INDIA’S FEDERAL administration yesterday proscribed the Maoists, formally labelling them a terrorist group. It is hoped the move will strengthen the enforcement powers of the security forces to counter their growing control over the heart of the country.
The ban came after hundreds of Maoists, who have established their hold over about 180 of India’s 603 administrative districts, had declared the township of Lalgarh in eastern Bengal state a “liberated zone” last week, before fleeing at the weekend in the face of heavy police and paramilitary deployment against them.
The country’s third largest steel producer, JSW Steel Ltd, is investing $7 billion (€5 billion) in a plant near Lalgarh, 155km southwest of the provincial capital Kolkata. However, a growing Maoist presence in the region and across large tracts of rural India spread over 13 of 28 provinces in central, eastern and southern India, has many investors worried.
Maoists have frequently threatened to attack multinational corporations and large Indian companies accusing them of triggering “state-aided brutal area domination exercises” to exploit and oppress the poor.
Exacerbating matters is Maoist support from locals, mostly tribals, Dalits or lower-caste Hindus and landless villagers who, for decades, have been ruthlessly exploited and maltreated by the district administration and now look upon the rebels as their saviours.
Maoist cadres have for decades been quietly but doggedly pursuing the four-path strategy of their “People’s War” of agitation and propaganda, creating “liberated zones” followed by armed struggle in rural and then urban areas in order to establish their suzerainty.
In their areas of operation the Maoists levy taxes, dispense justice through “kangaroo” courts and determine the educational syllabi and moral behaviour of locals. For the moment they control, but do not hold territory.
Security experts, however, believe the ban will contribute little to the fight against an estimated 22,000 Maoists who prime minister Manmohan Singh has deemed India’s biggest internal security challenge since independence 62 years ago.
“There will be a marginal advantage [from the ban] if at all,” said Maoist expert Ajai Sahni of the Institute of Conflict Management in New Delhi.
More people, he said, could be arrested under the ban but it would be the same inefficient, ill-trained and badly-equipped police forces that will be inefficiently taking on the Maoists.
Meanwhile, in the under-developed Koraput district in Orissa province, adjoining Bengal, thousands of dispossessed tribals are turning to the Maoists to rescue them from land grabbers operating under state patronage.
According to reports from the remote region the tribals no longer bring their complaints to the local administration that exists only in name, but go straight to Maoist organisations who assist them in grabbing back whatever was seized from them.
“They come and hoist a red flag on our agricultural land, signalling the end of our possession over it. I owned 11 acres of land and now, I am hiding in my relative’s house” said Madhusudan Pondu (72) of Balipeta village. The Maoists are on the ascendant, he added.