The Hindu : Choosing targets

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 19, 2003

Opinion

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Choosing targets

THREE DAYS after the abortive attempt on the life of the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, the People's War (PW) extremists carried out a successful attack on another target in Guntur district. This time, their victim was not a high-profile person, but Sambasiva Rao, a driver in the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation.

Rao and some passengers had resisted a group of naxalites who tried to burn his bus at Gamalapadu village on the night of April 13. One naxalite was lynched while the others escaped. The incident attracted media attention, with the Guntur police terming it the "beginning of the end of the naxalite movement". Rao was presented with the Shramshakti award on May Day by Mr. Naidu who also announced a cash reward of Rs. 1 lakh. But the PW shot Rao dead before the reward reached him.

Anyone who opposes the naxalites' tactics automatically becomes a target "fit" to be eliminated. Caught between the devil and the deep is the vast majority of the neutral and uncommitted masses.

The PW has undoubtedly expanded its base from a few pockets of resistance in Telangana in the early 1980s to many States within two decades. But it has also suffered setbacks in the Telangana districts, which were earlier hailed as beacons of the revolutionary movement.

However, in Andhra Pradesh, the key element that continues to help the naxalites hold sway over a section of society is the widening gap between the expectations on development, as promised by the State Government, and the ground reality. A number of Government programmes launched for poverty alleviation such as Velugu, or for the development of women under the DWCRA scheme, or the recently launched grandiose Rytu Mitra Groups (RMGs), are seen as benefiting only the ruling Telugu Desam Party workers.

Take the example of the Food for Work (FFW) scheme under which foodgrains were supplied in lieu of wages during one of the worst spells of drought in the State recently. The irregularities came in handy for the PW to mobilise people against the `contractors', though, despite large-scale misappropriation, the FFW scheme helped people to some extent. Similar are the cases of other development activities, be it land distribution or allotment of houses or laying of roads.

The PW went to the people pointing out the lapses, and what they called the `real motive' of the ruling party.

The Government's communications machinery has been at a disadvantage. To make matters worse, the hype over `effective monitoring' through hi-tech video-conferences between Mr. Naidu and his officials has only led to a reverse impact, since people at the field level know the efficacy of the system.

Another factor that helps the naxalites is the Government's inadequacies in responding to the people's immediate needs. While the laying of a road to make a village accessible is of vital importance, the new facility is of little use without a helping hand to improve the production centres in the village. The roads help businessmen send consignments. But the benefit will reach the villagers only if the Government helps with farm inputs and finance.This is not happening, concedes a senior official involved in anti-extremist operations.

The civil administration is not involved in addressing the problems. It is the police who are forced to take up remedial measures in most of the affected areas, with non-police departments shrugging off their responsibility. An incongruous scene is the police organising health camps and veterinary camps in affected villages, with the designated departmental heads looking the other way. — K.S.R.

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