements of good governance in an open society.” The Kargil Review Committee had, as he pointed out, exposed the fallacy of this traditional answer by pointing out flaws and the absence of checks and balances and governmental correctives.
The vice president argued for a Standing Committee of Parliament on Intelligence, on lines of the committees in the USA, the UK and many other countries like Canda, Australia, Germany etc to ensure nation’s security and check potential abuse.
While stating that operational secrecy was essential for intelligence agencies, the vice president, nevertheless, insisted that the legislature was “entitled to insist on financial and performance accountability” because of the fact that it is the organ of the state that allocated funds to these agencies.
It is time for our public representatives to take the vice president’s views seriously and think of bringing public accountability to our intelligence agencies. This will not just ensure that the money we spend on intelligence is actually spent on intelligence but also raise the general efficiency of our intelligence gathering agencies.
Tribals put faith in Gandhi's humbug
Governance Now, May 1-15
Maoist apologist Arundhati Roy might debunk non-violent assertion of rights but the Kondhs are saving Niyamgiri without firing a shot
Six years ago, when the government acquired his farmland to let a multinational corporation, Vedanta, set up its alumina plant at Lanjigarh in Orissa’s Kalahandi district, Kumti Majhi, a 50-year-old Kondh tribal, discovered a facet of his character he didn’t know existed. He turned to violence. He led mobs to attack the Vedanta officials and government servants who accompanied them. Even the policemen. He pelted stones at them and chased them wherever they went. He was jailed but that didn’t deter him. Once out, he led more such violent mobs until the cops swarmed his village and set up camps all around the alumina plant.
But when, in 2009, Vedanta started blasting a part of the Niyamgiri hills, the hills Kumti Majhi and thousands of other tribals call their home and worship as their god, he turned to violence again. He picketed at the spot and refused to leave his god to the designs of the multinational. He had to be forcibly taken away to the jail again. But he succeeded in stopping the company from completing its access road and conveyor belt to the hilltop which it wants to mine for bauxite.
Those were the worst days of his life. “I was scared. Vedanta will grab Niyamgiri like a monster. It will take away our dongar (hill), our stream and all the fruits, roots and herbs that Niyamgiri gives us. How will we survive? Niyamgiri is our very life!” Majhi recalls the disturbing thoughts that engulfed his heart and mind.
He has sobered down since then and seems more at peace with himself. He has found a hope that he can save his god and himself without taking on “the monster” physically. That hope came in the form of social activists and local politicians who told them about a new law the ‘sarkar’ had devised for them.
“They said we will get land. They said the forest will be ours, the dongar will be ours. We will not be harassed or taken away from our forefathers’ land. I didn’t understand it fully then, but it gave us hope,” Majhi recollects. That was mid-2008. A few months earlier, in January, the Forest Rights Act had come into force.
Once, as the founding president of Niyamgiri Surakhsya Samiti, Majhi led violent mobs. Now, he helps villagers in setting up forest rights committees to stake their claims and takes round of forest and revenue offices to expedite processing of these claims.
Sitting in his low-roofed hut in Kendubarali village that overlooks the particular hill that Vedanta wants to mine and located half a km away from the alumina plant, Majhi explains how his life is linked to the Niyamgiri: “It takes care of everything. I grow millet, sometimes rice on small patches of land in the area. My family and I go to the dongar to collect kanda (a root), kendu, jackfruit, amla, mango, mahula, honey and herbs. Niyamgiri provides us water and shelter. It sustains us and protects us.”
The Kondhs, like other tribals, worship nature and for them the Niyamgiri personifies their almighty Niyam Raja, the Law Maker. He is worshipped once a year, in February, for which all the Kondhs gather at a few sacred places and sing and dance for days together.
Nestled in a quaint corner of Orissa, the Niyamgiri hills span three districts – Kalahandi, Koraput and Rayagada. Part of the Eastern Ghats, these hills are green and a rich source of biodiversity. They are also the source of two major rivers of the area, Vamsadhara and Nagaballi, and 40 mountain streams that irrigate the flat plains below. These hills have been home to primitive Kondhs – the Dongaria Kondhs and the Kutia Kondhs. The Dongarias live on the hills and the Kutias at the foothill. Kumti Majhi is a Kutia Kondh.
The Kutias number around 6,000 and can be found elsewhere in the state but the
Dongarias (close to 8,000) are found only on the Niyamgiri. Both tribes practice rudimentary jhum (shifting) cultivation and largely depend on the forest for survival. The Dongarias are more primitive. Once a week, they descend the hills to visit the ‘haat’ at the foothills for essential goods. The Kutias have more interaction with the world outside.
Though not too far from the district headquarters of Rayagada (40 km) and Kalahandi (60 km), the Niyamgiri and its people lived in another age, another time, largely untouched by the civilisation until Vedanta arrived here in 2004 and changed everything forever. The alumina plant robbed them of their pristine silence, their clear blue sky and the clean air. Lanjigarh is now covered with a cloud of dust and smoke. Hundreds of trucks carry bauxite every day from far off places like Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Now the companny wants to mine the Niyamgiri, threatening the very survival of its people.
The Dongarias live mostly on the other side of the Niyamgiri that comes under Rayagada district. Like Majhi, they too are anxious. Sindhey Wadaka, a middle-aged Dongaria, lives in Khajuri village, about six km up the hill and about 10 km from the nearest traces of civilisation – Chatikona in Bisscum Cuttack block which has grown around a small railway station by the same name. “Mining will open up Niyamgiri from its head. The trees will die, the streams will die. Where will we get our food? Who will we worship?” she wonders aloud.
