ESCAPE FROM THE RED ZONE

Orccha; Narayanpur:
Be a guerilla to beat the guerillas.
It was this simple strategy that inspired Paaklu Ram Mandavi to escape from the Maoist clutches in the uncharted swathes of Abujh-Maadh right in the heart of Bastar.
For almost two days and two nights, hungry and thirsty, the 17-year-old primitive Maadia tribal trudged through a hilly and forested terrain unknown to the outside world to come out unscathed after being picked up by the rebels.
But for the risk he took, Paaklu would be dead.
“The choice,” he recounts sharing his little-known escape story, “was between sure death and a possibility.”
If he were to be produced before a kangaroo court (people’s court) by Maoists, he thought he would be executed. But if he tried escaping, it was a risk worth a try.
“I would be killed anyway,” he says. He chose the latter option and, succeeded.
***
It’s a hot summer evening and Paaklu, a shy but confident teenager, is just back home from his newly-found menial labour job in a non-descript corner of this highly-sensitive district.
He’s clad in a yellow T-shirt and a track, his volley-ball dress. About six feet tall he’s a potential national player in the making. Last year, he says, he played for his school at the state and national events.
He’s just appeared for his SSC and wants to continue his studies – something that his teacher Kamlu Ram Wadada would have wanted, he says. “But I want to make a career in sports.”
Not many here know his escape saga yet. The police have advised him to lie low. The danger still lurks. Once a target, he says, always a target. The Maoists never pardon their targets.
“For him it’s not a big deal,” says the Narayanpur superintendent of police Mayank Shrivastava. But in the season of abductions (of the two Italians and an MLA in Odisha) and killings (of the civilians and local political leaders all over the red zone), his escape saga is a rare exception.
“I haven’t heard of any such escape before,” says Irfan Khan, a local Hindi journalist.
Maadh, a living puzzle, an un-surveyed swathe of over 5,000 square km in southern Narayanpur, is said to be a liberated zone of the Maoists where their diktat reigns. There are no roads or lights. For the first time in the history of independent India, about 4000 security troops last month ventured there in a coordinated operation, with a lot of technological and logistical support, and after months of planning.
And yet they could not yet fully decipher the ‘Unknown’.
***
“I wanted to see my mother,” Paaklu says.
He hadn’t been home in Mathbeda village in Maadh ever since he shifted to Narayanpur for studies in May 2010, after completing his eighth class.
On March 26, the Monday, he wrote his final SSC examination paper and left for Orccha, a tiny block headquarter at the foothills of ‘Maadh’ with inconsequential but some official State presence. In the rest of the hills, the State has virtually no stamp. People from all over ‘Maadh’ unfailingly come to the weekly market of Orccha every Wednesday, to collect their rations and buy the essentials.
Paaklu was sure his mother would come too, so he could see her there on March 28. He’s the only child of theirs to be in school. Two of his brothers died of snake bite in the village. The oldest sibling lives with his wife in Mathbeda. “I thought I will meet my mother and return to my school campus the same day.”
What he didn’t anticipate was that he was on the Maoists’ radar.
***
Tuesday, March 27, 11 pm: Paaklu and his friend Jailal Kowachi were preparing to go to bed at one of his uncle’s houses, a small but beautiful hut adjacent to the cremation ground in Orccha, when 25-30 male and female Maoists, a few of them armed, suddenly barged in and ordered the two to follow them.
They came from the forests behind the hut, when the town had fallen asleep. Three-four of them had rifles hung on to their shoulders; all of them were in plainclothes – none in the olive green fatigue.
“I was nervous,” he recounts. “It looked like the end of life.”
They had to leave in a hurry in whatever clothes they were wearing. There was no light anywhere, but he gauged they were heading westward – into the ‘Maadh’. “When the rebels felt they were at a safe distance in the forest, they enquired about my friend,” he says. “I told them he is my school-mate and had come with me to meet my mother; they left him unharmed and let him go.”
Kowachi returned and conveyed the news of Paaklu’s abduction to his uncle. The same night, the Orccha police lodged a complaint – but it was now a wait and watch game for his relatives.
“Once my friend had left,” Paaklu remembers, “we began our walk through the forests.” No word was spoken. They seemed to know the pathways. “I kept thinking I am going to die.”
For, he knew of how the rebels executed those who were perceived as “traitors”. At some point, he says, he thought his best chance to live was to escape. He must escape quickly, before the dawn.
After about two hours of walking his abductors decided to cook their dinner and halt there that night. It was, he recollects, a small rocky plateau with an open sky.
“That was the first time they asked me why I spied for the police,” he says. “I pleaded it’s not true; I am studying in Narayanpur; came here to see my mother after my exams.”
They wouldn’t believe. How could the police not utilize the services of a native youth who knows Maadh all too well? “They chained my legs and locked it with a wire,” he says. They had already folded his hands behind his back and tied them with a rope above the elbows, when they picked him from Orccha.
One of the female cadres told him that he would be taken to the higher-ups the next day and produced before a people’s court for his punishment. “It could be death,” he says.
