Selling India by the Pound The Hidden Story of Operation Green Hunt Operation Green Hunt (OGH), launched in the second half of 2009, is yet another military manifestation of large scale social, political and economic inequalities and repressions that have prevailed in India for decades. Under OGH there has been massive troop deployment in large parts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Bengal. More than one lakh military and paramilitary troops, along with air support, have been deployed in these areas. Additionally, bands of private, mercenary and vigilante forces are also actively involved in OGH. Such massive deployment of troops in civilian areas by creating the hysteria of internal threat is completely unjustified. Military solutions to problems that are economic and political in nature always fail. The North-eastern states of India – Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura – have suffered continuous troop deployment in civilian areas since the late 1940's. When the military, empowered with the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958), was deployed in this region against civilians, under the pretext that they were ‘disloyal’, there was only one movement (the Naga National Council) that operated in the Naga inhabited areas. Now after more than sixty years of troop deployment there is a proliferation of armed groups covering almost every state of the North-east, precisely because the armed forces destroyed all available sites of public political articulation, leaving armed movement as the only available option. Striking parallels with this are evident from the history of the Kashmiri struggle, as well as in the ongoing Operation Green Hunt. Military ‘solutions’ are failed and discredited, and yet our government seems determined to apply them indiscriminately and without restraints. Under OGH, it has launched an unprecedented offensive in civilian areas, targeting armed and unarmed movements, of Marxist or Gandhian persuasions, as well as civil liberties and democratic rights groups, and alarmingly, even villagers and adivasis. More than 641 villages were destroyed in Chattisgarh alone after OGH began; in Lalgarh, following an attack on the Chief Minister’s convoy, police atrocities, already widespread, escalated into a reign of terror on the adivasis. Security forces attacked and destroyed the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, a Gandhian organisation in Chattisgarh. In Orissa people's movements to secure their rights to land and forest, from corporates – such as those in Kalinganagar, Niyamgiri, Jagatsinghpur, Narayanpatna, etc. – are facing severe repression. In Punjab, between 23rd and 25th March 2010 alone, hundreds of peasant activists and leaders were picked up in preventive detention. Even legal and non-violent civil liberties and democratic rights organisations and individuals have not been spared. Dr. Binayak Sen, a paediatrician and an activist of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), whose services towards deprived sections of the society has received commendations, was incarcerated on trumped up charges. More recently, reputed democratic rights organisations and activists were referred to as Maoist sympathisers in the charge sheet of arrested Maoist leader Mr. Kobad Ghandy. The Supreme Court, in an ongoing case involving missing adivasis in Chattisgarh, sharply told the police to refrain from using ‘Maoist sympathiser’ as an 'innuendo'. It is of particular significance that state-sponsored, organised violence – such as took place in Delhi in 1984, Gujarat in 2002, or Kandamal in 2008 – which destroyed the lives of entire generations, has always been condoned; whereas resistance coming from the poorest of the poor, and the marginalised, has been sought to be ruthlessly and comprehensively crushed, as in OGH. This repetition of a failed policy is a result of a subordinate insertion of the Indian state into the regime of globalisation. This is directly evident in the fact that American and Israeli forces are training Indian military and paramilitary personnel on Indian soil, as part of OGH. It is also evident in the retreat of the state from the social sector and its reduction into a means for big business to open up and access labour, intellectual and natural resources. Circumvention of labour laws through SEZ and police repression is routine. The food security of the country is being deliberately undermined through the imposition of 'New Agriculture” – floriculture, genetically modified crops, cultivation of exotic food items, new contractual farming with food packaging corporates – and transformations in agrarian subsidies and trading policies. A direct consequence of this has been the more than two lakh farmers’ suicides over the past few years. The enormous budgetary outlay involved in implementing OGH is thus simultaneous with and related to the reduction of subsidies in agriculture, education, health, and the maintenance of the Public Distribution System. Operation Green Hunt seeks to open up mineral resources for appropriation and plunder. As
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per the Ministry of Mines, of the states that fall under the proposed area of operations of OGH, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Bengal alone account for 59% of the country’s mineral production. In the period 2006-09 environmental clearance was given to 120 projects, to either expand existing or to open new mines in the states of Jharkhand and Orissa alone. Almost all the major corporates on cement, iron and steel and energy have MOUs in the area. The Ministry of Rural Development’s own report, 'Unfinished Task of Land Reform' (2008) had noted that Tata and Essar had designs to acquire the large tracts of land cleared after the displacement of villages. These mineral rich areas are home to the poorest of the poor and have consequently yielded a wide range of movements – those rooted in adivasi history and culture as well as those inspired by Gandhian, Socialist, or Marxist ideologies. But increased demand in the international economy has impelled the government towards cauterising these areas from any kind of politics, to enable a smooth transfer of mineral extraction rights. Operation Green Hunt exposes the changes in the character of the state. Liberalisation has rendered the state incapable of meeting the aspirations of the less privileged sections of the society. It has therefore reworked structures of governance to dispense with public accountability: postliberalisation, the number of draconian laws passed has increased visibly – TADA, POTA, MCOCA, UAPA, etc. It has also led to corporatisation of the media to such an extent that the media only reflects the interests of the state-corporate nexus. Consequently, there has been very little objective coverage of the hostilities under OGH. In fact, the media has actively defended the state in the implementation of draconian laws such as the UAPA, the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, etc, as part of OGH. Operation Green Hunt also seeks to enhance the power of the state in other ways: by deploying troops, while circumventing periodic review, the government has claimed unfettered power, i.e. it has claimed impunity for all its acts of violence. Further, OGH seeks to restructure and centralise internal security apparatus, by making law and order and police a Central (rather than a State) subject. Over the last more than two decades several issues of state subject have been taken over by the centre: forests, roads, special assistance programmes, etc. These have made the Indian government more unitary and less federal than ever before. OGH, in the final analysis, is indicative of processes whereby centralisation of capital is being accompanied by centralisation of governance; together, this promises a devastating erosion of civil and democratic rights. In the light of this, we call upon all concerned citizens to come together and join the struggle for people’s rights to life, livelihood and resources. We demand: Immediate and complete withdrawal of military and paramilitary forces. Allow independent observers to visit the affected areas. Make public all MOUs concerned with natural resource extraction and industrial production between 2005-09. Please attend the following programmes: Public Meeting against State-Military Offensive on People's Lives & Resources: 6 April, 2009. 4.00 pm at Central Park C P. Independent People's Tribunal on Land Acquisition, Resource Grab and Operation Green Hunt: 9th to 11th April, Speakers Hall, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi. Cultural Event and March to Parliament: 26th-27th April, Mavlankar Auditorium, Rafi Marg, New Delhi. Speakers for the Public Meeting on the 6th include Mr. Surendra Mohan, Ms Seema Mustafa, Mr. Prashant Bhushan, Mr. Sumit Chakravarthy, etc. Delhi University Campaign against War on People Jawaharlal Nehru University Forum against War on People Forum against War on People Campaign against Genocide of Adivasis Citizens Initiative for Peace And others
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