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In order to understand the OPERATION GREEN HUNT we must have some kind of knowledge of current phase of Naxalism, we need to understand different aspects of organizational transformation that have occurred within the Naxal movement, since the origin and current phase of the movement is a reflection of continuity and change. To understand its continuity over the decade, one has to understand its dynamics of change, just as to understand the changing nature of the Naxal movement; the factors responsible for its continuity. And this re- establishes the dynamic character of the movement. The fragmented character of the movement gave rise to an embarrassment of possible trends and groupings and thereby, smoothened the way for new path of organizational conflict.
WAR AGAINST INDIANS
Historian Ramachandra Guha on Saturday warned that the Centre's ‘Operation Green hunt’ is a misguided venture that threatened to wreak havoc in India's adivasis heartland.
The statement delivered by the senior historian Mr. Ramachandra Guha has large meaning and consciousness to common Indian masses towards the Operation Green Hunt. Operation Green Hunt is a genocidal campaign waged by the comprador Indian state against its own people, especially in the tribal regions of India. The imperialists and their supporters say that Operation Green Hunt is to rid the country of the Naxalites, the Maoist guerrillas of India. However, the reality is that Operation Green Hunt is part of a long struggle by the imperialists and their agents to suppress the Indian masses.
The principal contradiction today is between the global cities versus the global countryside, the First versus the Third World. The country of India, with the second largest population in the world, is one of the front lines of this struggle. It is a battle for two different futures. On the one hand, the imperialists and their supporters strive to force India into their system of capitalist-imperialism, of globalization, of First World domination, of patriarchy, of ecological destruction. The imperialist road is one that places profits over people; it leaves the vast majority of India poor, powerless and destitute. On the other hand, the people of India seek a future that places people over profits. They seek development that benefits the vast majority, not a “development” at the expense of the vast majority. They seek a green, sustainable development, one that ensures the survival of future generations of Indians. They seek power for the masses, not for the compradors and the imperial world.
The dominant perspective right now is one that considers the need to clear out the Naxalites and their followers from these mineral rich regions as the main motivation behind Operation Green Hunt. It is argued that their strong presence is holding up several crores of mining and power projects lined up by TNC’s and Indian compradors. Hence the huge push to drive out the Naxalites and secure these regions.
Well, it is surely true that a number of monopolies like Tata, Mittal and Vedanta are just waiting to rob the resources of these areas. A good part of it is lineup for export as raw material to imperialist countries. The only thing preventing this right now is the people’s war and politicized Adivasis masses led by the Maoist & Naxalites. But to reduce Operation Green Hunt to this or even mainly consider it from this angle would be wide off the mark. It is like missing out US imperialism’s world strategic aims in the Iraq war and seeing it mainly as a war done for oil. The question of control over resources is certainly involved. But this is neither the sole issue, nor even the main one. The important thing to be take hold of is the political, strategic aim of Operation Green hunt.
Well, it is surely true that a number of monopolies like Tata, Mittal and Vedanta are just waiting to rob the resources of these areas. A good part of it is lineup for export as raw material to imperialist countries. The only thing preventing this right now is the people’s war and politicized Adivasis masses led by the Maoist & Naxalites. But to reduce Operation Green Hunt to this or even mainly consider it from this angle would be wide off the mark. It is like missing out US imperialism’s world strategic aims in the Iraq war and seeing it mainly as a war done for oil. The question of control over resources is certainly involved. But this is neither the sole issue, nor even the main one. The important thing to be take hold of is the political, strategic aim of Operation Green hunt.
The Adivasis masses of these regions have established control not just over its resources. They have taken control of their destiny, their lives, into their own hands. They are building a different society- vibrant with their tribal traditions, yet modern enough to load new values. So, while studying the reality behind the Operation Green Hunt we must focus on following factors:-
1. Area of operation green hunt
2. Role played by P. Chidambaram
3. Current phase of operation green hunt
4. Operation Green Hunt and its relation to Stock market of India.
5. Facts found at Dantewada
6. Vedanta versus the villagers: the fight for the sacred mountain
7. Koda scam and Lease for mining companies
8. Demand an end to this Green hunt
Area of operation green hunt
If we look this picture very closely then we come across that the Naxalites movement has been take place only in those areas where adivasis are more in number or in other word we can say that it took birth in the homeland of adivasis. Areas like Chandrapur, Midnapoor, and Niramayee are rich for their natural resources. And capitalist wants to snatch away these resources by throwing out all indigenous people from their own land to secure their own imperialist interest.