After dinner, they gave him a blanket to cover himself from the cold. The days are very hot but nights on Maadh are mighty cold, even in summers, Paaklu informs.
Two rebels took turns to stand guard with their rifles while others slept, he recounts. On a piece of paper, he draws a sketch to show us how and in which position the Maoists slept surrounding him.
“I was here, in the middle,” he says, pointing a dot in the middle of a circle that represented the rebels. The guerillas were probably among the village-level militia groups that knew him well, he feels. “They would flash torch-light on my face from time to time to keep a check on me.”
In his mind though, Paaklu began to plot his escape. “I managed to untie myself.” First he loosened the knot to free his hands. “Since I was under the blanket they could not see it.”
Then, he quietly unraveled the chain from his legs. “They had not locked it; it was tied with a small wire that I could easily break.” His legs and hands were free, so now he could run.
“I heard a girl cadre say to her comrade that it’s about 4 am and that in some time they will move again before it dawns; that was when I decided to take the risk,” Paaklu says. He held his nerve, mustered all his courage, remembered his mother, and began to count in mind: “One, two, and three…”
The armed guards kept vigil on the other side. He removed the blanket, deftly got up, jumped over the cadres sleeping behind him, and vanished into the forest, even before his abductors could react.
“I ran as fast as possible,” he says. “I was being chased by them but I did not look behind.”
While running he removed his white half-trouser and T-shirt so that they could not see him and then ran and ran until he saw the first rays of Sun, he recollects. “I was heading west but I needed to turn around so that I go back east to Orccha.” For some time he sensed the rebels chasing him; after a while he knew he had left them far behind. That was the dawn of March 28, the day he ought to have met his mother.
***
Paaklu took shelter in a rocky cave overseeing the valley. “I was feeling the pain in my stomach.” But his mind hovered on his next move. First, he must assess where in Maadh he was.
“I think I must have been about 30-35 km from Orccha to its south west,” he says. He decided to move up the higher ridges, and walk against the sun’s direction east-ward. “Going up was safer.”
He needed to make sure no one saw him. So he used his innate primitive instinct: hide in the light, walk in the dark. He climbed up the hills and hid himself by sunset in a small rocky burrow he’d located.
When it was dark, he began his descent with stars and the moon keeping him the company.
Perched atop a hill earlier, he had sighted a structure in the valley with tin shade. He realized it was the school of Mandali, a hamlet near Orccha. If he reached there, he could hit a forest way to Orccha.
“I walked several hours; it was cold, and I had no clothes on.” As the luck would have it, he saw a forest fire (usually the villagers set forest floor on fire during the Tendu plucking season). “I stayed close to it to keep myself warm,” he says. March 28 was about to end. It had been over 24 hours that he had given the Maoists a slip. He was thirsty – and hungry. But he was not yet safe.
“I had to hide myself until I would cross Mandali,” Paaklu says. He began his trek, this time much slower, at the crack of the dawn. When the sun was overhead on March 29, he says, he could see Mandali. “It has a water pond; I was thirsty, but did not drink water,” he recounts. “I feared being seen.”
Paaklu hid himself beneath a wooden structure near the water pond; to escape from the day’s heat and waited for the evening to set in, telling himself that his ordeal would soon end.
When the second day’s dusk fell he gathered his energy, he says, for the last leg of his escape.
Paaklu crossed Mandali, and hit the pathway that would take him to Orccha. The distance between the two villages is five-six km. After a walk for an hour, he saw a hand-pump – he was almost there.
When he saw the first hut, he went there, and took a towel to cover himself. “The woman gave me rice gruel – I had had something for the first time in two days,” he says.
He rushed to the police station, which is fortified with barbed wire and armed troops keep vigil round the clock. An armed constable couldn’t identify him when he knocked the gate.
“I had turned black; dust and mud was all over my body,” he says. “I am Paaklu, I told the constable; he was surprised. He helped me inside. I was tired; but totally relieved.” He stayed there for two days. The district police airlifted him to Narayanpur on March 31, where he reunited with his school friends.
***
On April 8, Maoists issued a pamphlet, branding Paaklu as a police informer, like his mentor Kamlu Ram Wadada, a teacher who they had killed in late 2010 on suspicion.
Shrivastava, the Narayanpur SP, insists neither Kamlu was an informer, nor Paaklu is.
Kamlu was Paaklu’s mentor in the Durbeda tribal residential school, one of the few primary and middle schools in ‘Maadh’ that is functioning. It was he who helped the boy secure admission in a government school in Narayanpur to do his SSC. That was the transition from one world to the other, Paaklu says.
Leaving ‘Maadh’ for higher studies in a town is a breach of trust in the eyes of the rebels. So he is now a la comprador for them. He can’t return home; in fact he’s to be on the guard forever.
“Once here, we can’t go back,” says Paaklu’s uncle. “Those who try usually fear execution.”
He’s sad that he could not meet his mother – perhaps he never will be able to see her. Paaklu says it is a reality he must accept. “I am in a different world,” he says. “Maadh is now behind me.”

