Last week, a 50-km road reached Kandagaon in Bastar district of Chhattisgarh. Health workers, teachers and business people can now reach Narayanpur, headquarters of the adjacent district?part of the no-go zone ?administered? by the Naxalites?during daytime, robbing the fear factor from the journey. This was the reason the Naxalites were willing to do anything to stop the road from being built, repeatedly threatening its contractor Sharat Rao from Andhra Pradesh, said Manoj Kumar Pingua, divisional commissioner of Bastar.
Chhattisgarh is using roads to fight the Naxals, said Pingua. The strategy is an adoption of the classical economics dictum of using access to markets to break a monopoly and its attendant ills. The Naxals too realise that. State Highway No. 5 is the first of a stretch of roads that will criss-cross an area of 39,060 hectares, which has just a single-line railway and no airport. Since a good road network makes policing the area easier, state chief minister Raman Singh on May 31 signed an order giving district collectors the authority to build roads if a contractor delays the project or if a tender gets no response.
To build each road through the dense forests, the state has to ring-fence the labourers with police. TJ Longkumer, inspector general of police in Bastar said each kilometre of road needs one company of police to guard them. On occasions, when there is advance information of a Naxalite strike, ?we have to give an off-day to the labourers, while the police sanitise the area,? he said.
Chhattisgarh is building another 200 km of road, through the sal forests of Dantewada district. ?In the last one year, we have tarred about 140 km of this,? said Pingua. Driving through part of the NH-16 to the district capital, the incessant flow of traffic tells you why the Naxals don?t like metalled roads, as they make the tribal aware of the world outside and the chances of making it good there.
Sipping tea, Pran Kumar Sethia, an educated tribal who drives a cab talks about the new state highway: ?The road makes you feel something is happening?. He is pointing to the perception of an end to the long-drawn war, which has taken a heavy toll on them. Perceptions do matter in this strategic game. Government statistics show that by 2009, it has increased road length per 100 sq km to 21.4 from 17.7 when it was bifurcated from Madhya Pradesh in 2001.
Chief secretary P Joy Oommen underlines the role of the road in fighting the Naxals. He observes that the Naxals might not interfere even in the no-go areas when the state offers rice and wheat through the public distribution system or provides health care. But roads are a big no-no. ?The central government has provided about Rs 570 crore for areas affected by left-wing extremism; plus, the state has also provided about Rs 100 crore for the purpose,? he says.
In Sarguja in northern Chhattisgarh, the Naxals have been decimated by this very instrument. The new roads helped erstwhile Bangladesh refugees and settlers in the area create a thriving trade in vegetables here. Abdul Sakeen informs me that a little less than a decade ago, the area?s staple was rice and ?fata??mildewed potatoes. Now, the area now boasts of six cold storages.
PN Tiwary, IG Police at Sarguja range, the tip of the state surrounded by Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, says he has to deal only with splinter groups. ?This morning, a tendu leaf transporter reported his truck load was burnt. But (individuals) are willing to make a compromise; so, no group has been named the culprit?.
According to Tiwary, the Naxals here have been reduced to low-intensity extortion gangs operating for ransoms. ?We do not get complaints and that?s fine.? Till about a couple of years ago, the district was racked by Naxal attacks which often targeted bauxite consignments for the Balco unit at Korba and Hindalco?s unit across the state at Renukoot. The profusion of towns in the region and the possibilities of making an easy killing by joining hands with the coal mafia have instead made the Naxal an entrepreneur.