Current phase of Operation Green Hunt
On the Name of Operation Green Hunt adivasis are paying a heavy price, for just being there.
An operation is underway in Central India, but no one really knows what it is. Variously described as a media myth, a comprehensive hearts and minds strategy, and an all-out offensive by paramilitary forces and the state forces along the borders of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, Operation Green Hunt has become a shoebox of news clippings, police reports, public demonstrations and armed encounters.
Depending on the definition, Green Hunt either began in July 2009, September 2009 or November 2009. Speaking off record, senior policemen confirmed that the intensification of “search and comb” operations in Chhattisgarh began as early as July last year. In September 2009 the press reported on the progress of “Operation Green Hunt”: a massive 3 day joint operation in which the central COBRA force and state police battled Naxal forces in Dantewada.
By November, the press was regularly reporting on the planning and progress of Green Hunt, prompting Home Minister, P. Chidambaram to term the operation a “media invention.” Since then, the security apparatus has scrupulously avoided all mention of Green Hunt. The week-long joint operation, launched on December 25 2009 in
CHANGE IN organization
Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra for instance, was termed “Police Week.” The change in organization could be prompted by a realization that the battle between the state and the Naxal is unlikely to end anytime soon. Speaking on background, police sources confirm that the conflict shall take the form of “a prolonged, open-ended engagement” rather than a short, fierce “operation.”
There is also little clarity on the extent of troop deployment, the composition of the forces and the chain of command between central paramilitary forces and the state police. Privately, sources in the security apparatus admit that part of the confusion is by design rather than by default to control the information available to Naxal commanders. At present, the only information independently confirmed by The Hindu relates to the Bastar Zone, a 40,000 square kilometer area in Chhattisgarh that lies at heart of the battle. Sources state that 7 additional battalions of central forces have been moved in the area, bringing the strength of central forces in Bastar to a total 20 battalions including troops from the CRPF, ITBP, BSF and SSB. Taken alongside the 6,000 policemen deployed in Bastar, the size of the total fighting force in the zone is about 20,000 troops.
“The first step was to secure the roads. Ninety to ninety five per cent of casualties of security forces occur on the roads.” said T.J. Longkumer, Inspector General of Police, and Bastar in an interview to this reporter. “We have started road security operations and indentified ambush prone areas.” It is the next step that is proving controversial. “Forces shall actively enter villages and nab Naxal elements,” he added. Longkumer insists that search operations are conducted only on the basis of concrete intelligence and that all possible care is taken to minimize the death of innocents. However, information emerging from villages in the interior suggests otherwise.
Figures provided by the police suggest that a majority of police operations have targeted “Sanghams” with 499 sangham members arrested in 2009 – up from 214 in 2007. Sanghams refer to village level bodies installed by the Naxal in areas under their control. Sangham members are considered to be sympathetic to the Naxal cause, but it is important to note that sangham members are not necessarily armed. While the number of Naxal killed has also increased to 113 in 2009, as compared to 66 in 2008, and the number of civilian deaths attributed to Naxal violence has reduced from 143 in 2008 to 116 in 2009, Chhattisgarh does not keep any record of civilians killed by the security forces. Two PILs pending in the Supreme Court since 2007 have highlighted precisely this problem, asking for an inquiry into killings, rapes and murders since 2005. They have provided an initial list of over 500 people killed, and subsequently pointed to discrepancies in the police version and the FIRs filed. Initially, the bodies were not even counted; now they are recorded as Naxalites killed in encounters. The NHRC, which investigated a small sample of the killings on the orders of the Court, noted with respect to the sangham members: “These villagers were specifically targeted when Salwa Judum was on the rise. The enquiry team has come across instances where some of these villagers were even killed (no criminal cases were, however, either reported or registered). Though the State has taken action against SPOs in some cases for violations like murder and attempt to murder, but these cases do not pertain to the violence let loose on innocent villagers during operations against Naxalites.”
