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June 2010

Volume 23, Number 6
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People's Tribunal
Deepankar Basu


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People's Tribunal

By Deepankar Basu
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Organized by a collective of civil society groups, social movements, progressive academics, social activists, and concerned citizens, the recent "Independent People's Tribunal (IPT) on Land Acquisition, Resource Grab, and Operation Green Hunt" offers a unique perspective into contemporary India. While national and international media talk profusely about the unprecedented growth of the Indian economy, as measured by the growth of the gross domestic product, it shies away from looking at the underlying costs of that growth, which include increasing inequality, forced displacement, growing social tensions, and a rapidly growing state terror. The IPT, by giving space to different activist voices from the grassroots, offered a much needed alternative perspective.

From April 9 to April 11 (in New Delhi), the IPT heard accounts of diverse grassroots activists from the states of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal, and Jharkhand—the theater of an insidious war, nicknamed Operation Green Hunt, that the Indian State has launched against its own people. Supplementing activist accounts and witness testimonies with critical insights and advice from social scientists, journalists, legal experts, former government functionaries, and human rights activists, the peoples' jury of the IPT made recommendations—the most urgent of which was to stop Operation Green Hunt and initiate a dialogue with those living in the affected areas. Other recommendations included:

  • immediately stop all compulsory acquisition of agricultural or forest land and the forced displacement of the tribal people
  • make the details of all the memorandum of understanding (MOUs) signed for mining, mineral, and power projects known to the public
  • stop victimizing and harassing dissenters
  • withdraw all paramilitary and police forces from schools and hospitals
  • constitute an Empowered Citizen's Commission to investigate and recommend action against persons responsible for human rights violations of tribal communities

The Context

Why has the Indian State launched Operation Green Hunt? To address this question, we need to look at the political economy of contemporary India. The neoliberal turn in the economic policies pursued by the Indian State since the mid-1980s has, in line with similar experiences in the rest of the world, spelled unmitigated disaster for the vast masses of the country. While a small section of the population has increased its wealth to preposterous levels, the majority of the population has continued to live in absolute poverty, marked by widespread hunger, malnutrition, and lack of access to even the most basic health and educational infrastructure necessary to guarantee a decent standard of living.

In 2009, India had 52 billionaires, about double the corresponding number in 2007. The wealthiest Indian, Mukesh Ambani, has a net worth of $32 billion; the combined net worth of the richest 100 Indians in 2009 was $276 billion. On the other side of the social pyramid, about 77 percent of Indians spent less than $2 per person on daily consumption in 2004-05 and roughly 80 percent of households did not have access to safe drinking water.

Not only has the neoliberal economic paradigm meant increasing disparities, it has been defined by unprecedented levels of state-assisted resource grabs by Indian and foreign capital—what a Ministry of Rural Development report termed the biggest resource grab since Columbus "discovered" America. This has gradually encompassed arable (often extremely fertile and multi-cropped) land, forests, mineral resources, and water.

The current phase of this unprecedented resource grab has been concentrated primarily in the forested regions of Central India, stretching from Chhattisgarh to Jharkhand and West Bengal, which contain enormous amounts of mineral resources like iron ore and bauxite. Big corporations with interests in mining, minerals, and power industries—like Tata, Essar, Vedanta, POSCO, and others—have lined up to appropriate these resources for quick economic gain, paying little attention to the environmental and human costs inherent in their ventures. State governments have welcomed these corporations with open arms by signing unknown numbers of memorandum of understandings, whose details have not been made public, despite repeated requests by activists and the local population.

The forested regions of Central Indian are also home to a large section of the roughly 100 million indigenous people, referred to as adivasis. To get at the resources there, the tribal population needed to be moved. In Chattisgarh, according to some reports, 300,000 adivasis have already been forcibly displaced—some have moved into the bordering state of Andhra Pradesh and some have fled into the forests.

The adivasi population, quite naturally, have resisted, using all possible means at their disposal. Drawing on the Indian Constitution, which lays out special provisions for their protection and endogenous development, adivasi activists have attempted to challenge the government. Instead of addressing the genuine grievances of an indigenous population facing forcible displacement and dispossession, the state has, in flagrant violation of the letter and intent of the Indian Constitution, cracked down on their legitimate protests. Peaceful resistance movements across the region have been met with police brutality and military might, forcing armed resistance. State-assisted vigilante groups, like the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh and Harmad Bahini in West Bengal, were the state response to the adivasis' armed resistance. When that failed, Operation Green Hunt took shape.

What is the Message?

Mindful of this ominous context and, after hearing the testimonies of participants from various corners of the country, the people's tribunal jury made their recommendation of stopping Operation Green Hunt and the compulsory acquisition of agricultural or forested land, making details of all MOUs public, and rehabilitating all displaced adivasis.

All the presentations, though differing in details, drew attention to two related facts. First, that the current process of growth and "development" in India rests crucially on the forced displacement and dispossession of a sizable section of the indigenous population and peasantry. Second, any and every resistance to this state-assisted displacement has been met with military force. Forced dislocation and dispossession, systematic violations of rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and an attack on any form of dissent that challenges State policies are the festering wounds on the underbelly of the current phase of Indian "development." This is what the tribunal wanted to expose to those enamored with India's "economic growth."

Will the Indian government heed the advice of the IPT? After all, People's Tribunals are regularly organized the world over to highlight important social, economic, and political issues that affect peoples' lives. But, given the negative attitude of the government in dealing with dissent of any kind, it is doubtful that it will heed the advice of the Independent People's Tribunal and call off its war on tribal people. If so, then it must take note that the IPT ended its interim observations with: "Even peaceful activists opposing these violent actions of the State against the tribals are being targeted by the State and victimized. This has led to a total alienation of the people from the State as well as their loss of faith in the government and the security forces. The government must realize that its actions could very well be sowing the seeds of a violent revolution demanding justice and rule of law that would engulf the entire country. We should not forget the French, Russian and American history, leave aside our own."

Z

Deepankar Basu is assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Thanks to Partho Sarathi Ray and Pinaki Chaudhury for comments on an earlier version of this article.

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