Are US and Pak fooling us?

I am not a foreign policy analyst or an expert in military issues, but what is now being claimed as a stealth raid by the US navy seals to kill Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, bang inside the Pakistani territory, leaves more questions than answers.
That Indian foreign policy and military analysts within the State and in the 24X7 media haven't raised questions regarding the many missing links surrounding the facts of the raid is not only baffling. It is in worrisome.
First: I find it indigestible to accept that the Pakistani defense establishment had no idea of the US raid on a compound that hosted Osama in their sovereign territory - and that too in a town like Abbottabad where the entire Army training is based. Four choppers flew in to carry out the raids; circled around the town for hours, as one of the tweeters put it, and one of them actually crashed near the compound, and no one even knew it? Rubbish. A crashing chopper, in flames, could hardly be kept a secret.
I find it even more of a fiction that four stealth choppers fly in, in the middle of the night, over this compound with no ground directions, right in the heart of Pakistan?
From where did the American stealth helicopters fly? I believe from the nearest base somewhere in Afghanistan.
Is it possible to navigate their way into the territory right in the heart of Pakistan without any ground communication? I believe, from whatever I've read, it isn't.
Indian defense experts - I believe - are taking a closer look at the theories doing the round, and I'm sure they are concerned at the fact that the US and Pakistan are fooling the world with their common lies about this raid. For, if the US and Pakistani establishment are hand in glove, it obviously is a concern for India. It's happening next door.
The US meanwhile has launched more attacks inside Pakistan, and the premier is still on a foreign tour.
Who are the militants getting killed, including Osama? Not a single one is a Pakistani national. And I believe, it is significant. Osama was an arab. Others being neutralised are either Afghans or Arabs. Are any of the militants of Al Qaeda being killed, Pakistani nationals? I see no terrorist born and bred in Pakistan getting killed or neutralised by the US forces. The killings appear selective, and pretty much with the knowledge and complicity of Pakistan. Is it some part of a bigger deal? We shall - and must - know over the next few days or, may be, years.
Osama was sick. Abbottabad is not known to have private hospitals, at least from the information available on the internet. It has a military hospital though. It is virtually impossible that the Pakistani military and establishment had no knowledge of his presence. Even the Pakistani journalists are refusing to accept their establishment's view that they had no idea of Osama's presence. Some of them actually are hinting that Osama might have lived his utility for the shrewd Pakistani military establishment.

