NOTÍCIAS DA GUERRA POPULAR: [** MAOIST_REVOLUTION **] The Impending Indian Government Offensive against the Adivasi....Statement of Concern and Protest by Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky and Others

http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/india141009.html

14.10.09

The Impending Indian Government Offensive against the Adivasi
Inhabited Hilly Regions: Statement of Concern and Protest by Arundhati
Roy, Noam

Chomsky and Others

Analytical Monthly Review

On Monday, October 12th, it was reported that Manmohan Singh --
despite the request of air chief marshal P. V. Naik to permit IAF
personnel in

helicopters to attack inhabitants of the hilly regions -- had
announced that the armed forces would not be deployed against the
domestic left-wing

opponents of the regime. �On October 8th the Cabinet Committee on
Security (CCS) had authorised the home ministry-driven coordinated
offensive that

will see, along with state police deployment, some 75,000 central
security personnel -- who are trained alongside the army -- and IAF
choppers that

will "assist in movement of forces." �We shall soon see what the Prime
Minister's reservation means in practice.

We should no doubt be thankful for any such slight sign of restraint
in the mounting militarisation of our internal politics, but the
evidence is

clear that this is at best a short respite. �The interest behind the
demands voiced by air chief marshal Naik has dominated this government
from its

inception, and will not likely be denied for long.

That interest is U.S. imperialism and its agents in the Indian armed
forces and security departments. �As Manmohan Singh spoke on October
12th, a

major Indo-U.S. war game in U.P. commenced focused "on mechanized
infantry operations for counter-insurgency/counter-terrorism in
semi-urban

terrain." �This is the latest of "joint combat exercises -- around 50
in the last seven years -- between the two nations" (Times of India,
October

8).

The impending government offensive against the adivasi inhabitants of
the hilly regions is a major turn toward civil war. �Behind the
curtain are

U.S. "counter-insurgency" experts and "advisers" fresh from the
torture camps of Iraq and the death squads of Colombia. �At this
critical moment we

add our voice in support of the statement circulated by our friends of
the Sanhati collective and set out below, and commend to your
attention the

"background note" appended to the statement.

October 12, 2009

To
Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister,
Government of India,
South Block, Raisina Hill,
New Delhi,
India-110 011.

We are deeply concerned by the Indian government's plans for launching
an unprecedented military offensive by army and paramilitary forces in
the

adivasi (indigeneous people)-populated regions of Andhra Pradesh,
Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa and West Bengal states.
The stated

objective of the offensive is to "liberate" these areas from the
influence of Maoist rebels. �Such a military campaign will endanger
the lives and

livelihoods of millions of the poorest people living in those areas,
resulting in massive displacement, destitution and human rights
violation of

ordinary citizens. �To hunt down the poorest of Indian citizens in the
name of trying to curb the shadow of an insurgency is both
counter-productive

and vicious. �The ongoing campaigns by paramilitary forces, buttressed
by anti-rebel militias, organised and funded by government agencies,
have

already created a civil war like situation in some parts of
Chattisgarh and West Bengal, with hundreds killed and thousands
displaced. �The proposed

armed offensive will not only aggravate the poverty, hunger,
humiliation and insecurity of the adivasi people, but also spread it
over a larger

region.

Grinding poverty and abysmal living conditions that has been the lot
of India's adivasi population has been complemented by increasing
state violence

since the neoliberal turn in the policy framework of the Indian state
in the early 1990s. �Whatever little access the poor had to forests,
land,

rivers, common pastures, village tanks and other common property
resources has come under increasing attack by the Indian state in the
guise of

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and other "development" projects related
to mining, industrial development, Information Technology parks, etc.
The

geographical terrain, where the government's military offensive is
planned to be carried out, is very rich in natural resources like
minerals, forest

wealth and water, and has been the target of large scale appropriation
by several corporations. �The desperate resistance of the local
indigenous

people against their displacement and dispossession has in many cases
prevented the government-backed corporations from making inroads into
these

areas. �We fear that the government's offensive is also an attempt to
crush such popular resistances in order to facilitate the entry and
operation

of these corporations and to pave the way for unbridled exploitation
of the natural resources and the people of these regions. �It is the
widening

levels of disparity and the continuing problems of social deprivation
and structural violence, and the state repression on the non-violent
resistance

of the poor and marginalized against their dispossession, which gives
rise to social anger and unrest and takes the form of political
violence by the

poor. �Instead of addressing the source of the problem, the Indian
state has decided to launch a military offensive to deal with this
problem: kill

the poor and not the poverty, seems to be the implicit slogan of the
Indian government.

