While the Maoists used the ceasefire period to breathe easy and regroup, the police used this opportunity to film leaders and their bodyguards and human couriers. Later, many of these were lured by the police to give away the location of several Maoist leaders who were then eliminated.
From then till recently, the Maoists had been on the backfoot in Andhra. It was dubbed as a major success story by the government, and other Maoist-affected states sought to replicate the Andhra model. The Maoists had suffered serious setbacks in Andhra but they had not been wiped out completely. Senior police officers maintained that the Maoists were trying to regroup along the Andhra-Orissa border. 'In Warangal, Khammam and Andhra-Orissa border, they still have a support base and are very much active there,' said Andhra's police chief, Aravinda Rao.
In an interview16 to the author at the end of 2009, Maoist supremo Ganapathi termed the situation in Andhra as a 'temporary setback' for the Maoist movement and made it clear that the revival of movement in Andhra was very important for them. 'The objective conditions in which our revolution began in Andhra Pradesh have not undergone any basic change. This very fact continues to serve as the basis for the growth and intensification of our movement. Moreover, we now have a more consolidated mass base, a relatively better-trained people's guerilla army and an all-India party with deep roots among the basic classes who comprise the backbone of our revolution. This is the reason why the reactionary rulers are unable to suppress our revolutionary war, which is now raging in several states in the country.
We had taken appropriate lessons from the setback suffered by our party in Andhra Pradesh and, based on these lessons, drew up tactics in other states. Hence we are able to fight back the cruel all-round offensive of the enemy effectively, inflict significant losses on the enemy, preserve our subjective forces, consolidate our party, develop a people's liberation guerilla army, establish embryonic forms of new democratic people's governments in some pockets, and take the people's war to a higher stage. Hence we have an advantageous situation, overall, for reviving the movement in Andhra Pradesh,' he told me.
What Ganapathi said about objective conditions is not far from the truth. In Andhra Pradesh, over 20,000 farmers committed suicide between 1998 and 2008. Most of them were tenant farmers (those who take land owned by the landlords on lease). The total number of tenant farmers in Andhra is believed to be as high as 50 lakh. In 2009, there were 2,414 farmer suicides in Andhra. In December 2010, over 50 farmers committed suicide in the state's Krishna district alone.
Veteran police officer and former Director-General of the Border Security Force E.N. Rammohan, who was also appointed by the home ministry to probe the 6 April Dantewada Maoist ambush says that the primary reason why Maoism has flourished in states like Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh is because of land ownership patterns and absence of rights among marginalised communities like the Adivasis. He remembers a time in the late '80s when he was posted in Hyderabad with the CBI, and went to meet the revenue minister along with his friend, the intelligence chief of the state. 'I told him openly that until the government does not implement land ceiling (limiting individual ownership of land) it would be impossible to defeat the Naxals. He said it was impossible and cited a friend's example who owned over a thousand acres of land. He said that friend would not even part with an inch of his land,' says Rammohan.17
Of course, that does not deter politicians from taking advantage of the situation for electoral gains. TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu during whose tenure compensation to farmers who committed suicide was withdrawn (by arguing that most of such cases were not related to agriculture) launched a hunger strike to highlight the plight of farmers. When he was the chief minister, the Congress party had bitterly opposed his decision to withdraw such compensation. And now when the Congress party is in power itself in the state, it is singing the same tune as Naidu's. In September 2010, the leading market research organisation IMRB conducted a survey for The Times of India18 in the five districts of the Telangana region—Adilabad, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Warangal and Khammam. The results were shocking. About two-thirds said that the overwhelming feeling of neglect of the areas by the government was 'the root cause of disaffection'. In Warangal, this figure was as high as 81 per cent. Almost 60 per cent said that the Maoists were good for the area. Fifty per cent also felt that the Maoists had forced the government to focus on development work in affected areas.
By the end of 2010, the alarm bells had started ringing in Andhra Pradesh. Intelligence reports suggested that the Maoists were planning to cash in on the unrest generated by the Telangana agitation and the anti-Polavaram dam sentiments (the Polavaram dam project, officially called the Indira Sagar project, is supposed to be built at the Polavaram village of West Godavari district and it will displace about two lakh people, mostly tribals). In December 2010, during the tenth anniversary celebrations of the formation of PLGA, the Maoists finally struck after a gap of four years, killing two men, one of them a TDP leader. There were reports that a large group of Maoists had infiltrated from Chhattisgarh to stage a comeback in the state. Reports also pointed out that they were on a major recruitment drive in their erstwhile bastion. One of the senior Maoist leaders Ramakrishna (who led the talks with the Andhra government in 2004) was believed to be directing operations in the area. This led to a massive troop deployment in the area but owing to fear, night bus service in these areas was suspended.
In the same week, Maoist spokesperson in Dandakaranya Gudsa Usendi19 said that apart from the PLGA two other wings had been trained in warfare and would be deployed soon to launch attacks against security forces.
