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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Perspectives |
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Politics |
Binayak and the Big Questions
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| When we ask for sacrifice but fail to deliver, it’s not hard to see why some might get disillusioned with their country |
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AP PHOTO |
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| Binayak Sen sits inside a police jeep after his arrest in Raipur, Chhattisgarh.
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THINK I GRASPED THE FULL IMPORT of the case
against Binayak Sen on one shadowless March day, as
I walked through the “new” village of Bokrakachhar,
in a remote corner of Chhattisgarh, while the noonday
sun beat mercilessly down. From one end, I looked along
two ruler-straight rows of identical pista-green blocks that
made up the village, searching for a
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tree, or even a large bush, that could give me some shade. There was not one to be found—and that’s when the case hit home for me.
Bokrakachhar, home to 36 families of Baiga tribals, used to
be deep inside the Achanakmar Wildlife Sanctuary. In 2009,
Achanakmar was declared part of Project Tiger—the nearly
40-year-old Government of India initiative “to ensure a
viable population of tiger in India for scientific, economic,
aesthetic, cultural and ecological values”, as their website
puts it. That meant Bokrakachhar and a few other villages
had to move out of the “core zone” of the sanctuary.
Hence the creation of “new”, or resettled, Bokrakachhar,
comprising 36 government-built, concrete-block homes and
zero trees. It is actually one of three new villages that exist
side by side, a treeless total of about 100 concrete-block
structures. This development has been held up as a model,
in fact, and other Baiga are brought here to see what they
will get when they agree to move.
I moved slowly through Bokrakachhar, suffering from the
heat. People sat under their parapets, the only shade available.
In every house, I noticed electric wires running neatly
along the walls, with smart white switchboards and even
the occasional fan. Why were these people not sitting inside,
under their fans?
Standing outside his home, Dhanga Singh (name changed)
cleared that up tersely: “No electricity,” he said.
“Oh, you have regular power cuts?” I asked. “When will
the electricity be back?”
“No,” said Dhanga. “You don’t understand. There is no
electricity. One year we’ve been here, but we’ve never had
electricity.”
State authorities move these Baiga, build houses for
them and wire the houses, but there’s no electricity. Also:
no school, no healthcare, no water supply apart from two
handpumps. And, maybe I mentioned, no shade. This is the
charade that passes for resettlement.
What is the connection to Binayak Sen? This much: when
you’re a doctor practising in rural India, as Sen was, you
come to understand that health does not stand by itself. It
is intimately linked to poverty, justice, hunger, governance and charades. In treating your patients, you run up against
these themes all the time. How could you not? To reach the
nearest doctor, for example, Dhanga Singh would have to
pick a Tuesday, walk 1.5 km from Bokrakachhar to a tarred
road, wait there for a bus, then ride an hour to a village
named Bamhni. Why Tuesday? That’s when a team from
the Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS), a rural hospital in Ganiyari,
60 km away, comes to Bamhni to run an outreach clinic.
Six decades after India became free, it’s not hard to find
Indians whose only access to healthcare is at a once-a-week
clinic over 90 minutes away on foot and then by bus. Try
selling that kind of access to the average urban Indian. What
decibel levels will his protests touch?
Imagine you’re that doctor in rural India. Over years that
stretch into decades, you see and absorb things around you.
Eventually, you cannot help speaking about the way that the
people who are your patients live. Eventually, you begin to
understand why some might choose to support a movement
that speaks of a phantasmagoric Maoist utopia.
I happen to believe that there was no evidence to convict
Binayak Sen: I am aware of considerable inconsistencies in
the case against him, each of which seem to me like grounds
to have dismissed it. I also believe, for that matter, that
there’s no place in our democracy for an antiquated law on
sedition.
These issues have already attracted considerable comment
in the four years since Sen’s initial arrest, and especially
in the months since he was convicted and sentenced
to life in prison last December. But there is a deeper lesson
in the Sen case, that is, if we’re willing to see it. It lies in
the chance to understand why ordinary Indians would support
what so many think of as an abomination: a movement
whose avowed intention is to overthrow the Indian state.
Let me be clear: this is not to say Sen argues for such overthrow,
nor that I do. Nor that the families of Bokrakachhar
do—I really have no idea. But when we ask a village to make
great sacrifices in the name of development or wildlife and,
in return, we deposit them in the soulless wasteland that is
new Bokrakachhar—when this transaction is not an aberration
or something that’s never happened before—well, blow
me away, but it’s not hard to see why people might get disillusioned
with their country.
