Chattisgarh holds the key

I have been lurking on a mailing list for a few days watching this back and forth on the issue of violence whether state supported, vigilante type, in the interest of corporate investments or maoist ideology inspired or self inflicted violence in the form of suicides. What I say below is an attempt to see if we can ground this discussion in the dynamics of development rather than as discrete types of violence or even isolated incidents. Some of this violence in Chhattisgarh may have happened even if it were not a state by itself. It is just that now it gets framed as violence in Chhattisgarh rather than violence in Bastar or in Madhya Pradesh — which simply would have escaped most people’s attention.

But I think the formation of the state has actually given the context for a new and aggravated violence because it is now possible for a variety of social groups to aspire to a better life and to prosperity and these aspirations come into conflict with each other much more ferociously because there are new opportunities which must be captured at all costs. And then these are all framed in the new logic of development — measured almost exclusively in terms of scorching rates of economic growth that all states in India are desparately chasing.

It is instructive to draw parallels to the  situation in Andhra Pradesh. It is not exactly a parallel because Andhra Pradesh became a state in 1956 under the linguistic principle. The state definitely witnessed a significant amount of violence even until the 1980s. But after the early 80s, with the rise of the Telugu Desam Party, the nature and degree of violence and its trajectories became both quantitatively much higher and qualitatively different as it became possible for a number of social groups with some investible agri surpluses to not merely seek avenues but actually assert their power to do so. In the event, these groups formed powerful caste based alliances (and of course these castes are not empty socio-cultural identities but actually have an economic and material basis — as opposed to the congress alliances of reddy-brahmin- scheduled castes the new alliance was kamma-kshatriya- Backward Classes).

This dynamic of different social groups asserting their aspirations to a ‘good life’ through politics, through political movements, naxalite parties, reached a climactic point in the mid 90s when it was no longer possible to fight it out through ordinary means and was resolved through a virtual coup on the lawns of the governor’s residence — Chandrababu Naidu became the chief minister.

In the last 12 years, we have seen first a sharpening of the contradictions and then a gradual transformation of the political and economic turf where organized opposition to any of the things that we call ‘neoliberal’ seems quite impossible as on date. What we see instead is a gradual atrophying of politics into -NGO led single issue campaigns, identity based movements that arise with a lot of promise, throw up charismatic leaders and disappear and a tentative strugles that attempt to address these issues in a territorial form — separate Telangana. I write this potted history of struggles in Andhra Pradesh on this list because I feel that in Chhattisgarh what we are seeing is a very intense form of similar struggles telescoped into a short period of half a decade or so. It would be really useful to see if we can identify the socio-economic bases of Salwa Judum or any such campaigns or even farmers suicides rather than identify it with a single political party.

Although in the immediate context one party may have initiated it and claims credit for it, and the other may reject it (and we should definitely be attentive to these differences) , in the longer run, it will be useful to pin down what are the shifts in the aspirations and opportunities of different social groups that resulted in the emergence of Salwa Judum soon after the formation of Chhattisgarh as a state.

And relate these then to the restructuring of state institutions themselves both via their relationship to various donor-investor networks and via administrative reforms. There is my do paisa worth contribution to the discussion and if I am speaking out of turn – please indulge me as my acquaintance with Chhattisgarh is limited to visits to some places long before the state was formed and I have not bee on this list for very long either. But it is a region that fascinates and intrigues me and I have very fond memories of it and frankly I think the experience of Chhattisgarh can offer invaluable lessons to other places in India.