Travel a couple of km up the hill, on a road that was probably built by the British and has never been repaired, you reach Kurli, another Dongaria settlement on a hill. Its woman sarpanch, Subardani Wadaka, is worried about the developments. “The air is tense. The educated youth are demanding jobs. If Vedanta gives them jobs, they will not oppose mining,” she says, adding that her heart, however, is with their god, their protector. Literacy rate is very low among the Dongarias (8.9 percent) but the educated youngsters are demanding, and even aggressive, about what they want.
After the forest rights entered their consciousness, violent attacks on Vedanta are quite rare though. Both the tribals and their chief ‘tormentors’, the forest and revenue officials, are busy measuring and mapping the hills these days to settle the claims. Bharat Bhushan Thakur of the Janakalyan Sanstha, who has played a key role in educating and helping Kumti Majhi and others to claim their new rights, says it is possible to achieve their objective of preventing Vedanta from mining the Niyamgiri by using these rights.
“The tribals have historical and cultural possession of the dongars and the forests. They are not encroachers. They are the owners. This ownership will be legalised by the Forest Rights Act. Their main demand is no mining in Niyamgiri. If mining is allowed, the forests, the streams, the villages, the people and their culture everything will be destroyed”, he says.
He knows it is difficult for the primitive tribals to exercise their right. That is why his associate Gunasagar Nayak lives among Kumti Majhi and others in their village helping them to claim their rights. He tells them how as an individual they can seek the right to land on which they live, the forest patches where they do jhum cultivation and the surrounding forest in which they collect fruits and other things. He also tells them how collectively they can claim rights over a larger area – their places of worship, cremation ground, their kalubasa where they gather for social drinking, the dongars beyond their village which they collectively scout for their needs and the streams that gives them water.
Most of nearly 200 settlements in and around Niyamgiri have now claimed individual rights. The community claim has only come from 50 villages. Some of the claims have been partially settled. Majhi had claimed five acres of land individually and his village Kendubarali had claimed 300 acres collectively. He has got 26 decimil (100 decimil is equal to one acre) of the revenue land but the forest part of the land he has claimed is yet to be settled. The community right of the village too is pending.
Shindey Wadaka of Khajuri had claimed 72 acres but got only five acres. Neither she nor anyone from her village has claimed community right, because they don’t know about it. In Kurli village also, some individual claims have been settled partially. No community right claims have been made there yet.
Implementation of forest rights is certainly tardy in the Niyamgiri. But Kalahandi district collector RS Gopalan says he has already granted 995 individual rights and 90 community rights elsewhere in the district. Under the community rights, he says he granted over 10,000 acres of forest land to 90 villages--that is an average of more than 1,000 acre of forest to each village!
He promises to do the same for Niyamgiri too. “We will do the field surveys and check the records. Even a scrap of record showing that they have been living there will be enough.”
The tribals haven’t had it easy so far. For one, the officials play tricks. Majhi points out how in his village the local officials granted only the revenue land, not the forest land. So, the villagers got small plots ranging from 25 to 27 decimil each.
But the Janakalyan Sanstha stepped in and pressed for the forest land too. This will now be granted after the mapping.
Poor knowledge of the forest rights, both among the tribals and the officials, and absence of forest surveys and records have also proved to be the stumbling blocks. Rayagada sub-collector Ravindra Pratap Singh admits his men are not yet familiar with the subject. “That is why even in individual cases we are not rejecting any claim. We are sending them back for re-verification. We will soon start a gram panchayat-wise awareness campaigns. Once the individual claims are settled, we will take up the community claims.”
As far as official records of habitations are concerned, especially in the forested areas, Orissa has very bad reputation. A government report, “Draft Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operation in Lanjigarh Ex-zamindary area of Kalahandi District, 1976”, makes a telling point. It says: “In the current settlement operation, all areas other than reserve forests and the protected forests demarcated for reservation have been surveyed.” As is quite clear, the state blindly declared forests “reserved” without checking for human habitations and so the tribals became “encroachers” of their own homes overnight.
This callousness has endured. Even when the Vedanta project came up nobody cared to consult, let alone take the consent of nearly 18,000 people living in and around the Niyamgiri who are directly affected by it – as the law of the land requires. The Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act of 1996 specifically provides for mandatory consultations and consent for anything that affects the tribals and their environment.
The truly heartening aspect of all this, however, is that these tribals--Kumti Majhi, Sindhey Wadaka and Subardani Wadaka--have not taken up arms to fight for their survival. They have put their faith in the law of the land, howsoever flawed its implementation may be.
Vedanta plays foul with the law and the tribals
May 11, governancenow.com
Vedanta Aluminum, part of the London-headquartered Vedanta group, has been hitting headlines for its plans to mine Niyamgiri hills in Orissa's Kalahandi district and opposition to it from the primitive tribes living there for centuries who consider the hills sacred. Quite apart from the questions raised by the controversy – whether the tribals have a right on their environment – are the questions raised by the firm's operations in the region. The company has violated the law as well as polluted the pristine forests.
Vedanta Aluminum established a 1 million tonne capacity alumina plant in Lanjigarh of Orissa in 2004. The plant sources the raw material, bauxite, from outside the state; from Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. In 2005, the company applied for mining the bauxite deposits from the Niyamgiri hills. The ministry of environment and forests gave its “in-principle” clearance, which is not the final clearance but the first step towards it, in December 2008.
But without waiting for the final clearance, the company started erecting its conveyor belt (proposed to be 4.8-km-long) and building a mine access road (which would be 12-km-long) to the mining spot on the hilltop. A visit to the spot reveals tell-tale signs of its illegal activities. Several metres of the conveyor belt and nearly 200 metres of the Niyamgiri’s foothill have been dug up. It was stopped some months ago not by the watchful officials but by the villagers of Kendubarali, who picketed and sat on dharna for nearly six months to protect their land which came in the way.
