India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation (25 page)

Their ideology is vague (Maoism, they say; violent nihilism, their opponents), their public support is limited and their true strength is difficult to ascertain. All the same, they remain impossible to ignore. Originating in West Bengal, the Naxals now extend across at least ten states, mostly in eastern and central India. The area is dubbed the ‘Red Corridor’.

Guerrilla attacks on police and army outposts are the Naxals’ traditional speciality. They don’t stop there. Their ambitions, like their firepower, have shown a recent shift in scale. In April 2010, a Naxal battalion killed seventy-six members of the Central Reserve Police Force less than one hundred kilometres away from here. Most of their intended victims wear uniform, although not all. Shortly after the blood-soaked ambush, they detonated an explosive on a bus in the same vicinity, killing forty people, including a good number of civilians. In the same month, the Naxals bombed the railway line as the Jnaneswari Express chugged its way from Kolkata to Mumbai. Over one hundred and forty passengers died.

In the wake of this glut of murderous blood-letting, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the rebel movement as the country’s ‘gravest internal security challenge’. He’s since authorised a massive military crackdown – codenamed Operation Green Hunt – to rid the country of the ‘ultra’ scourge.

Amol had warned me that Naxals operate in the region around Chavela. Only when we arrive back in Armori does he let on that the guerrillas had paid a visit to the village just two days
beforehand. Suddenly the presence of our unspeaking pair of bodyguards makes sense. As does Jeevan’s anxiety. Chavela, it seems, is anything but ‘problem-less’.

We pull up outside the half-built house of Dr Manesh Kopulwar. Amol shows me up an open flight of concrete stairs to the first-floor apartment. We edge past a pile of bricks and cement, the building blocks of a future upward extension.

Dr Kopulwar, a moustached, middle-aged man of evident education and ill-concealed confidence, invites me to sit on the mottled armchair of his floral three-piece suite. Amol, Nandeep and the two silent minders squeeze onto the sofa beside me. Dressed in his home attire of shorts and shirt, the doctor sits cross-legged on the last remaining piece of furniture, a low-lying bed. He runs his own Ayurvedic practice. He is also district secretary for the Communist Party.

We make small talk about life in Armori and the local political scene as his wife prepares tea and biscuits. The noise of trucks passing along the Nagpur trunk road below competes with the hubbub from the market opposite. Conversation is difficult, although helped by our huddled seating arrangement.

Dr Kopulwar’s wife arrives from the adjoining kitchen pushing a white plastic drinks trolley. Her appearance provides the opportunity for a switch in subject. I’m interested to know if the Naxals enjoy local support and, if so, why. Amol had been reluctant to be drawn on the question when I’d asked him earlier. He was a Marxist, he’d insisted. Naxals are Maoists. ‘As the Communist Party of India (Marxist), we have no dealings with the Maoists.’ He’d declined to elaborate. Dr Kopulwar strikes me as a straight talker and I try the same question on him.

All of a sudden, I’m grateful for the clatter outside. It allows the Communist leader to speak plainly, without fear of prying ears. Men need food, water, shelter, clothes, education and health, he tells me. These are the basic necessities. ‘The tribals want these things. Because they are tribals, though, the government says development isn’t necessary. Sometimes the government plans something for their development, but nothing happens.’

These communities are ‘totally illiterate’, he continues. ‘Without education, how can they develop?’ Of course, the government blames the Maoists. The Maoists don’t want development, they say. ‘Because of that, these communities are not developing. But that’s not a fact. The government says this, but it’s not a fact.’

He pauses a second or two, not in anticipation of an answer but to allow time for his point to sink in. The pregnant pause is one of several rhetorical habits picked up by Dr Kopulwar. Another is the ability to cast himself in his audience’s shoes. Years of soapbox speech-making in Armori have infused the doctor’s Marxist beliefs with a healthy dose of day-to-day reality.

‘So what will these communities do? Their lack of education and their illiteracy means they cannot work. So they join the Naxal movement because they have no employment. They say, “At least with the Naxals, we get some salary.”’