Despite the gravity and urgency of the situation, there has been no hearing of this case for over a year now, because a suitable ‘non-miscellaneous’ day has not been available. Not surprisingly, allegations of unlawful killing continue to dog the state authorities. A writ petition filed in the Supreme Court last year implicates the Chhattisgarh police in the deaths of a total of 12 villagers in Gachanpalli and Gompad villages as part of “sanitization” operations in September last year. As reported previously in The Hindu, the Chhattisgarh police have assumed control over at least four of the 13 petitioners, and have actively prevented them from meeting their lawyer. Witnesses to the Gompad incident have accused the police of killing innocents at random.
FLUID IDENTITIES
On the other side, on January 21 2010 local newspapers reported the killing of two “police informers”, one a 16 to 18 year old tribal youth, in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district. Police sources cited in the story attributed the killing to the Eastern Bastar Division Committee of the Naxal. At a press conference in Raipur, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram stated that the two youth were killed as they wanted to join the Indian Army.
As the battle-lines between the Naxal and the State shift with every jungle encounter, adivasis across the zone of operations are forced to assume a series of fluid identities contingent on the force in power on a given day.
In a police operation with no clear name, timeline or goal, fought against a guerrilla force that rarely wears uniforms, the adivasis are learning that each side extracts a heavy price for supporting the other.
Operation Green Hunt AND IT’S relation to Stock market of India.
BSE PSU index tracks the market’s perceptions of Public Sector Undertakings. Stock markets are supposedly prescient about the functioning of the economy & the future of companies operating within it. Whole ranges of events unfolding elsewhere in the economy & the polity that have an impact on the prospects of a company are factored into its share price by operators on stock exchanges. BSE PSU index rose 3.91% on that day. Remarkable, but not extraordinary considering that the government had announced a sale of some stake in PSUs. Sensex, the bellwether index of Bombay Stock exchange, itself had a pretty modest outing in the field rising only 0.6%. An extraordinary event was the performance of NMDC (10% rise), MMTC (20% rise), Hindustan Copper (10% rise) etc. The market cap or the notional worth (Number of outstanding shares x market price/share) of NMDC rose by Rs. 120 Billion & of MMTC by Rs. 300 Billion. Why were these companies worth so much more overnight? The answer lies in their business.
National Mineral Development Corporation is in the business of “exploration of wide range of minerals including iron ore, copper, rock phosphate, lime stone, dolomite, gypsum, betonies, magnetite, diamond, tin, tungsten, graphite, beach sands etc“. Minerals & Metals Trading Corporation on the other hand boasts of managing with “commendable élan the bulk operations spread across far – flung areas in the mineral rich states of the country and by exporting minerals from all the major ports of India“. The third company, Hindustan Copper, modestly claims that “It has the distinction of being India’s only vertically integrated copper producing company encompassing mining, beneficiation, smelting, refining and casting of refined copper metal“. So this troika straddles the mineral wealth of the country – and they are currently owned by “We the People of India…….” Turning to the other side of the story, the State of Chhattisgarh is home to 28 varieties of minerals including diamonds as per the Mining.pdf document available on its official website. It lists Coal, Tin, Iron Ore, Bauxite, Limestone, Dolomite, Corundum, Alexandrite, Beryl, Garnet, diamonds, gold among others minerals. Now a very tight coupling is complete. On one hand is a state extremely rich in minerals. On the other you have companies best placed to exploit those treasures. The only irritant is that the minerals are buried deep below the lands that for millennia have belonged to tribals. The minerals can be got out if the tribals can be got off that land.
The stock market has given resounding thumbs up to operation green hunt because it knows it will vacate the mineral rich lands of the nuisance of tribals. It is happy at the twin gravy train UPA-II government has set rolling for it. First it is unlocking the mineral wealth. Then it has started the process of eventual privatization of public assets by selling stake in PSUs – bit by bit. A grand scheme of defrauding ‘We the people of India…..‘ So Bastar & Bombay are interconnected after all. It is the misfortune of Bastar, but lady luck is smiling on BSE.