When complaints reached the ministry, three members of the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) were sent for enquiry. The committee, in its report submitted in March, said Vedanta had erected 47 pillars for the conveyor belt in the non-forest land. This was a clear violation of
the ministry’s guidelines which say that when a project involves both non-forest and forest land, construction in the non-forest land should not begin without clearance for activity in the forest land itself.
About the mine access road, the report was more scathing in its indictment. It said the road cuts through 50 metre of village forest land. “This is a case of violation of the Forest (Conservation) Act and also of the guidelines (Para 4.4) issued by the ministry of
environment and forests.”
It also found another serious anomaly. In the area where the conveyor belt and the access roads are being built, it found a gaping gulf of about 75 metre between the boundary of the revenue land and the forest land – a kind of no-man’s land, which shouldn’t be there.
Vedanta, however, has a different story to tell. Mukesh Kumar, the chief operating officer of the Lanjigarh plant, told Governance Now that all construction activities were limited to 2,018 acre land originally allotted to the plant that came up in 2004 and that it was not related to the mining lease.
He said construction activities were stopped in mid-2009 “when it was discovered that the land ahead was marked in the revenue records as the forest land, though there was no mention of it in the forest records”.
“This land was to be transferred to the forest department after which the forest department’s clearance was to be sought. But the transfer has not happened yet”, he said.
Vedanta wants to add 6 million tonne to the plant capacity by mining the Niyamgiri. But the final clearance is subject to compliance of the Forest Rights Act.
Vedanta has also run foul with the local people, mainly the Kutia Kondhs, a primitive tribe, by causing severe damage to their environment. Hundreds of truckloads of bauxite roar into Lanjigarh every day, disturbing the idyllic environment in which they have lived. To add to the woe, it has set up ash pond and red-mud pond extremely close to their settlements. In one case, a red-mud pond is located right on the edge of the village Rengopalli. Environment pollution is so disconcerting that not only the Kondhs even district collector R S Gopalan has written to the government suggesting that at least two villages, Rengopalli and Bandhaguda, be shifted away from the plant.
The case of Rengopalli is worse. Red-mud ponds are the dumping ground of wastes that are generated after bauxite is processed to extract alumina. The collector has described these ponds as “caustic in nature”, causing “irritation in the eyes” in his report after he inspected the
area in October 2009.
“I wrote to the state pollution control board also but they are not doing anything”, Gopalan told the Governance Now. The villagers complain that these ponds (there are two of them now), cause various health problems and believe these to be the cause of several deaths, of people and cattle, in the recent past.
Air pollution is high and above the acceptable level. The state’s pollution control board has repeatedly shown this. The officials point out that they have been monitoring the situation very closely and have been issuing necessary instructions. As far as the collector’s report goes, they say are yet to read it.
Mukesh Kumar dismisses the charges. He says the kind of technology being used to run the red-mud pond here posses no risk to the environment in any way. “Actually, the villagers having seen the benefits given to the rehabilitated people want to be displaced so that they get similar benefits.” He, however, assures that if the expansion plans were permitted he would give priority to shift these two villages.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Maoists keep them in misery
Feb 28,2010 issue of Governance Now
If you thought Maoists are the guardian angels of tribals who have taken up arms to end exploitation and under-development of the tribal areas of central India, think again. Visit the heartland of the Maoists — the Dandakaranya forest that spreads through Bastar in Chhattisgarh and adjoining districts of Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra and from where they run their Janatana Sarkars — and you will know how they are actually perpetuating misery of the very people they profess to fight for by cutting off the region completely off the rest of the country and preventing development work.
R. Sangeeta, CEO of zila panchayats of two of the worst hit districts of Chhattisgarh -- Narainpur and Bastar — narrates her predicament. She does not sanction any development work to Orcha block that forms 70 percent of Narainpur district. And that is because the money goes directly into the hands of Maoists. Secondly, as no official or vehicle is allowed to enter the area (save for primary school teachers, medics and vehicles carrying PDS supply) there is no way of verifying work done either.
Orcha is in the thick of Abujhmar forest — a base area forming parts of Kanker, Narainpur and Bijapur of Chhattisgarh and Gadchiroli of Maharashtra and from where Maoists run one of their Janatana Sarkars. It is, connected with a 60-km-long bad road from Narainpur either side of which is uninhabited and covered with thick jungles. The Maoists would allow no contractor to repair the road so that no outsider enters the area. Sangeeta travelled to Orcha just once in her one-year tenure so far and has no intention of doing it ever again.
“Not only the road is extremely bad, it is close to a river. Once it is dark, a small mistake would land the vehicle in the river. There are no villages, no mobile connectivity in the area leading to Orcha. If the vehicle breaks down, there is no way of getting any help from outside.”
She hasn’t sanctioned any development work for two-thirds of Bastar (the other district under her charge) either.
How did Maoists, who claim to represent the marginalised, turned against development? Sangeeta explains: “The Maoists fought for development in Andhra Pradesh but when development actually happened in the 1980s, they lost their support base. They learnt their lessons. And so, when they moved into Chhattisgarh, they started hindering development.”
n Roads are their prime target. All roads leading to their two bases in Chhattisgarh —Abujhmar and south Dantewada— have innumerable cuts and are not allowed to be repaired. Some parts of Bastar are accessible only from Andhra Pradesh. It helps in two ways: it keeps the base cut off and makes it easy to lay landmines, which are often used to target any vehicle venturing into the area.
