COUNTERING THE MAOIST CONNUNDRUM

the prime minister Mr.manmohan Singh not so long ago had labeled the Maoist insurgency as among the gravest threats to our internal security and stressed on the need to address this problem with “utmost urgency"....while governments both central and state have grappled to address the issue in myriad ways, the most blatant tactic among them all was that employed by the Chhattisgarh government in the form of SALWA JUDUM ....what started out as a successful model which helped villagers in Maoist areas defend themselves from the atrocities committed on their lives and property by the Maoist, gradually transformed into a rouge, unaccountable outfit charged with unbridled violation of human rights. The state adopting a policy of "arming citizens to fight disgruntled citizens" is a blasphemy of the principles of democracy enshrined in our constitution. Every civilized society in our world has public institutions entrusted with the onerous task of securing the confidence of the people it seeks to serve. Our country has many.... the police and the paramilitary forces have their job cut out to secure the lives of ordinary citizens & maintain law & order. By resorting to salwa judum, the govt of Chhattisgarh has not only obliterated any remnants of morale which the battered police force has, but also has exposed the inadequacies of rural policing & intelligence. Involving people in the process of development for long has been regarded as a prerequisite for securing good governance….but such organizations such as salwa judum shouldn’t be the means employed to realize this goal!!.The recent Supreme Court judgment in this regard holds significance. The SC has now banned the salwa judum and other organizations of the ilk from operating and pulled up the chattisgarh govt for conceiving such a policy.this is indeed a positive development.sense has finally prevailed!!
.good governance has often been cited as a cure for Maoism .involvement of all stake holders in their respective capacities to contribute towards addressing the endemic & systemic problems is imperative. While the security of the rural populace can only be ensured by boosting up the capabilities & morale of the rural police force in affected regions[in terms of weaponary,training,preparedness,technology aids(night vision, bullet proof vests etc )], “community policing” model could be actively promoted through awareness programs to bridge the “trust deficit” & improve “grassroots level intelligence” capabilities . For any civil administration to exist and operate to its fullest potential in the affected areas there is a need to provide adequate security to civil infrastructure, personnel & villagers. Securing such an environment for development is not possible unless people themselves want it to stay that way. Identifying and tracking overt as well as covert Maoist “sympathizers” is important in this regard. On one hand there is a need to restore faith in the government through proactive action by the administration .on the other hand there is a need to plug in the loopholes which have rendered democratic methods of protest defunct & ineffective. If this can be achieved to some degree & if the people are educated on the means to bring erring officials to book for violation of norms or shirking from their authoritative responsibility, then it could go a long way in curbing Maoism in the long run.
Maoism today lacks the ideological force it once commanded. Unlike the earlier cadres composed of distinguished ideologues, Maoists of the present day are a frustrated lot devoid of ideological underpinnings. A Maoist today is one who is affected by unemployment or victimized by any atrocity conducted by a public authority. The external financial & arms support which the Maoists once had from the Nepal Maoists and the Chinese has also gradually tapered down. The fact that Maoism is slowly but surely on the path of decline, provides immense opportunity to the government to counter them. It is an opportunity which govt can let go only at its own peril. The government has to revisit its policy on the Maoists and adopt a clever mix of force, diplomacy, dialogue, rehabilitation for employment and proactive visible development to reverse the inroads made in the past few decades by the Maoists. There is a need to recognize the common necessities of the reds (sympathizers, arms, ammunition, finances for propaganda and sustenance) as well as the tactics employed by them (hit & run/guerilla tactics ,slipping across jurisdictions of states ) to evolve effective strategies to deal with them.
The need of the hour thus is a committed, proactive bureaucracy and governmental agencies working in tandem to dismantle the Maoist on one hand and ensuring good governance to all citizens so that any kind of depravation doesn’t persist. And even when it does, there are democratically mandated mechanism to ensure complete, speedy and transparent redressal of grievances.

