Naxalism is a symptom which has been caused by the deep rooted rot in our society in the form of social injustice which has also transcended into an extremely corrupt polity and bureaucracy or better known as the system which gets worked by and for the interests of the elites of our country. Today India constitutes mainly of 200-300million people who get better addressed to as the middle class who either live in the urban centers or in the better off rural centers, beyond that the real rot starts from where bharat starts and a huge 800-900million people form a part of this structure also referred to as the marginalized section from where the social ills have taken a mammoth shape by the name of naxalism, but only instigated by a handful people, and the larger appeal remains rather limited for now.
This huge majority of people have little or no food to eat, and as per world standards they are under nourished with majority of them termed as malnourished to extreme proportions with almost all facing abject poverty with no or extremely scarce access to basic human needs like health, sanitation, water, justice, shelter, education, etc and remain a section of society which is exploited on every nook and corner. The government for them is as good as non existent for there is hardly anyone ready to listen to their grievances let alone those being addressed to. A simple word like human rights is a unheard concept which is routinely violated, and they hardly anyone raise their voice with almost everyone dieing a silent death.
A few who do, have either aliened themselves to a violent communist ideology of the far left which has today taken to thug proportions by their thug practices of further exploiting these poor that you and I know as naxals or have sought shelter under various NGOs and this part of the voice gets heard through the so-called intellectuals but behind them also hide the naxals in certain cases.
The functioning of police constitutes a huge part of the whole problem and it is because of the brutality of this force that a pholan devi gets born, who at least had the will in her to take on the state machinery, a machinery which was supposed to protect her but ended up exploiting and raping her not once but on numerous occasions, how she survived that ordeal only she knew best, but that is not a story of just one pholan devi but in some form or the other with a vast majority of our populace.
Police reforms, is just one facet to the whole problem which needs to be taken on an urgent basis but for now the central government and the state governments have taken little to no interest for if done then that will make the force independent and not prone to the dictates of our political class and that clashes with the attempt on the part of politicians to exert power through the police and so the reform remains in a limbo. Land grab is a routine in the name of development with no or little compensation with owners who then become migrants facing uncertain futures staring their face, so what is required is a just compensation policy that gets adhered to very strictly. People have no land to cultivate in a country where huge pieces of land remain unused, which can be understood from the fact that in India a near 70% of the population inhabits 30% of the land and the rest 30% in 70% but without any land ownership, and then to cultivate that land, where is the water, so there in no one solution to this massive problem but what needs to be done is social engineering across the board at a massive scale or our dream of making it right to the top in the coming years will just remain a dream with our weaknesses being exploited by the outsiders.
Having given a picture of the things as they stand today, it is hearting to see that we today have initiated a lot of social security programs which have to an extent scored a success but still remain mired by large scale corruption which can be gauged from a report that sites for every rupee spent a near 50paise gets siphoned off (mind you this has improved for the better from the days of rajiv Gandhi who himself was quoted as saying during this tenure that the effective money used was as less as 20paise of each rupee invested) and this is an evil which hurts us the most. Programs like NREGA, rural housing, right to information, right to education, etc have and will help but then we don’t need to get selective in our approach and come up with half hearted measures as is happening in the right to food act where the government has dropped the supreme court ruling of providing 35kgs of either rice or wheat per month for the families living below poverty line to a mere 25kgs, or by distributing this food to only 28% of the populace when a huge 80% go under nourished.
The real sad thing is that for most in India, politics is nothing more than a business to enhance their personal gains. The ray of hope here is PC, one of those very rare honest people in our polity. He is determined to root out naxalism and is not shying away from using force which is a must and the best part, this person has the will to walk the talk and being a reasonable person that he is, he will surely not miss out on the social engineering aspect for he knows if that is not done then after a brief lull this menace will come back to haunt us again.