Between 6 and 7 in the morning of
Tuesday, 6 April, the Maoists sprung an ambush on
80-odd people of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)
and the Chhattisgarh state police who were returning
to their barracks after a night’s combing operations
in the Tarametla jungles,. It was a devastating
display of firepower capability by the Maoists in
their own terrain. According to reports, entrenched
in hillocks on both sides of the trail, they first
blew up the lead vehicle of the convoy. In the chaos
that followed, they gunned down 76 of the 80 cops,
at the cost of eight of their own. In less than an
hour, it was all over — with the Maoists taking all
the government issued guns and ammunition to boot.
When the reinforcements arrived, they found only
three guns left at the site.
A month or so before the massacre, the Maoists had
promised to show Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram
who ruled the roost in the remote villages and
forests. On 6 April, near Chintalnar village, they
proved it in no uncertain terms.
The Dantewada massacre raises critical questions:
“Guns versus butter: What works when? Do guns work
at all?”. Unfortunately, there are no clear answers.
If we were to take the pro-people, or ‘butter’,
side, it is best to begin with a brief portraiture
of Dantewada district from the 2001 Census. It is
mostly forested, with an area of 10,239 square
kilometres. In 2001, it had a reported population of
719,065, comprising 145,272 households. 66 per cent
of the population were tribals. Dantewada was the
least literate district in India, with a literacy
rate of a mere 30 per cent — implying that three out
of ten people could at best claim to vaguely signing
their names. It was the poorest district of
Chhattisgarh and 12th poorest in India in terms of a
households ownership and access to basic assets and
amenities. I can give you more depressing data. But
it isn’t necessary. Dantewada belongs to the
wretched of the earth.
But that’s not all. Like many districts Chhattisgarh,
Dantewada has been pathetically governed by the
Congress and the BJP alike — and this is so since
independence. There is neither development work that
can empower its people, nor any credible governance
at the district-level. This area has seen decades of
dis-entitlement and exploitation, both of the
adivasis and the forests. There is rampant
corruption. And in more recent times, the state
government led by Raman Singh, has been promoting
Salwa Judum (or ‘peace march’) — a cutely
anaesthetised term for arming people, local thugs
and henchmen of contractors to eradicate the
Maoists.
Can butter work? In theory, yes. But the tragic fact
is that there is absolutely no governance structure
in Dantewada that can properly implement any
development programme worth the name. In fact, there
is no governance structure at all. So, the butter
advocates can say what they wish about the need for
education, healthcare, social infrastructure, rural
employment and the like. All of which is correct;
but none of which can be implemented in today’s
Dantewada.
It is also important to understand what happens when
a district gets comprehensively taken over by the
Maoists or any armed radical movement. A new
administration emerges that runs the area: it
collects substantial revenues from the timber mafia,
mining dons and other contractors; it levies taxes
and duties where it can; it purchases or robs
weapons and ammunition; it widens its operations by
training people as fighters or informants; and it
operates in its terrain of choice. The Maoists are
now the economically, politically and militarily
powerful rulers of Dantewada, and mere promise of
butter — that too from an utterly distrusted
administration — will not help in the least in
getting them to turn in their arms, and renounce
violence for development.
So, it has to be a combination of guns and butter.
That’s much easier to pen in an English language
weekly than to actually implement in the forests of
Chhattisgarh. Despite all their training, the CRPF
are operating in alien territory; and the less said
of the capability of local cops, the better. The
Maoists will lure the government’s forces to deeper
forests; choose their times and areas of ambush; use
their superior network of informants; and kill as
and when they want to make a point. I don’t see the
incapable police force of Chhattisgarh doing any
anti-terrorism of consequence. And I don’t think
that Delhi has the appetite for too much ‘extreme
force’ with ‘collateral damage’ — even if it could
make such force work.
We can neither stomach a bloody no-holds barred
fight; nor start putting a genuinely committed
administration in place that begins to govern for a
change. That’s why the Maoists are winning. It’s sad
but true.
Published: Business World, April 2010
