India's deadly Maoists

The US media constantly bombards us with the growing economic threat of India’s bustling economy. But rarely do we hear about civil strife in reaction to Multinational Corporations or the political factions fighting pseudo wars with “a bloody local war in which at least 350 people have so far lost their lives, and nearly 50,000 are holed up in relief camps.”

There are two India’s: an India that “steals our jobs” and an India with serious problems.

“THE single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country,” is how Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, in April described its Maoist rebels, known as “Naxalites”. Many were taken aback: a violent insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir has claimed tens of thousands of lives; its north-eastern states are wracked by dozens of secessionist movements; and its cities have been subject to repeated terrorist atrocities—culminating in this month’s bomb attacks in Mumbai, which killed nearly 200 people.

Compared with such well-known horrors, the Naxalite threat is low-key, insidious, and, to the city-dweller, largely invisible. Yet it now affects at least 170 of India’s 602 districts: a “red corridor”, running from the Nepali border in the north to the state of Karnataka in the south. It takes in some of the poorest parts of India, and in particular forests inhabited mainly by tribal peoples. In some places Naxalites have, in effect, replaced the state, running local affairs through their own councils, and administering their own rough justice.

Posted by oneofmany
knee deep in blood, waist deep in bullshit, neck deep in metaphor.