"Be prepared for trade-offs"

Rather than facing the mirage of bringing a third of our country under forest cover, the union minister for environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh, Monday saw the need to shift the public policy mindset on maintaining the quality of forests, in the light of growing conflicts on the common property resources.
“From quantity of the forests, we need to change our focus on its quality,” the minister told a gathering of academics, practitioners, and policy makers,while inaugurating the 13th biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of Commons (IASC) in Hyderabad. Sustaining quality forests over a certain area of land, he explained, could do the same amount of carbon sequestration than degraded forests scattered over the vast stretches of land. He said it might also reduce the potential conflicts.
The minister’s remarks are significant in the face of growing demand to open up some forest areas for the mining sector. He said the current legal regime will have to be looked into in the context of multiple pressures on the natural and common resources, and developmental and conservation imperatives.
While India argues for equitable access to sustainable living at the climate change talks, we can’t be oblivious to the skewed domestic distribution, the minister said.
The minister also disclosed that come April, the central government would be putting a 2.5% weight in the annual resource allocation as an incentive to the states managing their environment better, in what may bring environment as a subject on the planning and policy agenda. Ramesh was speaking after the 2009 Nobel Prize winner in economics, Professor Elinor Ostrom’s plenary address in which she explicitly vouched for the need to free commons from the institutional monoculture and to evolve a diversity of institutional to deal with the complexities of CPR management. She built up on the empirical studies and field data to support the notion that communities might actually manage their commons efficiently and sustainably. “When the subjects in the laboratory experiments made their decisions anonymously with no communication, they tend of over harvest, but face to face communication enables them to increase cooperation,” she said. Resources in good condition, she said, have users with long term interests, who in turn invest in monitoring of resources and building trust among themselves in polycentric approaches.
Collective action theory at the core of the social sciences and policy is the underlying part of Ostrom’s work in the areas of development economics. Access, withdrawal, management, exclusion and alienation, she said, were five identified community rights in the practice.
Ramesh categorically admitted that conventional mindsets and institutional monoculture was a hurdle in management of CPRs such as forests in India. He actually saw four factors in poor implementation of policies and laws in India. “Development dynamics; institutional monoculture; split responsibilities; and old policy mindsets,” he reiterated, stood as hurdles in the way of implementation of law.
More than 700 delegates from all parts of the world and from diverse backgrounds are attending the conference – the first to be held in South East Asia – that would culminate on January 14. The theme is ‘Sustaining Commons: Sustaining our Future’. Within the broad thematic categories, the participants will be deliberating on sub-themes dealing with new and evolving commons: such digital and knowledge.
In the light of increasing conflicts among different stakeholders, the Foundation of Ecological Security (FES), the co-partners of the conference and local hosts, intend to derive pointed recommendations for the 12th plan from this conference. Commons, they expect, could be brought in the planning agenda.
Ramesh said it was time for the country to acknowledge that to sustain a nine percent growth trajectory, there would be an ecological trade off.
“In some cases you can reconcile both: growth and conservation,” he said elaborating on the complex dynamic of development that has led to conflicts over commons. “In a few cases, you can say ‘yes, but there will be conditions’, but there are cases when you have to make a clear choice, and you’ve to say no,” he said. There are occasions where trade-offs are inevitable, he said in the context of increasing conflict between the growth imperatives and conservation urgencies.
Ramesh said the institutional monoculture – and the notion that only the state could manage commons efficiently – need to be done away with. “We need multiplicity of models to manage our CPRs,” he said. That would include of the market driven models that, he said, are still an anathema to many. “CPRs do need regulations, but do they need regulators, who become a part of the problem?” The entire legal, he said, will have to be relooked to deal with the new issues in the changing contexts. Elucidating the issue of river basin management, he said, maintaining a minimum environment flow of rivers amid multiple pressures on water use is becoming a potential conflagration point in public policy debate.
Taking a relook of the current legal regime, he said, had now become necessary.
The minister said the global commons debate, particularly on the climate change, suffers from a total lack of communication between the academics and the climate negotiators. Devising sets of rules to define the equitable access to sustainable development was the biggest challenge before the academic world. “We need a diversity of solutions,” he said, “and a variety of options.”

