Cause and consequence

When armed people capture a town, storm a jail and bail out the inmates, as they did in Jehanabad in Bihar on Sunday night, several questions will be asked. But what is needed immediately is action: to prevent reprisals from upper caste forces responding to the kidnapping of Ranvir Sena activists. The second immediate step should be to bring the local police under control again, and not allow the development of a revolt by those in uniform. And the third, of course, should be to go after the culprits and bring them to justice. Doing all three successfully will be the first serious test of the state government. If the government fails, Bihar will sink deeper into the quagmire.

Then, serious questions must be asked about why and how a small army of (supposedly) ideologically motivated persons can surround a town, issue political exhortations on loud speakers and overpower the police, and then decamp with hundreds of freed prisoners. The obvious point is that the state has failed in multifarious ways, and the weak see it as an oppressor. So, just as Pakistan was able to exploit the conditions in Kashmir, the Maoists have been able to exploit those in Bihar. The cause and effect are the same""disaffection and its exploitation by religious groups in one instance, and in another by quasi-political groups.

In Kashmir, despite its complicated history, everyone understood that part of the answer was good governance; in Bihar that understanding is only now dawning. Whether the government that is formed after the elections will be able to provide it, remains a big question mark. The chances are that it will not, which means we may well see more such incidents. As the attackers asked, why were innocent people being kept in prison even when the courts had ordered their release months ago? To which one may add, what are the ordinary people supposed to do when the state administration is aligned on caste lines, and favours rich over poor? The central government must understand that Maoist activity in different parts of India is a consequence and not a cause. The government and the media may label them as rebels, but surely it is important to understand what they are rebelling against. This is central to tackling the "Maoist menace".

At the root of the problem lies the fact that, in Bihar and in other places where Maoists are active, the state has lost its monopoly on the use of force. Whether in Bihar or in Andhra Pradesh, it first gave it up to the rich land-owners, and is now giving it up to the inevitable counter-force, the Maoist groups. The first task therefore is to reclaim this monopoly in a manner that is perceived as being fair by the poor and everybody else. That, in turn, means taking action against the private armies of the rich and not of the poor alone. It must be remembered that what finished off Naxalism in West Bengal in the 1970s was not force alone but the CPI(M), which diffused the situation with massive land reform when it came to power. This is what is needed in Bihar and elsewhere.