Indian Maoists attacked a police search party 70 cops missing

Maoists operate in more than 200 of the country´s 630 districts,according to the Institute for Cnflict Management a New Delhi think-tank.
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About 70 police personnel were Wednesday reported missing in Chhattisgarh forests amid a major gunfight between heavily armed Maoists and the security forces in Dantewada area, authorities said.

The gunfight began when Maoists attacked a search party of the state police in a thickly forested area of Gumiapal, close to Kirandul, about 420 km south of capital Raipur, an iron ore mining facility of India’s top iron ore producer NMDC Ltd.

‘About 70 police personnel are missing,’ a source at the police headquarters here said.

‘Additional forces have been rushed to the site. The gun battle is on amid heavy rain. I can’t comment anything now about casualty or injury but it’s a major fight,’ the police officer told IANS.

A strong contingent of District Force (DF) and Koya Commando comprising of special police officers (SPOs) had gone into the forests around 11 a.m. after police were tipped-off about the presence of a unit headed by Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) commander Ganesh Uike in Gumiapal forests, state police spokesperson Rajesh Mishra told reporters.

‘Police headquarters is awaiting details about the encounter which is still on. Our brave policemen are giving them (Maoists) a very tough fight,’ said Mishra, an inspector general of police.

IANS

Tags:

Commodities

Iron ore

Communist Party of India (Maoist)

India

Mining

Guerrilla warfare

4 Maps of India

Given below are some maps that I came across which should be useful for anyone writing about the Maoist Movement in India.

The maps are pretty simple and do not need any explanation

The Well Being Index has been created using eight 8 critical categories carefully selected to form the index on the basis of their ability to explain the well being of households broadly covering all aspects of well being.

The categories are

1 ) Home amenities,
2 ) Kitchen Facilities,
3 ) Education,
4 ) Hygiene,
5 ) Entertainment,
6 ) Communication,
7 ) Transportation
8 ) Healthcare

District wise well Being index.


Poverty Map of India



Mineral Resources and Forest Cover Map of India


Maoist Affected Districts of India - Latest map

Indian media outlet. Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal

The UCPN-Maoist supports its Indian counterparts notwithstanding some differences on certain issues, and opposes the security operations being carried out against them in India, Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal told an Indian media outlet.

The former rebel leader, who is more popularly known with his nom de guerre Prachanda, further pointed out the need of dialogue and negotiations to solve the problems in India rather than using force, according to a report published on Saturday’s Hindustan Times.

Talking to the newspaper over telephone from Kathmandu, he said, “This is the first time we are publicly saying that we oppose state repression and the so-called Operation Greenhunt in India. The problems of the day can be solved only through dialogue and negotiations, not through the use of force.”

He argued that the Indian Maoists are ideologically the same as their Nepali counterparts.

The Nepali Maoists that took to an armed rebellion for a decade joined the mainstream politics in 2006. They succeeded to take over the government after winning the Constituent Assembly polls in 2008. The single largest party in the CA, however, stepped down from the government following the differences with the president over the sacking of the then army chief and his subsequent reinstatement.

Meanwhile, an Indian security expert has correlated Dahal’s support to the Indian Maoists with Nepal’s volatile political developments.

“His declaration of support is related to internal political developments in Nepal,” former RAW official B. Raman said.

Dahal has been accusing the Indian establishment of influencing the Nepali politics, in one way or the other, to thwart his party’s accession to the power.

After Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal announced his resignation on July 1, Dahal has staked claim over the leadership of the proposed national unity government.

Tags:

Andhra Pradesh

Maoist

Cherukuri Rajkumar

Communist Party of India (Maoist)

Hyderabad

Chhattisgarh

Maoist rebels killed at least 15 police officers

Maoist rebels killed at least 15 police officers and injured five more in an ambush in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh on Tuesday, a senior local police officer told AFP.

The targeted group were returning from a road-opening ceremony when they were attacked by a large number of heavily armed militants, the head of anti-Maoist operations in the state, Ram Niwas, said by telephone.

Other local police sources said the Maoists, who massacred 76 policemen in Chhattisgarh in April, might have numbered as many as 100.

The officers were surrounded in the ambush, which took place in Dhodai, 300 kilometres (190 miles) south of Chhattisgarh state capital Raipur, and they fought back in a gunbattle that lasted three hours, the police said.