Supreme Court strictures against Vilasrao a blot on the Govt

The Supreme Court’s strictures against Vilasrao Deshmukh for interfering in the enforcement of a law that regulates private money lending while he was the chief minister of Maharashtra are not only a blot on the DF government in the state, but also a reminder of an unabated exploitation of the peasantry.

The strongly worded verdict that imposes a fine of Rs 10 lakh on the state government also comes as a major embarrassment to an already troubled UPA government, and particularly the Congress party, as Deshmukh is currently a union minister (for heavy industries) in the Manmohan Singh-cabinet.

The case, which highlights a victim peasant’s indomitable grit to take on the powers-that-be despite risk to his life, also brings to fore the political patronage private usurers enjoy, maiming the debt-trapped peasantry. The development is bound to raise a storm in the ongoing winter session of the legislature in Nagpur, though no immediate reaction was forthcoming on Tuesday from the Sena-BJP opposition.

It all began in 2006 with a letter that Shangdhar Singh Chavan, a 54 year-old victim peasant, wrote to the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court on behalf of the 55 debt-ridden farmers.

The beleaguered farmers said in the letter that neither the Buldana Superintendent of Police nor the collector was paying any heed to their complaints against Gulabchand Sananda, the usurer father of the Congress MLA from Khamgaon (Buldana district), Dilip Sananda. The farmers had alleged in their complaint that the Sanandas had usurped their farmland against the money they borrowed.

The high court suo motto converted the farmer’s letter into a writ petition. In March 2009, delivering its verdict, the high court flayed the then chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, for “the gross abuse of power” and directed the state government to pay Rs 25,000 to the petitioners as the cost of petition.

Deshmukh's then personal secretary had asked the police not to register a FIR on the complaint of the farmers, an instruction that got recorded in the police diary. Subsequently, he had instructed the district collector that he’d personally look into the matter before any action was taken against the Sanandas.

Chavan’s letter to the high court actually epitomized hundreds of farmers’ grievances against the private usurers across the crisis-ridden Vidarbha, particularly the ones indebted to the Sanandas. The Congress MLA’s family is alleged to be big moneylenders in Khamgaon, with a reign of terror in the region.

Elated by the SC verdict Chavan told DNA from Khamgaon over telephone, the government must help complainant-farmers get back the land from the clutches of the Sanandas. He said he lost 14-and-a-half acres of land in his native village Hingnakadegaon, near Khamgaon, to the Sanandas against the loans he took from them in 1993 and subsequently in 1995. He’s managed to keep three acres in his possession.

