Fight the Maoists by aiming at rural poverty
Jharkhand is one of the poorest states in India and has become a test for the ability of Indian democracy to serve the poor. The jungles of its many mountains are home to 7 million indigenous people who speak their tribal languages, worship the sun rather than Hindu gods and live in dire poverty.
Three generations ago, these hunters and gatherers were forcibly settled, but agriculture was foreign to them. Perhaps it is not surprising that they produced Maoists guerillas who initiated a campaign of murdering middlemen and officials they suspect of pocketing money meant for development. A local Congress member of Parliament, Rebelo Merbelo, says the main problem is severe unemployment. 'The money allocated to change the situation simply runs away. We have a poor, unstable, state government here and although the central government wants to help, it can't just hand over more money that won't be used well.'
I met Dr Prakash Oraon, who runs the Jharkhand Tribal Development Society. Well funded by both the central government and the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, Oraon has put together a fired-up group of young agricultural and community experts, all tribals themselves, who go into 300 of the villages and get development going. In one village we visited, a new, deep well had replaced the old shallow, inadequate one. A large pond had been dug to catch rainwater and provide for aquaculture. There was irrigation from the pond to fields, and watershed management to stop erosion off the steep slopes.
The people still looked appallingly slight and young for adults - few survive to old age - but a light shines in their eyes when they talk about the transformation of their village economy. The guerillas, I was told, don't impede the project's work.
The political trick now for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is to find a way to quickly extend this kind of work throughout the Maoist-infected areas, which cover significant parts of seven states. Until the past few months, the insurgents were not taken seriously enough. But now the national and state governments are clearly on the back foot, profoundly worried. The monster is growing at a rapid rate, killing officials, police and paramilitaries, and taking horrific revenge against villagers who don't immediately bow to them.
Neither agricultural reform nor the introduction of more doctors, teachers and agricultural advisers, nor clever policing, has been much on show. Indeed, the police and the local state militias seem totally incompetent, and unable to understand that economic, agricultural and social changes are much more important than any bullets they may let fly.
The government's programmes for aiding the poor are increasingly well funded and, indeed, most of the countryside in the vast majority of states is at peace. Nevertheless, the government's attention to the problems of the tribals has come very late in the day. The insurgencies are punching a sizeable and growing hole in the government's record of achievements.
Jonathan Power is a London-based journalist