Some of injured were evacuated by helicopter, and reinforcements were sent to the area.

The government launched a major offensive last year to tackle the worsening left-wing insurgency, but since then the Maoists have hit back with a series of bloody strikes.

Maoist rebel groups have fought for decades throughout east India against state and central government rule, drawing support from landless tribal groups and farmers left behind by the country's economic expansion.

(AFP)

ڈیرہ اسماعیل خان: انوکھا شہر

جنوبی وزیرستان کی سرحد کے قریب واقع شہر ڈیرہ اسماعیل خان جو شدت پسندی سے بری طرح متاثر ہوا اور جہاں فرقہ وارانہ تشدد کے بے شمار واقعات پیش آئے ، وہاں اسی شہر میں مذہبی ہم آہنگی کی ایک انوکھی مثال بھی پائی جاتی ہے۔ ڈیرہ اسماعیل خان کے ایک قبرستان میں مسلمانوں کے ہمراہ عیسائیوں اور ہندوؤں کی تدفین بھی کی جاتی ہے۔

Maoist threat hampering India coal output

The threat of Maoist attacks is hampering coal mining in several states, keeping production lower than the demand from growing industries, Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said on Wednesday.

"If law and order situation is improved, coal production can rise by at least 25 percent," Jaiswal told reporters.

India produced 531 million tonnes of coal in 2009/10, which fell short of demand by 70 million tonnes, and is looking at ways to boost production to help its growing power, steel and cement sectors.

"Unfortunately, the states that have coal, have bad law and order situation... no doubt our problem is very big due to which we can't raise our production," Jaiswal said.

With the Maoist rebels controlling vast swathes of mineral-rich areas, the government has often struggled to transport coal to power and steel firms.

Jaiswal said the central and the eastern Indian states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal were some of the coal-rich states that needed to beef up the security for mines.

Maoists, who say they are fighting for the rights of the poor and landless and want to overthrow the government, have attacked railway lines and factories, aiming to cripple economic activity.

The coal ministry is also taking advice from consultants to help get environmental clearances for coal mining, Jaiswal said.

"We are taking advice from consultants on what the way out is... what system we should evolve for getting forest and environmental clearances," he said. Indian mines are facing difficulties in getting clearances from the Ministry of Environment and Forests which is keen to expand forests and has even earmarked "no-go" areas where vast tracts of mineral-rich zones lie.

Derailing India's Maoist Insurgency

Eric Randolph

The train derailment that left 148 dead in one of the hotbeds of India’s internal war could well be a classic example of how peaceful resistance can spin easily out of control if handled badly.

The sabotage took place on 28 May in the West Midnapore district of West Bengal, an area the press likes to call “infested” with Maoist rebels. The saboteurs removed about 50 feet of padrol clips, which keep the railway track in place, causing the Gyaneshwari Express passenger train to derail and leaving it in the path of an oncoming goods train which rammed into its side about five minutes later.

The Maoists, who tend to be quite up-front about the attacks they perpetrate, denied any involvement - perhaps unsurprising considering the horrendous loss of civilian life. It is worth considering, however, that the death toll is only marginally less than the 173 killed in the Mumbai attacks of November 2008. Derailing trains is a typical tactic for the Maoists, who were responsible for 58 attacks on infrastructure targets in 2009, according to the Ministry for Railways. In November, two people died when Maoists derailed a train in the state of Jharkhand. The difference with the May 2010 attack was timing: another train coming from a different direction crossed the train's path and compounded the destruction - a catastrophe facilitated by the absence of any emergency warning system.

The Maoist leadership is sticking to its denial, and announced an internal investigation to determine if the attack was the work of rogue elements. Last week, the police appeared to corroborate the story when they put out an arrest warrant for three men from a group called the "People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities" (PCAPA).

The story of the PCAPA began in November 2008 when the Maoists tried to blow up the convoy of West Bengal chief minister Bhuddhadeb Bhattacharya after a visit to the controversial steel plant built by the Jindal Iron and Steel Company in West Midnapore. They used a roadside bomb and missed their target. Police responded by barging into nearby villages, looking for suspects. Reports from the villagers alleged extreme police brutality, including claims that pregnant women were raped and that one was beaten until she lost an eye. Police deny the charges, but the villagers were agitated enough to form the PCAPA.