We feel that it would deliver a crippling blow to Indian democracy if
the government tries to subjugate its own people militarily without
addressing

their grievances. �Even as the short-term military success of such a
venture is very doubtful, enormous misery for the common people is not
in doubt,

as has been witnessed in the case of numerous insurgent movements in
the world. �We urge the Indian government to immediately withdraw the
armed

forces and stop all plans for carrying out such military operations
that has the potential for triggering a civil war which will inflict
widespread

misery on the poorest and most vulnerable section of the Indian
population and clear the way for the plundering of their resources by
corporations.

We call upon all democratic-minded people to join us in this appeal.

National Signatories

Arundhati Roy, Author and Activist, India
Amit Bhaduri, Professor Emeritus, Center for Economic Studies and
Planning, JNU, India
Sandeep Pandey, Social Activist, N.A.P.M., India
Manoranjan Mohanty, Durgabai Deshmukh Professor of Social Development,
Council for Social Development, India
Prashant Bhushan, Supreme Court Advocate, India
Nandini Sundar, Professor of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics,
University of Delhi, India
Colin Gonzalves, Supreme Court Advocate, India
Arvind Kejriwal, Social Activist, India
Arundhati Dhuru, Activist, N.A.P.M., India
Swapna Banerjee-Guha, Department of Geography, University of Mumbai, India
Anand Patwardhan, Film Maker, India
Dipankar Bhattachararya, General Secretary, Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, India
Bernard D'Mello, Associate Editor, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), India
Sumit Sarkar, Retired Professor of History, Delhi University, India
Tanika Sarkar, Professor of History, J.N.U., India
Gautam Navlakha, Consulting Editor, Economic and Political Weekly, India
Madhu Bhaduri, Ex-ambassador
Sumanta Banerjee, Writer, India
Dr. Vandana Shiva, Philosopher, Writer, Environmental Activist, India
M.V. Ramana, Visiting Research Scholar, Program in Science,
Technology, and Environmental Policy; Program on Science and Global
Security, Princeton

University, USA
Dipanjan Rai Chaudhari, Retired Professor, Presidency College, India
Amit Bhattacharyya, Professor, Department of History. Jadavpur
University, Kolkata
D.N. Jha, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Delhi, India
Paromita Vohra, Devi Pictures
Sunil Shanbag, Theater Director
Saroj Giri, Lecturer in Political Science, Delhi University, India
Hilal Ahmed, Associate Fellow, Center for the Studies of Development
of Societies, India
Reetha Balsavar
Sriparna Bandopadhyay, India
Sudeshna Banerjee, Department of History, Jadavpur University, India
Chinmoy Banerjee
Kaushik Banyopadhyay, Student, IIT KGP, India
Pranab Kanti Basu, Department of Economics and Politics, Vishwa
Bharati University, India
Harsh Bora, Student, Delhi Law Faculty, India
Kaushik Bose, Reader, Vidyasagar University, India
Anjan Chakrabarti, Professor of Economics, Calcutta University, India
Shitansu Shekhar Chakraborty, Student, IIT Kharagpur, India
Achin Chakraborty, Professor of Economics, Institute of Development
Studies, Calcutta University Alipore, India
Rabin Chakraborty
Anand Chakravarty, Retired Professor, Delhi University, India
Uma Chakravarty, Retired Professor, Delhi University, India
Indira Chakravarthi, Public Health Researcher, India
Nandini Chandra, Member of Faculty, Delhi University, India
Navin Chandra, Visiting Senior Fellow, Institude of Human Development, India
Jagadish Chandra, New Socialist Alternative, CWI, India
Pratyush Chandra, Activist, Freelance Journalist, and Researcher, India
Kunal Chattopadhyay, Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur
University, India
Debarshi Das, IIT Guwahati, India
Probal Dasgupta, Linguistic Research Unit, I.S.I., India
Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta, Professor, Jadavpur University, India
Surya Shankar Dash, Independent Filmmaker, India
Ashokankur Datta, Graduate Student, I.S.I. (Planning Unit), India
Amiya Dev, Emiritus Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur
University, India
Soumik Dutta
S. Dutta, Delhi Platform, India
Madhumita Dutta, Green Youth Movement, India, Based in Chennai
Durga Prasad Duvvuri, Independent Management Consultant, India
Ajit Eapen, Mumbai, India
Sampath G, Mumbai, India
Lena Ganesh
M.S. Ganesh
Subhash Gatade, Writer and Social Activisit, India
Pothik Ghosh, Editor, Radical Notes, India
Rajeev Godara, General Secretary, Sampooran Kranti Manch, Haryana
(associated with Lok Rajniti Manch), India (Also an Advocatein Punjab
and Haryana

