Chattisgarh

Supreme Court grants bail to Binayak Sen, seems to think that the conviction for sedition not correct

The recent conviction of the left-leaning Doctor, Binayak Sen, by a court in Chhattisgarh for sedition, and for helping Maoists in their efforts to overthrow the power of the state has always been controversial. For his supporters, the legal evidence that helped to get him convicted was nebulous, and not on firm legal ground; in fact, his supporters state that the efforts of the state Government to get him convicted was done, not based on the legal evidence, but based on the need of the State Government to try and shut up an outspoken supporter of the rights of the people. On the other hand, the state Government contends that he is actually a Maoist who provided support to jailed Naxalites, and is as much a part of the movement as any of the gun carrying people on the ground. Further, his conviction was done by a trial court, an independent judiciary, and was all legal and proper.
The cause of Binayak Sen has become much more famous, not just isolated to the state; he had a number of supporters who are campaigning to get him set free, and this happened in a number of cities in the country; and of course, like many other people who lean left, he has a number of supported internationally as well. In fact, a group of observers representing the European Union nations wanted permission to attend his trial, and they got the required permissions as well.
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Fight against the Maoists – need a unified strategy (2)

The first version of this article talked about why the Maoist problem has grown to such a large degree, and how the lack of development, and percolating of the forward movement of the Indian economy to backward and tribal areas is important. In the second part, we address how serious the issue is, and what needs to be done.
The Maoist problem is indeed a massive problem, especially when you consider that the Maoist occupy huge chunks of the land area of the country, and are now emerging in a position to hold hostage many of the crucial economic links that the country depends upon. What are these ? The Maoists have given a good example of what all they can do. In the past, they have shown that they attack police stations in many areas of the country, sometimes in masses of 100′s. They over-run smaller towns and habitations, destroy police stations, loot these stations of their weapons, and also loot banks of money. They do targeted attacks of police and para-military companies, killing patrolling parties through a combination of land-mines, direct attacks and sneaking attacks, and then attacking the reinforcements. Further, many of these encounters take place in remote areas where sending reinforcements take time, while the Maoists know the jungle.

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Fight against the Maoists – need a unified strategy (1)

A lot of problems that India faces in terms of internal disturbances are ignored till they are almost too late to solve. So, the Punjab problem was allowed to grow without actions being taken to stop or take concrete actions to stop the problem, the same with the Kashmir problem. Now, we have seen the same problem with the Maoists. Over the past many years, it has been proclaimed that the huge zone that the Marxists control in the backward, densely forested areas of the country was a problem to the security of the country, but there were no concrete actions taken to stop this growth, or address the root of these issues.
Even more so than the Punjab and Kashmir problem, the problems leading to the growth of the Red problem in states such as Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkand, West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Maharashtra are basically problems related to governance and political issues. It is no coincidence that the ultra-left group has grown in areas where there are low levels of development, where the state institutions (police, babudom) are seen as heavy-handed or absent. It is this feeling of a separateness from the overall economic development happening in the country that is feeding the ultra-Marxists growth. All these are issues that the state needs to address, and different state Governments have responded differently. So, for example, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh have a much more nuanced strategy that has evolved in the recent years of combining police action with a development based strategy.
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