Maoist Mistakes

What now that the district collector and a junior engineer have been released by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the Government of Orissa has accepted some of their demands? Neither the Maoist leadership nor those who are celebrating the episode are asking this question. If this is the way to achieve people’s demands, they should kidnap a bigger fish and demand the implementation of the “new democratic revolution” in return for the release.

What is likely to happen, as earlier experience has shown, is that the state will only intensify the extermination campaign against the Maoists and the adivasis who are accused of helping them. The state will also use this to suppress the mass movements going on in the state like the POSCO, Kalinganagar, Bhubaneswar Basti Suraksha movement, etc. The anarchists run away after an “action”, but it is the people and their movements which suffer because of them. The Maoists’ blasting of trains and abductions show that bereft of revolutionary ideas, without efforts to mobilise the people and without any effort to learnfrom past mistakes, the Maoists have deviated to the line of outfi ts like the LTTE and ULFA.