THE BATTLE FOR BASTAR
Chhattisgarh and Bastar in particular never make it to the front pages in Delhi newspapers. When they do, usually it is for the wrong reasons. Either this has to do with CRPF men being killed in some land-mine blast or road building equipment being burnt to ashes in some remote forest. The story of how people live in the area and why Maoism struck roots there is of little interest to anyone in the country’s capital.
This narrative, however, is quite off the mark. The reality is that Communist Party of India (Maoist) has steadily lost its ability to inflict politically lasting damage in Bastar over time. Now it is more or less a nuisance: The Maoists often burn vehicles and equipment and even manage to kill politicians now and then but this is mostly to remind people in Raipur and Delhi that they matter. The idea of a revolutionary change never really took off and is now limited to geographically limited patches of territory.
How did this once powerful political idea come to such a pass? And what does this mean for the adivasis of Bastar? These are questions that need answers.
When the first batch of Maoists who crossed the Godvari from Andhra Pradesh to the dense forests of Madhya Pradesh in 1980 they did it as part of classic Maoist strategy. The Bastar region was to serve as a “rear” area while the forward area, where the revolution was to be waged, was Andhra Pradesh. To an extent, developing Bastar as a rear base was part of the Maoist quest for survival. The ability of the Maoists to set root was due to two factors. One, Bastar at that time was a remote area with very poor connectivity and a non-existent road network. A bus journey from Bijapur to Jagdalpur that can be completed in a day would take nearly three to four days at that time. In addition, the then state capital Bhopal was far away. This isolation was tailor-made for Maoists to establish their writ. Secondly, administrative neglect followed in the wake of the huge distance from Bhopal. There was little oversight of village level officials and they behaved as petty tyrants towards adivasis. In a span of a decade—from 1980 to 1990—the Maoists had “eliminated” these officials. In the process not only did they gain control over this isolated region, they also gained a measure of support from adivasis.
This process was, however, over by late 1990s. In the next five to six years, the Maoist world witnessed a massive churn. In Andhra Pradesh, the movement was decimated by 2006 after a series of tactical errors. Viewed dispassionately the setback in Andhra Pradesh has delivered an ideological and strategic body blow to the Maoists. If the “forward area”, which was the theatre of the revolution, itself was lost what was to be done in the “rear area” except survival? The same logic of geographic isolation that allowed Maoists to control Bastar now became a limiting factor for their spread across India. The fact is that India’s fate is determined in its plains and not from a forest fastness. Once Andhra was lost, so was the idea of the Indian revolution whatever argument the Maoists may give. Operations in Bastar then became a mere “holding area” where the battle was for survival and not for launching the revolution.
Against this background, the Maoists would have been wiped out by the first decade of the 21st century. Then luck sided with them. Sometime in 2005, the Salwa Judum “movement” erupted in South Bastar. It is often portrayed as a “spontaneous” movement of adivasis against Maoists or as an attempted land grab for mineral rich adivasi lands. But these characterisations of Salwa Judum miss its strategic logic. It was first and foremost an attempt to control the men and women who lived in the forests of Bastar. The help given to the so-called movement by the government after its initial spurt is a very strong indicator that this strategic idea was the driving force behind Salwa Judum.
In any insurgency situation there are two ways for government to assert control: area domination or controlling the flow of people living in the area. In a low population density area like Bastar, controlling people was a strategy of choice. What made it more appealing to the government was the poor road and transport infrastructure that made area domination in Bastar very difficult if not impossible. The human cost of this strategy was immense and cannot be calculated by any rational means. The dislocation and the misery inflicted on adivasis served as a nutrient for the Maoists. Adivasis joined the Maoists in droves, prolonging the life of an idea that had lost its relevance in India much earlier. The reckoning for that is yet to arrive.
In the intervening period, roughly from 2005 until the end of Salwa Judum in 2011, the state government—with the massive backing of the Centre—did manage to start a crash programme of building roads and associated infrastructure. It took a massive injection of central paramilitary forces to achieve this task. Camp-by-camp and kilometre-by-kilometre, roads were built at a great economic and human cost in the region. The best example here is the 35 km road from Sukma to Dornapal that took a very long time to construct. Unless the security infrastructure was put in place, building that road would have been impossible.
A more or less sufficient road network now enables to government to go back to an area domination strategy instead of the one that relies on controlling people. So can one say that the worst is over for Bastar?
This is one of those questions that are very hard to answer. No doubt the worst excesses of Salwa Judum now lie in the past. But the question is that for how long will the area domination strategy be required? From the government perspective the answer is clear: as long as there are Maoists in Bastar. It is a reasonable assertion.
There is, however, danger ahead. Unless the situation in Bastar is managed carefully, the chances of Maoist resurgence will remain strong. Classically, there are two groups that form the backbone of any insurgency. Depending on the relative economic situation, these are the middle class or the poor at the rock bottom of the hierarchy. In economic conditions that are relatively better and where there is some hope from the future, radicalism is a middle-class phenomenon. But when the situation is dire, the opportunity cost of joining the rebels approaches zero. This is a situation that is conducive for Maoism to spread.
What can be said about present day Bastar from this perspective? For one, the adivasis in the area were always self-contained and occupied in village life. This explains the half-hearted support the Maoists received from them even after nearly four decades of presence in the area. A crucial factor in this was that adivasis are masters of their land and the forests, something that goes by the slogan of jal, jameen aur jangal. But the danger ahead is that if the government in its “developmental” streak decides to make full use of a better security situation to take away these lands for mining of minerals, the insurgency may take a qualitatively different form. From being a movement where only the relatively better off adivasis support the Maoists, the danger of a far-greater involvement of adivasis cannot be ruled out in this case. The Maoists, of course, deny this and claim that “class enemies” among adivasis have been uprooted from the villages. But this is an inaccurate characterisation. The kinds of people who support them in the villages are the ones who see a better future with them. That class is bound to be better off than the average adivasi. These are, of course, relative claims and the reality may be more complicated. What can be said more firmly is that any land acquisition in the area has to be undertaken with care, keeping in mind the political risks associated with forcible measures. One hopes for the day when the sounds of drums and humming of songs will return to a peaceful Bastar.
Special story for Bhumkal Samachar by Senior journalist Siddharth Singh
