Bullet Vs Ballot

The World’s largest democracy is in the danger of its survival after the recent strikes by the Naxalites in the wake of crackdown by security forces. India built on the ideology of socialism by Pandit Nehru has not only inclined towards the policies of Neo Liberalism but the gap between have and have-nots has increased to such an extent that a day will come that the word middle class will no longer exists in society.

A visit by any Expatriate to this country and he will be back by a varied experience where sitting in any IT office one can feel the ambience and aroma which can beat even Microsoft and on the other side tribal people are still lives unaware of the word INDIA.

Forced Land acquisitions, years of neglect and exploitation by the successive state governments has made these people to rage a civil war against their own country. Naxalites are not the Pakistani and Chinese intruding into our territories but common people who are fighting to save their own land from grabbing by the Govt. This war is not like LTTE which was ethnic but in similar to war in Nepal which was against corruption, nepotism, and exploitation by Ruling class.

There has been debate going on whether to deploy army and go for a major strike against Naxals. The deployment of Army will only worsen the situation as in case of J&K and North East. Army has been slapped with number of cases of violations of human rights. Army has refused to deploy its forces amid the fear of backlash by people and on the basis that they are not meant for internal security. The CRPF and police forces does not match the guerilla war tactics to defeat Naxalites. Barring the incident of derailing of passenger train in which 148 innocent people were killed; Naxalites have always targeted Police forces and thus escaped the outrage of people. This isolated incident has given the govt. a prerogative to divert the attention from the root cause of this conflict .The Government needs to realize that it is not a separatist movement but a war against poverty and marginalization which can be only won by providing relief and rehabilitation to the Naxalites affected people.

If India which boasts of resolving all issues through composite dialogues; then why is it resorting to go for a massive strike against naxals? What the state governments were doing all these years when the naxals were spreading their wings all over India?

The real fight between bullet and ballot has begun. Let’s see whether bullet prevails over ballot or successive governments sit on their laurels and let the ballots decide.