Fire in the Hole: A Look Inside India’s Hidden Resource War
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
“Fire in the Hole,” by authors Jason Miklian and Scott Carney, provides a fascinating on-the-ground account of what they call a “perpetual-motion machine of armed conflict that is grimly familiar in places like the oil-soaked Niger Delta, but seems extraordinary in the world's largest democracy.” Paired with the article is a photo essay by the authors with some striking images of mining and conflict in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand states.
Of particular note in their coverage is Miklian and Carney’s account of how India’s thirst for resources fuels the conflict on both sides:
Mining companies have managed to double their production in the two states [Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand] in the past decade, even as the conflict has escalated; the most unscrupulous among them have used the fog of war as a pretext for land grabs, leveling villages whose residents have fled the fighting. At the same time, the Maoists, for all their communist rhetoric, have become as much a business as anything else, one that will remain profitable as long as the country's mines continue to churn out the riches on which the Indian economy depends.
ECSP recently co-hosted “The ‘Gravest Threat’ to Internal Security: India's Maoist Insurgency” with the Wilson Center’s Asia Program on the situation, with representatives of the Indian press, civil society, and defense communities. The New Security Beat has also covered the conflict in “India's Maoists: South Asia’s ‘Other’ Insurgency,” with particular attention to the resource management and development issues that have driven strong local support for this latest incarnation of a longstanding Maoist revolt.
Photo Credit: “A woman dumps rubble into a crusher at a mine in India's Jharkhand state. Jharkhand has an estimated 2,500 off-the-books mining operations, an underground industry that has both built sympathy for the state's Maoist rebels and provided a source of income for their rebellion.” Courtesy of Jason Miklian and Foreign Policy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
The Authors highlight the economic desparity between mining regions, and the regions which actually profit from their work. Also mentioned are the underground coal fires destroying the land, and the fact that the majority of the regions soils are depleted. While angry miners no doubt contribute to the Maoist ranks, how many farmers do the same, and what can be done to make violence less appealing than their origional trade? Just as the authors said India needs to reform many sectors of its government to deal with the proeblems associated with its rapid growth. However to stop the violence people in the effected regions need to see immediate action, and tangiable results.
Trouble is many of the people in the effected regions sympathize with the rebels, as pointed out by the article and my post on the topic. Most of the violence occurring is between Maoists and police or other government representatives.
There's also the problem of the Salwa Judum - a state-sponsored militia that many locals fear as much as, if not more than, the rebels they are supposed to help combat.
I would venture to say that it's not a pragmatic insurgency vs. farming or mining calculation that's drawn some to insurgency but more a political decision - "I don't agree with how the government's treated us, so I'll fight (or at least not turn in those who are fighting)."
It's a very complicated situation to say the least.
If it is a primarily political decision to fight, what is the political motivation? What is the issue driving miners and farmers to give up their trade and take up arms with a group like the Maoist? It seems that there must be a tangiable reason not just political ideology.
Miners and farmers are not necessarily giving up their trades to fight - mining has continued despite the violence as the article points out. The number of Maoist fighters is actually fairly small, most local supporters seem to be giving tacit support rather than directly taking up arms with the rebels.
For the Maoists it is purely ideological - they want a communist state. For the tribals and natives who support them though you're right that it's not just political ideology - they are motivated by years of economic, legal, and political marginalization by the Indian government. So they are politically motivated in the sense that they are not supporting the rebels for money or immediate gain necessarily but because they no longer trust the Indian government to give them what they want/need (better representation, more control of their land, development, etc.).
Broader resource inclusive but not specific to this particular case - recently came across the Delhi-based NGO Center for Conflict Resolution and Human Security that looks at a lot of these issues from a holistic perspective in South Asia - more at http://www.ccrhs.org/default.aspx
The first comment mentioned the involvement of miners and farmers in the Maoist movement. I saw no mention of miners becoming involved in violence in the article. However, it seemed quite clear that local farmers are becoming economically disenfranchised as a direct result mining operations degrading arable lands, and are directly contributing to the violence.
"It is better to die here fighting on our own land than merely survive on someone else's," Phul Kumari Devi told us when we visited her dusty mining village of Agarbi Basti in June. "If the Maoists come here, then we would ask their help to resist."
While I would agree that greater local control over resources is essential to eliminating the political motivation for violence or at least the motivation for locals to tacitly support Maoist violence. It seems unlikely that simple political maneuvers could fully solve the problem. The issue has become more than a political sentiment.
According to the author, “Coal mining and armed rebellion have long gone hand in hand in what is now Jharkhand, both dating back to the mid-1890s, when the British began extracting coal from the area and Birsa Munda, today a local folk hero, launched a tribal revolt to regain local control of resources”. However, now after years of mismanagement environmental degradation has become a key issue. There are many economically or politically disenfranchised regions across India. However, I believe it is the environmental issue here which makes the problem unique. Even if locals were to suddenly gain control over the mines, and corruption was eliminated, the depleted soils, coal fires, and air pollution would still exist. Separate from land control, environmental reform must occur to fully address the issue in this region.
Post a Comment