Posted on June 4, 2013 by reed
[It is not hard to imagine that the
government's counter-insurgency "hearts and minds" campaign is very
different from the liberatory "development" of the Naxals. -- Frontlines
ed.]
Vivek Deshpande, Indian Express: Nagpur, Monday June 03 2013
The government move to win the hearts
of tribals to tackle the Naxal issue may be gaining pace, but the Naxals
too claim to have started their own development programmes.
In an interview published in April 2013 issue of
Pahat (Dawn), a mouthpiece of Maharashtra State Committee of CPI
(Maoist), Katakam Sudarshan, secretary of Central Regional Bureau of
Maoists and alleged mastermind of the Darbha Valley massacre in
Chhattisgarh, says that lands of over 1,000 farmers were levelled and 50
new reservoirs and farm-bunds have been built in the “liberated”
Dandakaranya zone.
The programme reportedly was launched in 2011 on
the occasion of Bhumkal Diwas on February 10. It was on this day in 1910
that the tribals revolted against the British in Bhumkal, Bastar.
Sudarshan has claimed that in the zone, that cover
parts of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, houses
have been built for 136 homeless. “Only one-third of the Rs 1.5 crore
allotted by zonal government (Jantaana Sarkar) was spent on the works.
Since the funds don’t get lapsed, the amount will be spent for further
works,” he says.
Sudarshan claims that over 1.2 lakh people
participated in the three-week-long activity. With this initiative,
Sudarshan says, people are finding it less necessary to travel to
adjoining states to fetch anything. Trying to emphasise that the
villagers are participants in the armed conflict, he says, “And in such
times, it has become possible for the people to unitedly fight police
attacks.”
The Maoist leader also expounded on industrial
growth based on agriculture. “The current exploitative ruling classes
are afraid that if this alternative model of development succeeds, it
will pose a danger for their existence. So they are trying to crush it,”
he said.
Rubbishing various Acts like the 1970 Land Ceiling
Act and the 2006 Forest Rights Act, he says such laws have done no good
to tribal farmers.
Supporting the Telangana cause, he says, “Deceitful
conspiracy by Nehru and Patel saw annexation of Telangana. Communists
and Muslims continued to be massacred even after the Nizam surrendered.
After creating Andhra Pradesh, people from coastal Andhra started
exploiting poor Telangana farmers leading to agitation in 1969.”
Marri Chenna Reddy rode the wave of dissent and won
11 Lok Sabha seats but he later ditched the Telangana people and joined
the Congress, says Sudarshan.
According to him even what Chandrashekhara Rao of
TRS is doing is nothing beyond elections, resignations and lobbying. “We
are supporting it since it is necessary for real people’s Telangana and
prevent it from being reduced to the same state of affairs as other
states,” he says in the interview.
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