People's DemocracySantosh Das
THE Maoists launched a well planned organised attack on the night of February 15, 2008 in the district of Nayagarh of Orissa to loot the arms. The entire state was shocked by this operation. They attacked the district armory, the arms department of police training school, the local policy station, looted the arms and safely transported them by bus, three trucks and one jeep. To ensure the non-existence of the police presence on their way back, they attacked other police stations like Dashpalla, Nuagaon etc. Their operation started at 10.30 pm on the night of February 15 and continued till 00.30 hours. The Maoists killed 15 persons including 13 policemen. This was the biggest Maoist operation in Orissa.
The government woke up lately and mopped up forces from different sources including the armed police of Orissa, the CRPF and the Grey hound forces brought from Andhra Pradesh. They are yet to capture any body or recover the looted arms. If the response time is any kind of measure to gauge the readiness of the government machinery, the response shown in this case is too poor. The seriousness is reflected in the longevity of cross firing which lasted for two full days. Despite such a huge counter operation, the government is not able to recover the looted armory except those that are the obsolete weapons left behind by the Maoists. The non-official claim by the top brasses of the police apparatus , the home department- that many of the Maoists, their number being one hundred were killed in the encounter, appears to be ridiculous since not a single dead body of Maoists in produced so far.
No doubt, it was a failure of the law and order authority and failure on the part of the intelligence agencies. But the self introspection of the government or the oppositional criticism need not end here. So far, the Orissa government has treated the Maoist phenomena as simply a law and order problem. No measure has been taken to study the root cause of the problem and take remedial measures. Casually it is admitted that socio-economic factor is responsible for the growth of the Naxalism. The poverty, unemployment, backwardness, exploitation by landlords, moneylenders, contractors, harassment by police, forest officials and other official agencies are certainly the socio-economic factors that need to be addressed. But how has the government addressed such problems?
Malkanagiri district that falls under the well-known K B K area is one of the worst hit districts of Maoist attacks. The planning commission study has revealed that in spite of the pumping of money under a special plan called K B K Plan, poverty in the KBK region has increased from 77 percent to 89 percent during the period from 1998-99 to 2004-05. If such is the fate of these schemes, then it demands serious introspection. Similarly the implementation of NREGS is anything except success. Lack of commitment, administrative callousness and corruption are the factors responsible for such failure. The labour law or the minimum wage act does not protect the poor and the tribal when the contractors cheat and exploit them. Never has the government thought to implement land reforms in its true spirit. The government is leasing out hundreds and thousands of acres of land to capitalists whereas it refuses to distribute land among the landless poor and the tribal population. Certainly, the discontentment generated due to these problems works as fertile ground for the Naxalites or Maoists to spread their activities. The Maoists recruit these people for their military activities and to create ‘base areas' in inaccessible regions and spread further to capture cities with the ultimate objective of capturing the state power. The Maoists undermine the democratic movement, refuse to undertake the job of organising day to day struggle for promoting the class consciousness and the political consciousness of the people. Instead, they resort to individual annihilation killing innocent people. During the last couple of years, they have killed poor tribals and low rank employees and police men in good number in districts of Sambalpur, Deogarh and Malkanagari, the latest being the incident of Nayagarh where 13 police men and two civilians were killed.
While the successive governments have not taken any steps to address the socio-economic cause of the Maoist phenomena, they seek to eliminate the challenge only through law and order measures and announcing awards and rehabilitation schemes to allure the Maoists to surrender. The reaction of the opposition parties to the incident also was directed to meet the needs of the electoral politics only. They criticised the failure on the law and order front and held the BJD-BJP government responsible for the spreading of Maoists activities. The politics and the activities of the Maoists were not condemned.
CPI(M) while criticising the political failure and the failure of the government on the law and order front, condemned the activities of the Maoists and their politics. CPI(M) has decided to undertake a campaign to counter the Maoists politically and ideologically.