Lyrical Scribe.
No one has a monopoly over truth. Truth has many facets. Facets that don’t find expression in the media need to be told with vigor. It is not a privilege but duty of the media to give voice to the most dispossessed. Such reporting strengthens democracy by helping to reach benefits of growth to reach all. Press is therefore called the fourth estate – the 4th leg of parliamentary democracy. Yet, time & again we find mainstream media not only reporting official narrative without questioning, but even supporting it with unabashed enthusiasm. Sample this piece by Sankarshan Thakur in Raipur for The Telegraph: “Vishwa Ranjan is a poet and a pragmatist, a palpably split persona who cansing the eloquent song of injustices done to tribals and, in the next breath, bluntly set out the imperatives of crushing the Maoist surge”. “His is finely articulated position on reasons and requirements — he can understand, he says, why the Maoists have been able to make a base for themselves in Bastar and expand, but isn’t willing to accept their strategy of redressing wrongs“. One would imagine that Vishwa Ranjan is being honored & felicitated for his accomplishments. But, No! He is the DGP of Chhattisgarh (“chief executive officer of Green Hunt“, as he is approvingly called by the scribe) & Thakur is there to find out what is happening there in the wake of ‘operation green hunt’. Thakur should have been skewering the top cop with some tough questions to get at the bottom of what exactly is going on. He should also be doing that to activists & social organizations that have expressed serious apprehensions about government’s motives & repercussions of its actions on the tribals.
Facts found at Dantewada
True facts of Dantewada
Till now, no substantive information has been given in the media regarding the Gachanpalli killings of 17th September 2009 (during Operation Green Hunt) and 1st October killings at Gompad and Chintagufa villages by security forces. Nor have any reports appeared regarding detentions and arrests of several young men on 1st October.
Information regarding looting, burning and torture which accompanied these operations have also remained unknown. Also, that people have fled their villages, are living in make shift sheds in the forest has gone unnoticed. The fact that on both these days, security forces (Cobra, local police and SPOs and Salwa Judum leaders such as Boddu Raja) went on a rampage stabbing and killing people, looting, burning houses and forcibly picking up young men is the other side of Operation Green Hunt which has been carefully kept away from public scrutiny. In order to ascertain these facts, a 15 member fact-finding team visited Dantewada area between 10th and 12th October 2009. The team comprised members from PUCL (Chhattisgarh), PUDR (Delhi), Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (Dantewada), Human Rights Law Network (Chhattisgarh), Action Aid (Orissa), Manna Adhikar (Malkangiri) and Zillah Adivasis Ekta Sangh (Malkangiri).
The team was initially denied permission and was repeatedly questioned and interrogated at Dornapal and Errabore police camps on the way. The team spent a night in Nendra village (a rehabilitated village) and met witnesses and victims from several villages and gathered testimonies from them. Subsequently, the team spoke to District Collector and Superintendent of Police, Dantewada. While a detailed report is in the making, some of the important and significant issues are given below.
17th September 2009
1. Gachanpalli murders: In the early hours of 17th September, 6 villagers were murdered by security forces in this village. Dudhi Muye (70 yrs) and Kawasi Ganga (70 yrs) who could hardly walk were murdered after her breasts were cut off. Family members, who had fled the scene on seeing the security forces, found her lying dead.
2. Burnt in hot oil: Muchaki Deva (60 yrs) of Onderpara was grazing cattle on the morning of 17th September. He was caught, beaten and dragged into the village by security forces. He was hanged upside down from a tree and a pot of hot oil was lit below and he was dropped into it.
4. Tied and paraded: 6 villagers, including 3 women were tied and paraded through Gachanpalli and other villages where the security forces went. Fortunately, they escaped as timely rains made it possible for them to flee.
5. Forced displacement and terror: families of those who were murdered by security forces and those whose houses have been burnt down vengefully, have fled the village and are living in make shift sheds in the forest. The condition of the others is no better as the entire village has been terrorized by security forces.
