Operation Greenhunt II: Who were hunting whom in Dantewada?

Chidambaram: India's George Bush?

Supreme Court Advocate Prashant Bhushan at a Press Conference, addressed by signatories of an Open letter to the PM on October 19, 2009 in Delhi, had this to say about Chidambaram - “He has represented many companies with business interests in Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, he was a director of Vedanta (a multinational with mining ambitions in Orissa) until the day he became finance minister in 2004. The idea of this war by the government seems to be to use propaganda to get tribal areas vacated for corporate companies, just as George Bush used a false campaign on weapons of mass destruction to grab Iraq’s rich oil wells for American business houses.”

Interestingly, just as Prashant Bhushan said, Chidambaram sounds very much Bush-like when he said "I had said that to counter the menace of naxalism we need ‘a strong head, a stronger heart and enormous staying power’. I believe that the Government has all three qualities. Even as we grieve the loss of lives, I appeal to the House – and through this House to the people of India – that we should remain calm, hold our nerve and stay on the course that we had carefully chosen since October 2009”. Was not 'Stay the Course' the phrase used at least 30 times and made famous by Bush in his policy statements on Iraq!? The usage of the phrase inadvertently tells that the Bastars and Dantewadas are as alien to Indian rulers as Iraq was to US!

Operation Greenhunt: Who are hunting whom?

That is a striking piece in India Today - Slain CRPF man had to take pay cut. It shows who were fighting whom in Dantewada. The CRPF jawans were earning a meager 10,000 per month while relocating and getting used to different theatres of war, from Kashmir to Assam to the hills in Dantewada. And yet, for all their service, the likes of Udaiveer get this kind of treatment from the ruling elite. It is the same indifference, insensitivity from the rulers that swells the ranks of the violent Maoists. Indifference of the Indian state over 6 decades to their basic amenities, education and health drove the tribals into looking at an alternative in Maoism and the state’s ruthless exploitation of their natural wealth now is forcing them to pick the gun. And so we have the poorest of India – CRPF jawans from predominantly UP and Bihar fighting the mainly Andhra Pradesh Maoist guerrillas in the hills of Chhattisgarh! 74 jawans and 8 Maoists die. And for whom? To fill the coffers of the super-rich and the MNCs, with the wealth from the tribal lands.

In a related piece in IBN, a CRPF jawan says “The British have gone but left the babus behind. The Officers act like British babus with us. The condition will always remain like this, nothing will change. Even when Central government will declare some package in Parliament, the big bosses will fatten their pockets further. They are buying crores of machinery and getting commissions. We don't even get a deserving pay” Is Mr. Chidambaram listening? No. He is busy fomenting paranoia and selling a civil war to Indian public. His own transformation from a business executive into a finance minister and then into Home minister seems to be seamless and in complete harmony. He was a non-executive director of the infamous ’Vedanta’, one of the biggest players in mining in the same region now the Operation Greenhunt is on, till the day he swore as the finance minister. And now as Home Minister, he gets down to do the dirty work of annihilating the tribals out of their homes and handing their mineral-rich regions, like in Chhattisgarh and Orissa, to the Vedantas, Tatas, Essars etc.

This job of emptying the Scheduled Areas is easy to do in the guise of an anti-Maoist operation (official figures state that around 644 villages were emptied and nearly 200,000 people displaced by the by the state-backed militia Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh) and these operations would get public support only when Dantewadas happen and paranoia is spread the way the minister is doing now about how Maoists will overthrow the state. So never mind that Udaiveer struggled with his pay when alive, he would now as a dead get Rs. 35 lakh, swiftly by this month-end as per Chidambaram. That is how important this operation is and how heroic the forces participating in it are, Chidambaram tries to make us believe now. Deify the poor Jawan, keep propagating that the Maoists are India’s number 1 enemy (ahead of the LeTs and Al Qaedas ) until the Indian middle class gets around to mentally accepting that it’s okay to throw the poor tribals out of their centuries-old ecosystem - that is the approach. This is a deadly game being played where India’s poorest, who never got anything from Indian state would be robbed of the only thing they have – their tribal land, by the state and the big corporations. The jawans, like those 74 dead, are but pawns in this game.

My Previous Posts on 'Operation Greenhunt':

Operation Greenhunt I: Chidambaram, when would your violence end?