The Disarming of teh Salwa Judum

In a landmark Judgement, delivered on July 5th, the Supreme Court of India has bracketed the Salwa Judum, the Special Police Officers (SPOs), or the Koya Commandos together, and has termed their existence as unconstitutional and illegal. The Apex Court remarked that these were the outcome of a “flawed policy” that pitted the adivasis against the adivasis, as also using the tribals as a “Cannon Fodder” in its fight against the Maoists/Naxals. The Judgement of the Apex Court was in response to a PIL filed by the noted Professor Nandini Sunder, Historian Ramachandra Guha and a former Civil Servant, EAS Sarna.


For the uninitiated, the Salwa Judum is a private militia created by the Chattisgargh Government to assist the forces in its anti-naxal operations especially in the regions of Dantewada and Bastar. Over a period of time, the Salwa Judum has grown on to fight the naxals, but have been accused of attacking and harassing the tribals, in the name of helping the naxals. The main organizer of this movement was a local Congress politician called Mahendra Karma, but in an unprecedented solidarity between the two biggest warring political parties, the BJP Government led by CM Raman Singh, has been the biggest advocate of the group.


Over a ong period now, the tribals have been on the receiving end, by having to loose their land, their forests and rights, to the Mining Mafia, big International Conglomerates like the Vedanta, Essar and Posco, as also to some of the very large dams, which have been termed as the ‘Temples of Development’. The discontent and the frustration of having to loose their livelihood, and no proper compensation for their loss as also repeated disregard to their voices, have made them to take arms, if not support those groups, like the naxals and the Maoists, who were only happy to find an excuse to fight the State.


The Judgement, indeed, has come as a big blow to the Chhatisgargh Government, as well the Union Home Ministry led by P Chidambaram, who had enhanced the quantum of anti-naxal Grants in 2010.
The Supreme Court, vide its Judgement, further directed the state to immediately desist itself from using SPOs in its anti-naxal operations, disarm the groups, recall all firearms issued to them and also give the tribals protection, because they have made themselves targets of maoist wrath by assisting the security forces in its operations.


The Court has also ordered a re-investigation into all such uncompleted cases of alleged criminal activities of the Salwa Judum and the SPOs.


The underlining issue is that the Judgement questioned the very basis of the model of development, followed by the successive Central and State Governments, post the liberalization pioneered by none other than the current Prime Minister. The Supreme Court, in no uncertain terms has stated that on the one hand, the State subsidises the private sector, giving it tax breaks after tax breaks, while simultaneously citing lack of revenue and funds for not helping the poor and the needy, it arms the youngsters to combat the anger and the frustration borne out of this very same neo-liberal policies.
This Judgement should go a long way, as also make the economist PM as well all the ruling class to know what the need of the hour is, and to make their ponder over what line of action they should be taking to effectively tackle the “biggest threat” that the country now faces.


The full text of the Judgement can be read here : http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/CaseRes1.aspx

Pic Courtesy :- thehindu.com

"'If Chidambaram quits, It would be seen as a Maoist Victory"

....When I picked up my newspaper today morning, I was quite astonished to see this headline in the inside pages. The BJP was crying in Rajiv Pratap Rudy's voice that if P Chidambaram had resigned, it would have seen as a Maoist victory! What statesmanship. Infact, this just made me remember that in one of the TV debates some two three days back, BJP in the voice of Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shanker Prasad had gone public to state their support to PC in his "so-called' Operation Green Hunt".

So what suddenly makes BJP turnaround itself. The party that cries of Intelligence Failure and blames the Union Home Ministry, and asks for a resignation for every terror attack in any part of India now says resignations will be seen as an enemy victory!

So what should we common people infer from this? Do they mean to say, resignations are okay when it comes to Transnational Terrorists and they can claim their small sweet victories, but when it comes to Maoists, we should not allow even a grain of a chance for them! Great thinking! surely they are a party with a difference.

Or is it that the 'Buck really stops' at the same place for both the BJP and the Union Party and as far as this war is concerned, all politicians are united just because there is no vote bank involved and inturn there is a lot of money stashed away somewhere...!

You have got everything wrong, Mr Arnab!

The other day I was watching this debate on Times Now, whether the Centre should go all out against the Maoists or not. Mr Arnab was in his impeccable best fighting the corporate cause, the feeling I had was that of how such a debate can take really outrageous when media goes overboard so as to take up issues and suppress the other point of view.

Mr Arnab, we all stand under the same Tricolor, and at the same time, it doesn't and it never gave you the licence to ask and impose 'If you are not with us, then you are with them' cliche on any other Indian. The Bushisms TimesNow inherits can at the very best be saved for Arnab's personal triads, but not on National TV debates.

The Times Now debate was to be categorical 'New-Low' on Indian electronic media.