The authorities call it Operation Green Hunt, going by the conventional wisdom that the Maoists being chased — in Chattisgarh in this case — fight from thick jungles. But many of the victims appear to have nothing to do with the insurgency.
1st October 2009
2. More killings: In Chintagufa, a 45yr old man, Tomra Mutta was stabbed and shot inside his house. On seeing the sudden arrival of the security forces.
3. Travails of a 2yr old: Madvi Bajar's grandson was not spared. He is all of two and yet the security forces beat him, cut four of his fingers, broke his teeth and cut off part of his tongue.
4. 8 arrested and 2 missing:
5. Looting and burning of property and houses: As many as 9 instances of looting and burning by security forces were reported to the team. Unlike the 17th September killings which were followed by arson and burning of the houses of those murdered, security forces on 1st October looted homes.
6. Harassment and torture:
7. Presence of SPOs and Salwa Judum leader with security forces
8. Forced displacement and terror: Several families are living in makeshift sheds in the forest area as their houses have been burnt down. Those who are unable to run and flee are living in terror in the villages and residents and relatives have helped them to repair their houses and have given them other support.
The same is true for instances of torture, loot and detentions. The clamp down on information makes it impossible to know what exactly is happening in distant and far flung villages. However, what is clear is that the operations conducted by security forces have compelled villagers to leave their villages, flee into the forests and/or take shelter with relatives in other villages.
The condition of those who are residing in their villages is precarious and vulnerable. Given that the government has not complied with the Supreme Court order on rehabilitation of displaced families (families which were displaced in the earlier phase of Salwa Judum violence), the new and current phase of violence by security forces has added to the crisis in these remote and inaccessible villages. Instead of rehabilitating people, the government, in the name of combating Maoism, with the help of operation green hunt is bent upon unleashing its lethal paramilitary forces and evicting people from their villages. It is imperative to immediately end to this policy of eviction and terror and enable people to settle in their villages.
Tribes say plans by UK-listed mining firm Vedanta to mine on holy land will destroy their way of life the ash spills out across the plain beneath the brooding bulk of Niyamgiri Mountain, swamping the trees that once grew here, forming dirty grey-brown drifts around the stems of the now-dead scrub.
Every day there is more ash, pouring out of the alumina refinery that squats among the steep-sided, jungle-clad hills of western Orissa, India. The dust hangs in the air and clings to the landscape, settling on the huts of the aboriginal Kondh tribes who call this place home, choking those who breathe it in. Niyamgiri is as remote as any place in the country: 600km from the state capital Bhubaneswar, accessible only by narrow, shattered roads pocked with deep holes, a world away from the economic powerhouse that is 21st-century India.
It is a place of quiet beauty, of lush green paddy fields and huge mango trees, where self-sufficient tribes still share the jungle with elephant, tiger and leopard. Yet this most unlikely place is now the frontline in a clash of civilizations that has pitched the indigenous population up against the corporate might of the British mining company Vedanta Resources, intent on dragging Niyamgiri into the modern world. It is the mineral wealth lying beneath the slopes of the mountain that has drawn Vedanta to Niyamgiri. It wants to turn the hillside into a giant bauxite mine to feed its refinery at the foot of the mountain.
The FTSE 100-listed company, which is run by the abrasive billionaire Anil Agarwal, is pressing ahead despite a desperate local rearguard action and an international outcry. Yesterday the British government turned on the company, issuing an unexpectedly damning assessment of its behavior. Vedanta hopes the refinery will produce at least one million tons of alumina a year. But the Kondh people – the Dongria, Kutia and Jharania – need the bauxite too. It holds water remarkably well and helps feed the perennial streams on which they and the animals that live on the mountain rely. Once the bauxite is gone, they fear, the streams will run dry. And that will be the end of the Kondh.
Faced with ferocious local opposition and an international campaign to stop the development, the company has returned time and again to the courts to push its plans through. In July, after numerous setbacks and rulings against it, it was finally given permission by India's Supreme Court to start mining.
