Modi Transformation eliminating ‘Urban Naxals’

Union Minister for Home Amit Shah has shown by his actions that he is uncompromising when going after a target, and “Urban Naxals” have from the start of his tenure been on the list of “enemies of the state” needing to be eliminated. One by one, those identified as “Urban Naxals” have been uncovered and dealt with. It may be instructive to know a bit more than is commonplace about the phenomenon of Naxalism and its origins in India. It began as far back as 1967, and its leaders were Charu Mazumdar and Kanu Sanyal. They formed a political party, CPI (M-L) inspired by the way in which Mao Zedong had led a peasant army to take over China in 1949. Indeed, “China’s Chairman (Mao) our Chairman” was its motto.

India was, however, not China, and whatever redistribution of farmland took place from rich peasants to the poorer tillers of the soil proved enough to prevent “A single spark can light a prairie fire” (a favourite saying of Mao) from taking place. In West Bengal, the home of the founding fathers of the Naxalite movement, whether it was Chief Minister S.S. Ray of the Congress Party or Jyoti Basu of the CPM ruthlessly eliminated presumed Naxals, including in the state capital, Kolkata. The CPM in particular did not take kindly to the formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPIM-L), as it saw in the formation a nascent threat to their own Communist Party Marxist (CPM) and suppressed it with vigour.

Ultimately, Sanyal publicly recanted his earlier beliefs and said that democratic politics was an acceptable method of seeking change. Home Minister Amit Shah has succeeded in breaking up most of the splinter groups wedded to armed struggle as the only means that could assure political change. Within the CPM, Prakash Karat was of the same ideological vintage as the CPM leaders who blocked the suggestion made by the victorious opposition in 1977 after the Lok Sabha rout, which was that CPM leader Jyoti Basu should take over as Prime Minister. Finally, the mantle descended on Morarji Desai, who much before his term in office was forced to quit by dissident factions in the ruling Janata Party.

Charan Singh took over the job, until he was himself toppled by the withdrawal of support by the Congress Party. In the 1980 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress led by Indira Gandhi emerged with a comfortable majority. The far more coalitionfriendly Sitaram Yechury succeeded Prakash Karat, and the present national General Secretary of the CPM is the personable M.A. Baby, who comes from the only state where the CPM rules, Kerala. The 2029 Lok Sabha polls are far away, and given the personality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it will be an uphill task to unseat him from the high office he has thus far held for three consecutive terms and remains the favourite for a fourth. As far as “Urban Naxals” are concerned, the political trajectory of Kerala may be instructive.

The Naxalite movement fell apart in the 1970s, a collapse caused less by police action than from the boom in Gulf jobs after the rise in oil prices in 1973 from $4 to $16 per barrel in a few days, caused by the coming together of oil producing countries to ensure higher prices. Social media recently showed an image of a beautiful Himachali bride and her two husbands. One was dressed in traditional finery, the other in western attire. Since the Modi government came to power in 2014, villages in India have changed beyond imagination. Changes not just in states such as Gujarat or Maharashtra, but in what were once called the BIMARU states, UP, Bihar and other Hindi-speaking states that were for close on seven decades impervious to change.

Especially marked is the change in the attitude of women and the way menfolk deal with them. Young women can be seen going around in scooters driven by them, often with their brothers or other relatives riding pillion. They have ceased to be confined to housework and are working as insurance agents, or running small stores or such other occupations. Internet coverage has spread across practically every corner of India, including nowadays increasingly in rural areas. This has given them access to knowledge on a scale never heard of before. Husbands are increasingly supportive of their wives, instead of seeking to confine them to household work. Rather than just within India, village youths see other parts of the world as being possible for them to move to.

Institutes that teach the English language are recording full enrolment. Such changes have become irreversible, and among these is the network of roads that link the country, again developed on a scale never seen before. Modi 3.0 is on track to witness changes in tax and other policies, going by the truism that lower tax rates ensure greater compliance and therefore greater revenue. MPs are the hub of the mechanism by which policy frameworks get decided, and the time in Parliament needs to be spent on ways of making India still better. The primacy of Parliament and the honour of being an MP merit nothing less.

We should not forget the heroines and heroes powering the Modi Transformation. Across small towns and villages, what is changing is their long-held status of being part of a “problem” state. These are the young women and men of the country. They refuse to accept the status quo, and just as the country has changed, so do they wish to change. They are soaking in educational opportunities and the work opportunities that later come their way. For generations, families had to content themselves with what they, or more accurately, did not have. A drive for individual betterment is becoming pervasive across the country.

More and more are finding occupations outside their own state, where once the only opportunities they considered possible were within their own district. Change is riding on wings and accelerating before our eyes. Small wonder that predictions are being made by those who are assumed to know that the country is moving towards, and will enter in years, the superpower league.