Dantewada Superintendent of Police Amresh Mishra says Maoists allow only those activities that are essential for their sustenance. “Except for PDS and medical supply, nothing else is allowed. No development is allowed. Schools, anganwadis, roads, electric polls, mobile towers, everything is blasted. Students are discouraged to move out to city for the fear that they will turn police informers.”
The data compiled by Bastar officials show that since 2001, Maoists have destroyed 75 school buildings, 29 hostels, 15 anganwadis and 128 other government buildings in the region. They have also damaged 164 roads and 17 brides and culverts.
Two school buildings that came up in Palnar in Kuakunda block of Dantewada were destroyed in the first week of November – the night before these were to be thrown open. Though Maoists claim such buildings are destroyed to prevent security camps being set up, it isn’t true. A permanent CRPF camp exists less than half a km away.
Nine kilometres further down south, in Shameli, a hostel for girls lies in a shambles. It was destroyed by Maoists a little over two years ago. The state government’s slogan “Nari Padhegi, Vikas Gadhegi” has, apparently, no meaning for the Maoists.
Cross over to Malkangiri in Orissa (part of Dandakaranya) and the situation is worse. Even the roads of the district headquarters are in a pathetic condition because no contractor is willing to take up work. Arterial roads have not been repaired since 2001. The centre’s plan to build a Ranchi-Vijayawada corridor though the rebel-hit districts of Orissa, including Malkangiri, remains on the drawing board. The road passing through Korapur, Raygada, Phulbani and Nayagarh (all rebel-hit districts) on way to Bhubaneswar is so bad that you actually pity the bus drivers. As you are about to enter Govindpalli in north Malkangiri (a Maoist stronghold) your mobile stops working.
Maoists have established two base areas in Malkangiri—the main one is located on the south-eastern part and called “Cut-off Area” because a block comprising of nearly 150 villages are completely cut off from rest of the state by a reservoir and two rivers and the Eastern Ghat hills. It is a safe haven for Maoists, where they are hiding now. Since late 1990s, the administration has been trying to build a bridge on the Gurupriya river to establish a link with the area. Dozens of tenders have been floated but Maoists frighten away the contractors every time. In 2006, Gammon India tried to be brave but the rebels blasted its storehouse and ordered the contractor to leave. He fled and the project was abandoned.
The only construction in Malkangiri in recent years is of ‘shahid smaraks’ memorials for martyrs). There is even a bus stand close to Gammon India’s abandoned project site dedicated to these “martyrs”.
If you thought Maoists are the guardian angels of tribals who have taken up arms to end exploitation and under-development of the tribal areas of central India, think again. Visit the heartland of the Maoists — the Dandakaranya forest that spreads through Bastar in Chhattisgarh and adjoining districts of Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra and from where they run their Janatana Sarkars — and you will know how they are actually perpetuating misery of the very people they profess to fight for by cutting off the region completely off the rest of the country and preventing development work.
R. Sangeeta, CEO of zila panchayats of two of the worst hit districts of Chhattisgarh -- Narainpur and Bastar — narrates her predicament. She does not sanction any development work to Orcha block that forms 70 percent of Narainpur district. And that is because the money goes directly into the hands of Maoists. Secondly, as no official or vehicle is allowed to enter the area (save for primary school teachers, medics and vehicles carrying PDS supply) there is no way of verifying work done either.
Orcha is in the thick of Abujhmar forest — a base area forming parts of Kanker, Narainpur and Bijapur of Chhattisgarh and Gadchiroli of Maharashtra and from where Maoists run one of their Janatana Sarkars. It is, connected with a 60-km-long bad road from Narainpur either side of which is uninhabited and covered with thick jungles. The Maoists would allow no contractor to repair the road so that no outsider enters the area. Sangeeta travelled to Orcha just once in her one-year tenure so far and has no intention of doing it ever again.
“Not only the road is extremely bad, it is close to a river. Once it is dark, a small mistake would land the vehicle in the river. There are no villages, no mobile connectivity in the area leading to Orcha. If the vehicle breaks down, there is no way of getting any help from outside.”
She hasn’t sanctioned any development work for two-thirds of Bastar (the other district under her charge) either.
How did Maoists, who claim to represent the marginalised, turned against development? Sangeeta explains: “The Maoists fought for development in Andhra Pradesh but when development actually happened in the 1980s, they lost their support base. They learnt their lessons. And so, when they moved into Chhattisgarh, they started hindering development.”
n Roads are their prime target. All roads leading to their two bases in Chhattisgarh —Abujhmar and south Dantewada— have innumerable cuts and are not allowed to be repaired. Some parts of Bastar are accessible only from Andhra Pradesh. It helps in two ways: it keeps the base cut off and makes it easy to lay landmines, which are often used to target any vehicle venturing into the area.
Dantewada Superintendent of Police Amresh Mishra says Maoists allow only those activities that are essential for their sustenance. “Except for PDS and medical supply, nothing else is allowed. No development is allowed. Schools, anganwadis, roads, electric polls, mobile towers, everything is blasted. Students are discouraged to move out to city for the fear that they will turn police informers.”
The data compiled by Bastar officials show that since 2001, Maoists have destroyed 75 school buildings, 29 hostels, 15 anganwadis and 128 other government buildings in the region. They have also damaged 164 roads and 17 brides and culverts.
Two school buildings that came up in Palnar in Kuakunda block of Dantewada were destroyed in the first week of November – the night before these were to be thrown open. Though Maoists claim such buildings are destroyed to prevent security camps being set up, it isn’t true. A permanent CRPF camp exists less than half a km away.
Nine kilometres further down south, in Shameli, a hostel for girls lies in a shambles. It was destroyed by Maoists a little over two years ago. The state government’s slogan “Nari Padhegi, Vikas Gadhegi” has, apparently, no meaning for the Maoists.