It organised large, non-violent protests, surrounding police stations in remote areas and forcing them to decamp. Those who attended estimated as many as 30,000 or more people would regularly gather from hundreds of surrounding villages, cutting off roads and staging mass protests. The PCAPA's initial list of demands was simple. Essentially, it wanted the police to stop their attacks. It also wanted the police superintendent to come to the village and do press-ups while holding his ears. The latter demand, a common form of tribal punishment, was not taken seriously by the authorities in Kolkata. Had the authorities taken the request seriously and shown genuine remorse, the PCAPA claims it would have called off further protests.

Instead, the police waited, and then launched a large-scale operation in June 2009 to forcibly reassert their presence in West Midnapore. Activists who worked with the PCAPA in its early negotiations with the state government say its leaders had resisted Maoist attempts to take control of the movement, adamantly sticking to non-violent methods. But the police refused to accept that the PCAPA was ever anything but a front organisation for the Maoists, designed to seize power in the area. It did not help that one of the leaders, Chhatradhar Mahato, had a brother who was a confirmed Maoist.

When I interviewed director-general of police Bhupinder Singh in February of this year, he told me “The PCAPA drummed up support by cooking up stories about atrocities with the obvious backing of the Maoists. All they want is to control these areas. We have been very careful that there are no human rights violations, that they respect women and children and the elderly.”

A year on from the launch of that operation, progress remains uncertain. The police have been able to re-establish bases across the region, but winning the hearts and minds of the people is another matter entirely. The whole thing bears worrying comparison to other famous jungle conflicts. “When we go into the jungles," Singh told me, "they just hide their weapons and walk like normal people. It is something like the Vietcong – classic guerrilla tactics. They know where we are, we don’t know where they are. It requires a lot of specific intelligence.”

In September 2009, Chhatradhar Mahato was arrested by police pretending to be journalists (a tactic not much appreciated by local hacks). On 22 February of this year, another of its leaders, Lalmohan Tudu, was gunned down by police. Activists say he was dragged out of his village home and shot in front of his wife and daughter as revenge for a Maoist attack on a nearby police camp the week before in which 24 officers died. Police claim Tudu was killed in a gunfight that he had initiated. The truth will probably never come out, since the body has never been recovered and the results of the post-mortem remain classified.

The line between peaceful protester and Maoist footsoldier is often blurred. The Maoists feed off the same grievances that motivate peaceful demonstrations: the demand for development, improved governance and an end to human rights violations. But by lumping them together, the police have essentially done the Maoists’ job for them, cutting off outlets for legitimate protest and encouraging impressionable individuals to see violence as their only recourse. This encourages a decentralisation of the insurgency. Recruits are motivated bottom-up by local events rather than manipulated by a distant, central leadership. That lack of focused command and control also yields more chaotic results, such as last month’s horrific train wreck. If it turns out that members of the PCAPA are indeed responsible for the violence, then the group has clearly forfeited any claims to the moral high-ground it may have once held. But part of the blame must also go to the heavy-handed government response, which refused the olive branch when it was still being proffered.

POSTSCRIPT: Conspiracy

There is one other possibility in this story: that the whole thing was staged by state authorities to undermine the Maoists' and the PCAPA's legitimacy. If that sounds a little far-fetched, that's because it probably is. Nonetheless, there remain some serious questions about the investigation. A key piece of evidence against the PCAPA was the fact that their own propaganda leaflets were found near the crash site - though it seems odd that they would leave a calling card near an attack which they subsequently refused to claim as their own.

West Bengal opposition leader Mamata Banerjee has suggested there is some sort of political conspiracy afoot, although her garbled public statement on the issue, and media reports about it, offer little clarity. The PCAPA came out on Saturday with a list of its own suspects, all of whom are key figures in the Marxist party that runs West Bengal. Meanwhile, the state government and police are likely exploiting the situation to round up some of their most wanted, regardless of whether or not they were involved.

India Is the nation in a coma?

Naxalite Maoist India

A well written article from the Hindu Businessline on the World's largest undeclared Banana Republic.

Europeans believe that Indian leaders are too blinded by new wealth and deceit to comprehend that the day will come when the have-nots will hit the streets.

Mohan Murti

A few days ago I was in a panel discussion on mergers and acquisitions in Frankfurt, Germany, organised by Euroforum and The Handelsblatt, one of the most prestigious newspapers in German-speaking Europe.

