Prosperity Unbound

On April 6, the Naxalite insurgency group in northern India killed 76 policemen in their most violent attack in forty-three years of existence.  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has declared them the “greatest threat facing India”.  They are active in a third of India’s 602 districts, and control thirty-three. Why has the group been able to take root in India and where?

For the past couple decades, the group’s stronghold was Andra Pradesh (AP).  In AP two factors were dominant: agriculture and land rights issues.  The state had virtually ignored poor, remote peasants, providing little if any public services.  The state provided no security for peasants from land appropriation.  The Naxalites, a Maoist insurgency group, took advantage of the opportunity presented by disenfranchised, rural citizens.  They engaged in land grabbing on behalf of the peasants, becoming something of a modern-day Robin Hood outfit.  Often, however, they did not devote sufficient time and energy to redistributing land to the poor.  The Maoists offered citizens little else to peasants in territories they dominated besides some sense of security with a violent price tag.

After 2000, the State of Andra Pradesh developed a multi-pronged strategy to root out the insurgents.  They amassed a strong counter-insurgency force with assistance of the central government’s reserve police forces.  As a counter-measure, they addressed citizen grievances, first by engaging in a land redistribution which benefited 250,000 of the state’s poor, and secondly by trying to increase employment opportunities in the areas where agricultural opportunities did not provide sufficient income.  They also proffered dialogue with the Naxalites if they would lay down their weapons and amnesty for disaffection.

Over the past four to five years, the strategy has proved effective.  The Maoists have been virtually rooted out, but its leadership has found fertile ground elsewhere to continue operations: in the States of Bihar and Chhattisgarh where the police to citizen ratio in some districts falls as low as 1:100,000.   This month’s insurgent attacks were in the Chhattisgarh district of Dantawara.  Where the government fails to provide security for it citizens and their property, someone will … creating a less-than-ideal situation, to put it gently.