It has wasted no time. Already, the skeleton of an enormous conveyor belt snakes out of the refinery and up to the foot of the mountain. Beyond it, an ugly scar of deep red earth runs up the hillside where hundreds of trees have been felled. Convoys of Lorries trundle along the narrow roads, churning them to mud.
There are still legal challenges that the protesters can make and there is also the remote possibility that Vedanta shareholders, which include the Church of England, could bring pressure on the board to reverse its plans. Although the mining is yet to start in earnest, those who live in the hundreds of small villages that dot the slopes are in no doubt that the effects of Vedanta's presence are already being felt. People and animals are dying, they say: the numbers of cases of tuberculosis have shot up.
Now they also have to keep watch for the contractors who are trying to build roads up the mountainsides.
"We don't want a road. The company will come and kill us," says Sitaram Kulesika, 23. He is sitting on a charpoy under the shade of a tree, toying with a new Nokia mobile phone, a rare concession to the outside world. Kulesika is involved in the campaign to stop the mining: the phone, he says, is a necessary evil to keep in touch with his fellow activists. "We stopped them coming up here. We went to explain to them that if they came we would have to leave. We don't want to get into clashes, so we are explaining peacefully."
The police watch warily from behind a barricade, clutch bamboo shields and their long wooden lathis. They fear trouble, though the rain has dampened the enthusiasm of the crowd. The speakers finish and the crowd drift away. An hour or so later, back in his village of Kundobodi, close to the refinery, Kumati Majhi, one of the protest leaders, is still railing against Vedanta. The company claims it is committed to sustainable development of the area, he says, but their actions tell another story.
"Once they start mining the mountain will be bulldozed and the rivers will dry up and our livelihood will be lost," he says. "We will become fish out of water. We don't know how to adapt and survive and our way of living is not available in the cities. We will be extinct."
Koda scam and Lease for mining companies
If we study the nature of politics in Naxal affected area then we will come across shocking information. Indian politician like Madhu koda, Shibu Soren are better known tribal leaders. They had (?) Good relations with UPA government.
In recent days the ex chief minister Madhu koda was arrested and charged for scam of 2500 cr. The properties of several senior officials, including Jharkhand Chief Minister Shibu Soren's personal secretary, were raided Tuesday in connection with the Rs.2,500 crore money laundering scam involving former chief minister Madhu Koda. Sources in the department said raids were on in at least 13 Indian cities spread over five states, including West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra and Delhi.
What was the source of that big amount?
Large scale corruption has been found in the recommendations for awarding of mining leases to different companies during Koda's rule.
Tiwari, who was mines secretary when Koda was chief minister, has admitted that Koda put pressure on him to get work done. He has also said Koda had cleared a file regarding the recommendation of a mining lease to his close associate Vinod Sinha.
Demand an end to this Green hunt
If those that have died are not armed Naxalites but are in fact rural villagers, then leaving their bodies behind in the forest is the smart thing to do from the government’s point of view. Even if the bodies are those of armed Naxalites, the opinion in Chhattisgarh’s ruling officialdom seems to be that the corpses of traitors deserve neither the usual dignities accorded to the dead, nor their labor for the performance of such dignities. In the war against the LTTE in Sri Lanka, when evidence was uncovered through the Panchnama performed on the bodies of dead Tamils that they had been killed by torture, the government of that country ordered that bodies of Tamils could henceforth be buried without the performance of Panchnama.
Ordinary people might indeed wonder if the immorality of the ruling parties, their unfair governance, and economic systems that are perversely feeding the growth of inequalities, are in fact not greater dangers to the internal security of the country.
But what the current home minister Chidambaram, who is also the ex-finance minister and one
Of the architects of the countries development policy, knows is that leaving aside the issue of
Internal security, Maoist presence can inhibit the attempts to extract the enormous mineral
Resources in the forests of Central India, and use them for development. While Maoists have not necessarily obstructed on all occasions the presence and expansion of capitalists in the areas under their dominance, the anxiety is that the fear that the Maoists might do so will inhibit capitalists from coming forward to invest in the area.
