Naxalism / Left-wing Extremism

The participatory research facilitated a critical analysis of the multiple vulnerabilities tribal women face in Dumka and Jamtara districts. Using participatory research methods, the barriers in accessing education and health services, in particular the effect of the conflict, were analysed. Suggestions for ensuring more effective and equitable access to quality health and education services were made.

"Opposing the neoliberal rhetoric of a shining middle-class India, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) has, since 2004, called for a New Democratic Revolution. Indian Maoists dismiss parliamentary democracy as a sham insofar as it fails to address the concerns and aspirations of the majority of its citizens, nearly four-fifths of whom live below two dollars a day. In their party programme, Maoists characterize the postcolonial Indian state as ‘reactionary’ and ‘autocratic’ and seek a ‘worker-peasant alliance’ to overthrow ‘imperialism, feudalism and comprador bureaucratic capitalism’ via an armed revolutionary struggle. The CPI (Maoist) politburo, which constitutes its ideological leadership, is thus supported by an underground People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The party’s long-term objective is to establish a ‘people’s democratic state under the leadership of the proletariat’ that will ‘guarantee real democracy for the vast majority of people while exercising dictatorship over a tiny minority of exploiters’.

The CPI (Maoist) is active mostly in eastern and central India, where human development levels rank among the lowest in the world, forest cover and rugged terrain facilitate guerrilla tactics and protracted low-intensity insurgency, and tribal and lower caste groups are preponderant. According to the Indian prime minister, Maoist rebels pose the greatest internal security threat to India since independence. In reality, however, Maoist cadres are estimated to be anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000 in a country of nearly 1.2 billion people, though this number does not include sympathizers and non-combatants. These thinly-spread cadres are concentrated chiefly in what journalists, policymakers, and scholars call the Red Corridor, running from the Nepalese border through the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, and Andhra Pradesh. In these areas, regular elections are held, state and non-governmental organizations routinely participate in rural development, and state police and forest officials coexist with armed rebels and their rural supporters. Since 2005-06, the state has deployed paramilitaries to supplement state police forces in combating Maoist guerillas, which has intensified state-sponsored violence and led to widespread human rights abuses, yet it has been incapable of establishing anything akin to a monopoly of legitimate violence. Shared sovereignty is thus the norm, not the exception, as in other insurgent zones in India such as Kashmir and the northeastern frontier. This state of affairs also suggests that the everyday realities of Indian Maoism are somewhat different from its ideological self-image as a vanguardist revolutionary movement."

Maoism has become a challenge for India’s internal security. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) is known as a party organisation for this foremost challenge. Now CPI (Maoist) has estimated 10,000 to 12,000 well-trained cadres which constitute guerrilla army and more than 50,000 members of several wings such as political, cultural and jan militia, ect. An organisation with such a big number of cadres demands huge money. This article deals with the following questions: How much is the annual turnover or budget of CPI (Maoist)? What are the basic sources to accumulate this money? How and where is this money spent?

