http://www.thesundayindian.com/18042010/storyd.asp?sid=8750&pageno=1
Tribal unrest - provider as marauder
As the people of Junglemahal drift close to desperation, it is the state that is to blame
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Soumitra BasuChairman, Indian Instutite of Marxist Studies, Kolkata
An epic is being enacted, or an apology of it! Chidambaram started it, with a number � 72 hours. Kishenji retorted with another unit � days� nothing came of it. Neither took it seriously. Both procrastinated. This is a fine management technique- one that creates huge media hype and thus social capital is formed. Things did not change but perceptions did. Junglemahal is now a name, more than Nandigram.
People die or are dying, get raped, jailed, evicted and, of course, they are threatened on a quotidian basis. Lalmohun Tudu was bumped off in an encounter. His crime? A highly dangerous conspiracy against the state and the system � he was running a local hospital on the people�s initiative. Compassion is extremely dangerous when people are the target. Police officers are disappearing too. Retaliation is often swift. The cycle goes on, on and on. The idyllic but sombre rainforest is now bloodied. And procrastination is the response.
700 villages have been flattened and wiped out ostensibly for �development� � for mining important national resources. �National interest� serves city-dwelling billionaires who compete in the global arena. It will never serve the people in the nation-state. A rainforest does not have capital value and is, therefore, dispensable. People who live and who produce through their toil and let the wealthy live off their resources generated through indirect taxes, do not have a voice or opinion in a �democracy�. The voice that matters is that of those whose �national interest� is served.
Liberals and �independent� think tanks are clamouring about a colossal breakdown of an ostensibly perfect development regime. A haven of representational neurocracy that we advertise as the best liberal model laments that people of the rainforest are now mere victims of neglect and corruption! What a revelation! Ask Lalita Tudu, thoroughly determined daughter of Lalmohun. She does care a fig for �development� or �administration�.
Ask those ladies who are either already raped or are preys of the future; ask the children whose parents are behind bars and do not know why; ask those who have lost their generations-old possession to some security mercenaries. Do they care about how many borewells may be installed in some future time, or how many health centres and even schools? People have lived here on their own for millenniums. They expect nothing from the dikus (outsiders). So they do not appreciate their presence either. Adivasis have seen outsiders coming and going, and robbing them in every such new move and another thread of continuous stream of wealth outflow starts. These various streams of dikus of different races and people have now congealed into an all-powerful state. The state is now institutionalised diku. These people had to be subdued, imprisoned, strangled and dishonoured. �Development� follows the same track. The people of the rainforest and Junglemahal are fighting the war their predecessors had started millenniums back.
Dignity is all they want, dignity for the domiciled, dignity as human beings and dignity as producers. They are hardly swayed by the lollipops of jobs, doles, �development� and, least of all, bore-wells. Binayak Sen, Himangshu Kumar, Anuradha Ghandy, Narayan Sanyal, Jayanta Bhattacharya, Naba Kumar Biswas are not dikus. They are kakus. The STATE is, the uniform-clad BABUs are, the sahebs in the white car are and definitely the security authorities are. An Adivasi mother knows who to watch out against and who to go to as friends. The state comprises of the liberal soothsayers as well, the think-tanks, the academicians, the NGOs, and all other �individuals� in addition to the four existing pillars we had known. Castes after castes, sections after sections are joining the ranks of the rebels. Previously Mundas were the rebels, then came the Santhals, then all other denominations of Vanvasis, then the Mahatos (Koiris) and now the domiciled Biharis and Bengalis. Marx conceived of withering away of the state. The means were rather mundane: build up mass organisations and render the government-sponsored institutions irrelevant. Now it is the state that is blasting itself off by unleashing a backlash. The state is the anarchist and terrorist here, it is pushing the whole populace into rebellion, it is losing all iota of credibility as a provider and positing itself as a marauder.
The ruling establishment at the Centre is not bothered. The Congress has a long enough experience of wading through waters sullied by themselves. They know how to linger on without solving but creating more complex twists. Our Left parties have learnt how to parrot and even out-perform the Congress in their game. The people are now realising this. There are two ways of looking at the same thing � a state way, and a people way.