The other panellists were senior officials of two of the largest carmakers and two top insurance companies — all German multinationals operating in India.

The panel discussion was moderated by a professor from the esteemed European Business School. The hall had an audience that exceeded a hundred well-known European CEOs. I was the only Indian.

After the panel discussion, the floor was open for questions. That was when my “moment of truth” turned into an hour of shame, embarrassment — when the participants fired questions and made remarks on their experiences with the evil of corruption in India.

The awkwardness and humiliation I went through reminded of The Moment of Truth, the popular Anglo-American game. The more questions I answered truthfully, the more the questions get tougher. Tougher here means more embarrassing.

European disquiet

Questions ranged from “Is your nation in a coma?”, the corruption in judiciary, the possible impeachment of a judge, the 2G scam and to the money parked illegally in tax havens.

It is a fact that the problem of corruption in India has assumed enormous and embarrassing proportions in recent years, although it has been with us for decades. The questions and the debate that followed in the panel discussion was indicative of the European disquiet. At the end of the Q&A session, I surmised Europeans perceive India to be at one of those junctures where tripping over the precipice cannot be ruled out.

Let me substantiate this further with what the European media has to say in recent days.

In a popular prime-time television discussion in Germany, the panellist, a member of the German Parliament quoting a blog said: “If all the scams of the last five years are added up, they are likely to rival and exceed the British colonial loot of India of about a trillion dollars.”

Banana Republic

One German business daily which wrote an editorial on India said: “India is becoming a Banana Republic instead of being an economic superpower. To get the cut motion designated out, assurances are made to political allays. Special treatment is promised at the expense of the people. So, Ms Mayawati who is Chief Minister of the most densely inhabited state, is calmed when an intelligence agency probe is scrapped. The multi-million dollars fodder scam by another former chief minister wielding enormous power is put in cold storage. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chairs over this kind of unparalleled loot.”

An article in a French newspaper titled “Playing the Game, Indian Style” wrote: “Investigations into the shadowy financial deals of the Indian cricket league have revealed a web of transactions across tax havens like Switzerland, the Virgin Islands, Mauritius and Cyprus.” In the same article, the name of one Hassan Ali of Pune is mentioned as operating with his wife a one-billion-dollar illegal Swiss account with “sanction of the Indian regime”.

A third story narrated in the damaging article is that of the former chief minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda, who was reported to have funds in various tax havens that were partly used to buy mines in Liberia. “Unfortunately, the Indian public do not know the status of that enquiry,” the article concluded.

“In the nastiest business scam in Indian records (Satyam) the government adroitly covered up the political aspects of the swindle — predominantly involving real estate,” wrote an Austrian newspaper. “If the Indian Prime Minister knows nothing about these scandals, he is ignorant of ground realities and does not deserve to be Prime Minister. If he does, is he a collaborator in crime?”

The Telegraph of the UK reported the 2G scam saying: “Naturally, India's elephantine legal system will ensure culpability, is delayed.”

Blinded by wealth

This seems true. In the European mind, caricature of a typical Indian encompasses qualities of falsification, telling lies, being fraudulent, dishonest, corrupt, arrogant, boastful, speaking loudly and bothering others in public places or, while travelling, swindling when the slightest of opportunity arises and spreading rumours about others. The list is truly incessant.

My father, who is 81 years old, is utterly frustrated, shocked and disgruntled with whatever is happening and said in a recent discussion that our country's motto should truly be Asatyameva Jayete.

Europeans believe that Indian leaders in politics and business are so blissfully blinded by the new, sometimes ill-gotten, wealth and deceit that they are living in defiance, insolence and denial to comprehend that the day will come, sooner than later, when the have-nots would hit the streets.

In a way, it seems to have already started with the monstrous and grotesque acts of the Maoists. And, when that rot occurs, not one political turncoat will escape being lynched.


The drumbeats for these rebellions are going to get louder and louder as our leaders refuse to listen to the voices of the people. Eventually, it will lead to a revolution that will spill to streets across the whole of India, I fear.

Perhaps we are the architects of our own misfortune. It is our sab chalta hai (everything goes) attitude that has allowed people to mislead us with impunity. No wonder Aesop said. “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to high office.”

(The author is former Europe Director, CII, and lives in Cologne, Germany. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in.)