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Correlation between extremism and poverty Admitting that the rise of Naxalism was a "political movement with a strong base among poor peasantry and adivasis", a high-powered government committee has ascribed its growth to people's discontent and complete failure of the system and asked for immediate winding up of the Salwa Judum. The report, prepared by a panel set up by the Planning Commission, said that measures like Salwa Judum "delegitimizes politics, dehumanizes people, degenerates those engaged in their security and above all, represents abdication of the state itself". While criticising the crude violence practised by Naxalites, the committee asked the government to first deal with the problem of landlessness, ensure livelihood and have an effective land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement policy. It also asked the government to hold peace talks with the Naxalites. Stating that "dissent or expression of dissatisfaction is a positive feature of democracy", the committee said, "What is surprising is not the fact of unrest, but the failure of the state to draw right conclusions from it." The committee recommended that all debt liabilities of the weaker sections be liquidated where the debtor has paid an amount equivalent to the original principal and where intended benefit for which the loan was taken has not accrued to the borrowers. A policy and legal framework should be put in place to enable small and marginal farmers to lease-in land with secure rights while landless poor occupying government land should not be treated as encroachers. Instead, they should be declared as deemed patta holders on "as is where is" basis. The committee recommended that the tribal sub-plan be brought under the fifth schedule and forest produce be provided protection of minimum support price. "Public purpose" in the Land Acquisition Act should be limited to national security and public welfare and should not be stretched to acquisition for companies, cooperatives and registered societies. Police should undergo rigorous training not only on humane tactics of controlling rural violence but also on the constitutional obligation of the state for the protection of fundamental rights. The committee, set up by the Planning Commission in 2006, is headed by D Bandopadhyay, a retired IAS officer who played a key role in dealing with Naxalites in West Bengal in the 1970s. Among the members are Prakash Singh, former UP DGP and an expert on Naxal issues; Ajit Doval, former director of Intelligence Bureau; B D Sharma, retired bureaucrat and activist; Sukhdeo Thorat, UGC chairman and K Balagopal, human rights lawyer. The committee submitted its report earlier this month. On growth of Naxalism, the report said that while policy documents admitted direct correlation between extremism and poverty, in practice, the government treated it as a law and order problem. "It is necessary to change this mindset and bring about congruence between policy and implementation," the panel said. The report has exhaustive details about social, political, economic and cultural discrimination faced by SCs/STs in the country and how that resulted in discontented people finding succour in immediate justice provided by the Naxalites. To buttress its point, the committee did a survey of four districts affected by Naxalism and compared it with four comparatively more developed ones in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa. It was found that the districts where Naxalism had grown were different from developed ones in 10 ways: high share of SC/ST population, low literacy, high infant mortality, low level of urbanization, high forest cover, high share of agricultural labour, low per capita foodgrain production, low level of road length, high share of rural households without bank accounts and high share of rural households without specified assets. Blaming the growth of Naxalism on poor governance, the report said, "It is not fortuitous that overwhelmingly large sections of bureaucracy/technocracy constituting the delivery system come from landowning dominant castes or well-to-do middle classes, with their attachment to ownership of property, cultural superiority, purity-pollution governed behaviour and a state of mind which rationalizes and asserts their existing position of dominance in relation to others". Arguing that land-related factors played an important role in the growth of Naxalism, as seen in the "land to the tiller" policy of the Naxalites, the report said Naxalites had done little to redistribute private land among poor. Pointing out that thousands of acres of land remained fallow, the panel asked the government to devise legal means to ensure that the landless got land. It also suggested that land be returned to those landholders where it was taken by Naxalites for political reasons. "Excesses of the Naxalites in this regard are not only unjustified but deserve utmost censure," the report said. timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Talk_to_Naxalites_says_govt_panel/articleshow/289145.cms * * *Jharkhand Music @ Jharkhandi.org/music.htm<http://www.jharkhandi.org/music.htm> * .
