There has been no large scale violence, no high profile abduction, no gory killings and not even a murmur of a police campaign against the Maoists in Bastar Chhattisgarh for the last over one month. Bastar – larger than Kerala in size, home to one million tribals, ten thousand Maoists and one lakh para-military and police force and best quality iron ore, tin, forests and all – is in virtual mute mode. It has not been in news, barring one incident on June 21 when a potentially fatal, but failed, and hence less reported, attack on a Youth Congress convoy was saved from becoming national news by an advance road clearing anti-landmine vehicle. The vehicle missed the booby trap by a few seconds but was fiercely fired upon by the Maoists.
After hogging the limelight in the weeks following the deadly attack on the Congress leadership in May, Bastar along with its perpetually ongoing bloody conflict between the state and the Maoists, with the tribals sandwiched in between, has gone off the radar of the national consciousness. As Ashutosh Bharadwaj writes in the Indian Express no prominent English news channel has a correspondent in Chhattisgarh, the capital of the Maoist insurgency. After a major incidence, their crew flies in to put together a few primetime packages and goes back. No gore – no news.
If the administration, which along with most of the sarpanchs and panchayat secretaries (and the teachers and revenue and forest and health workers) was sucked into the perceived safety of the district and block headquarters following the Maoist attack on the Congress carcade on 25th May was pretending to make a buzz, that has fallen silent since July 5th when the state government employees went on an indefinite strike. They are demanding what they call “risk allowance” for being posted in this area. The central government gives them 25% of the salary as risk cover. The state government was to chip in its share of 20% which hasn’t come yet, hence the strike. The work, in whatever form was going on till now, has come to a standstill in the offices, hospitals and schools of block and district headquarters too. The government has responded with an offer to post the lathi-yielding home guards – “security” in place a risk allowance – but the employees are not amused.
Neither the chief minister or any other minister or leader of the ruling BJP has visited the area after the May attack. No Congress leader, including the party’s newly-appointed working president Charan Das Mahant has visited the area either. This has more significantly brought to the fore the glaring absence of a vibrant political milieu in the region.
The chief minister started his highly publicised ‘Vikas Yatra’ on 6th May in Dantewada town in the area and traveled full one kilometer in the bus to reach the Circuit House from where he took off in the helicopter. He hasn’t returned to Bastar since. The Congress had been making some efforts in the months preceding the May attack to raise the interest level in the masses. ‘Parivartan rally’ was a part of that campaign. It is ironical that the rally that was intended to be the curtain raiser for the political fight before the impending assembly elections later this year effectively put a curtain to whatever nascent activity was there till then.
The ostensible reason – given by both the parties – is the rains.
The MLAs have shifted their bases to towns further away from their constituencies. Their public appearances have virtually dried up. So has the contact with their constituents – with perhaps one exception of that of the Jagdalpur MLA Santosh Bafna who has come out with a unique model.
As the Hindi daily Deshbandhu reports he has pitched a tent in the lawns of his fortified residence in Jagdalpur town where his constituents, loaded on trucks, are brought to him to “meet” the representative. The ride comes with the promise of food and gifts as bonus.
In a small pocket in the south, the health and education services have been outsourced to the NGOs. In the rest, the state has simply put the shutter down. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which had been working in the area since 2010 was asked to leave last month when eyebrows were raised on realization that their services in the tribal villages were benefiting the Maoists too. The ICRC was ensuring that people have access to clean water and proper sanitation in two districts – Bijapur and Sukma of south Bastar. Another NGO -The Nobel Peace Prize winner Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) – popularly known as Doctors without Borders – is under scanner of the state government. That leaves only Ramkrishna Mission with a base in Narayanpur.
The political activities have dried up. The MLAs – both sitting and prospective – have virtually fled the scene, the offices are deserted as the employees have gone on strike, the school buildings are either destroyed or damaged, no teacher is to be found when the new academic session has started, no doctor is found in the season of what the department call “seasonal diseases”. A good part of the nation’s geography has been abandoned by the state, a good part of its population forgotten and this has failed to make headlines. Is it because the news does not carry gore?
