Think Dialogue, Not Development and Laws to Address Resentments

Editorial:
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking at the National Integration Council Meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday, called for “integrated development” to counter Naxalism and said that a “holistic approach” should be adopted to tackle the problem. “The development has to be meaningful, development has to integrated and it should be for people,” he said. The NIC was meeting after nearly three years and was convened essentially to discuss the Communal Violence Bill [which did not go too well], but since the PM made special mention of Naxal violence and offered his panacea for it, there are some things which need to be discussed more.
While not challenging the PM’s commitment to “integrated development”, it goes without saying that it is the pursuit of “introducing development” which has caused the denials which continue to feed local resentments and even Naxal violence in wide swathes of the country. Public hearings and environment impact assessment documents ceased being about hearing the public and assessing impacts a long time ago and corruption and co-option of the system which packages exploitation [of regulations, people and natural resources] as development have made people resentful in most cases and violent in some other pockets. The development process needs to be turned on its head. Politicians have to stop believing that it can hoodwink people with their development model which upsets traditional lifestyles, stakes claim of regions the people have nurtured through generations and trucks away natural resources, making people dependent on doles and corrupt systems even for survival. The PM should have spoken of development by the people instead of ‘for’ them because the latter option foists the same hierarchy which has caused so many mutinies to surge.
Unfortunately, the approach has not improved much in the past years when one had hoped that the experience of ‘fighting’ people’s uprisings would have eased in more pragmatic approaches rather than the token doff to winning hearts and minds. Some years ago, addressing a conference of Chief Ministers on Internal Security, the Union Home Minister had identified three challenges to internal security - terrorism, insurgency and ‘left wing extremism’. He was quite accurate in indentifying the challenges, but way off the mark when he said that the nation had ‘only one instrument to confront and defeat the three challenges’ - the Police. His portfolio is self-explanatory in specifying that he is responsible for “Home” and thus, always dealing with Indian citizens. That being the case, for him to believe that the only way challenges to internal security can be secured was through counter-violence by the State, is disquieting.
Every Indian knows the efficacy of meeting internal security ‘threats’ with counter-violence. It has not delivered on even one count. There is not even one internal conflagration in our country which has been doused by the khaki; and still our Home Minister sees the police force as the only option?! The police can attack only the symptoms and because it continues to be groomed in colonial attitudes [and this is not mean to denigrate the individual sacrifices made by police officers], it cannot see dissenting Indians as fellow citizens and deals with everyone across the barricade as criminals. This distances the people and reinforces the root causes behind terrorism, north-eastern insurgency and Naxalism – confused identities, prejudice, class conflicts and denial of equal control [of resources], respect, representation and opportunities. The reason why such obvious realities need to be reiterated here is because the State is obviously palming off shallow solutions. Whatever happened to dialogue? The only way the marginalized can be made to feel secure is not through sops and quotas, but through a system that listens; and listens in time, not after violence has been resorted to and lives have been claimed and lost. Delhi requires an attitudinal reorientation, but this still does not appear in the offing. Even with the Communal Violence Bill, it is attempting a super-structure controlled by the Centre which will take the power of dialogue [or action] away from the States and unfortunately, like it has done with Naxalism, reduces communal violence to a law & order situation when it should be approaching it as a social and civil challenge.