After the formation of the People's War Group, the Maoists adopted the fundamental programme of 'New Democratic Revolution'. It proposed to form the Janathana Sarkar or the People's Government in their areas of influence in Dandakaranya. This party programme is followed now by the CPI (Maoist) as well, in more or less the same avatar. The ultimate aim of the Indian revolution, the programme says, is to seize power. To the masses, the party document, however, guarantees the following fundamental rights:
• To meet
• To form organisations
• To conduct strikes and demonstrations
• To live according to one's wish
• To have primary education
• To have primary medical treatment
• To gain minimum employment
In return for these fundamental rights, the people are required to fulfill the following duties:
• To protect the country
• To respect the constitution and law
• To protect the government properties
• To provide military services
• To pay taxes
The PWG document provides an assurance that the State (the Maoist state) shall not discriminate towards anyone in terms of tribe, caste, religion, nationality, gender, language, region, education, post and status. It shall deal with all as equals. It shall give equal opportunities to all. Citizens will have the right to believe or disbelieve religion and the state shall oppose all kinds of religious fundamentalism.
The document says that the party will confiscate the lands of landlords and religious organisations and distribute them to the poor, landless peasants and agricultural labourers on the basis of 'land to the tiller'. It shall strive for the development of agriculture.
The document further goes on to say that the party will confiscate all the industries, banks and other organisations of the 'imperialist and comprador bureaucratic bourgeois classes' and that it will dissolve the 'unequal financial agreements that the exploiting government made with the imperialists'.
The document envisages implementing an eight-hour working day for all the workers. It says that the contract work system will be dissolved and child labour abolished. It promises to provide equal wages for women and men and also provide social security and protective working conditions to all the workers.
The document also declares that women
will be liberated from household drudgery to make them part of social production, political, military, government administration and other such activities. Prostitution, the document says, will be banned, and rehabilitation would be provided to women. To implement this to some degree, it has taken a lot of effort on the part of women Maoist leaders to change the patriarchal set-up which also afflicts the tribals who form a majority of the Maoist cadre. Senior Maoist leader Narmada remembers20 how it took time to drill into the minds of male guerillas that women were not only meant for cooking for the squad or performing other domestic chores. Now, the guerillas in a squad do everything irrespective of their gender. That means that while a man may prepare tea, a woman may venture in the forest to cut firewood or perform sentry duty. Initially, when the Maoists entered Dandakaranya, the women guerillas would wear saris and other traditional outfits. Narmada says it was the wife of senior Maoist leader Malla Raja Reddy, Comrade Nirmala, who insisted on wearing 'pant-shirt' like male members of the squad. There was a major debate in the CPI (Maoist) in the mid '80s whether there should be a separate organisation for women. Ultimately the senior women cadre prevailed and the Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sangathan (Revolutionary Adivasi Women's Organisation) was formed. Today, it has about one lakh women as its members.
On the issue of marriage, the PNG document says that this should be allowed on the basis of 'mutual love and agreement'. The minimum age for marriage would be 20 years. Child marriages are banned and widow remarriages encouraged. Women also have a right to abortion.
There have been occasional reports on the alleged sexual exploitation of the women cadre among the Maoist ranks. In 2010, a woman commander who said she had surrendered to the West Bengal police accused several high-ranking Maoist leaders of sexually exploiting her. In response to a question on her allegations, Ganapathi claimed that the woman commander had been kept in illegal custody by the police for almost a year and later asked to make such accusations against the Maoist leadership. But he also added that he doesn't deny that 'there are no shades of patriarchy in the party or that the men and women comrades haven't become its victims.' He emphasised that the Maoist leadership was 'fighting against the manifestations of patriarchy by increasing the political consciousness of our comrades and people, by taking up anti-patriarchal rectification campaigns and more than anything, increasing the consciousness, self-confidence and individuality of the women comrades and implementing pro-women policies firmly. It is a part of our practice to take disciplinary actions which include severe warning to expulsion from the party according to the severity of the mistake, on comrades who commit mistakes, however high they may be placed in the party.'
Such allegations notwithstanding, the women cadre is involved in the Maoist struggle at par with its male counterparts. About 40 per cent of the Maoist cadre comprises of women. They take part in attacks on security forces and other operations as much as male rebels. In fact, some of the most daring attacks on security forces—like the one on the camp of Eastern Frontier Rifles in Silda in West Bengal on 15 February 2010, that resulted in the death of 24 policemen—are believed to have been led by women commanders. Three women Maoists, disguised as dancers, had conducted a reconnaissance of the Silda camp on the morning of the attack. One of them, Sambari Hansda alias Seema was arrested by security forces on 17 December 2010, from the Lakhinpur forest in West Midnapore district.
Maoist documents say that Village Janathana Sarkars may be formed in an area of 500-3,000 population. The Party Constitution reveals that the ultimate aim or maximum programme of the party is the establishment of communist society. This, the document says, will be carried out and completed through armed agrarian revolutionary war. That is the protracted people's war will be carried out by encircling the cities from the countryside and thereby finally capturing them. Hence the countryside and the protracted people's war has remained as the centre of gravity of the party's work from the very beginning.
