Not schools but education. We are trying to give basic education through Mobile Academic Schools. Teaching basic sciences, mathematics and indigenous languages. Teams involved in the process are specialising in designing courses for the people who are backward, so that they can learn faster. We are taking extra care to improve health facilities as well. For example, wherever we work, we have told the tribals to boil drinking water. It has reduced diseases and death by 50 per cent. Even independent NGOs have said so. Child mortality decreased because we have managed to empower women to an extent. The level of under-development in Bastar and all these areas is worse than, as some indicators suggest, sub-Saharan Africa.” This is a response to a question, but the one questioned was not the HRD or health minister. It was Kobad Ghandy interviewed by the BBC.

The Planning Commission set up a task force on development challenges in extremist-affected areas and a report (in the public domain) was submitted in April 2008. This task force (TF) stated, “If the emphasis of this exploration is on the Naxalite phenomenon it is not because other modes and forms of agitation are less important but only because the method of struggle chosen by the Naxalites has brought the problem to a head.”

What’s the problem? Stated simply, some geographical regions and communities have been bypassed by the growth process. It isn’t that government committees have not examined similar issues earlier. The TF mentions three: report of the home ministry’s policy planning division in the late 1960s, the Manmohan Singh committee on rural unrest in Bihar and Andhra in the mid-1980s, and a committee of senior officials (chaired by V.C. Pandey) in the late 1980s. For the moment, though different figures float around, the TF estimates the Naxalites to be active in 125 districts in 12 states. Beyond general points about marginalisation of SCs/STs/ women, the TF makes two points. First, there has been abdication by government on physical and social infrastructure (health and education mentioned by Ghandy) and law and order. “Of all the things that are known about the Naxalites, their people’s courts are perhaps the most notorious. While the abuses that have been reported about them are not all false, taking that to be the whole story would not be quite correct. The fact is that such informal, rough and ready forums of dispute resolution did in a way respond to the felt need.” The criminal justice system (and the civil one too) doesn’t deliver. Consequently, there is the post-1970s Bollywood route of taking the law into one’s own hands, or resorting to alternative channels like mafia and now, Naxalites. Minimum wages are yet another instance of abdication, mentioned both by the TF and Ghandy.

... contd.