India in a hurry: Are we working towards development or chaos?

The sentencing of Binayak sen, the PUCL activist from Chattisgarh brings to the fore the way the country looks & treats naxalism. Naxalism is getting equated to terrorism & lot of innocent people are being targeted just because they are protesting against government's inaction. The governments of the day seem to be either hell-bent on taking advantage of naxalism or have tried to address the symptoms at best. No one is trying to address the root cause.

What is the root cause of naxalism? It is a deadly mix of poverty and perceived belief of being wronged. In most of the cases it is true. In a hurry to sanction lands for development (for obvious reasons), the state forgets its responsibility of the need to take care of its citizens in a wholesome manner and provide for their bare necessities at the least.

Whenever land is identified for a particular project, a thorough analysis is not done about the effect of the intervention on the ecosystem at that location. For example, when land is acquired for a mine in a tribal dominated area adjoining a forest, what could be the impact? The tribals who are generally dependent on the forest ecosystem are suddenly reduced to penury since the resource which they depended on is no longer there nor they are provided any alternative means of livelihood. The forest ecosystem is also disturbed, but so far I have not heard anybody paying serious attention to analyzing the impact on the animals & forest ecosystem. Ideally, both the tribals & the forest need to considered together while working on a rehabilitation process. Otherwise, tribals become naxals while the forest animals run into people in neighboring villages & get killed.

The case of acquisition of agricultural land is much more simpler. Either the complete ecosystem should be created elsewhere or people compensated appropriately so that their standard of living does not get negatively affected. In fact, the government should ensure that their standard of living becomes better since they are in a way sacrificing their convenience for the betterment of the country by surrendering their land. Unfortunately, the people who come up with the relief & rehabilitation programs either do not understand what needs to be done or simply not bothered.

So, in a hurry to get more projects off the ground quickly, the governments end up creating Singurs across the length & breadth of the country. In some places, the people succeed in halting the project while in some others, the movements are just suppressed and the result is there for everyone to see. While India's GDP is increasing at a scorching pace, more than half of the country lives in poverty. More development projects will lead to more chaos unless enough attention is not paid towards relief & rehabilitation. The end-result could be a Laloo-time-Bihar kind of situation across the country with affected people taking to unlawful means to earn their livelihood.