High Courts)
Abhijit Guha, Vidyasagar University, India
Jacob, South Asia Study Center
Manish Jain, Assistant Professor, Center for Studies of Sociology of
Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India
Shishir K. Jha, IIT Mumbai, India
Avinash K. Jha, Assistant Professor of Economics, Shri Ram College of
Commerce, India
Bodhisattva Kar, Fellow in History, Center for Studies in Social Science, India
Harish Karnick, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur, India
Sumbul Jawed Khan, Biological Sciences and Bio. Eng. Department, IIT
Kanpur, India
Kavita Krishnan, AIPWA, India
Ravi Kumar, Editor of Radical Notes and Assistant Professor, Jamia
Millia Islamia, Central University, India
Abhijit Kundu, Faculty, Sociology, University of Delhi
Gauri Lankesh, Editor, Lankesh Patrike, India
Soumik Majumder
Dishery Malakar
Julie Koppel Maldonado
Dr Nandini Manjrekar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
Soma Marik
Erika Marquez
Satyabrata Mitra
Siddhartha Mitra
Tista Mitra, Journalist, India
Najeeb Mubarki, Assistant Editor, Editorial page, Economic Times, India
Dipankar Mukherjee, PDF, Delhi, India
Subhasis Mukhopadhyay, Frontier
Pulin B. Nayak, Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics,
Delhi University, India
Nalini Nayak, Reader in Economics, PGDAV College, Delhi University, India
Soheb ur Rahman Niazi, Student, Jamia Milia Islamia, India
Rahul Pandey
Jai Pushp, Activist, Naujawan Bharat Sabha, India
Imrana Qadeer, Retired Professor, Centre of Social Medicine and
Community Health, J.N.U., India
Neshant Quaiser, Associate Professor, Jamia Millia Islamia, Central
University, Department of Sociology, India
Divya Rajagopal
Ramendra, Delhi Shramik Sangathan, India
Ramdas Rao, President, People's Union for Civil Liberties, Bangalore Unit, India
V. Nagendra Rao, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad, India
Shereen Ratnagar, Retired Professor, Center for Historical Studies, JNU, India
Sankar Ray, Columnist
Kirity Roy, MASUM and PACTI, India
Atanu Roy
Anindyo Roy
Dunu Roy, Social Activist, India
Sanjoy Kumar Saha, Reader, CSE department, Jadavpur University, India
Sandeep, Freelance Journalist
Dr. K. Saradamoni, Retired Academic
Madhu Sarin, Social Activist Satyam, Rahul Foundation and Dayitvbodh, India
Jhuma Sen, Delhi
Samita Sen, Professor, Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, India
Santanu Sengupta, UDML College of Engineering, India
Ajay Kishor Shaw, Mumbai, India
Dr. Mira Shiva
Jagmohan Singh, Voices for Freedom Punjab, India
Sandeep Singh, Mumbai, India
Harindar Pal Singh Ishar, Advocate, Punjab and Haryana High Court, India
Preeti Sinha, Editor of Philhal, Patna, India
Oishik Sircar, Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School, India K. Sriram
Viviek Sundara, Mumbai, India
Saswati Swetlena, Programme Officer, Governance and Advocacy Unit,
National Center for Advocacy Studies, India
Damayanti Talukdar, Kolkata
Divya Trivedi, The Hindu Business Line, India
Satyam Varma, Rahul Foundation
Rahul Varman, Professor, Department of Industrial and Management
Engineering, IIT Kanpur, India
Padma Velaskar, Professor, Center for Studies in the Sociology of
Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India
G. Vijay, Lecturer, Department of Economics, University of Hyderabad, India
R.M. Vikas, IIT Kanpur, India

