THE STATES

Talks and obstacles

R.J. RAJENDRA PRASAD

LIFE in the villages of northern Telangana in Andhra Pradesh has been seriously disturbed by the violence unleashed by the People's War Group (PWG) and the State government.

Successive Chief Ministers from Dr. M. Channa Reddy to N. Chandrababu Naidu have appealed to the PWG to shun the path of violence, join the mainstream of life, win public support for its cause and capture power through elections.

The PWG had ignored these appeals. But in recent months, the organisation has shown signs of a willingness to come to the negotiating table. However, there appears to be no meeting ground. After the spate of explosions that marked the first anniversary of the formation of the People's Guerilla Army, Chandrababu Naidu said that the PWG had taken a clear stand against the development of the State and that the blasts were aimed at scaring away investors. He asked the PWG and the Left parties to look at the progress that China had achieved and the changes it had introduced in governance while remaining a Communist state.

The suggestion that talks be held to end the violence first came from the Andhra Pradesh High Court. In a judgment in 1996, Justice M.N. Rao and Justice S.R. Nayak said that a peace commission should be set up with representation to all the parties involved, inspiring confidence in all sections of society, including the naxalites and the police, and backed by state power and consent, "to bring about a cessation of Police encounters and violence by Naxalites".

Justice M.N. Rao said: "Before closing this case, we feel it our duty to advert to the tragedy that has befallen the State and the continuing traumatic situation into which the State has been entrapped for more than one and a half decades. Between 1981 and 1996, 242 policemen were killed at the hands of naxalites while the civilian casualties attributed to naxalite attacks was 1,805. By May 1996, a total of 1,140 naxalites died at the hands of police. A soft state cannot protect the political and democratic institutions and the representative bodies from which it receives sustenance."

Inspired by the judgment, the Committee of Concerned Citizens (CCC) was formed in 1997 with S.R. Sankaran as convener. This organisation is doing commendable work in preparing the ground for talks. Sankaran, an Indian Administrative Service officer of the Andhra Pradesh cadre, was instrumental in promulgating Regulation 1 of 1971, which prohibits the transfer of land in the Agency areas to anyone other than a tribal person, with a presumptive clause that all land in the Agency area originally belonged to tribal people. He retired as the Chief Secretary to the Tripura government and was himself once abducted by the PWG in the Gurthedu forest of East Godavari district.

In its first report the CCC said that it was possible to find a long-term direction for a democratic restructuring of society which alone can address the basic issues. It pointed out to the government that it was futile to set pre-conditions that naxalites must surrender their arms or give up violence before talks could be held. The CCC said that democratic protests should not be treated as naxalite activities and that the police force should not be used to suppress them. It advised naxalite groups not to coerce elected representatives, to stop cruelty on the part of its activists, and to ensure that innocent people are not killed.

The CCC had a meeting with Chandrababu Naidu in April 1998 and with a representative group of the PWG. The Chief Minister gave an assurance that there would be no fake encounters. He promised that the government would not stand on prestige and would consider regularising lands already taken possession by the poor. He also said that the government was keen to invest in development.

The PWG said that the formation of the CCC was "a good development, and it is favourable to the revolutionary situation when democrats feel the need to act even though without a direct role in the revolution". It said that governments were denying the minimum democratic rights to the people and encouraged "naked exploitation by feudal comprador bourgeois and imperialist forces".

On the other hand, the PWG statement, the people's movement organised struggles as part of self-defence. The forms of resistance included beating up landlords and their agents as part of class struggle, eliminating the cruel ones, taking action against informers to counter the Police repression effectively, killing officers who were aggressive, ambushing police patrols and carrying out raids. "In other words, people are countering the armed repression of the exploitative ruling classes with their own armed resistance," the PWG added.

With such divergence of views, a meeting ground is hard to find.