MGNREGS & SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Over the past few decades, there has been a considerable change in the mindset of academics & policy makers with regard to perceived notions on our ever growing population. While population explosion is still considered as a serious concern with respect to percapita availability of resources, it is no longer seen as a serious impediment to growth (courtesy: china!!).A testimony to this changed mindset is the way in which the population stabilization target was blatantly pushed to 2070 without even batting an eyelid!! ....some of us may scoff at this indifference & call for corrective action. But the truth remains that there far too many complexities involved in securing population control than we are actually aware of !...much of the factors which influence population explosion are beyond cognitive control…they are so firmly entrenched in our social fabric that there is as such no concurrence among the think tanks of India regarding a foolproof counter strategy.
If unbridled population is growth is to be accepted as a reality which all of us have to live with, then what could be our strategy to convert this 1.2bn population with over a 400 million work force into a productive one?....the answer to this lies in the world’s largest wage employment guarantee program  the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Program( MGNREGS)…it is now of common knowledge that the rapid strides made by our country in the past six decades has effected a significant shift in employment patterns across India. The shift from agriculture & allied activities as the principle source of employment to other occupations which form the bulk of the unorganized sector is evident all around us. However, as a classical case of the fabled “riggsian prismatic society”, we still have a majority of our workforce still occupied as agricultural workers.
When the NREGP emerged as a flagship scheme of the UPA govt, there were apprehensions regarding its capability to provide guaranteed gainful employment in rural areas as a supplementary avenue of income. Five years on, the verdict is a chequered one…..while the program did perform admirably (given its scale of operation & size of beneficiaries) , the results were not uniform across the country. Further there were reports of malpractice, embezzlement & fraud in areas where miscreants found out ways to beat the system & navigate through loopholes….nevertheless the experiment was a fruitful one which came up with periodic reforms (like social audit) to counter most drawbacks…..now rechristened as the MGNREGP, the program which has both its scope & mandate expanded is regarded as one among the greatest human resource development programs undertaken in history. All this sounds good isn’t it?....but is it true?...is the MGNREGP a “human resource development ” program in the first place?.......hell no!....its at best a “human resource utility” program!!.....
There is seldom any cognizable development of human resource ….all we do is provide the poor blokes “guaranteed employment & timely wages” just because we are bound by duty to do so…isn’t that pathetic? Doesn’t it look like the government is trying hard to continue its tradition of “distributing alms” & “perpetuating the culture of beggary”?
That’s exactly what the successive governments have been doing since independence….most of our poverty alleviation programs & policies(national food for work program(NFWP);conditional cash transfer scheme; huge subsidies given all along the production-consumption chain etc) point to a pattern wherein , no effort is made to develop the skill of the beneficiaries. It is sad that MGNREGP which has the potential to transform millions of lives is going down the same way…
Any serious effort towards human development should focus on skill development. a renowned luminary once said that , its better to teach a man how to fish rather than put food on his plate…the relevance of this view is greater today as we live in a knowledge economy where lack of knowledge is viewed as incompetence. In such a scenario would it be wise on our part to merely use our human resource to carry on doing manual unskilled labour throughout their lives? Should we not nurture the ability of population to equip itself with all the skills which are required to secure self employment?
We should indeed!...there is no better opportunity to do this than carry this out on an already established robust platform such as MGNREGP.if the skill set of our working population is bolstered to its potential & sufficient freedom to express one’s scientific temper is given, it would lead to a social entrepreneurship movement which could revolutionize the way we Indians looks at things, infuse innovative spirit in our citizens & usher in dignity in their lives.
One of the fundamental reasons china was able to achieve double digit growth in spite of starting out later than India was due to the fact that they embarked on a systematic process of upgrading the skills of their workforce .the level of civilization in modern parlance is determined by the degree of specialization of the work force of a country….the scope of developmental activity is infinite!....if our work force can develop specialization in various fields, new vistas of employment .could open up & we could secure inclusive growth .
Are we doing enough to enhance the skill of our work force?....apparently not!...there are a lot of things which we should be doing on this front which we are not. The current govt policy to upgrade skill has been carried out through ITI’s .but like a lot of policies; these institutions are besotted with an array of problems such as lack of proper infrastructure, funding & archaic practices & procedures. There is a huge deficit between the technical expertise required for a job on field & the obsolete training that is imparted at these institutes. Further, there is no synergy between our premier educational institutions (read IIT’s,IIM’s & universities),R&D facilities & the ITI’s which has rendered them defunct. The need of the hour is to come up with a system of vocational education which could educate the illiterate unskilled labour & make them competent enough to secure employment on their own. A strategy of using development programs involving people’s participation as a plank to launch major skill development programs may be used.Further, this could be augmented by issuing certificates to those workers who develop an expertise in a particular field of skilled work. This would not only help them tide over unemployment (enabling them to secure employment in the private sector) but also gradually reduce the subsidy burden of the government. Such surplus funds could be ploughed back into more social sector spending. It is thus imperative that social development schemes of the Ilk of MGNREGP be used as a tool to herald a new era of change.
If we should transform our teeming millions into a potent human resource capable of sustaining our burgeoning growth & securing inclusive growth, we should ensure that our unorganized, unskilled work force embrace the culture of “consistent skill upgradation” on par with global standards .if we are able to achieve this in the next decade, it could as well serve as an antidote to most of the undesirable social issues of our times.

DEMOCRACY IN PERIL: IS INDIA A PSEUDO-DEMOCRACY?

Democracy as a potent tool to exercise control over the governance can be effective only when the citizens of a country are empowered in terms of :

a) Expressing their viewpoints without fear;
b) Assured dignity & enforceability of rights & liberties against arbitrary actions of the state
c) Possessing the ability to bring the requisite change & accountability in the system.