International Signatories

Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, M.I.T., USA
David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, The C.U.N.Y.
Graduate Center, USA
Michael Lebowitz, Director, Program in Transformative Practice and
Human Development, Centro Internacional Miranda, Venezuela
John Bellamy Foster, Editor of Monthly Review and Professor of
Sociology,University of Oregon Eugene, USA
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor and Director of the
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University,
USA
James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science, Yale University, USA
Michael Watts, Professor of Geography and Development Studies,
University of California Berkeley, USA
Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government, Departments
of Anthropoogy and Political Science, Columbia University, USA
Mira Nair, Filmmaker, Mirabai Films, USA
Howard Zinn, Historian, Playwright, and Social Activisit, USA
Abha Sur, Women's Studies, M.I.T., USA
Richard Peet, Professor of Geography, Clark University, USA
Gilbert Achcar, Professor of Development Studies and International
Relations, School of African and Oriental Studies, University of
London, U.K
Massimo De Angelis, Professor of Political Economy, University of East
London, UK
Gyanendra Pandey, Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of
History, Emory University, USA
Brian Stross, Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas Austin, USA
J. Mohan Rao, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts at
Amherst, USA
Vinay Lal, Professor of History & Asian American Studies, University
of California Los Angeles, USA
James Crotty, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Haluk Gerger, Political Scientist, Activist, Political Prisoner, Turkey
Justin Podur, Journalist, Canada
Hari Kunzru, Novelist, U.K.
Louis Proyect, Columbia University
Biju Mathew, Associate Professor, Rider University, USA
Harsh Kapoor, South Asia Citizens Web
Nicholas De Genova, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Latino
Studies, Columbia University, USA
Peter Custers, Academic researcher on militarisation, Netherlands
Radha D'Souza, School of Law, University of Westminster , UK
Gary Aboud, Secretary, Fisherman and Friends of the Sea, Trinidad and Tobago
Mysara Abu-Hashem, Ph.D. Student, American University, USA
Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Professor of English, Montclair University, USA
Nadim Asrar, Ph.D. student, University of Minnesota, USA
Margaret E Sheehan, Attorney at Law, USA
Arpita Banerjee, Lecturer, Whittemore School of Business and
Economics, University of New Hampshire, USA
Deepankar Basu, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of
Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Sharmadip Basu, Syracuse University, USA
Joseph A Belisle
Kim Berry, Professor of Women's Studies, Humboldt State University, USA
Varuni Bhatia, Assistant Professor, Religous Studies Program, N.Y.U., USA
Anindya Bhattacharya, Faculty, University of York, UK
Sourav Bhattacharya, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Peter J. Bloom, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies,
University of California Santa Barbara, USA
Sister Maureen Catabian, Sisters of the Good Shepherd, Philippines
Paula Chakravartty, Associate Professor, Department of Communications,
University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Shefali Chandra, Professor of South Asian History, Washington
University at St Louis, USA
Ipsita Chatterjee, Assistant Professor, University of Texas, Austin, USA
Piya Chatterjee, Associate Professor of Women's Studies, University of
California Riverside, USA
Angana Chatterji, Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies,
San Francisco, USA
Ruchi Chaturvedi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Hunter College,
City University of New York, USA
Chitrabhanu Chaudhuri, Ph.D. Student, Department of Mathematics,
Northwestern University, USA
Len Cooper,Victorian Branch,Communication Workers Union Australia
Priti Gulati Cox, Artist, USA
Stan Cox, Senior Scientist, The Land Institute, USA
Linda Cullen, Canada
Huma Dar, Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of British Columbia, Canada
Koel Das, UCSB, USA
Atreyi Dasgupta, MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA
Grace de Haro, APDH Human Rights Organization, Argentina
Nandini Dhar, Ph.D. student, University of Texas Austin, U.S.A.
Martin Doornbos, Professor Emeritus, International Institute of Social
Studies, Erasmus University, Netherlands
Emily Durham-Shapiro, Student, University of Minnesotta, USA
Arindam Dutta, Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, MIT, USA
Anne Dwyer, University of Washington, USA
T. Robert Fetter, USA
Kade Finnoff, Doctoral Candidate, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Kaushik Ghosh, University of Texas, Austin, USA
Bishnupriya Ghosh, Professor of English, University of California
Santa Barbara, USA
Vinay Gidwani, Professor of Geography, Graduate Center, City
University of New York, USA
Wendy Glauser, MA candidate, Political Science. York University. Toronto, Canada
Ted Glick, Climate Crisis Coalition, Climate Crisis Coalition and
Chesapeake Climate Action Network, USA
Inderpal Grewal, Yale University, USA
Shubhra Gururani, Associate Professor of Anthropology, York University, Canada
Anna L. Gust, University College London, UK
Shalmali Guttal, Focus on the Global South
Arne Harns, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Social and Political
Sciences, Free University of Berlin, Germany