While the government reckons it needs to bring in stringent laws to reign in the private money lenders the amendment to the existing legislation has been pending. The government essentially wants to bring in 12 rules to monitor the private usury violating the laws and give relief to the trapped peasants. There are stricter punitive clauses, the draft Bill that has been referred to a joint select committee suggests.

The number of farmers who sought recourse to private lenders despite the loan waiver package rose to 574,046 (2008-09) in Maharashtra compared to 423,213, the previous year.

“It’s a political conspiracy against me,” a defiant Dilip Sananda told reporters in Khamgaon. “There is no mention of my name in the police records, and there was never any pressure from me or the then CM,” he maintained. He refused to comment on the Supreme Court verdict, saying “I am yet to read it.”

“The chief minister had no business to interfere in the functioning of the 1946 Act to regulate money lending in the state,” the Supreme Court said while dismissing the Maharashtra government's appeal challenging the Bombay High Court order and enhancing the cost of petition to Rs 10 lakh.

“This is historic decision,” Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, a farmers’ movement, said in a statement, urging the prime minister to sack Vilasrao and take legal action against the legislator.

The 1K-crore aid is peanuts

Nagpur, December 5:

There are many ways to read into any government bonanza.

Look, for instance, at the thousand crore aid that the Maharashtra government announced on Saturday for farmers, hit by the untimely rains.

Plain arithmetic shows that the aid would come to roughly Rs 20,000 a hectare, since the preliminary estimates are of losses over 5.4 lakh hectares.

Weigh it with past figures, and one thinks the government has really been more liberal in helping the peasants than the previous years. As the new chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan, and his deputy, Ajit Pawar, put it: The compensation has been increased three-fold over the average assistance of Rs 350 crore the government has been giving every year to the losses-torn farmers of the state since 2004.

But when demystified, the huge amount looks more of a pain than relief to the peasants, whose losses this year stand anywhere around Rs 10,000 crore.

Given this year’s phenomenal increase in the production cost, particularly for the rain-dependent farms of the state, the loss of harvest due to an extended 60-day post-monsoon period comes as a rude shock, since the peasant’s farming risks have risen manifold with cash crops, price volatility, and natural calamities.

So how do the Rs 1000 crore get distributed?

The amount includes of the burden of interest on grape growers’ loans that the government has decided to bear for the next two years. This, when desegregated, will include of three components, top officials say: this year’s losses, interests on commercial loans and the loans taken under the National Horticulture Mission.

Together it amounts to about Rs 250 crore, and since the interest waiver is for two years, the benefit to the grape growers in Nashik and Pune would eat into almost half the package amount. The government has made it clear that it would bear the entire interest burden (without upper limit or land size restriction) so that the grape growers, whose losses are unprecedented, rebuild their vineyards.

The losses borne by other traditional agriculture crops: paddy, soybeans, pulses, cotton, and sugarcane, would get compensated from the remaining amount, and within the ambit of the existing norms: that is compensation up to two hectares, unless the government decides to treat 2010 as a special case. In any case each of the beneficiaries, reliable sources say, won’t get more than Rs 5000, or Rs 1000 per acre. The details would be anyway available by December 14-15.

That, for the kind of losses paddy, soybean, sugarcane and cotton farmers have borne this year, is peanuts, according to the agriculture experts and peasants.
The other promise of restoration of power supply to agriculture pumps favuors the irrigated farms, and ignores majority rain-dependent peasants.

More tragic is the flaw the government continues to persist with since 1997 in its policy to compensate the peasants for losses due to nature’s vagaries.

The Panchanamas, or the spot verification, is intended to compensate individuals and not the entire village. Which is strange. If untimely rains cause losses on one field in a village, how can other fields be left untouched by their impact!

The 5.4 lakh hectare agriculture land where crop losses are more than 50 per cent would be eligible for the compensation doles. This area is scattered over 33 districts. On the ground, the actual acre of farmland wrecked by untimely rains is no short of a million hectares. May be more.

Who will the Rs 1K crore provide relief to and in what way is therefore a million dollar question.