The vibrance of a democracy is best expressed through the amount of emphasis it places on human rights. If indices to measure democracy should be arrived upon, it should primarily include the attribute of “implied human rights”. There is a difference between universally agreed attributes of human rights and implied human rights. While the former is confined to defining human rights from the point of view of rights which a man/woman/child should enjoy, the latter is concerned with the emotional –psychological content involved by the virtue of being human. Accordingly,
even acts which cause small inconvenience/dissatisfaction for an individual citizen could be treated as a human rights violation. While there is a rising consensus among countries of the world with regard to maintenance of human rights, such an approach is essentially a micro-approach. There is a need to strive towards achieving implied human rights. The Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Sweden & Finland are already on that path. It is high time that India being the world’s largest democracy takes a baby step in that direction.

When the whole world condemned china for its gross violation of human rights during the 1989 Tiananmen square incident(where army tanks were sent in to crush protesting students),there were imminent comparisons with the human rights scenario in India. Media entities urged china to “learn” the “art of valuing a citizen’s rights & upholding their dignity” from India. In the past, India’s compassion towards its own citizens was setup as a benchmark /ideal to be followed .both nascent democracies like South Africa & seasoned ones like the USA & Canada sought to emulate the “gandhian vision” of a democracy.

However, recent trends in the human rights record of India have been abysmal. While overt violation of human rights in Kashmir, northeastern states etc have been highlighted in the UNDP human development report 2009, there are gross HR violations happening every minute in India as we speak.these go unreported or even unnoticed. We Indians thrive on this callous attitude. There is a scant respect for the “ aam aadmi “ whose everyday problems are treated as “minor glitches or aberrations” in a largely successful government machinery.

The treatment meted out to the common man in the event of a VVIP visit is particularly appalling. It goes on to show, how we value our citizens. It is ironical, how the government servants & elected representatives, who derive their purpose, authority & value from the citizens of India are given precedence over the citizens of the country!!. Traffic snarls during VVIP visits, cordoning off public places to ensure safe passage of VIP convoys etc have become the order of the day.

a recent incident , in which three aircraft loaded with around 500 passengers were not given clearance to land just because the president was supposed to return from Beijing. Over 11 flights were delayed, some of them cancelled and the three in question were circling in the air waiting for ground clearance. The flights were not notified in advance of plans to divert the flights elsewhere due to “security concerns which could endanger the life of the president”. They were left hanging perilously mid -air running on reserve fuel, with all the passengers hanging on to their dear lives. Now, if we are a true democracy, does it make sense to endanger the lives of 500 passengers & cause so much inconvenience to ordinary citizens , just to give clearance to the first citizen of our country? Is it not the moral responsibility of our government to value the lives of our citizens? ...and considering that this incident occurred just days after the tragic aviation disaster at Mangalore speaks volumes of our indifferent governance.

To top it all, apart from a few news items in the media, there was little public outcry. The people of our country have come to live with it. They have accepted it as a part of their life.it is difficult to say whether this is due to the passiveness ingrained in Indians due to nature of our freedom struggle or due to loss of faith of the people in general that any progress is achievable. But irrespective of what the reason is, we continue to live in misery & have accepted it as our fate.
This is in complete contrast to the attitude of citizens of western countries. There the citizens are proactive in demanding for their rights and the authorities are obliged to provide what the citizen demands of them.

A pivotal characteristic of a vibrant democracy is citizen activism. There is a need for the citizens of our country to shed their impassive & indifferent nature towards what is happening around them. Social consciousness brought about through awareness could help them in sensitivising individual towards other’s problems & issues in the society in general. An important lesson should be learnt from our freedom struggle. No change could have been possible without collective representation & demands. However, effective citizen group action should be accompanied by acquired human sensitivity.

If our civil society can take over the reins and act as a responsible “fourth pillar” of governance, its contribution towards strengthening democracy, ensuring the wellbeing of all citizens & achieving the ideal of “inclusive growth” would be priceless.

The government and its functionaries(civil servants included) are responsible to the citizens of this country both “collectively as well as individually”.i am stressing on this point , as the concept of responsibility of the government towards an “individual citizen” is often underplayed ,in favour of responsibility to the citizens as a whole. There is a need to revise our traditional concept of democracy and work towards establishing the notion that “the responsibility (of the state) towards the people of India is the sum total of responsibility of the state towards every individual citizen of India” .further, there is a need to define a new paradigm of democracy where, “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”…..meaning, it is the primary responsibility of the state to uphold the rights & dignity of an individual citizen. The responsibility of the state towards an individual citizen cannot be shirked or compromised in the garb of securing responsibility towards the citizens of India as a whole.

