Sudha Pillai, who recently retired from the IAS after being member-secretary of the Planning Commission, has a rich understanding of our development processes. She tells Namrata Biji Ahuja that a hostage policy must be followed up by appropriate tribal development policies.
Let’s begin with Sukma collector Alex Paul Menon’s abduction. Do you think Maoists are rattled by young, enthusiastic, development-oriented officers?
Actually, the Maoists are using these young collectors to put pressure on the government and secure the release of their own cadres. In many cases, the officers put their own safety on the backburner. There is a lot of affection in the minds of the public for such officers and the Maoists are using the situation to their advantage. I don’t think they are rattled. They are only using these young collectors.
Police action or development to curb Left-wing extremism — which should take precedence?
The two go together. They are two sides of the same coin. They have to go hand in hand, almost simultaneously. Take any country where there is no safety and security, you will see that no development takes place there. Sometimes you will find that if you have to build a road, you need security arrangements in place. This is why the collectors are targeted — they symbolise the power of the state, the establishment of order — and, at the same time, they are trying to further development.
Speaking of recent times alone, Malkangiri collector R. Vineel Krishna was abducted by the Maoists in Orissa, then two Italian tourists and a tribal BJD MLA, and shortly after we saw the case of Mr Menon, the Sukma collector, in Chhattisgarh. Don’t you think there is a need for a proper hostage policy?
Certainly, but first you should ensure that you don’t make collectors an easy target. The state governments need to first work out their development policies and their tribal policies. Hostage policy comes later. But I also think — in the case of Maoists — that we should avoid giving them the impression that we are easily swayed. That encourages hostage-taking behaviour.
How do you see the handling of the Maoist hostage situation by the Chhattisgarh and Orissa governments.
Bad. Because first you create a problem and then try to handle it. The policies of the government should follow the law of the land.
Where are the state governments lacking?
There are three or four glaring acts of omission — absence of any effort on the part of the powers that be, the state governments and others, to implement the measures meant for the welfare of the tribal people.
Schedule Five of the Constitution provides protection to the adivasis living in the Scheduled Areas, and any other law of the state governments which runs against this cannot be applicable. But we have a situation where the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, or Pesa, is not being implemented, the Forest Rights Act is not implemented. This is total dereliction; total disregard of the implementation of Part IX of the Constitution which deals with panchayati raj institutions. The Pesa bestowed “the ownership of the minor forest produce” to the tribals way back in 1996.
Bamboo is a minor forest produce, but bamboo has been nationalised. How can you nationalise something which is owned by somebody else? State governments are indulging in blatant violation of the law. Bamboo, tendu leaf are all money spinners. The economy out of the total “minor forest produce” is to the tune of `50,000 crore, and this is being taken out of the hands of the tribal people.
So you create rage and anger. You have a situation where in a family the father has no work, the mother has nothing to cook, and the children do not have a school to go to apart from the fact that there is no bridge or culvert to take them there if there was a school. And this has happened because you have taken away their bamboo etc to give away to the paper mills.
Then, what is the development happening on the ground?
Changing procedures to implement flagship programmes has helped. Giving untied money to collectors under the Integrated Action Plan (IAP) helps reduce alienation. Home minister P. Chidambaram deserves credit for this. But real development has actually not taken place. We are behaving like colonial powers by taking out the timber, the minor forest produce, spoiling their rivers. Such is the impunity with which the laws for tribals are violated.
Then there are those who romanticise tribal life. They want it to remain untouched by the outside world. They have a horror of collectors, tehsildars, any development, and would not allow anyone to go in. They say let tribals live in their innocence, and now that place has become Abujhmad (a thickly forested area in Bastar region of Chattisgarh known to be a Maoist guerrilla nerve centre). Nobody goes there. You have created a development vacuum there and a Maoist problem. This is asking for trouble.
Do you think it is a “no-win’’ situation for officers who go to the Maoist areas: if they go in with security they are getting killed, and if they go with minimal security, they are getting kidnapped. Is it fair to blame them for not following the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)?
I think the collector is under (unspoken) compulsion from the state government. And if the officer has done good work, he may feel the need to carry on in the same way. It has become a practice in states, of late, where collectors are going in (to Maoist stronghold regions) and becoming attractive baits for the Maoists.
They may be going to these areas to talk about the development activities being undertaken there and build a rapport with the villagers and tribals at the behest of the state government. But what is needed first is to set your house in order. Your basic policies are exploitative, give the tribal people back what they had, then give them the development which they need.
The collector may have done good work but he becomes the symbol of the state government and the state government has certainly not done the right thing if they have not implemented the Pesa, the Forest Rights Act, if they have not de-nationalised tendu and bamboo. What have they done if they are permitting exploitation of minerals in a manner which they ought not to? But the collectors cannot afford to be foolhardy. They have to follow SOPs.
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