“If we are Maowadis, you are MoUwadis,” he tells me, indicating that displacement due to large scale land acquisitions resulted in the growth of Maoism in the region.

Shafi Rahman of India Today spends some time in the autonomous zone established by the Naxalites. It’s a fantastic article that reflects many of the trends I’ve explored in this weblog since 2007, so I quote liberally:

Local governance, based on local revenue:

• Janathana Sarkars collect “taxes”, decide on local disputes, fix prices of local products, run local amenities and provide basic healthcare.

• “For the first time in ages, we have done collective farming last year. We have stopped approaching police over disputes and the committee decides over the disputes,” says Manji.

• Inspector in-charge at Adhaba police in Gajapati district, Devendra Mahapatra, is well-protected in his station with a cathedral-like gate and a platoon of CRPF stationed in the premises. As Maoists established grip over local dispute handling, the number of criminal cases filed in the station have come down from over 300 five years ago to 48 last year.

Distribution of wealth/land:

• Around 59 work teams with up to 70 members in each were set up last year to prepare land for millet, paddy and dal. In Bastar alone, around 1,436 acres of land were seized from landlords. Of this, 1,057 acres were distributed to 482 families and 310 acres was put under the control of the Janathana Sarkar and 65 acres were given to the militia.

Decentralized development:

• The mode of adivasi agriculture in all these divisions was primitive, rarely using cattle for agriculture. “We are now using cattle to plough the fields. We were used to building tanks in areas were water collected naturally in earlier days and water was carried manually from these tanks. Now we are using canals to take water to these points,” notes Manji

• They launched a campaign against the tribal belief that women shouldn’t be allowed in certain agricultural activities like sowing seeds and reaping the harvest. The tribals are also being introduced to a new script for tribal languages, which has so far been scriptless. Chloroquine, an anti-malaria medicine, is given in packets replete with slogans – Soshiko Athanko, Soshito Shruthi (Terror for the oppressors, dear for the oppressed).

Selective connectivity (essentially, India’s skeleton is being controlled by the Naxals):

The Maoists are allowing signposts of the state to come in, wherever it fits their plans. The NREG roads have been approved selectively, ensuring that they don’t make easy passage for security forces into Maoist hideouts.

Most of the beaten paths are mined. We avoid these roads, move forward using GPS in favour of a tougher journey by setting up new paths. The moment we enter into these forests, the Maoists light up torches and give signals to their counterparts around, making it easy for them to retreat,” says HK Jasoria, Officer Commander at CRPF station in Gajapati district.

Sheena Roy passionately argues for a separate Talangana state, taking great pains to distance herself from the Naxals that she claims the opposition has been smearing her movement as a part of:

The Seema Andhra leaders today are trying to term Telangana people as naxalites, trying to create a fear in the Center and suppress the student movement. This propaganda has moved to the internet, now the Andhra people take pleasure in calling all Pro-Telangana people naxalites. They too show their indifference and apathy when young kids from Telangana die, committing suicides.

I agree with Michael on this one. Rather than revealing an insurgency independent of the Naxals, this movement reveals just how much the Naxals have eroded governance in the region, creating the conditions for a Talangana movement, and underpinning the kind of connectivity that enables this kind of insurgency. In short, the Naxal is the keystone species of the rural Indian ecosystem.

Reporter/Analyst Eric Rudolph has a great new blog titled Kikobor. He’s based out of India. Also, Michael Spacek is keeping up with Naxal War.

Glad to see I’m not alone in this space anymore. I look forward to collaborating with both of these guys. Lots of work to be done.

There are essentially two schools of thought regarding the recent Naxal offer of a 72 hour truce.

• The leaves in the forests are about to shed, and the Naxals would be weak during that time period. The latter sounds too much like a government information operation to be taken seriously. Naxals, who spend their entire lives operating in a particular kind of environment, will not likely be too worried about

• The Naxals are weak, and are looking for three days of peace to recoup, renew, and attack again. There is no evidence of this. If anything, an attack that took place mere hours after the offer of a truce proves that the ability for the Naxals to maintain a normal OPTEMPO is intact. This is also revealing for a different reason – it attests to the operating structure of Naxals. It is not a hierarchy with strong command and control links. Instead, it’s a ecosystem of violence, with disparate parts.

Rather than approaching this with the assumption that the Naxals are engaging from a position of weakness, it’s far more likely for them to be engaging in an information operation.

In publicly expressing the ability to negotiate with the standing government, to the point where Chidambaram, the Minister of Home Affairs, has released his fax number publicly), the Naxals are showing that they are a serious threat.

Longer run: they’re showing that Chidambaram is weak, and that stronger measures must be taken against them. In doing so, they hope to provoke an overreach that alienates more rural Indians and strengthens their numbers even more.

At a time when the tools exist to open up education for all, it is bizarre to find what the  Indian Express reports (ITC/ITI = trade schools for tasks relevant to local industry):

A recent study shows that government spending on education, health, electricity, roads, water and other infrastructure [in Naxal affected areas] is appallingly low, far below the state average. Now, labour ministry data reveals that there are only 196 ITCs and ITIs in the 33 districts reeling under left-wing insurgency, compared to 3110 in non-affected areas in the same states.

(Emphasis mine.)

As I’ve been writing about for years now, India continues to attempt to counter the Naxal threat by increasing its firepower rather than adopting a collaborative security approach. Anshuman G Dutta writing for MidDay.

“The possibility of military confrontation with any country has gone down but the concept of homeland security is expanding,” said an official from Ministry of Defence.

“Currently the products in the defence and security market are being diversified to cater to the need of para-militaries and police forces also. Many systems used by the police and para-militaries and conventional armed forces are similar in nature like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and MPVs,” he added.

“The defence market is no more a defence market; it has become a security market which is providing equipments and services for armed forces and central para military as well as police forces,” said Deba R Mohanty, senior fellow and a prominent defence analyst from Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

This morning, a blast ripped through the German Bakery (a popular destination for the middle class and foreigners alike), killing 8 and injuring 33. Thus far there have been no second order events.

My early take on this still-developing situation. This was an attack designed to exploit the ever-present cultural rift between Indian Muslims and Hindus. The hope is to provoke an overreaction by all parties, including fundamentalists from both Hindi and Muslim populations. The historical goal for this kind of activity has been riots led by extremists that kill hundreds.

The conditions may be ripe for this sectarian conflict. Maharashtra has been experiencing significant activity along its cultural fault-lines recently, including:

• Attempts to ban the Shah Rukh Khan movie “My Name is Khan.”
• Standard resistance to Valentines Day by fundamentalists.
• Banning non-local taxi drivers.

Here is a VJMovement (a video journalism outfit out of the Netherlands) five minute film on the conflict. Pretty great way of putting a human face on this conflict.

Thanks to Richard Bottemley of VJ Movement for passing this along.

William Avery, formerly a US diplomat, outlines in this article precisely how India should NOT conduct its affairs for the coming decade. In it, he advises spending absurd amounts of money on foreign expeditions, a huge boondoggle of a navy, and importing talent -  all at the cost of local, organic talent that can deliver results and embed resiliency – now the key to survival and success in these uncertain times.

Bill Roggio has a great read about how Dawood Ibrahim’s D-Company underpins much of the illicit activity in and around India. I laid out the same case in 2008.