Government-led recruitment

India has recently seen a spate of Naxalite activities. In Bihar, there have been attacks on police posts and killings of 'informers'. In Chhattisgarh, there have been abductions of Adivasis, murders of farmers, and the killing of 24 policemen. Blasts have taken place in government office in both Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand, while 'encounter killings' of suspected Naxalites have taken place in Karnataka. These incidents, all of which have taken place over the past month, have not only created misery for common citizens, but point to a deeper malaise. Beyond consuming a regular staple of newspaper headlines, there is little the common citizen seems able to do; the 'Naxalite problem' is left to bureaucrats, intelligence agents and the police force to tackle. And therein lies the issue: as long as the Naxalite situation is treated as a law-and-order problem, the killings will continue. District after district of south, central and western India will subsequently join the expanding list of 'disturbed areas'.

This magazine has consistently spoken out against the politics of violence. The 'root causes' theory, so often used to justify the actions of armed political groups, does not stand critical scrutiny. In many ways, Naxalite politics today have been drastically distorted, and have proved to offer more problems than solutions. For many, the movement has become an effective way to make money at the local level, to exert power, and to impose authoritarian structures in areas they dominate. In the name of the people, there is little doubt that such groups often put marginalised communities directly in the crossfire between the militants and the security forces.