Cross over to Malkangiri in Orissa (part of Dandakaranya) and the situation is worse. Even the roads of the district headquarters are in a pathetic condition because no contractor is willing to take up work. Arterial roads have not been repaired since 2001. The centre’s plan to build a Ranchi-Vijayawada corridor though the rebel-hit districts of Orissa, including Malkangiri, remains on the drawing board. The road passing through Korapur, Raygada, Phulbani and Nayagarh (all rebel-hit districts) on way to Bhubaneswar is so bad that you actually pity the bus drivers. As you are about to enter Govindpalli in north Malkangiri (a Maoist stronghold) your mobile stops working.
Maoists have established two base areas in Malkangiri—the main one is located on the south-eastern part and called “Cut-off Area” because a block comprising of nearly 150 villages are completely cut off from rest of the state by a reservoir and two rivers and the Eastern Ghat hills. It is a safe haven for Maoists, where they are hiding now. Since late 1990s, the administration has been trying to build a bridge on the Gurupriya river to establish a link with the area. Dozens of tenders have been floated but Maoists frighten away the contractors every time. In 2006, Gammon India tried to be brave but the rebels blasted its storehouse and ordered the contractor to leave. He fled and the project was abandoned.
The only construction in Malkangiri in recent years is of ‘shahid smaraks’ memorials for martyrs). There is even a bus stand close to Gammon India’s abandoned project site dedicated to these “martyrs”.
How not to fight Maoists
Feb 28,2010 issue of Governance Now
As hundreds of crores and thousands of forces are committed for the offensive against the Maoists, one question sticks out: why is choking their money taps not part of the battle strategy? We know where it is flowing from, but not how much or how to stop it. Strange, isn’t it?
The state, with all its might, is at war. Security forces are battling Maoists in dense forests and tiny hamlets in tribal hinterlands. There was even talk of air attacks on rebel dens. This, after all, is a no-holds-barred war. Except for a small detail, largely ignored in TV talk shops as well as strategy rooms. As long as Maoists’ lifeline, channels that deliver cash in hundreds of crores, are secure, they will not be defeated, air attacks or no air attacks.
Speak to strategists in New Delhi and troopers in Chhattisgarh, and they point out two things: one, leftwing radicals have put in place a financial system to rival an MNC, and two, authorities have chosen not to do much to block their fund flows.
The state, in fact, seems to be clueless even about the the size of the Maoist empire.
Maoists are collecting ‘tax’ to the tune of Rs 1,600 crore to Rs 2,000 crore a year, up from Rs 500 crore in 2005, if you go by the figure Home Secretary G.K. Pillai gives, based on the Intelligence Bureau’s assessment. But the whisper in North Block corridors is that the actual figure is at least twice that.
Raman Singh, chief minister of the most-affected state of Chhattisgarh, says the Maoist extortion racket is worth about Rs 300-400 crore – down from Rs 600 crore he used to mention earlier. The state’s Director General of Police Vishwa Ranjan puts the figure at Rs 150 crore before saying that this is a mere “guesstimate” since there can’t be accurate information on this score.
Orissa Director General (Intelligence) Prakash Mishra is not sure how much money the Maoists are making in his state. Less than 24 hours after quoting the figure of Rs 300-400 crore a year, he scaled down his “guesstimate” to “less than Rs 100 crore”.
Here is another way to figure out the sum. Chhatradhar Mahato, head of the Maoist-sympathising People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, has confessed before police that PCPA imposed a one-time ‘levy’ on people in Lalgarh area of West Bengal. His rate card: Rs 200 for primary teachers, Rs 100 for para-teachers, Rs 400-500 for high school teachers, Rs 700 for bank managers, Rs 200-300 for bank employees, Rs 100-200 for anganwadi workers, Rs 100 to Rs 5,000 for businessmen and Rs 12,000 for Ramgarh High School teachers. Every village family was asked to cough up Rs 10 and one kg of rice.
PCPA also collected Rs 17,000 from the Lokart Forest Beat Office, Rs 15,000 from Ramgarh Forest Beat Office and Rs 20,000 from Goaltore Range Office. Some PCPA members run regular ‘check gate collection’, like octroi or toll tax on roads, and collect Rs 200 to Rs 300 from every vehicle passing through areas under their influence. This booty was kept in a joint account in United Bank of India’s Kantapahari branch in Lalgarh, Mahato admitted.
Now extrapolate these figures to 223 districts of 20 states and we are looking at probably the biggest systematic extensive extortion racket. The Communist Party of India (Maoist), the most dominant among the leftwing radical organisations, is virtually ruling over 40,000 sq km – according to Pillai’s admission before a Parliamentary Standing Committee in September. Maoists are running a parallel government, called Janatana Sarkar, collect tax from everyone who is involved in any economic activity, dispense justice through kangaroo courts and carry out violent attacks on government functionaries and whoever else they think is inimical to their interests.
Funds are collected from industrialists, businessmen, contractors, mine operators, poor tribals and even government officials and establishments.
So much so that Vishwa Ranjan, the man who has christened the operation to rid Chhattisgarh of Maoists as ‘Operation Green Hunt’, says without batting an eyelid, “if you go there, they will take money from you too.”
Thus, it would make sense if the strategy to fight insurgency begins with choking the source of the Maoist funding. “You choke their finance and ammunition they are finished,” says former Border Security Force (BSF) director general Prakash Singh, an expert on Maoist insurgency. But policy makers have completely ignored this area.
The only time the government made an attempt in this direction was way back in 2005 when the Home Ministry set up the Committee on Combating Financing of Terrorists (CFT). But the Maoists were not declared terrorists till June 2009, so the committee had only one perfunctory discussion on them and concluded that nothing much could be done since this matter was linked to the overall security environment of the area and the money flow was more through non-banking channels. The matter was then left to the “sensitisation of the state governments”.