Amrit Singh Heer, Graduate student, Social and Political Thought, York
University, Canada
Helen Hintjens, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands Robert
A Hueckstedt, Professor, University of Virginia, USA
Zeba Imam, Ph.D. student, Texas A&M University, USA
Kajri Jain, University of Toronto, Canada
Dhruv Jain, Graduate student, York University, Canada
Mohamad Junaid, Graduate Student, Department of Anthropology, City
University of New York, USA
Louis Kampf, Professor of Literature Emeritus, MIT, USA
Jyotsna Kapur, Associate Professor, Southern Illinois University,
Carbondale, USA
Emily Kawano, Director, Center for Popular Economics, USA
Nada Khader , Executive Director, WESPAC Foundation
Jesse Knutson, University of Chicago, USA
Peter Lackowski, Writer/Activist, USA
Maire Leadbeater (human rights activist Auckland New Zealand)
Joseph Levine, Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of
Massachusetts Amherst, USA
George Levinger, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts
Amherst, USA
David W. Lewit, Alliance for Democracy, USA
Jinee Lokaneeta, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Drew University, USA
Ania Loomba, Catherine Bryson Professor of English, University of
Pennsylvania, USA
Arthur MacEwan, Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of
Massachusetts Boston, USA
Sanjeev Mahajan
Sunaina Maira, Associate Professor, University of California Davis, USA
Panayiotis "Taki" Manolakos, Writer/Activist, USA
Carlos Marentes, Farmworkers.org, USA
Bill Martin, Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University, USA
Thomas Masterson, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, USA
Jim McCorry, Belfast, N. Ireland
Victor Menotti, Executive Director, International Forum on Globalization, USA
James Miehls, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Stephen Miesher, Associate Professor, University of California Santa
Barbara, USA
Ali Mir, Professor, William Paterson University, USA
Raza Mir, Professor of Management, William Paterson University, USA
Katherine Miranda, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras.
Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director, Oakland Institute, USA
Roger Moody, Association for Progressive Communication, UK
Agrotosh Mookerji, Statistician and student, UK
Joshua Moufawad-Paul, Ph.D. student, York University, Canada
Sudipto Muhuri
Alan Muller, Executive Director, Green Delaware, USA
Sirisha Naidu, Assistant Professor of Economics, Wright State University, USA
Sakuntala Narsimhan
Sriram Natrajan, Independent Researcher, Thailand
Nandini Nayak, SOAS, University of London, UK
Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, Longman Professor of English, Oberlin College, USA
Ipsita Pal Bhaumik, NIH, USA
Shailja Patel, USA
Saswat Pattanayak, Editor, Radical Notes, USA
Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project
Kavita Philip, Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine, USA
Mike Alexander Pozo, Political Affairs Magazine
Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University
of California Irvine, USA
Kaveri Rajaraman, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, USA K.
Ravi Raman, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Manchester, UK
Leena Ranade, AID India, USA
Nagesh Rao, Assistant Professor, The College of New Jersey, USA
Ravi Ravishankar, Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, USA
Chandan Reddy, Assistant Professor, University of Washington, USA
Bruce Rich, Attorney, USA
Dr. Andrew Robinson, UK
Rachel Rosen, International Workers of the World and OSSTF, USA
Seth Sandronsky, Journalist, USA
Amit Sarkar, Visiting Fellow, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID/NIH, USA
Bhaskar Sarkar, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies,
University of California Santa Barbara, USA
Helen Scharber, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Anna Schultz, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, School of Music,
University of Minnesota, USA
Svati Shah, Assistant Professor of Women's Studies, University of
Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Shaheen Shasa, USA
Snehal Shinghavi, Assistant Professor, University of Texas, Austin, USA
Tyler Shipley, Department of Political Science, York University, Canada
Samira Shirdel, Community Advocate, Chaya: a Resource for South Asian Women, USA
Jon Short, Department of Communications Studies, Wilfrid Laurier
University, Canada
Kuver Sinha, Texas A&M University, USA
Subir Sinha, SOAS, University of London, U.K
Julietta Singh, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA
Preethy Sivakumar, York University, Canada
Ajay Skaria, Associate Professor, University of Minnesota, USA
Stephen C Snyder
Nidhi Srinivas, Associate Professor of Nonprofit Management, The New School, USA
Chukka Srinivas
Poonam Srivastav, Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Minnesota, USA
Rachel Steiger-Meister, Graduate Student, Wright State University, USA
Raja Swamy, Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, USA
Usha Titikshu, Photojournalist, Nepal
Wendel Trio, Former Chair, European Alliance with Indigenous Peoples
Shivali Tukdeo, University of Illinois, USA
Sandeep Vaidya, India Support Group, Ireland
Rashmi Varma, University of Warwick, U.K
Nalini Visvanathan, Lecturer in Asian American Studies, University of
Massachusetts Boston, USA
Daphna Whitmore, Secretary, Workers' Party, New Zealand
T. Wignesan, Editor, Asianists' Asia, Centre de Recherches, CERPICO
and CREA, France
Daphne Wysham, Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies, USA