He raises a hand of caution. The local Communist Party leader is anxious I don’t assume that his knowledge on the subject is first-hand. The salary is something ‘people tell me about’, he insists. He can’t verify the information. He’s a Marxist, after all. Not a Maoist. Even so, he’s adamant that most young people don’t join the Naxals for ideological reasons. ‘Most don’t even know what the Maoists stand for. They just want to help their families and escape poverty.’

As with Jeevan, he talks at length about government interventions that promise much yet produce little. His list culminates with the Recognition of Forest Rights Act. The law exists to provide tribal communities with legal tenure to their ancestral lands. According to Dr Kopulwar, who has a politician’s knack for churning out statistics with absolute authority, only twenty thousand two hundred and twenty-four applicants in Maharashtra have so far met with success. I ask the total number of applicants. ‘Fifty-eight thousand,’ he assures me, with equal confidence but marginally less precision. More than a third, then. Given India’s reputation for red tape, the ratio doesn’t sound too bad to me. ‘But the government has so far actually given over very few lands,’ he adds, as if guessing my train of thought and curtailing it.

If his party were to come to power, he’d follow Marxist principles and pursue social equality through land distribution. Electricity, fertilisers, water – whatever is needed to make agricultural land more productive – would be provided at a concessionary rate. That’s what happened in West Bengal, he affirms. ‘And the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has stayed in power for almost four decades.’

I had experienced Indian-style Communism during my stint in Kerala. In practice, the state seems to run much the same as any other: the same inefficiencies, the same complaints of corruption, the same volume of political infighting. Only in Kerala, there are more strikes than in any other state. With the exception of Communist-run West Bengal, perhaps. I say nothing.

‘The tribals are trying for development, but whatever they need they are not getting,’ Dr Kopulwar reasserts by way of conclusion.

‘Exactly how are they trying?’

Unfairly, I feel, he takes the question as a slight. An awkward silence prevails. Amol begins work on the grime beneath his fingernails. Nandeep straightens and unstraightens his legs as if to relieve sudden muscle ache. Only the bodyguards remain unperturbed, smiling away. I wonder what it is that I’ve said.

Eventually, Dr Kopulwar points to the shorter of Amol’s grinning companions. ‘Without education, they cannot develop or think for themselves. They need to understand each and everything. Then they can do the development. Otherwise, they continue doing what they’ve been doing for generations.’

From Armori, I catch a bus to Gadchiroli, the next large town down the road and the district’s capital. The same picturesque countryside unfolds outside the window. It ends abruptly as we enter the city limits.

Dust-covered houses and a down-at-heel pavement market replace the open fields and colour-soaked landscape. The market stalls are piled high with flip-flops, dark glasses, kitchen equipment, eggs, vegetables, CDs and bicycle tyres, all looking slightly sorry for themselves, like strays in a dog pound. Scraps of frayed
festival bunting hang from a lamppost. Beneath it, a barber is giving his client an arm massage.

Gadchiroli’s main roundabout is clogged with school kids on bikes, women riding pillion on motorbikes, rickshaws, goods carriers and the occasional rattling car. A yellow bus with ‘Carmel School’ plastered on the side trundles straight over the junction, oblivious to the traffic. A short avenue of oil-stained mechanics’ shacks squashes along the roadside. The last has a billboard erected above it. Two young men are looking happy in front of a laptop screen. ‘ME Mobile Excitement for You’, reads the slogan. A cow arches its head in the direction of the advertisement and then, apparently resigning itself to a non-digitalised future, continues its plodding walk along the central reservation.

The town’s two hotels are fully booked so I beg a room at the government guest house. Unlocking the door, I startle the occupying guest – a tiny brown mouse – and send him scuttling down the open latrine.

Evening is beginning to settle in by the time I arrive at the Deputy Collector’s office. A journalist in Delhi had passed on his name to me as a helpful local source. In my experience, government officers know much and say little. Transparency is not part of their brief.

His run-down office building is located in an expansive government compound on the edge of town. The site is lined with trees and fenced by armed sentries. It’s quiet. The atmosphere is inexplicably nervy, like a military base during a temporary armistice. A large herd of ambling goats is blocking the driveway. My taxi driver toots his horn. Both the goats and the dozing guard jump in fright.