Jhadha Ghati attack, cadres of the Communist Party of India­Maoist (CPI­Maoist) killed at least 25 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel and injured another six in an ambush at Kalapattar in the Burkapal area of the Sukma District of Chhattisgarh on April 24, 2017. According to details available, an estimated 200­300 Maoists attacked the CRPF personnel who were out to provide protection for road construction work in the area. Though the CRPF claimed that "a considerable number of Maoists are believed to have been eliminated (in retaliatory action by CRPF men) as the tell­tale sign indicate from the ground," only one body of a Maoist fighter was recovered, in the night of April 27, " just 500 metres away from the spot where the gun battle had taken place ". The body was recovered during search operations in the area. The Maoists had also looted at least 21 weapons, ammunition and 22 bullet proof jackets from the possession of the slain CRPF personnel. On June 29, 2010, 27 personnel of the CRPF, including Assistant Commandant Jatin Gulati, were killed in a CPI­Maoist ambush in Narayanpur District of Chhattisgarh. The attack took place near a hilly stretch known as the Jhadha Ghati, three kilometres from the CRPF's Dhudhai base camp. However, the Maoist's worst ever attack targeting the SFs was at the Tarmetla village near Chintalnad in the Dantewada District of Chhattisgarh, on April 6, 2010, in which 75 CRPF personnel and one State Policeman were killed. Significantly, this area now falls under the Sukma District after the bifurcation of Dantewada. Among other recent major attacks in Sukma, the Maoists had killed 12 CRPF personnel and injured another four when they ambushed a road opening party in the forests near Kottacheru village under the Bhejji Police Station on March 11, 2017. The troops were part of a road clearing party that has been securing an under­construction road between Bhejji and Kottacheru. Maoists looted arms and ammunition from the slain CRPF personnel. According to partial data compiled by the Institute for Conflict Management (ICM), Sukma has accounted for at least 45 Maoist­ related deaths (four civilians, 38 SF personnel, three Maoists) during the current year so far (data till April 30, 2017). Out of 30 districts across six states from where such fatalities have been reported in 2017, Sukma recorded the highest number of killings at 45. Narayanpur District stands at a distant second with 17 fatalities (three civilians, one trooper, 13 Maoists) followed by 13 fatalities each in Bijapur (two civilians, four SF personnel, seven Maoists) and Dantewada (two civilians, two SF personnel, nine Maoists), all Districts of Chhattisgarh. Since January 16, 2012, the day Sukma was carved out of Dantewada as a separate District, a total of 1,947 fatalities (including 698 civilians, 482 SF personnel, 767 Maoists) have been reported from 82 Districts across 12 states (data till April 30, 2017). Out of these, Sukma alone has accounted for a total of 254 Maoist­related deaths (58 civilians, 123 SF personnel, 73 Maoists), i.e. 13.04 per cent of total fatalities, the highest for any single District in the country, followed by Bijapur (Chhattisgarh), 218; Gadchiroli (Maharashtra), 159; and Malkangiri (Odisha), 141. These were the only four Districts where fatalities reached into triple figures over this period. More worryingly, Sukma alone has accounted for 25.51 per cent of total SF fatalities during this period (123 out of a total of 482). Bijapur with 49 SF fatalities stands at a distant second. Though, the SFs have secured a positive SF:Maoist kill ratio of 1:1.59 across India, in Sukma it favours the Maoists, at 1.68:1. Out of the 37 Districts in the country from where fatalities in both these categories were reported, the kill ratio was in favour of the SFs in 18, was at par in four, and favoured the Maoists in the remaining 15. There were another 25 Districts from where only Maoist fatalities were reported. Four Districts recorded only SF fatalities. These numbers clearly suggest that Sukma, located in the Bastar Division of Chhattisgarh, the epicenter of Maoist violence in the country, is the final bastion for the Maoists. The District occupies an area of 5635.79 square kilometres, with a population of 250,159 (Census 2011), and shares its borders with the Maoist­infested Bastar, Bijapur and Dantewada Districts of Chhattisgarh to the north and west; the Malkangiri District of Odisha to the east; and the Khammam District of Telangana to the South. Some 3,500 square kilometres of Sukma, more than 75 per cent of its total area, are under forest cover. The forest cover, terrain and location of the District have given the Maoists a sustained advantage in their campaigns to establish disruptive dominance and evade action by SFs.

In this exchange in International Security, I contest Barbara Walter's thesis that groups like ISIS benefit from being super extreme. I argue that extremism is counterproductive -- a point developed in far greater detail in my book, Rules for Rebels, which comes out in fall 2018.

In the conflict affected districts security concerns got primary focus and the development deprivation in these regions, in fact, played a major role in aggravating the situation. Due to the prevailing socio-economic and political unrest in these regions, children in the regions are deprived of critical services provided by the government such as nutritional support (through anganwadi centres), health support, and school education. A good number of the children in the area are constantly vulnerable to physical abuse by both the security forces and extremists, and also other anti-social elements.

In the context of RTE, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has launched the Balbandhu Scheme (BBS) in one block in nine of what it considers as the most disturbed districts in five states (Assam, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh) of India with direct support from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) for a period of three years. These districts are “disturbed” because of civil unrest: armed conflicts, communal riots, extortion, kidnapping, witch-hunting, and above all, child trafficking.