Rumblings after Ashok-Parva

By Jaideep Hardikar

The ‘Ashok Parva’ is over. Its aftershocks aren’t.

Here’s another trouble brewing up for the axed chief minister Ashok Chavan, and this one might actually be worse than the Adarsh society scam that saw him lose his throne.

While the Prithviraj Chavan cabinet is likely to take oath, the former CM would on Friday be defending his 2009 election to the legislative assembly when the Election Commission of India (EC) holds the next and what is likely to be the final hearing of a petition that seeks his disqualification for allegedly fudging his poll expenses, including the unaccounted spending on what has come to be known as paid news.

The Ex-CM is defending a notice served on him earlier this year by the EC to explain why he should not be disqualified under the relevant sections of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, this – after his rival Madhav Kinhalar petitioned the EC following a series of reports that embroiled Chavhan in the paid news controversy. More than a dozen newspapers, some of them leading ones in the state, had in the run up to the polls published several pages in Chavan’s praise. The petitioner’s argument has been that one, the published content (dozens of pages virtually praising Chavhan) qualifies as “paid news” and, if accounted for, they would have cost crores of rupees breaching the Rs 10 lakh poll expenditure limit. In his official submission to the retuning officer of his Bhokar constituency, Nanded, Chavhan showed his expenditure to be Rs 7 lakh on his entire campaign, and a mere Rs 5,379 on newspaper advertisements.

That included of Rs 4400 he spent on the rally where Bollywood star Salman Khan was an attraction. And a meager Rs 200 on the pandal, Rs 1000 on setting up of the stage, Rs 40 for the cloth to cover it, and Rs 200 on the sofa-rentals. The rent of the meeting venue, added to the expenditure sheet later: Rs 500.

Kinhalkar holds that the very fact that EC sent notices to Chavan means that it is convinced that there’s prima facie a case against him and that there’s some violation. In his submissions before the EC, Chavan has denied any wrongdoing. Senior Congress leader, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, is said to be his counsel.

The BJP’s Kirit Somaiyya, who is intervener/petitioner on the issue, would also get an hour to plead his point of view before the EC, through his counsel and Rajya Sabha member, Ram Jethmalani.

The voluminous material evidence and other advertisements that were not accounted for in Chavhan’s election expenditure statement now form part of the EC hearings on the complaint.

The complaint against Chavhan and successive hearings over it hold significance, given that the EC, keen to clean up the malaise of paid news, has now set up a special cell, just before the Bihar assembly polls, to generally keep tab on paid news that favour some candidates and black out others in elections. The EC, sources in the know said, has this year issued circulars describing what according to it would qualify as paid news – content that is paid for but published under the garb of news.

In the previous hearing on November 12, the petitioner completed his arguments. The EC set November 19 as the date for next hearing, when Chavhan would get to explain his side of the story.

Dancing to the Official Tune

Pendhri, Gadchiroli:

The shadow of gun was inescapable, the contrast sharp.

As a motley group of adivasis danced to the enigmatic rhythm of the traditional ‘Rela’ drum-beat in the heat and dust, Pendhri village felt the tension and unease.

Tens of eyes stared at each other, as the armed troops in the olive green fatigues manned every nook and corner of this small village on Thursday, 75 km from the district headquarters of Gadchiroli in the thickly forested tribal hinterland, about 250 km away from the bustling urban trappings of Nagpur.

But when the police are holding a Jan-Jagaran Melawa, or the public awareness rally, in the strong Maoist-reigned area, the contrast is only natural if somewhat ironic.

This rally, the police said, was held against the backdrop of a strong Maoist threat. Only days ahead of the event, the armed rebels had threatened to foil it, warning the tribal villagers to desist from going to the venue. But as the crowds poured in, either under the police duress or on their own volition, officials smiled with a sense of relief. Holding it looked like a statement. What did it achieve, hardly mattered.