Why has the government, which has launched such a massive offensive against the Maoists and has deployed thousands of troops for the purpose so far, never tried to sever the finance link? Pillai says the government is “not able to provide security” in those areas because of “the lack of effective policing”. “How do you check extortion if you don’t have policemen to catch the extortionist?” he asks.
The police presence in the Maoist-affected states is indeed a problem. The number of policemen in these states is half (current vacancies stand at 300,000) of the national average of 120 policemen for a population of 100,000 (developed countries have 450 of them). The entire Bastar region has only 6,500 policemen.
Moreover, routine policing is one thing, fighting Maoist guerillas is quite another. Pillai says funds are awaited to set up 12 more specialised combat training schools to add to the existing eight, each of which can train only 300 to 500 men a year.
But all the passouts of these schools do not necessarily go out to battle rebels. Brigadier B.K. Ponwar, director of the Counter Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College of Kanker in Chhattisgarh – one of the eight schools – says only 65-70 percent of the cops trained there are posted in the insurgency-hit areas.
Yet, even the limited police force has no intention to block money going into rebels’ hands. Asked why, Chhattisgarh DGP Vishwa Ranjan insists that “nobody has complained” to him in this regard -- a common refrain of central and state officials. Bound as they are by the “rules of procedure” they can’t act, they say, unless somebody lodges a complaint.
Orissa DG Prakash Mishra candidly confesses that the finance angle simply never crossed his mind.
Then there are politicians. Former BSF DG Prakash Singh points out: “There are former chief ministers who have had a nexus with the Maoists, who patronised them for their political ends. And going by media reports, in (former Jharkhand chief minister) Madhu Koda’s corruption case it is clear that the Maoists were among the beneficiaries of the loot.”
This is why Home Ministry officials snigger at the very suggestion of choking Maoists funds. They say the source of illegal money is often the same for both politicians and Maoists.
Former IB director Ajit Doval takes the argument a little further when he says the Maoists can extort money only when there are surplus funds and illegitimate money floating around. For example, mine owners who dig up 100 truckloads a day more than they are authorised to do would happily pay protection money to the Maoists, which may amount to the cost of two truckloads.
Similarly, the lack of accountability in the government’s development projects works to the advantage of the Maoists. Corrupt officials and Maoists join the contractors in the loot. “What happened to all the money sanctioned in the name of development all these years? Thirty to 40 percent of it has gone to the Maoists and the rest to the corrupt officials,” Doval remarks, adding, more money for development also means more money to the Maoists. This would also partly explain why “nobody is complaining”.
Doval, too, thinks it is easier for the government to check the finances of the Maoists than to chase them in jungles but says this is not possible because the entire approach of the government is based on ‘watch and ward doctrine’. Simply put, it means when there is a threat from the dacoits put a watchman outside the house to ward off the threat.
If nobody else, at least industry can be expected to put pressure on the government to plug fund leakages. After all, industry would be the prime target for extortion.
Here is an illustrative case. Maoists blew up Essar Steel’s 267-km iron slurry pipeline, which transports iron ore from Bailadila mines in Dantewada to the Visakhapatnam pellet plant, at several places in May and June 2009. The entire pipeline passes through a Maoist-held terrain. The first blast happened on May 20 in Koda village of Dantewada. This could only be repaired on May 31 as the Maoists did not allow repairs for a while, but as the team was returning, it learnt that another section of the pipeline had been blasted in Malkangiri, adjoining district of Orissa. The team, led by A.K. Banerjee, plant in-charge of Essar’s Kirandul unit, moved there and repaired it ignoring locals’ advice. While they were returning the same evening, their convoy was stopped by the Maoists near Panasgandi village in Chitrakonda tehsil, close to the spot where 36 Greyhound commandos had been gunned down on June 28, 2008. There, rebels burnt five vehicles for carrying out the repair work without the express consent of their leadership. Everyone in the region says the attacking mob was led by Maoist leader Madhav, divisional committee member of Malkangiri. A day later, Essar learnt that the pipeline had been blasted at at least 17 places in the area. The company did file a police complaint about the burning of the vehicles but not about the pipeline blasts.
Its Kirandul plant has remained shut for more than eight months and the company is losing Rs 2 crore a day. When asked about the episode, a company official simply dismissed the matter saying: “Essar has laid the slurry pipeline after receiving all necessary approvals from the concerned authorities and in compliance with rules of the land. This has been damaged may be (by) some miscreants. It is in the process of being repaired. We would like to categorically state that Essar has nothing to do with any of the insurgency organisations.”
The industry has made a beginning, though. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) have set up task forces to discuss the issue. The CII’s report on “Security of Investment”, yet to be officially released, deals specifically about the Maoist threat and admits that extortion does take place. It says: “Naxalites have effectively created an environment, via threats and targeted executions, where extortion is a standard cost (on average 10 percent) of running a business.”
But Home Secretary Pillai says the the industry bodies have never approached him seeking government protection or complain about the extortion demands.
In other words, “nobody is complaining”. That, however, does not solve the problem. And if the government is willing to provide security to industry and block funds falling into rebels’ hands, there is a precedent too. The government set up the Assam Tea Plantation Security Force (ATPSF) in 1993 to guard tea gardens from rebels and the force was funded by tea companies.
Pillai says the centre does provide security to some coal mining companies through the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and has asked the states to set up similar security forces. Assam is the only state which has responded so far, and is converting ATPSF into a State Industrial Security Force.