The intervention of the NCPCR through the Balbandhu Scheme (BBS) to address the child rights violations is an innovative and holistic strategy based on community participation (parents, local authorities, law and order authorities, extremist groups, teachers) and facilitating the proper functioning or reopening of defunct or nearly defunct delivery channels of the government machinery in these regions.

The BBS scheme is structured such that in each block, there are two Resource Persons to identify, monitor and mentor 20 Balbandhus. The RPs plan and implement all the components of the BBS at the district level and coordinate with the block and village on the one hand and the district officials on the other. They also undertake intensive data collection and gather and report information at regular intervals.

On 7 December 2014, in the first ever incident of its type, personnel of Thunderbolt, the elite paramilitary commando unit of the Kerala Police exchanged fire with a six-member team of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) at the Chappa forest area located on Kozhikode-Wayanad border. No casualties were reported as the Maoist team escaped following a 10-minute long encounter. In the subsequent days, small teams of Maoists vandalised forest offices at Wayanad and Palakkad and carried out an attack on a private quarry-cum-crusher unit in Kannur district.

Marx’s views on pre-capitalist non-western societies evolved during his intellectual development and are generally grouped under the (problematic) term “Asiatic Mode of Production.” This article examines the connections between the Asiatic Mode of Production from Marxist economics, post-independence Indian land laws, the violation of those laws after independence and in the period of liberalization, and the continuing popularity of the Naxalite/Maoist insurgency. The contemporary round of globalization seeks to finish what colonization started by forcibly removing Adavasi and Scheduled Tribes in a process similar to primitive accumulation. Understanding this dynamic explains the Naxalites’ continuing appeal in contemporary India.

Deep inside the forests of Dandakaranya, a land full of coal and iron ores is called Bastar, the Central Gondwana region of India. The Bastar*, with population of almost 14,50,000 it comprises of many Adivasi communities such as Gond, Maria, Muriya, Bhatra, Halba, Dhruva community.

These tribal communities are more than 70% of the total population. The Adivasis, are marginalised indigenous community in India, have long been persecuted in a deadly conflict that has ravaged their homeland and displaced thousands.  The villagers fled their homes in the giant Dandakaranya Forest, crushed in fighting between government forces and Maoist insurgents, who had made the forest their headquarters.

A single big extremist attack can reverse the narrative of optimism regarding India winning the war on left-wing extremism (LWE). Such an attack can lead to a barrage of charges and counter charges on the range of deficiencies that affects New Delhi’s counter-LWE policy. The 24 April attack in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district is a case in point. The neatly planned attack that resulted in the death of 25 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel just not turned the previous official claim of a near-victory over LWE on its head, but opened a can of worms revealing the deficiencies that continue to mar the war on extremism in the past few years. This article takes stock of one such shortcomings, i.e. the lack of ground level intelligence.

Left-wing Extremism (LWE) continued to remain as one of the major challenges to India’s internal security. Its intensity continues to persist especially in three states – Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa – apart from significant presence in West Bengal, Bihar, and Maharashtra. At the same time, the left-wing extremists have successfully managed to penetrate into some of the states of the northeast and south of India and into few of the urban areas. Interestingly, there is a shrink in the number of middle- and top-level Maoist leaders due to killings or arrests or surrenders. Yet, one cannot assert with absolute confidence that the Left-wing Extremism is on the wane. Significantly, the spread of Naxals beyond the ‘red corridor’ and their external links are concerning.

The anarchist movement’s political thought and organizational structures in European Union states at the time of globalization transformations
The subject of this study is the transformation of the organizational structures, as well as in the political thought in the Western European anarchist movement during the period of rapid globalization. The research period runs from 1991–2010. Material for the research was provided by printed matter as well as Internet news and articles, documents and the author’s correspondence with the representatives of the European anarchist movement. The main method/technique of the survey involved the analysis of source texts. The author also employed his own research experience and observations of anarchism. Contemporary globalization processes are characterized by contradictory directions of development. They are expressed in the unification of the terrorist movement on one hand, and the diversification of its forms on the other. The goals of the anarchist movement and its main trends of thought are changing and dispersing. The achievement of full freedom, however, remains the primary goal of anarchists, while all other goals are secondary.