BACKGROUND NOTE

It has been widely reported in the press that the Indian government is
planning an unprecedented military offensive against alleged Maoist
rebels,

using paramilitary and counter-insurgency forces, possibly the Indian
Armed Forces and even the Indian Air Force. �This military operation
is going

to be carried out in the forested and semi-forested rural areas of the
states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and

Maharashtra, populated mainly by the tribal (indigenous) people of
India. �Reportedly, the offensive has been planned in consultation
with US

counter-insurgency agencies. �To put the Indian government's proposed
military offensive in proper perspective one needs to understand the
economic,

social and political background to the conflict. �In particular, there
are three dimensions of the crisis that needs to be emphasized,
because it is

often overlooked: (a) the development failure of the post-colonial
Indian state, (b) the continued existence and often exacerbation of
the structural

violence faced by the poor and marginalized, and (c) the full-scale
assault on the meager resource base of the peasantry and the tribal
(indigenous

people) in the name of "development". �Let us look at each of these in
turn, but before we do so it needs to be stressed that the facts we
mention

below are not novel; they are well known if only conveniently
forgotten. �Most of these facts were pointed out by the April 2008
Report of the Expert

Group of the Planning Commission of the Indian Government (headed by
retired civil servant D. Bandopadhyay) to study "development
challenges in

extremist affected areas".

