India's Naxalite rebellion

The red heart of India


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Careless, there is no army involved in the action against the maoists. It is only the para-military. The author is clearly careless.


where is democracy? did voting make the average indian's life better in any way? No, it replaces one corrupt official with another one making empty promises and then stealing every cent for itself.

India is a country with so much potential. It inherited the industrial knowledge of the British, an infrastructure undamaged by war, hardworking people, a Western government. However, Western does not mean most suitable.

The Maoist rebels are merely emulating a successful system that worked to India's north and east. It succeeded in providing stability and development in China and Vietnam. Anything is better than a 50% illiteracy rate, widespread malaria and TB in a country where 70% of the rural population feed the 1% of English educated elites who probably have British or American citizenships and will simply ship out at the first sign of trouble.

xxx hardcore


Your making the typical Indian argument. Look at what the USA spends, look at what China spends, etc.

Well, you are not the USA are you?

The point here is that Maoists are taking over larger portions of India, and you are here comparing yourself to the USA?

This sort of thinking is responsible for India's backwardness.

Also, their are many Indian billionaires, but none of them give any money to charity. Actually one Indian billionaire has given millions to charity--for cricket.

Instead, Bill Gates has done billions of dollars of charity work in India. If those Indian billionaires give to charity, it could do a lot of good.

Instead they just spend their money the old fashioned way; they build huge mansions, the biggest in the world.

Naipaul, the Nobel prize winner, called India 'a sick society.'


India’s economy is hemming with many new billionaires.

Yet instead of taking care the most basic needs of 270 m Naxalites tribals and dalits “untouchables” at the bottom of the Hindu caste system, Indian government chooses to launch “Operation Green Hunt” with as many as 100,000 troops with armour, minesweepers and weaponry to kill or quell these innocent and mostly defenseless people seeking for better treatment in India.

It’s an outrage of unknown proportion that calls for international sanctions from UN, the U.S. and human rights groups around the world against India's such brutal and murderous usurpation.


India as represented in a September 7, 2009 NY Times story is tragic indeed.

NY Times reports that: [British-based Institute of Development Studies (IDS) said that despite India’s recent economic boom, at least 46 per cent of children up to the age of 3 still suffer from malnutrition, making the country home to a third of the world’s malnourished children… Lawrence Haddad, director of the IDS, told The Times. He said that an average of 6,000 children died every day in India; 2,000-3,000 of them from malnutrition.]

The sad irony is that [The boom has enriched a consumer class of about 50 million people, but an estimated 880 million still live on less than $2 a day, many of them in conditions worse than those found in sub-Saharan Africa.], says the NY Times.

Manmohan Singh, the India Prime Minister, described malnutrition as [a curse we must remove]. Yet tons of money is wasted on corruptions and purchasing foreign guns and gunboats for the hollow vanity of a few with little left for the starving Indians. Such audacious neglect is tantamount to crime against humanity. How could the largest “democracy” allow this to happen to itself is baffling.

Indian government should think twice before sending 10,000 troops to in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh state to quash these poor people to avoid unnecessary killings of innocent people.

Let’s hope that such dreadful situation will be spared.


Don't you recognize that these Naxalite rebels are only the Pakistanis, Chinese, and Bangladesh's, in disguise. India is the world's largest democracy, we do everything right. It is impossible to have rebels as they can all express themselves with the ballot box. It is only Pakistani infiltration, and Chinese and even possibly American agitation, that these people decided to fight us Hindus in arms. The only reason we have not totally eliminated them is because we are a democracy, and we are tolerant of other views, and therefore we continue to allow them to disagree with us through arms.


Clearly, a lot of your readers commenting on this article are disillusioned with India. Opinion was that India would not be able to handle its freedom due to the multi ethnicity of its polpulation - but that has proven wrong for over 60 years. We learnt a lot from the West as the West learns from us - invaders of the past would not have been interested in a country that had nothing to offer.
Coming back to the article, it was a poorly researched article. The author does not bother to find if the Maoists use the poverty of the people as an excuse to further their movement - if Maoists are backed by the people or force people to back them at gunpoint. It is true that there are reports of exploitation of the poor tribals in the process of development of resources. But did this country not produce the great Mahatma who showed us how public opinion and public movement could be garnered to get even a great colonial power to bow its head?


To be more precise, the budget outlays in India consists of the following three components:

1) Defense: 85%, this is where the Tegas LCA, Arihant, Agni, BrahMos come from. Also included in it is space development.

2)5 Rupee meals: 10%, This is where the bribes to the voters, who may be a normal villager, a prostitute on the street, a beggar in the street corner, or just a passerby get paid to vote for either party every 5 years.

3) Education: 0.5%, only the IITs are paid with regular funding to provide for bright students

4) Others: 4.5%, Contingencies are budgeted for each year for famine relief, droughts, and flooding.


