What’s Left in India

To anyone who has ever traveled to India, it is almost an unfathomable amalgamation of inconsistency. Well over a quarter of this great nation lives on a paltry 40 cents or less per day. Somewhere north of 320 million (out of approximately 1.2 billion people) fall within a global definition of middle class or better; yet, the vast majority of India’s people are profoundly poor. India is like first world, second world and a third world nations layered on top of each other, living together under one democratic system, a sea of humanity that seems as if it really shouldn’t exist in relative harmony. Languages vary from region to region, and their legal system has embraced English as a necessary tongue of commercial expediency (definitely a language learned almost exclusively by the upper and middle classes).

New high tech complexes, in and around places like Hyderabad or Chennai or Bangalore, offer gated and guarded “mini-cities” technology parks with modern streets, chrome and glass buildings, fiber-optic linkage and state-of-the-art residential offerings. Immediately outside these gates often lie crumbling or inadequate infrastructure, from streets to waste treatment, and immeasurable squalor and poverty. Open sewers. Legions of beggars. sJury-rigged ramshackle “homes” that shelter millions. Cities offer ultra-modern amenities – spa, clubs, restaurants and shopping malls with the latest fashions (pictured above) – while sheltering teaming millions in dirt and truly ugly inhumane conditions right around the corner.

That harmony may be more of a cacophony, one in which peaceful co-existence is rapidly deteriorating. India has always had its share of political violence and rabble-rousing, but a disturbing factionalism has been rising violently, particularly in the eastern quadrant of the country – extreme left-wing Maoism. The November 1^st New York Times: “In the last four years, the Maoists have killed more than 900 Indian security officers, a figure almost as high as the more than 1,100 members of the coalition forces killed in Afghanistan during the same period… If the Maoists were once dismissed as a ragtag band of outdated ideologues, Indian leaders are now preparing to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign to hunt down the guerrillas in some of the country’s most rugged, isolated terrain.”

The Maoists don’t just want a voice within the massive Indian political spectrum; they want to topple the current government and take over entirely. Their efforts have found traction among impoverished tribes and deprived masses whose plight has become that much more transparent in the accelerated growth of the Indian economy, an expansion of the middle class that has completely left most Indians behind.

The Times: “Once considered Robin Hood figures, the Maoists claim to represent the dispossessed of Indian society, particularly the indigenous tribal groups, who suffer some of the country’s highest rates of poverty, illiteracy and infant mortality. Many intellectuals and even some politicians once sympathized with their cause, but the growing Maoist violence has forced a wrenching reconsideration of whether they can still be tolerated… ‘The root of this is dispossession and deprivation,’ said Ramachandra Guha, a prominent historian based in Bangalore. ‘The Maoists are an ugly manifestation of this. This is a serious problem that is not going to disappear.’…

“[I]n the state of Chattisgarh, Maoists dominate thousands of square miles of territory and have pushed into neighboring states of Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, part of a so-called Red Corridor stretching across central and eastern India... Violence erupts almost daily. In the past five years, Maoists have detonated more than 1,000 improvised explosive devices in Chattisgarh. Within the past two weeks, Maoists have burned two schools in Jharkhand, hijacked and later released a passenger train in West Bengal while also carrying out a raid against a West Bengal police station.”

The cry of poverty in India is overwhelming; the solution to the horrific human condition, even in times of explosive economic growth, is elusive. Populism has elected xenophobes, anti-Muslims and uncompromising ideologues along the way… movements that have been tempered with the underhanded cash flow of the richest segments of society. But this new Maoist movement, spreading its violent wings with a strong presence in 20 out of India’s 28 states, is indeed a power to be reckoned with, one that threatens the very existence of this great democracy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.