These, all together have led to the process of Maoists elimination. Chidambaram’s challenge
(Delivered without ruffling his toothpaste smile in the least), that Paramilitary units and Cobras
Trained in guerilla warfare will be launched in a massive fashion to physically annihilate the
Maoists, is now being implemented.
When the 11th planning commission, seeking a solution to this, appointed a committee of
Experts, they concluded that the only way to face the Maoists democratically is for the state itself to create through the use of state sovereignty whatever rights, freedoms and opportunities that people had gained through the Maoists. There is no evidence that either Manmohan Singh or Chidambaram have read those submissions. Finally, as always, the conflicts of Dantewada district have begun to echo in Bhadrachalam district. From Chintoor to Vajod, the police are forcing the Adivasis to come to police stations, and are imprisoning them illegally, and are torturing them severely in order to commit them to the legal process.
It was only when Komuram Narasimha Rao, a resident of R. Kothagudem colony, committed suicide on the 7th of this month, out of fear of what else the police would subject him to, that the world came to know that the Police of Charla had hung him on a hook and beat him to a pulp, after they had tied up his hands and feet. One can imagine what the situation is like in Dantewada when it is like this in Kothagudem. That is why it is important that we raise our voices to demand that the government stop this hunt, just as it is necessary to ask that the Maoists behave in a manner that would put pressure on such a direction.
Role played by P. Chidambaram
P. Chidambaram is an Indian politician and present Union Minister of Home Affairs of the Republic of India. He is among the most prominent cabinet ministers of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) union government led by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. From May 2004 to November 2008, he was the Finance Minister of India.
Chidambaram did his schooling from the prestigious Madras Christian College Hr.Sec.School, Chennai. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in Statistics from The Presidency College, Chennai, he completed his Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from the Madras Law College, and his Masters in Business Administration (M.B.A.) from Harvard Business School.
He represented the bankrupt American energy giant Enron, as a senior lawyer in India, and is again set to revive its Dhabol power project. this is small introduction of our finance minister Mr. P. Chidambaram and we all knew this. but, here we are going to see another part of his personality and his business relations through the context of Operation Green Hunt. The central government of India has launched a terrible war called ‘Operation Green Hunt’. Why this war against Indians? The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced at the Parliament on June 19, 2009 – that the rise of extreme leftist outfits in the regions rich in minerals has badly affected investments.
Since 2005 many small and big multinational corporations have signed MOUs. The Memorandum of Understandings were signed with the intention of mining bauxite, uranium, iron ore, tin, limestone, granite, diamond, gold etc from the forest region covering the states of west Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra. Among the owners of these mines are stalwarts like – Jindal, Mittal, Tata, Essar, Posco, BHP and Vedant. Mr. Chidambaram, the central home minister was the director of Vedant till one day before he joined the central ministry.
So it is not surprising that Chidambaram would want to clear the path for a MOUist corridor – a well-connected region for those investors who signed the memoranda of understanding. During his career as a legal advisor many of these mining companies were his clients. To woo more investments he cleverly announced these regions as the ‘Red corridor’, infested with Maoists and Naxalites. Unless the local inhabitants are ousted from the area how would the mines come up? So tens of millions of original inhabitants of these forest regions are to be banished, to be rendered landless and homeless –as the forest is their home, their source of livelihood. In order to do that the home minister has decided to free the land of ‘Maoists’.
The large corporate houses, with the help of the media are ready to invest millions of rupees to project this area as the as home of dangerous terrorists called Maoists. According to them the poorest original inhabitants, the ill-fed, neglected and cornered masses of tribes living in the jungles are launching a ‘terrible armed warfare’ against the state. After this, police and military have jointly started the ousting operation and any protest against this state-sponsored terror is being crushed by branding the protestors as ‘Maoists’. It would be easy to shoot and burn down village after village and to detain anyone in the name of investigation.
The atrocious law UAPA—Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (amendment) 2008 has been freshly introduced to arrest anybody without warrant on mere suspicion and detain indefinitely. Arrests are going on; leaders of protest groups are being arrested and detained with numerous charges.