The post-colonial Indian State, both in its earlier Nehruvian and the
more recent neoliberal variant, has failed miserably to solve the
basic

problems of poverty, employment and income, housing, primary health
care, education and inequality and social discrimination of the people
of the

country. �The utter failure of the development strategy of the
post-colonial State is the ground on which the current conflict
arises. �To recount

some well known but oft-forgotten facts, recall that about 77 percent
of the Indian population in 2004-05 had a per capita daily consumption

expenditure of less than Rs. 20; that is less than 50 cents by the
current nominal exchange rate between the rupee and the US dollar and
about $2 in

purchasing power parity terms. �According to the 2001 Census, even 62
years after political independence, only about 42 percent of Indian
households

have access to electricity. �About 80 percent of the households do not
have access to safe drinking water; that is a staggering 800 million
people

lacking access to potable water.

What is the condition of the working people in the country? �93
percent of the workforce, the overwhelming majority of the working
people in India,

are what the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised
Sector (NCEUS) called "informal workers"; these workers lack any
employment

security, work security and social security. �About 58 percent of them
work in the agricultural sector and the rest is engaged in
manufacturing and

services. �Wages are very low and working conditions extremely
onerous, leading to persistent and deep poverty, which has been
increasing over the

last decade and a half in absolute terms: the number of what the
National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS)
called the

"poor and vulnerable" increased from 811 million in 1999-00 to 836
million in 2004-05. �Since majority of the working people still work
in the

agricultural sector, the economic stagnation in agriculture is a major
cause for the continued poverty of the vast majority of the people.
Since the

Indian state did not undertake land reforms in any meaningful sense,
the distribution of land remains extremely skewed to this day. �Close
to 60

percent of rural households are effectively landless; and extreme
economic vulnerability and despair among the small and marginal
peasantry has

resulted in the largest wave of suicides in history: between 1997 and
2007, 182,936 farmers committed suicide. �This is the economic setting
of the

current conflict.

But in this sea of poverty and misery, there are two sections of the
population that are much worse off than the rest: the Scheduled Caste
(SC) and

Scheduled Tribes (ST) population. �On almost all indicators of social
well being, the SCs and STs are worse off than the general population:
poverty

rates are higher, landlessness is higher, infant mortality rates are
higher, levels of formal education are lower, and so on. �To
understand this

differential in social and economic deprivation we need to look at the
second aspect of the current crisis that we had alluded to: structural

violence.

There are two dimensions of this structural violence: (a) oppression,
humiliation and discrimination along the lines of caste and ethnicity
and (b)

regular harassment, violence and torture by arms of the State. �For
the SC and ST population, therefore, the violence of poverty, hunger
and abysmal

living conditions has been complemented and worsened by the structural
violence that they encounter daily. �It is the combination of the two,
general

poverty and the brutality and injustice of the age old caste system,
kept alive by countless social practices despite numerous legislative
measures

by the Indian state, that makes this the most economically deprived
and socially marginalized section of the Indian population. �This
social

discrimination, humiliation and oppression is of course very
faithfully reflected in the behavior of the police and other
law-enforcing agencies of

the State towards the poor SC and ST population, who are constantly
harassed, beaten up and arrested on the slightest pretext. �For this
population,

therefore, the State has not only totally neglected their economic and
social development, it is an oppressor and exploiter. �While the SC
and ST

population together account for close to a quarter of the Indian
population, they are the overwhelming majority in the areas where the
Indian

government proposes to carry out its military offensive against
alleged Maoist rebels. �This, then, is the social background of the
current conflict.

This brings us to the third dimension of the problem: unprecedented
attack on the access of the marginalized and poor to common property
resources.

Compounding the persistent poverty and the continuing structural
violence has been the State's recent attempt to usurp the meager
resource base of

the poor and marginalized, a resource base that was so far largely
outside the ambit of the market. �The neoliberal turn in the policy
framework of

the Indian state since the mid 1980s has, therefore, only further
worsened the problems of economic vulnerability and social
deprivation. �Whatever

little access the poor had to forests, land, rivers, common pastures,
village tanks and other common property resources to cushion their
inevitable

slide into poverty and immiserization has come under increasing attack
by the Indian state in the guise of so-called development projects:
Special