Rajiv Chandrasekhar, a Rajya Sabha member and former FICCI president who piloted a report on the subject by the FICCI Task Force on National Security and Terrorism, says the industries are not averse to the replicate the ATPSF model but “the government must create a framework” for that.
In absence of security, industrialists have devised what Chandrasekhar calls “sweetheart deals” with the Maoists. “It is unfortunate reality that many Indian businesses often take shortcuts to solve many of their problems. Unfortunately, most shortcuts are neither legal nor a correct thing to do,” he says.
But then he explains that the industry takes matter in its hands as much because of incompetent state governments as the fact that it is an “easier, cheaper and quicker” way of dealing with the situation.
A Home Ministry status paper admits: “Naxalites operate in the vacuum created by functional inadequacies of field level governance structures.” Clearly, the functional inadequacies are not restricted to “field level” alone.
As hundreds of crores and thousands of forces are committed for the offensive against the Maoists, one question sticks out: why is choking their money taps not part of the battle strategy? We know where it is flowing from, but not how much or how to stop it. Strange, isn’t it?
The state, with all its might, is at war. Security forces are battling Maoists in dense forests and tiny hamlets in tribal hinterlands. There was even talk of air attacks on rebel dens. This, after all, is a no-holds-barred war. Except for a small detail, largely ignored in TV talk shops as well as strategy rooms. As long as Maoists’ lifeline, channels that deliver cash in hundreds of crores, are secure, they will not be defeated, air attacks or no air attacks.
Speak to strategists in New Delhi and troopers in Chhattisgarh, and they point out two things: one, leftwing radicals have put in place a financial system to rival an MNC, and two, authorities have chosen not to do much to block their fund flows.
The state, in fact, seems to be clueless even about the the size of the Maoist empire.
Maoists are collecting ‘tax’ to the tune of Rs 1,600 crore to Rs 2,000 crore a year, up from Rs 500 crore in 2005, if you go by the figure Home Secretary G.K. Pillai gives, based on the Intelligence Bureau’s assessment. But the whisper in North Block corridors is that the actual figure is at least twice that.
Raman Singh, chief minister of the most-affected state of Chhattisgarh, says the Maoist extortion racket is worth about Rs 300-400 crore – down from Rs 600 crore he used to mention earlier. The state’s Director General of Police Vishwa Ranjan puts the figure at Rs 150 crore before saying that this is a mere “guesstimate” since there can’t be accurate information on this score.
Orissa Director General (Intelligence) Prakash Mishra is not sure how much money the Maoists are making in his state. Less than 24 hours after quoting the figure of Rs 300-400 crore a year, he scaled down his “guesstimate” to “less than Rs 100 crore”.
Here is another way to figure out the sum. Chhatradhar Mahato, head of the Maoist-sympathising People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, has confessed before police that PCPA imposed a one-time ‘levy’ on people in Lalgarh area of West Bengal. His rate card: Rs 200 for primary teachers, Rs 100 for para-teachers, Rs 400-500 for high school teachers, Rs 700 for bank managers, Rs 200-300 for bank employees, Rs 100-200 for anganwadi workers, Rs 100 to Rs 5,000 for businessmen and Rs 12,000 for Ramgarh High School teachers. Every village family was asked to cough up Rs 10 and one kg of rice.
PCPA also collected Rs 17,000 from the Lokart Forest Beat Office, Rs 15,000 from Ramgarh Forest Beat Office and Rs 20,000 from Goaltore Range Office. Some PCPA members run regular ‘check gate collection’, like octroi or toll tax on roads, and collect Rs 200 to Rs 300 from every vehicle passing through areas under their influence. This booty was kept in a joint account in United Bank of India’s Kantapahari branch in Lalgarh, Mahato admitted.
Now extrapolate these figures to 223 districts of 20 states and we are looking at probably the biggest systematic extensive extortion racket. The Communist Party of India (Maoist), the most dominant among the leftwing radical organisations, is virtually ruling over 40,000 sq km – according to Pillai’s admission before a Parliamentary Standing Committee in September. Maoists are running a parallel government, called Janatana Sarkar, collect tax from everyone who is involved in any economic activity, dispense justice through kangaroo courts and carry out violent attacks on government functionaries and whoever else they think is inimical to their interests.
Funds are collected from industrialists, businessmen, contractors, mine operators, poor tribals and even government officials and establishments.
So much so that Vishwa Ranjan, the man who has christened the operation to rid Chhattisgarh of Maoists as ‘Operation Green Hunt’, says without batting an eyelid, “if you go there, they will take money from you too.”
Thus, it would make sense if the strategy to fight insurgency begins with choking the source of the Maoist funding. “You choke their finance and ammunition they are finished,” says former Border Security Force (BSF) director general Prakash Singh, an expert on Maoist insurgency. But policy makers have completely ignored this area.
The only time the government made an attempt in this direction was way back in 2005 when the Home Ministry set up the Committee on Combating Financing of Terrorists (CFT). But the Maoists were not declared terrorists till June 2009, so the committee had only one perfunctory discussion on them and concluded that nothing much could be done since this matter was linked to the overall security environment of the area and the money flow was more through non-banking channels. The matter was then left to the “sensitisation of the state governments”.
Why has the government, which has launched such a massive offensive against the Maoists and has deployed thousands of troops for the purpose so far, never tried to sever the finance link? Pillai says the government is “not able to provide security” in those areas because of “the lack of effective policing”. “How do you check extortion if you don’t have policemen to catch the extortionist?” he asks.
The police presence in the Maoist-affected states is indeed a problem. The number of policemen in these states is half (current vacancies stand at 300,000) of the national average of 120 policemen for a population of 100,000 (developed countries have 450 of them). The entire Bastar region has only 6,500 policemen.