Chidambaram is a Harvard-returned attorney. He was a counsel for Enron Company, which had resorted to the biggest-ever corporate fraud in the country. During the P V Narasimha Rao regime, he had to quit the Cabinet for buying shares in Fair Growth Services, involved in the securities scam. Chidambaram was also on the Board of Directors of Vedanta, the world’s biggest mining corporate company, taking up mining activity in Orissa, though he had resigned from the Board on the first day of taking over as Finance Minister in the Manmohan Singh cabinet. In fact, he was attorney for several industrial majors, but withdrew from their cases after becoming the Finance Minister. It is not a mere coincidence that his wife Nalini had taken up those cases argued BY HIM.
So, one cannot expect Chidambaram displaying a different style of functioning, beyond his family culture. He once said the country would prosper if 85 per cent of people moved to urban areas; which means, he
wants more than 700 million people desert the rural areas and migrate to urban areas. Perhaps with this idea, he is forcing thousands of people vacate villages and flee into forests. Tens of thousands of security and paramilitary forces are scanning to the Chhattisgarh forests in the name of Operation Green Hunt, to hound out Maoists. Nobody knows how many Maoists were killed in this operation, but it has claimed lives of hundreds of innocent tribals.
So, one cannot expect Chidambaram displaying a different style of functioning, beyond his family culture. He once said the country would prosper if 85 per cent of people moved to urban areas; which means, he
wants more than 700 million people desert the rural areas and migrate to urban areas. Perhaps with this idea, he is forcing thousands of people vacate villages and flee into forests. Tens of thousands of security and paramilitary forces are scanning to the Chhattisgarh forests in the name of Operation Green Hunt, to hound out Maoists. Nobody knows how many Maoists were killed in this operation, but it has claimed lives of hundreds of innocent tribals.
CONCLUSION
The thesis has so far analyzed the nature of forces that are responsible for the rise of Naxalites movement in India and those that shaped the states response to people movement. So there is broader implication of this study. The Naxalites movement is significant episode in contemporary Indian history which brings to light and aspects of the characteristics of society and political system in India.
The Naxal war for their freedom from the capitalist and their own govt is a sad story. The people that statistics of any form produced by one side can easily be manipulated. In addition, the Govt. doesn't realize that by continuing this war against its own people to satisfy the greed of national and foreign multinational companies it merely remains a namesake democracy. Our adivasis brother and Naxal aren't a terrorist group that demands something that is not theirs. All they want is their lands to be free of greedy money-minded corporations and govt officials.
Naxal affected areas are rich with natural minerals, and imperialist don’t want to keep those area untouched. To get access to this area they need to overall control over the space so they can get all resources. For this purpose Govt have started operation green hunt. To save the our indigenous culture, our natural resources to save our thousands of innocents villagers from Naxal affected areas we must stopped the operation green hunt.
Protection of scheduled Adivasis areas was promised by the Indian Constitution six decades ago. Later, the Panchayat Raj Constitutional amendment promised a great amount of independence. All of this has been obviously violated by the Central and State governments. Such Constitutional protection has become empty missiles under which the cruelest squash of Adivasis way of living and habitats take place. Even the highest courts have either failed to prevent this or promoted it, as seen in the Narmada dam agitation. But here, in a large part of India, tribal peoples are making control over land, resources and society a reality, through struggles. This is an immediate fight to end exploitation, oppression and block aggressive moves of big corporate and the state. More importantly, it is a long term struggle projecting a different type of living.
In the shadow of this operation the security forces have indiscriminately killed non-combatants in areas not under government control. The victims are termed as Naxalites. The press in Chhattisgarh is harassed and reporters imprisoned for talking to villagers, so few are willing to enter these areas. There are reports that villagers were also punished for talking to reporters and outsiders. The pattern persists — the security forces comb an area, claim they killed Naxalites, and villagers speak of atrocities — provided someone listens. Many have migrated to Andhra Pradesh; others do not leave Chhattisgarh but retreat further into the jungles. Those who do go to AP tend to return because of harassment from the authorities and the local populace. Their new settlements are often burnt down.
