Addressing a luncheon organised by the Consulate General of India and theConfederation of Indian Industries (CII) at New York on May 17, 2005,Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh said: "We are India's youngest,smartest state without any liability from the past. We intend to become thecountry's hottest investment destination." Heading a team of seniorofficials, Raman Singh was pitching for foreign investment for his state, whichsits on some of India's richest mineral reserves of coal, iron ore, dolomite,bauxite and limestone. Returning home after the trip, on May 27, Singh declaredthat foreign investors would invest close to INR 56 billion in the coming monthsin the state. The Chief Minister's boast may, however, seem somewhat incredible,considering the security environment prevalent in Chhattisgarh.
On May 7, 2005, Naxalites of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist)attacked the Samri Aluminum unit of Asia's largest primary producer of aluminum,the Hindalco Industries Limited (a flagship company of the Aditya Birla Group)at Saridih in the Surguja District, destroying the company's buildings anddocuments. Following the attack, the Balrampur Superintendent of Police, SitaramKaluri, stated that security forces involved in combing operations in the regionhad earlier stayed in the company's residential premises, which may haveprompted the attack. However, this was not the first attack on the Hindalcogroup by the Naxalites. On April 25, 2002, they had attacked Hindalco's KutkuBauxite mines in the Balrampur area, damaging machinery and equipment worth INR20 million.
The latest assault did not end immediately. On May 8, in an attack reminiscentof the Koraput incident of February 6, 2004, in Orissa, CPI-Maoist cadresattacked the Kanker District Headquarters, setting afire buildings belonging tothe revenue and forest departments, as well as a branch of the State Bank ofIndia. The offensive was meticulous and according to Kanker Superintendent ofPolice, Pradeep Gupta, "the attack was unexpected. The armed guerrillasblocked all the roads leading to the incident site by felling trees onroads." An interesting aspect in both the attacks - at the Hindalco unitand in Kanker - was the reported involvement of more than 200 cadres in amethodical operation, in both cases taking the security, corporate andbureaucratic machinery by surprise.
With 43.7 per cent of the state under forest cover, and a 31.75 per cent tribalpopulation, Chhattisgarh has provided fertile ground for the Naxalites tooperate in and dominate. According to a recent state government intelligencereport, the Naxalites have become a "dominant force in nine of the 16districts and have partial but fast growing impact in four districts".Among the worst affected districts include Kanker, Dantewada, Bastar, Surguja,Rajnandgaon, Koriya, Kawardha and Jashpur. The report has also predicted thatthe Naxalites could capture nearly 60 percent of the state's land by 2010, ifdecisive operations are not carried out by the Union government to dismantletheir bases.
According to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA)Annual Report 2004-2005, "In Chhattisgarh, Naxal violence led by theCPML-PW (Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist - People's War) sharplyincreased during 2004. The increase was primarily on account of coordinatedNaxal attacks on police as a part of the CPML-PW/ MCCI (Maoist Communist Centreof India)-led poll boycott campaign." The MHA report further stated that,there were 37 fatalities in Naxalite violence in 2001; 55 in 2002; 74 in 2003;and 83 in 2004. In 2005, according to the Institute for Conflict Management database,till May 28, 16 security forces (SF) personnel, 11 civilians, and 3 Naxaliteshave been killed in different incidents. The preponderance of SF fatalities in2005 has been alarming and has been attributed by official sources to increasingcombing operations carried out in the districts of Kanker, Dantewada and Bastar,in an apparent effort by the government to enter the 'liberated zone' (areaswhere Maoist influence and activities are dominant).
In May 2005, a senior CPI-Maoist leader, Ayatu, speaking to the media in theBastar forest area had said, "Who said we are running paralleladministration? We have liberated some of our areas through our sustainedpeople's war in the Abujhmad (Abujhmar) area of Dandakaranya zone (of Bastarregion) where we have established people's governance." The local media hasoften substantiated this claim with reports of the Naxalites administering a'taxation' system in these areas; of police not venturing into the villagesafter dark; and of government officials traveling in vehicles that bear a'Press' sticker to avoid Naxalite attacks. Way back in 2000, (Chhattisgarh wascarved out of Madhya Pradesh in November 2000) the Madhya Pradesh's Commissioner(Land Records) and Chief Conservator of Forests (Land Management) had admittedin a report that the Naxalites had forcibly occupied 20,000 hectares of forestarea in the Bastar division and were running a parallel government there byappointing their own 'rangers' and 'deputy rangers'.
Similarly, in other districts like Surguja, there have been recent reports ofsales tax officials leaving their inter-state check gates on the borders ofUttar Pradesh and Jharkhand well before sunset for fear of the Naxalites. In theBastar region, the Indian Army's Border Road Organisation's (BRO) attempt toconstruct the 200 kilometer long national highway between Chhattisgarh andMadhya Pradesh has hit bottlenecks due to Naxalite attacks.
Acknowledging the difficulties faced by the police in entering this 'liberatedzone', the state government had approached the Hyderabad-based National RemoteSensing Agency (NRSA) in January 2005, to conduct a survey of the AbujhmarHills, in order to provide them with the geographical locations of the Naxalitecamps.
The Abujhmar Hills are located in the western part of Bastar District. Theterrain varies from 450 meters to 750 meters above sea level, is denselyforested, and comprises many high ridges and deep valleys created by numerousstreams, which provide an effective natural barrier from all sides, isolating itfrom the rest of the region. The Hills are inhabited by the Maria tribes.
The task of recovering control and restoring governance in the Naxalite affectedareas of Chhattisgarh appears far from easy, as evidenced by the May 19, 2005,incident, when senior police officials, supervising operations to enter theAbujmarh Hills, came under heavy Naxalite attack at Narayanpur in the BastarDistrict. Military helicopters were used to evacuate them.
The capacity to mount affective anti-Naxalite operations in the state isundermined by low police strength. According to the Crime in India, 2003, reportpublished by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), for an estimated mid-yearpopulation of 21,721,000 in Chhattisgarh, the police strength (civil and armed)was 20,472; this yields a police-population ratio of 1:1,061. The all-Indiaratio is 1:814, but in Delhi it goes up to 1:269; and in Mizoram: 1:129. [Theworst ratio in the country obtains in Bihar - 1:1,652]. In an attempt toreplenish this deficit, the Chhattisgarh government requested the Gujarat government to send police personnel to help man police stations when the localpolice was sent out for combing operations. This request has apparently beenaccepted, with Gujarat Director General of Police, A.K. Bhargava stating on May4, that a battalion comprising six companies of the Special Armed Force would besent to Naxalite-affected areas in Chhattisgarh. A similar request hasreportedly been made to the Nagaland Government. Whether this will result in anydramatic improvement in operational capacities remains to be seen. The presenceof outside troops often adds to disenchantment among the locals, and tends toyield unreliable human intelligence.
Nevertheless, as the state government fires up its efforts to penetrate Naxalitedominated areas in Chhattisgarh, the coming months may well see body countsrising. For the government, the success of these operations is paramount if thepromised foreign investment is actually to materialize; investor confidence canhardly be expected to improve as long as the Naxalites continue to function as'a state within the state.'
Saji Cherian is Research Associate, Institutefor Conflict Management. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review ofthe South Asia Terrorism Portal