India is shinning with the successes of the Super-richs, Cricketing superstars and IT outsourcers. Having abandoned Gandhi ideology of uplifting poors, Minorities and Dalits, Ultra-nationalism has been on the rise.

But with half the world hungry are still in World biggest democracy, it is little wonder that the Maoist ideology of Villages surrounding the Cities is an attractive alternative ideology to sweep away all sort of feudal ideas, superstitions and class enemies.

xxx hardcore

@ ceezmad,

I heard that Mexico faces great trouble with drugs. Yes, perhaps both nations need to work more on social programs.

@ His Frogginess

I have never worked for an Indian company before, and I never had an Indian boss. But I worked with an indian company, and I say first hand the work ethic,

K India

Involving the military in tackling the naxalites will prove to be a really bad political strategy. Home Minister of India is a regulator.Being so he could not stop Satyam from cheating the country and the people. There is no gurantee that he will succeed against the naxalites. Peoples problem must be tackled through people .

K India


The India Children of Mao, essentially the loose band of thugs, murderers, squatters, ransom kidnappers, gun runners and criminals need to be dealt with firmly as a priority.


Some undeniable truths in that article.

But what I liked best was the delicious irony at the end- The Naxalite commander who wants to train ordinary villagers to use arrows and machetes against Indian forces goes on to lament the predictable retalitaion against "innocent villagers" :-)

I assume the Maoists will be supplying t-shirts to the 2 factions in the villages reading:- "Innocent Villager" and "Machte-wielding Villager"

And for the disenchanted teenager from Chhatisgarh who wants to learn IT rather than join this new cottage industry, might I suggest the time-tested "My daddy hacked down the evil Imperialists and I got was this (&%^* t-shirt"


R Macaulay

India should follow Nepal's lead and settle a peace accord with these Maoist rebels.

Although the Indian central government may not like it, these Naxalites have the support of the disenfranchised and hold de facto control over large parts of West Bengal.

The best thing to do is to compromise and establish common ground before further violent escalation. I think using paramilitary bully-boys is absolutely the wrong thing to do. This isn't like the secessionists in far off Kashmir, these Naxalites control an entire ethnolinguistic region (west bengal)! If the Hindi-speaking majority use strong-arm tactics against the Bengalis, I fear for a slow roll to a civil war.


The Kerala model may work, as much as I hate some of its visible side effects. Applied judiciously and slowly, perhaps with policy changes based on serious socio-economic studies.


Many people in the UDCs want to emulate the Chinese path of development. Although the outcome is very exciting, the initial phases involved can be very brutal and demeaning like:-

a) Seize power from the local Elites and foreign explioters
b) Initiate Mass campaign for land reform and to industrialise
c) Blame failures on others and carry out purges to week out
capitalist roaders, feudal classes, tradition and superstitious
d) Phase (c) is important not only to make People realise the
futility of endless revolutions but to get rid of feudalism.


what xxxhardcore wrote is correct and makes lot of sense. No government since independence did anything for grassroot people. Consider this glaring example of MADHU KHODA xCM of Chattisgarh, the state most effected by Maoist Rebellion. He STOLE more than 500 Million USD of public money ! If he had spend 50 million on those poor people of his state I am sure situation wouldnt have escalated to this extent today ! just consider this ! Corrupt polititians are primarily responsible for what is happening. Its real catch 22 scenario. If you have to tame them, you have to give them house, electricity, school, road and hospital, which you cant do overnight. If you want to apply force, which will be almost impossible because, someone rightly said, they have people support !


Above is another interesting article discussing impacts of the new government security initiatives against the naxal movement.

There does seem to be room to improve the delivery of social services and governance improvements - which are the root cause of the issue. Considering a lack of these is a feature of most of (especially rural) india, it is quite suprising that the maoist movement does not field (at arm's length) parties and win elections.

The reason is not that the security establishment is denying these parties access to the electoral process. It is because they are a fringe movement without any electoral support.


India huge defence spendings may not make the Elites safe from the Naxalites. Taking a leaf from history, the Red Army successes stemed from the defecting KMT armies together with the military hardware acquired from the Americans and defeated Japs.

It is too early for the Naxalites to declare victory until there is more evidence of Indian army defections.


@ freezing.point wrote: Nov 5th 2009 9:05 GMT

Your analysis really hits the spot. India is a land with so much potential, so full of decent and hardworking people and so long a history, and yet it comes to this: Brutal usurpation of minorities.


I think one thing the Indian government should do is to find time to visit these poor areas and work things out with minorities like Naxalites tribals and dalits “untouchables” peacefully, rather than sky hopping to Moscow to attend SCO summit or to Thailand to attend ASEAN+3 summit to hold courts and rub shoulders with leaders there where India is not even admitted as a member to these organizations (India attended as an observer state). Vanity rules?

I usually do not belief in disintegrating a country, but it might just work out fine with India with several independent nations instead of a dysfunctional integrated one, if that serves the vast majority better.



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