The questions posed by Sen’s trial, in other words, are
questions that we’ve known all along—questions that many
among us prefer to avoid asking. Here are a few more:
What is it about the way we have chosen to develop that
has left so many Indians dissatisfied?
Why is it acceptable that large numbers in this country
are so poor that authorities run programmes for them to buy
grain at  3 per kilogram; and plenty so poor that they cannot
afford even that price, so authorities sell them grain at 1
per kilogram (Dhanga Singh being among them)?
What are the health implications of poverty this acute and
widespread?
When we resettle a village, why is it so hard to assure its residents even a minimal improvement in the way they live?
How can a newly constructed village, built by the government
and wired for electricity, not have power coursing
through those new wires from day one?
There are many more such questions, but you get the idea.
The decision to grant Sen bail—thus deferring concerns
like evidence and charges—offers the opportunity to think
through such questions. Consider that if we didn’t have to
ask the questions—if large numbers of Indians did not live
such lives—it’s plausible that the Maoist insurgents would
not have the support they clearly do. Not that the insurgency
would not exist, but that it would not have support.
(There’s a difference.) If we didn’t have to ask them, Sen
would not have raised issues that attracted attention from
Chhattisgarh authorities and became part of the case against
him. (It says something, that on his release on bail, he spoke
about malnutrition in the country). If we didn’t have to ask
them, insurgencies in this country would be starved of the
lifeblood of popular support.
This is no airy-fairy “hearts and minds” argument that
glosses over Maoist crimes. Fight Maoists, certainly. But
let’s acknowledge that hardship and injustice fill too many
Indian lives. Tackling that is a bigger headache than any
threat Maoists might pose, but remains nevertheless the most effective way to defeat them.
The problem, though, is that on the evidence of the last 60
years—the evidence in a ghastly place called Bokrakachhar—we are not interested in effective ways.
Dilip D’Souza a former computer scientist, is a journalist living in Mumbai and the author of Roadrunner: An Indian Quest in America. He is working on a book about the Binayak Sen case.
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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bee
28 August 2011
06:22 PM
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Great article. And as for the latter half of your comment, Dilip -- yes! That's exactly what I've been thinking for a while now, though instead of resettlement in the areas that benefit, the beneficiaries could pay extra for the service (like irrigation from a dam, for example) and that money could be used as pensions/resettlement money/whatever that the folks who have to move will get. After all, the state is acting as an intermediary in the purchase of one group's land by another group. If the cost is deemed too high by the second group then it doesn't go through, as it should not in our capitalistic system. If it does, everyone's happy. Anything but the above would mean that capitalistic principles are applied only when it suits those in power, who are usually the majority, who're usually the beneficiaries of such schemes. Viva la Adam Smith!
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Jugal Parekh
11 May 2011
09:53 PM
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Dear Dilip,
Great article. You are tireless and focussed.
Cheers
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Mayank Mathur
10 May 2011
11:05 PM
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Dear Sir
A very well researched article. Nothing hits the heart more than a story being reported directly from the field where the action is happening (or rather where the action is not happening in this case!)
You have definitely hit the problem right on its head. If we want permanent solutions to our problems, it is important we strike them at their very roots.
Please do write more of such articles that are so important in creating the right kind of awareness that is needed to solve the issues of the society.
Thanks & Regards
Mayank Mathur
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Dilip D'Souza
8 May 2011
01:21 PM
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Thanks all for comments.
Rahul, the whole question of the role of corporates is another issue that needs examination; in this essay I wanted to focus only on making this link between the way some Indians are treated and any possible support for Maoists.
Murali, I think there's no dearth of people who would be willing to step up and adopt one Baiga family each. But is that the answer? I'd like to make the case that the roots of what we face go deeper, and until we are able to confront it like that, not a whole lot will change substantially.
Steve, thanks for the mention of eminent domain. I cannot agree more with that idea of people choosing to move rather than being forced to. Another angle to that is, I've often wondered why people affected by a large project (for example those people displaced by a big dam) are not resettled in the area that will benefit, and the folks in those areas are told, if you want these benefits, you must also extend a hand to these people who need to be resettled.