Economic Zones (SEZs) and other "development" projects related to
mining, industrial development, Information Technology parks, etc.
Despite

numerous protests from people and warnings from academics, the Indian
State has gone ahead with the establishment of 531 SEZs. �The SEZs are
areas of

the country where labour and tax laws have been consciously weakened,
if not totally abrogated by the State to "attract" foreign and
domestic

capital; SEZs, almost by definition, require a large and compact tract
of land, and thus inevitably mean the loss of land, and thus
livelihood, by

the peasantry. �To the best of our knowledge, there have been no
serious, rigorous cost-benefit analysis of these projects to date; but
this does not

prevent the government from claiming that the benefits of these
projects, in terms of employment generation and income growth, will
far outweigh the

costs of revenue loss from foregone taxes and lost livelihoods due to
the assault on land.

The opposition to the acquisition of land for these SEZ and similar
projects have another dimension to it. �Dr. Walter Fernandes, who has
studied the

process of displacement in post-independence India in great detail,
suggests that around 60 million people have faced displacement between
1947 and

2004; this process of displacement has involved about 25 million
hectares of land, which includes 7 million hectares of forests and 6
million

hectares of other common property resources. �How many of these
displaced people have been resettled? �Only one in every three. �Thus,
there is every

reason for people not to believe the government's claims that those
displaced from their land will be, in any meaningful sense, resettled.
�This is

one of the most basic reasons for the opposition to displacement and
dispossession.

But, how have the rich done during this period of unmitigated disaster
for the poor? �While the poor have seen their incomes and purchasing
power

tumble down precipitously in real terms, the rich have, by all
accounts, prospered beyond their wildest dreams since the onset of the
liberalization

of the Indian economy. �There is widespread evidence from recent
research that the levels of income and wealth inequality in India have
increased

steadily and drastically since the mid 1980s. �A rough overview of
this growing inequality is found by juxtaposing two well known facts:
(a) in 2004

-05, 77 percent of the population spent less than Rs. 20 a day on
consumption expenditure; and (b) according to the annual World Wealth
Report

released by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini in 2008, the millionaire
population in India grew in 2007 by 22.6 per cent from the previous
year, which is

higher than in any other country in the world.

It is, thus, the development disaster of the Indian State, the
widening levels of disparity and the continuing problems of social
deprivation and

structural violence when compounded by the all-out effort to restrict
access to common property resources that, according to the Expert
Group of the

Planning Commission, give rise to social anger, desperation and
unrest. �In almost all cases the affected people try to ventilate
their grievances

using peaceful means of protest; they take our processions, they sit
on demonstrations, they submit petitions. �The response of the State
is

remarkably consistent in all these cases: it cracks down on the
peaceful protestors, sends in armed goons to attack the people, slaps
false charges

against the leaders and arrests them and often also resorts to police
firing and violence to terrorize the people. �We only need to remember
Singur,

Nandigram, Kalinganagar and countless other instances where peaceful
and democratic forms of protest were crushed by the state with
ruthless force.

It is, thus, the action of the State that blocks off all forms of
democratic protest and forces the poor and dispossessed to take up
arms to defend

their rights, as has been pointed out by social activists like
Arundhati Roy. �The Indian government's proposed military offensive
will repeat that

story all over again. �Instead of addressing the source of the
conflict, instead of addressing the genuine grievances of the
marginalized people

along the three dimensions that we have pointed to, the Indian state
seems to have decided to opt for the extremely myopic option of
launching a

military offensive.

It is also worth remembering that the geographical terrain, where the
government's military offensive is planned, is very well-endowed with
natural

resources like minerals, forest wealth, biodiversity and water
resources, and has of late been the target of systematic usurpation by
several large,

both Indian and foreign, corporations. �So far, the resistance of the
local indigenous people against their displacement and dispossession
has

prevented the government-backed corporates from exploiting the natural
resources for their own profits and without regard to ecological and
social

concerns. �We fear that the government's offensive is also an attempt
to crush such democratic and popular resistance against dispossession
and

impoverishment; the whole move seems to be geared towards facilitating
the entry and operation of these large corporations and paving the way
for

unbridled exploitation of the natural resources and people of these regions.