THE assassination of Sunil Mahto, a member of India’s Parliament, in Jharkhand allegedly by Maoists is unlikely to cause much of a ripple beyond the country. India is the great success story of recent times, the new economic superpower in the making. Terrorism is not going to change that. In any event, much of India’s terrorism is perceived, at least abroad, to be directly linked to Kashmir or communal tensions exploited by Hindu and Muslim militants — and even that has not dented India’s phenomenal growth. All the more reason then to gloss over Sunday’s assassination. Maoists? Who needs to be afraid of them? They are hardly going to derail India’s bright future.
Such thinking is wrong.
In his speech on India’s National Day last August, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that Maoist terrorism was the second biggest threat to the country’s security. The figures bear him out. While the Kashmir issue was linked to 41 percent of last year’s staggering total of 2,765 deaths in terrorist-related incidents, 27 percent were linked to Maoist terrorism.
The dynamic, go-ahead India with the world’s largest middle class (over 200-million strong, larger than that in the US) is the picture that the outside world focuses on. But there is another India, light years away from dynamic Mumbai and Bangalore or bustling Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It is an India of deprivation and poverty, in villages and countryside stretching down from Bihar in the north to Andhra Pradesh in the south. This is the other India where call centers, the latest Tata cars, apartment buildings, shopping malls, designer jeans, smart saris and the whole Bollywood image of happy prosperity is unimaginable. In states such as Chattisgarh, where 173 people were murdered by Maoists last year, and Jharkhand (at least 46 murders, 32 of them policemen) the Maoists have a following — and there is a real danger that it will grow as the gap between rich and poor widens.
We can say with every confidence that the Maoists are not going to destroy India’s date with economic destiny. But there are places in Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and other states where they have effective control. That is unacceptable, not just politically but socially and economically as well because, by murder and intimidation, they actively block the arrival of jobs and progress. And what happens if the Maoists move into the cities?
An end to their murderous activities will not be achieved by military force alone. It is needed to contain them (and has not been helped by the inconsistency resulting from security being a state rather than a central responsibility under the constitution).
But the best weapon is to give India’s poor a share in its new wealth. They cannot wait for the trickle-down effect to happen; it will take years. India’s prosperity has to spread — and the best way is through increased benefits and a clampdown on corruption. Communism has never been able to compete with the welfare state; less corruption means less resentment.