Except for two or three staff rustling behind mounds of paperwork, the office is empty. I pick my way through a maze of pine cubicles to the Deputy Collector’s room, which is situated at the far end behind a closed door. I knock and a voice invites me in. The room is painted lilac and empty of furniture but for a cabinet, a desk and six plastic chairs. The chairs are arranged in two rows of three, suggesting that the Deputy Collector is a man accustomed
to receiving delegations of petitioners. I take a seat in the front row and place my notebook on the desk beside a freebie calendar from the Bank of India. The month of October is given over to the promotion of the Bank’s mortgage products. ‘A house is made of wall and beams,’ the caption states. ‘A home is built with love and dreams.’ The words take me back to the collapsed building in Jeevan’s village. The rudimentary house-building advice would provide the property’s owner with cold comfort.

The Deputy Collector, Mr Rajendra Kanphade, is sat across the desk from me. He is not at all what I expect. Dressed in a light purple shirt buttoned to the neck, the senior civil servant has a mane of long white hair, which is combed back and tied into a ponytail. There’s a slightly wild look in his eye. His skin is dark and leathery, and his body as thin as a flagpole. Pens protrude from his top pocket. There is little to his look that suggests a government bureaucrat approaching retirement. If I had to guess, I’d say he was a magician.

A tall clerk with a limp comes in. He’s holding a selection of papers. Orange labels are stuck to the pages that require signing. The Deputy Collector removes one of his pens, scribbles his name in the requisite places and shunts the pile down the table. The clerk hobbles out.

‘I was recently in Sweden,’ he starts, as his departing assistant closes the door.

I’d hoped we could talk about rural development issues and, more particularly, about the Naxalite movement. But I’m on the Deputy Collector’s turf, so hear him out. What follows is, like his appearance, unexpected. Mr Kanphade’s trip to Europe was motivated not by work or tourism, I learn, but competitive sport. He is an amateur diver. One-metre springboard, to be precise. He picked up the sport nine years ago at the recreation club for government officials and now competes in the world masters series. His passion for diving has taken him to Italy as well. Gadchiroli’s lack of a swimming pool hampers his practice, however. To hone his skills, he needs to travel three hours to Nagpur – something he tries to do on a weekly basis.

The story has a purpose beyond showing me his certificates (which he does). Several purposes, in fact. The first is to stress his alternative credentials. It quickly becomes clear that there is little orthodox about the Deputy Collector. For starters, he claims to have joined the civil service with a desire to ‘mend the system’. In a similar vein, he maintains an absolute abhorrence of violence, ‘legal or illegal’. Likewise, he says he’s vehemently opposed to corruption. Sitting in his government office, he cites example after example of crooked behaviour by his colleagues. Such sentiments have not made him popular. Early on in his career, he tried to put a stop to an illegal timber operation. The loggers were in cahoots with local officials, paying them off to turn a blind eye to their chainsaws as they stripped bare an area of protected forest. His boss reprimanded him. If he didn’t like the way things were done, he was told, then he should ‘go back to teaching’ (a reference to his former profession).

The Deputy Collector’s long trips to Nagpur contain a wider message too. Gadchiroli lacks more than just a pool. According to the senior official, the district’s one million inhabitants are served by only eighteen kilometres of railway track. They are also short on doctors. Twenty-five of the thirty-one senior medical posts in the region remain vacant. The state of the schools is woefully substandard too. Nearly four hundred school buildings are judged to be ‘on the verge of collapse’. A similar number have no electricity.

In terms of industry, there’s a large pulp and paper plant seventy kilometres out of town. The rest is small fry: a bakery, an ice-cream factory, a rice mill, a tile manufacturer, a couple of furniture makers. None is a big employer. Several mining companies have talked of developing the region’s rich iron-ore deposits. That would be a shot in the arm for the local economy. Were they to start digging, that is. As yet, none has.

Three-fifths of the district’s inhabitants qualify as ‘rural’. Gadchiroli boasts almost one thousand seven hundred villages. The vast majority (ninety-eight per cent) of their inhabitants are tribals: mostly Gonds, plus a splattering of Madia, Pardham and Kolam tribespeople. In as much as they can, they live off the land.
Yields are poor, and hunger common. All bar a few subsist below the poverty level. According to the Indian government, Gadchiroli is officially classified as a ‘Backward Region’.