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The Absent State: Insurgency as an Excuse for Misgovernance FOREST means minerals, minerals means money, money means guns, and guns mean power." Simple mathematics! The 60-year-old former engineer who is now a top captured Naxalite leader writes on India’s biggest internal security challenge, one that the various governments, until recently, have shied away from recognising. As compared to the Kashmir issue, which has always been seen as "the insurgency", the Naxalite problem is seen as the poor rebel by the Indian government, elaborate the authors. The Absent State is not only about insurgency but also about people and governance. Neelash Mishra and Rahul Pandita give an intimate view of the world’s biggest communist insurgency and opine that it is set to become the ball and chain shackling a country poised to fly high and dream big. They travelled over thousands of kilometres for close to three years into some of India’s remotest corners. The same is evident as they go about reporting with the precision of surgeons who peel off lies and lay bare the truth bringing forth important stories of the relationship between people and governance that identify the causes of growing social unrest in India.
The Naxalite movement is not only the biggest threat but also has become the prime opportunity, at least for thousands in the government and for contractors working on taxpayer-financed projects in those regions. Government officials have not administered many of these areas in any real sense for decades, with policemen fighting an impossible battle for their survival in a land of cruel geography, where ferrying ration is "like fighting a war". Teachers do not go to teach; doctors examine malaria patients on paper and so are the roads built. It is not the epidemic of cholera but the cancer of corruption that is brewing discontent. During their tryst with reality, Neelash and Rahul do find a true "socialist", too. The mosquito! "As it bites the villagers, the police and the Naxalite with equal intensity", the authors remark. Referring to Kashmir as "The Valley of Denial", the authors highlight permanent presence of armed forces as the prime reason for apparent hostility. "The amount of money New Delhi has spent `85 they could have built a new Kashmir," the authors sermonise. Be it Kashmir, north-east or the jungles of Bihar and Jharkhand, the authors find numerous reasons for the social discontent brewing in the insurgency-hit areas: unemployment, poverty, ethnic and tribal rivalries, forced recruitment by rebels, the high-handedness of security forces, the promise to thrill and power for the adventurous; they complete a picture of hundred rebellions eating away at the country. The book gives a tense account of dilemma that the masses face while highlighting how easy it is for them to get labelled as traitors or spies or terrorists in the war zones at times for even offering food to insurgents in disguise. While insurgents can tag anyone as informers and punish them for talking to the police, even if they do so out of fear. While recording popular division, particularly in the territory under Maoists’ command, the authors have refrained from portraying them as the people’s saviours. However, the book highlights for a nation that has made insurgency a convenient excuse for misgovernance, it’s the humiliation that gives birth to desperation which, in turn, gives birth to uncontrollable rage and the rebels have effectively harnessed that and are now using it against the state. The book appropriately
discusses how not to deal with armed rebels, especially when
insurgency has become so deeply entrenched in the system that it
resembles the system itself. Since democracy does not come from the
top but from the bottom, the authors highlight that crushing the
rebels with force would boomerang as the problem is not just like a
strong headache for which the nation can pop an Aspirin and pretend it
is gone. The Absent State is an essential read to better
understand turmoil of our times for it addresses the need to go for
the cure of the causes and not just the symptoms.
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India
may now be regarded as one of the fastest growing economies with
global powers trying to woe but in many rural areas, the Indian state
simply does not exist. At least, 30 lakh people have been displaced by
reckless and poorly planned mining in the mineral-rich lands across
India, while tens of thousands of square kilometres of land have been
diverted, yet not even a quarter of the population has been
rehabilitated, let alone given a share of the earnings. The book
provides tragic real-life stories as to how virtually every labourer
had been cheated of a few thousand rupees that often means the
difference between life and death for an Indian farm labourer.