Originally designed to be the police propaganda and later converted into all-department information fair for the villagers, the ‘Jan-Jagaran Mewalas’ in naxal-prone Gadchiroli are resuming after a long lull.

The previous one was held in the month of March in hinterland of Laheri, where Maoists had killed 19 policemen in October, last. But the police said that one was a much-subdued event.

“Idea is to reach out to the people,” district superintendent of police S Veeresh Prabhu said. “It’s like breaking the ice with the people, and saying we are here for you.”

Several stalls put up by the various government departments meant that the district administration got a chance to meet the tribal people they are supposed to serve.

The stalls displayed information in Marathi, the volunteers explained the government schemes to the visitors, but the belying message was: shun supporting the Maoists if you want progress in your area. The stall that drew most attention was once where the police had on display the names and pictures of the top Maoist leaders and the list of violent incidents in the district over the past decade.

It’s an area where people hardly ever speak for fear of retribution, said an intelligence officer. “There is obviously some pressure from the police to attend the rally,” he said. “But it is for their good.”

Maoists don’t believe it. They describe the Jan-Jagran rallies as a “propaganda” ploy against them.

The state government though has persisted with the rallies as a means to hold dialogue with the people, in the absence of any political process. “We know it won’t yield immediate results,” said an officer, “but it is important that we engage with the people and reach the benefits of the government programmes.”

Gadchiroli Zilla Parishad CEO Amit Saini told the gathering: “Unless you participate in the Gram Sabha, how will you know where and how the government funds are being spent by your representatives.” He asked the villagers to ask their panchayat representatives how they were spending the village funds.

The rally also provides a rare opportunity to the villagers to get their work done on the spot: whether it is related to the revenue or agriculture or tribal welfare department.

An aging Chamaru Bai Atla came from an interior village to apply for the Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar Yojana, seeking the old age pension at Pendhri rally. Many others quietly glanced through the schemes offered by the agriculture, animal husbandry, tribal welfare or health departments.

Holding a Jan-Jagaran Melawa in the Maoist territory isn’t easy though.

“We postponed the event twice last month due to the Maoist threat,” the SP said. “It took us some time to re-plan it.” For a month, he said, his men undertook the area domination exercises to keep the rebels at bay and convince the villagers to attend the rally. On Thursday, tens of armed commandoes and CRPF jawans guarded the road that led to Pendhri through the thickly forested belt of Chatgaon.

Yet, the outcome may not always be as desired.

“It’s hard not only to convince people to come to the fair since they fear retribution from the Maoists,” said a police officer on the condition of anonymity, “but also the administration and other offices.”

Among the most backward districts in the country, Gadchiroli is also among the lowest in the human development index, with high infant mortality and hunger. It’s also a district where both the police and the government officials refuse to serve. Many a post lie vacant in the police and other departments.

The district police say they look to hold such rallies regularly now – at least once every two months. “This will allow the district administration to have a dialogue with the people living cut off from the world in the interior,” Prabhu said.

Pendhri was closed for all other activities though. The weekly market was shut for the afternoon, shops closed, and the armed troops kept an eye on incomers. As the poor adivasis poured in at the venue, been forced, prodded, or coerced by the police, the day long rally served one purpose: That a strong Maoist threat did not deter them to hold the event, seen as an important government initiative.

Despite a stern warning from the Maoists, the turnout was good, given that the fair coincided with the weekly market where villagers from the neigbouring 40-odd hamlets come to buy their groceries. It provides them with a reason to come to the rally; otherwise they face the wrath of the naxalites, one officer said.

Cultural dances, a discourse by Nilkanth Maharaj on the government schemes and the development issues, and a group skit on the Maoist-problem, marked the event.

What do the tribals gain out of such an exercise? As a tribal youth, Anil Usendi, of the neighbouring village put it diplomatically: “Those who can make a sense of it will know. It really depends on the individual.”