The military aspect of the Maoist doctrine says that the revolution goes through three phases: strategic defence, strategic equilibrium and strategic offence. A weak force can defeat a bigger and more sophisticated force only through guerilla warfare depending on extensive involvement of the masses. So, guerilla warfare is the method adopted to protect 'people's forces' and 'people's organisations.' As these forces develop into an established army, a 'people's liberation army', it evolves into mobile warfare where, besides self defence, the Maoists wipe out enemy forces. At present the Maoist movement in India is at the stage of strategic defence where in some areas they have been able to shift from guerilla warfare to mobile warfare.
In the 2007 Unity Congress, held in Bheembandh area of Bihar, the party gave a call for getting into the mobile warfare phase. However, Ganapathi believes that in most of the areas, the strategic defence phase will last for some more time. 'It is difficult to predict how long it will take to pass this stage and go to the stage of strategic equilibrium or strategic stalemate. It depends on the transformation of our guerilla zones into base areas, creation of more guerilla zones and Red resistance areas across the country, the development of our PLGA,' he said.
Who can be a member of the CPI (Maoist)? The Maoist document says that any resident of India who has reached 16 years of age, who belongs to the worker, peasant or toiling masses or the petty-bourgeoisie, accepts Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as his/her guiding ideology, accepts the party programme and constitution, actively participates in party activities under any of the party units and observes the unit's discipline, prepares to face the dangers encountered in the course and agrees to pay regularly membership fees and levies that are decided by the party unit, may become a party member. (The membership fee is Rs 10 per annum). Every applicant must be recommended by two party members. It also says that proven renegades, enemy agents, careerists, individuals of bad character, degenerates and such alien class-elements will not be admitted into the party.
In July 1994, the party gave a call for the setting up of new organs of power—the Gram Rajya Committees (GRCs). Led by a party member, the GRCs were envisaged as a rudimentary form of people's government. It is through these GRCs that the Maoists are trying to establish their authority in the villages. A base area, apart from certain military aspects, must have a self-sufficient economy. From the Chinese experience the Maoists have realised that the State seeks to crush a base area not only militarily but also by putting up economic blockades. So, the Maoists have undertaken a lot of development work in their areas of influence. In the south Bastar division, the party mobilised villagers to build a number of tanks to store water. This was done by electing a tank construction committee in every village involved. For example in Basaguda village, people of nine villages formed a tank construction committee and built a dam. Overall, people from 30 villages participated in this project. In Konta area, after a landlord was killed, a big tank on the land he owned was occupied by the local Maoist platoon. As the number of households in that village was only 25, it was decided to mobilise villagers from neighbouring villages as well. A total of 355 people from 12 villages were involved in the work. In some cases, the police would return and damage such projects. In Poosanar village, the police is believed to have damaged a tank constructed by the villagers and used it to ambush Maoist rebels.
The Adivasis' one culinary obsession is fish. The Maoists have introduced fish culture on a large scale. Maoist ideologues say some of it is sold and marketed in Delhi and Kolkata. A large variety of vegetables was also introduced including tomato, brinjal, onion, chilli among others. In 1997-98 alone, about 20,000 saplings of fruit trees were distributed among people in about 100 villages. In 1996-98, about 100 oxen were distributed to a few families in south Bastar. Most of them were confiscated from rich landlords. A number of rice mills were also constructed.
In the field of education, the Maoists have done a tremendous job. All new recruits who join the Maoist fold, are made literate within a year. In hundreds of mobile and permanent schools run in
their base areas, the Maoists educate children through BBC documentaries on science. Other modern educational aids are used as well. Apart from the regular curriculum, classes on political education and general knowledge are also conducted. Currently, the Maoists are working hard to create a curriculum in Gondi language. As mentioned earlier, Gondi has no script. But that has not deterred Maoists from introducing textbooks in Gondi language for primary classes in a few subjects including mathematics and social sciences. These books also contain lessons on hygiene and the ills of superstition. At various places, government teachers are encouraged to take classes regularly. In certain cases in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, even the teacher's salary and his/her accommodation is being taken care of by the CPI (Maoist). Adult education classes are also run in their villages of influence at times when the villagers are mostly free from their agricultural work.
In the field of health as well, the Maoists often fill in large gaps left by the state. Their mobile medical units cover large distances to offer primary health care to tribals. Most of the guerilla squads have one person trained at a central medical camp. In every village the Maoists choose a few youth to be given basic medical training. It involves identifying common diseases, their symptoms, and then providing medicines for these. Various training camps are held regularly on preventive measures against diseases such as diarrhoea or malaria. The grass-root doctors in the medical squads can administer vaccines, identify a number of diseases through symptoms, and treat injuries that are not severe. Some can even conduct simple blood tests to arrive at a diagnosis. This is a significant advantage in such areas. For instance, on the Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border, a hospital run by social activist Prakash Amte and his family attracts tribal patients from a radius of 200 km. A number of patients suffering from snake or bear bites or malaria or cholera are often brought on a string cot from afar to be treated at Amte's hospital. In Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district, which has a population of 70 lakh, there are only 12 doctors with an MBBS degree. Out of them, nine are either posted at the district hospital or are into administrative jobs.21
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