This contribution by Misra and Pandita is likely to be either ignored or dismissed by university-based sociologists and political scientists as an ordinary journalistic travelogue. But The Absent State is actually an important study by two sensitive and socially committed authors who reveal the realities about Indian democracy “from below” on the basis of intensive and painstaking grass-roots research. They show through concrete facts rather than rhetoric the sufferings of people sandwiched between the activities of defiant social groups and the oppressive responses of the functionaries of the Indian state. A common thread that binds the narrative on Naxals and insurgents in the Kashmir Valley and North East is that all of them are operating in a territory that is under their control; like the Indian state, these groups have their own armed forces, they also implement their own laws and collect taxes or extortion money from the local population. All these three armed rebellious groups have established their “own states within the Indian state”.
Misra and Pandita have not only demonstrated that the writ of the Indian state and its legal authority do not prevail in areas controlled and dominated by well-armed insurgent groups but also that socially alienated and deprived groups have opted to extend their support, voluntarily or under coercion, to these groups.
The social explanation for the growth of violent anti-state rebellions is contained in well-written accounts of the genesis of the (a) The Naxal Surge, (b) The Valley of Denial and (c) The Collapse of the North East. The stories are woven around “people and governance”, and the authors have undertaken a very hazardous journey to document the experiences of ordinary human beings and their encounters with the corrupt, callous and extremely anti-common people functionaries of the state apparatus.
A few important stories of the relationship between people and governance deserve to be highlighted here to identify the causes of growing social unrest in India. First, in Jharkhand, “there seems to be no sight of the New India anywhere close to villages such as Gitildi” and “bare-bodied children run around chasing nothing in particular”. The irony of Jharkhand is that Madhu Koda, Shibu Soren, Arjun Munda and other so-called tribal leaders sit in Ranchi and are concerned with the distribution and personal accumulation of wealth from the state’s rich mineral belt. Yet their own tribal poor are victims of total neglect by tribal chief ministers.
Second, after describing remote areas of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal and Bihar, the authors say that in “the Naxal heartland, the Naxalite movement is hardly the biggest threat to India. It has, in fact, become the biggest opportunity, at least for thousands into the government and for contractors working on… projects in those regions.” Bastar attracts public attention for the wrong reasons, the Adivasis are victims of local bureaucrats, powerful contractors, middlemen and local politicians. As a result, “New India digs into the other India”. That is why the Naxals have also established a parallel state system. Naxal leaders have stated that “forest means minerals, minerals mean money, money means guns, guns mean power”. The messiahs of the hungry tribals lure them by promising a monthly salary, education and medical treatment for better conditions of life which have not been provided by the functionaries of the state.
The Valley of Denial highlights the fact of alienation because of the permanent presence of the armed forces. “The amount of money New Delhi has spent… they could have built a new Kashmir,” the authors say. It is not only in Naxal areas, insurgency and anti-insurgency have become a lucrative business for everyone, from top politicians to bureaucrats and to businessmen. Incidentally, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Yasin Malik and powerful insurgent Yusuf Shah alias Salahuddin were all participants in the democratic electoral process of Jammu and Kashmir, but the ruling families of the Valley, with full connivance of the central governments, created an atmosphere that turned loyal citizens into separatists or secessionists or insurgents.
The story of the North East is much more complicated because it is not only India versus Nagas or Manipuris, it is a situation where anti-Centre insurgent groups are also involved in inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic tribal warfare. If, on the one hand, 25 insurgent groups operate in Manipur, on the other, of the Rs 3,000 crore that is sent as central government aid every year to Manipur, barely a fifth is utilised.
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Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth have been abandoned by the Indian state in favour of Vedanta or Tata or Jindals or Essars, so popular anger has to be expressed either through democratic electoral process or through violent rebellion. The politics of the ballot-versus-bullet has taken deep roots in India and if democracy has to prevail over violence, elected representatives, civil and police officials, prosperous and upwardly mobile neo-rich middle classes and the armchair intelligentsia should pay greater attention to the facts narrated by Misra and Pandita.
THE ABSENT STATE
Insurgency as an Excuse for Misgovernance
Neelesh Misra and Rahul Pandita
London-Gurgaon:
Hachette India, 2010
272 pages