Moreover, routine policing is one thing, fighting Maoist guerillas is quite another. Pillai says funds are awaited to set up 12 more specialised combat training schools to add to the existing eight, each of which can train only 300 to 500 men a year.
But all the passouts of these schools do not necessarily go out to battle rebels. Brigadier B.K. Ponwar, director of the Counter Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College of Kanker in Chhattisgarh – one of the eight schools – says only 65-70 percent of the cops trained there are posted in the insurgency-hit areas.
Yet, even the limited police force has no intention to block money going into rebels’ hands. Asked why, Chhattisgarh DGP Vishwa Ranjan insists that “nobody has complained” to him in this regard -- a common refrain of central and state officials. Bound as they are by the “rules of procedure” they can’t act, they say, unless somebody lodges a complaint.
Orissa DG Prakash Mishra candidly confesses that the finance angle simply never crossed his mind.
Then there are politicians. Former BSF DG Prakash Singh points out: “There are former chief ministers who have had a nexus with the Maoists, who patronised them for their political ends. And going by media reports, in (former Jharkhand chief minister) Madhu Koda’s corruption case it is clear that the Maoists were among the beneficiaries of the loot.”
This is why Home Ministry officials snigger at the very suggestion of choking Maoists funds. They say the source of illegal money is often the same for both politicians and Maoists.
Former IB director Ajit Doval takes the argument a little further when he says the Maoists can extort money only when there are surplus funds and illegitimate money floating around. For example, mine owners who dig up 100 truckloads a day more than they are authorised to do would happily pay protection money to the Maoists, which may amount to the cost of two truckloads.
Similarly, the lack of accountability in the government’s development projects works to the advantage of the Maoists. Corrupt officials and Maoists join the contractors in the loot. “What happened to all the money sanctioned in the name of development all these years? Thirty to 40 percent of it has gone to the Maoists and the rest to the corrupt officials,” Doval remarks, adding, more money for development also means more money to the Maoists. This would also partly explain why “nobody is complaining”.
Doval, too, thinks it is easier for the government to check the finances of the Maoists than to chase them in jungles but says this is not possible because the entire approach of the government is based on ‘watch and ward doctrine’. Simply put, it means when there is a threat from the dacoits put a watchman outside the house to ward off the threat.
If nobody else, at least industry can be expected to put pressure on the government to plug fund leakages. After all, industry would be the prime target for extortion.
Here is an illustrative case. Maoists blew up Essar Steel’s 267-km iron slurry pipeline, which transports iron ore from Bailadila mines in Dantewada to the Visakhapatnam pellet plant, at several places in May and June 2009. The entire pipeline passes through a Maoist-held terrain. The first blast happened on May 20 in Koda village of Dantewada. This could only be repaired on May 31 as the Maoists did not allow repairs for a while, but as the team was returning, it learnt that another section of the pipeline had been blasted in Malkangiri, adjoining district of Orissa. The team, led by A.K. Banerjee, plant in-charge of Essar’s Kirandul unit, moved there and repaired it ignoring locals’ advice. While they were returning the same evening, their convoy was stopped by the Maoists near Panasgandi village in Chitrakonda tehsil, close to the spot where 36 Greyhound commandos had been gunned down on June 28, 2008. There, rebels burnt five vehicles for carrying out the repair work without the express consent of their leadership. Everyone in the region says the attacking mob was led by Maoist leader Madhav, divisional committee member of Malkangiri. A day later, Essar learnt that the pipeline had been blasted at at least 17 places in the area. The company did file a police complaint about the burning of the vehicles but not about the pipeline blasts.
Its Kirandul plant has remained shut for more than eight months and the company is losing Rs 2 crore a day. When asked about the episode, a company official simply dismissed the matter saying: “Essar has laid the slurry pipeline after receiving all necessary approvals from the concerned authorities and in compliance with rules of the land. This has been damaged may be (by) some miscreants. It is in the process of being repaired. We would like to categorically state that Essar has nothing to do with any of the insurgency organisations.”
The industry has made a beginning, though. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) have set up task forces to discuss the issue. The CII’s report on “Security of Investment”, yet to be officially released, deals specifically about the Maoist threat and admits that extortion does take place. It says: “Naxalites have effectively created an environment, via threats and targeted executions, where extortion is a standard cost (on average 10 percent) of running a business.”
But Home Secretary Pillai says the the industry bodies have never approached him seeking government protection or complain about the extortion demands.
In other words, “nobody is complaining”. That, however, does not solve the problem. And if the government is willing to provide security to industry and block funds falling into rebels’ hands, there is a precedent too. The government set up the Assam Tea Plantation Security Force (ATPSF) in 1993 to guard tea gardens from rebels and the force was funded by tea companies.
Pillai says the centre does provide security to some coal mining companies through the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and has asked the states to set up similar security forces. Assam is the only state which has responded so far, and is converting ATPSF into a State Industrial Security Force.
Rajiv Chandrasekhar, a Rajya Sabha member and former FICCI president who piloted a report on the subject by the FICCI Task Force on National Security and Terrorism, says the industries are not averse to the replicate the ATPSF model but “the government must create a framework” for that.
In absence of security, industrialists have devised what Chandrasekhar calls “sweetheart deals” with the Maoists. “It is unfortunate reality that many Indian businesses often take shortcuts to solve many of their problems. Unfortunately, most shortcuts are neither legal nor a correct thing to do,” he says.
But then he explains that the industry takes matter in its hands as much because of incompetent state governments as the fact that it is an “easier, cheaper and quicker” way of dealing with the situation.
A Home Ministry status paper admits: “Naxalites operate in the vacuum created by functional inadequacies of field level governance structures.” Clearly, the functional inadequacies are not restricted to “field level” alone.
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