Having said that, there are many problems involved in ensuring that a regime of participative governance & citizen activism emerges. Based on the experiences gathered in western countries, it can be inferred that people become proactive only when their basic needs are met. As long as there is deprivation, people would continue to be self-centered and not work towards development of the nation as a whole. The bureaucracy & the political heads would continue to wield a great deal of power there by jeopardizing the lives of ordinary citizens. The paradigm of “developmental bureaucracy”, “participative democracy” & “compassionate representatives” should work together in unison towards securing the goal of achieving a true democracy. If this is not done & if they pull in different directions, any claim of being a democracy would sound hollow.

is the indian defense sector the proverbial "dinosaur" ?

high profile bickering among the "nuts & the bolts "of the government machinery has become the order of the day!!.taking a cue ffrom the "twitter happy" shasi tharoor , its now the turn of DRDO chief saraswat to embarrass the armed forces top brass before the hordes of lens-men media.marking a departure from the hushed up boardroom jibes ,he chose to bring out the sharp differences from within the defense establishment into the open....now the pending question is will he like tharoor get the sack too?

would defence minister A.K.Anthony save the skin of his scientific advisor?all this drama remains to be seen ..if at all such an issue snowballs into epic proportions.speaking about the content of discontent between the armed force top brass , both the sides do have a valid point.the armed forces have long argued that the DRDO has not been able to churn up cutting edge defense technology at the pace required to maintain battle readiness.the armed force cite the slow pace as the sole reason why they are "forced" to secure weapons from abroad.the truth however is that , the armed forces are happy being plagued by the "dependency syndrome " akin to pasting "made in India" on cheap Chinese goods!!.

the pathetic state of affairs has not even spared the space industry where india is supposed to be a "global player". the "bottom up" approach is often negated and we always choose "tested patterns" to developing one ourselves.we preferred to be pampered by our Russian friends with all the discarded technology.a clever Russian ploy to keep our technological obsolesce intact.

will india be able to stop the chinese jauggernaut in the event of a war?...the answer to this is obvious isnt it?...the question is if india should be able to stop agressive neighbours to infringe upon its sovereignity, what is it that needs to be done?

thankfully, there is a way out this dilemma.instead of resorting to a blame game, why don't we just unshackle our defense industries & push them towards becoming world class industries.there is a need to press for an aggressive agenda on this front.if Indians do want to not let go of their "copycat"tag, let them copy the practices followed elsewhere and not the technology!!.practices such as heavily relying on the private sector expertise to develop world class technology and innovative practices would go a long way into developing our industries into the future Lockheed martins & Boeings.

UNWARRENTED BRUTE FORCE

KALINGANAGAR The upcoming steel hub in Orissa's Jajpur district is a classic case of how the rehabilitation & resettlement policy 2003 has failed to be complied with.The 12,000-acre Kalinga Nagar complex, some 100 kilometres from Bhubaneswar, has about 10 industrial units and steel plants.While development of backward states to reduce disparity among various states of our country is the right thing to do,the methods followed by the authorities in place & the motives too are questionable.the high handedness of the district administration in using brute police force to deal with the anti-displacement agitations taken up by hundreds of tribals, who were opposing the construction of a common corridor road to give access to Tata Steel's six million tonne proposed steel mill shows lack of sensitivity in dealing with the marginalized sections of our population.the police opened fire at the protesting tribals, injuring about 50 men and women, living in the tribal hamlets. isn't mainstreaming our tribal population to be part of our "inclusive growth" strategy also a major dimension of development? if so how do we justify this brutality ? were there not better ways to bring about infrastructure development in these backward regions? agreed that most administrative decisions are tough ones where the axiom of "greater good" should be applied at the cost of a few.but what is hard to digest is the fact that the very development of these regions is against the interests of the very people whose well being the government is considering.

the basic paradigm in tribal administration & development is the framing of sustainable policies bearing in mind the attachment which the tribals develop towards their land.unless this is followed the authorities would be in no position to negotiate & assure them of the benefits which would accrue to them due to development projects.because for a tribal, his land,his culture & customs/traditions/beliefs figure in the top of his priority list.a suitable way could have been to by pass tribal localities in construction of the road or the governor of the state applying his discretionary powers with regard to regulating administrative action & overlooking the effective implementation of the rehabilitation policy before any work was started.instead all that the administration could muster was the use of brute force against a largely peaceful protest.

the tribals claim that they have lost all faith in the administration since no discussions were conducted with them by the authorities before the road project could be started.further they allege that the administration is out to prove that they were maoists. to compound the problems of the tribals,the local police seemed to have gagged any aattempts to voice the concerns of the tribals by denying entry to politicians and representatives of different organisations into the villages since the police action. it is high time that the government of orissa & the central government proactively prevent such attrocities from happening lest it could detoriate into another situation like what happened in lalgarh.