Has anyone challenged the idea of "eminent domain" anyway, and if so in what way?
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P. Zachariah
5 May 2011
05:40 PM
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A heart touching article, Dilip. There are about 90 million so called tribals in India., almost a third of the population of USA. After two generations of Independence, India has not found ways of bringing them into the main stream without doing violence to their identity. I believe that no amount of legislation, judicial activism or even good governance alone will suffice to solve their problems. The other India, its civil society, needs to get to know them, understand the horrendous problem of "development" for them and strive with them for solutions. I wonder whether we could initiate some kind of Yuva Jana Morcha, a kind of Peace Corps, which could be a vehicle for this approach. Meanwhile, can we start some study groups in our universities on this whole issue, like my generation had in the 1940s to address "rural devlopment"?
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Dr. Pushp Lata
5 May 2011
12:23 PM
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Dilip:
A well though out article. You have raised very pertinent issues. This isthe time we really need to answer where we are moving to after our independence. We seriously need to fight for the right and need to create awareness among these tribal and the suffered and the ignored lot.It is a tough call but we the privileged educated lot have to take it their stride.
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neelambari
2 May 2011
09:01 PM
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Dilip this is such a good articke - i also agree with murali ganapathy. is there some way that we can concretely improve living conditions for the people of the resettlement.
i am here in deolali doing a teacher workshop and bemoaning not having an ac because it is so damn hot!!!!!!
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Steve S.
2 May 2011
06:25 PM
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Dilip - nice reporting and good thinking - in the US we also continually face issues of what we call 'eminent domain' where citizens property can be seized by the government for the common good. It is a rare event but has been used to create highways and other such projects. It also was recently used in Connecticut to seize people's houses to create a shopping mall. In these cases people are paid 'fair market value' for their property but it is still coercive - i.e. if they don't like the offer they still have to move. Always seemed to me that the government should make the offer enticing enough that people choose to move and are not forced to move. It is difficult when the majority do something to benefit the 'common good' (aka the majority) and the minority end up paying the full price for it.
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Murali Ganapathy
2 May 2011
07:33 AM
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Dilip:
Great job. Greater job requires us as pseudo-intellectuals to collectively lead the fight for alleviating poverty. Can we not as individuals adopt one Baiga family each and assist them with basic necessities. Can we not get a few large industry to work with us to make this happen!
Or is it that we can all sit, have a drink and talk about Binayak Sen, Baigas, poverty and how 60 years of independence has not changed a thing.
I am not sure how to make this happen but i am definitely interested in contributing if someone can lead it.
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rahul banerjee
1 May 2011
06:19 PM
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there is no mention of the forces of corporate extraction that are behind the indian state. if people are given their rights then corporate extraction will not be possible and the cars wont run on the streets of the cities. at this point of time asking such naive questions wont get us far in the fight for a more just and sustainable development paradigm for this country.
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Gurcharan
1 May 2011
03:17 PM
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An excellent article-Dilip-and I appreciate your chain of thought which is aimed at solving the problem at its very root.The idea you give of eradicating poverty is a very good idea and it may perhaps solve the problem.
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j. hansen
30 April 2011
01:48 AM
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Dear Mr.Dsouza I have read with such horror the scenario of these god forbidden places where as to norm hindu .i.e. Indian govt.criminales cum ministry cum police man cum ctrf forces and their tens of battalions of mass murderers of the misreably and wretchedly poor tribals are slaughtered daily and at any hour or place ,if woman better for them to rape .if man boy or child axe them burn them or torture them ,thats the SUM total of this HENIOUS system called ,DEMOCRATIC SYTEM .And now a courageous man called Beneyak Sen who to say the truth ,he yes is a good indian and the few who have the guts to help these poor destroyed people,is hounded off to the very arms of the criminal judges and police to shut him a away just like these tribales who he cares for ,what I have said is the total truth ,you see the young men who created these movements are made up of what ,young educated men with unirversity education,they are not insane or criminals ,but educated people who have seen the misery of this henious system and have chosen to fight it ,that is what many Indians like Shivaji,Bose and others did against the mogul kings and the British ,just like them these young men have taken up the challenge against all oppresers and mass killers,who call them selves ministers judges ect . whos solem duty is help the common man and to protect them and not rob kill rape and slaughter them
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