Operation Green Hunt
Delhi University Campaign against War on People
Selling India by the Pound: The Hidden Story behind Operation Green Hunt
Operation Green Hunt, launched in the second half of 2009 by the Centre, has resulted in a massive troop deployment in large parts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Some of these areas had already existing anti-Maoist operations: Grey Hounds (A.P.), Salwa Judum (Chhattisgarh), COBRA (Orissa) and the Lalgarh operations in West Bengal involving 5 companies of CRPF, 2 companies of COBRA and the Eastern Frontier Rifles. These paramilitary and special task forces operate along with the State police, and in the case of Operation Green Hunt are being assisted by the Indian Air Force.
Such massive deployment of troops in civilian areas by creating hysteria of internal threat is unjustified. Military solutions to problems that are economic and political in nature always fail. The North-Eastern States of India have suffered continuous troop deployment in civilian areas since the late 1940's. When the military was sent empowered with the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, there was only one armed movement led by the Naga National Council that operated in the Naga inhabited areas. Now after more than sixty years of troop deployment there are more than 100 armed groups covering almost every State of the North-East, precisely because the armed forces destroyed all available platforms and spaces to air public grievances, leaving armed movements as the only available option. Striking parallels with this can be seen in the ongoing Operation Green Hunt.
Resort to military solutions is thus a failed and discredited solution and yet the government seems determined to apply it indiscriminately and without restraints. An unprecedented offensive has been launched in civilian areas, targeting movements both violent and non-violent, Marxist or Gandhian, civil liberties and democratic rights groups, and alarmingly even defenceless villagers and Adivasis. According to reports more than 641 villages were destroyed in Chhattisgarh alone; in Lalgarh, police atrocities in the aftermath of the attempted attack on the Chief Minister's convoy created a reign of terror that left Adivasis with no options but to organise and fight back. Security forces attacked and destroyed Gandhian organisation Vanvasi Chetna Sangh in Chhattisgarh. In Orissa, people's movements to secure their rights to land and forest from corporates such as those in Kalinganagar, Kashipur, Narayanpatna, etc. are facing severe repression. Legal and non-violent civil liberties and democratic rights’ activists are also not spared. Dr. Binayak Sen, a paediatrician, whose services towards deprived sections of the society has received commendations, and an activist of the People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), was incarcerated on trumped up charges. More recently, some democratic rights organisations and activists were referred to as Maoist sympathisers in the charge-sheet of arrested Maoist leader Mr. Kobad Gandhi. The Supreme Court, in an ongoing case involving missing Adivasis in Chhattisgarh, asked the police to refrain from such 'innuendos'.
This repetition of a failed policy is the result of a subordinate insertion of the Indian state into the regime of globalisation. This has led to the retreat of the state from the social sector and effectively reduced it to an apparatus to open up labour, intellectual and natural resources for exploitation by national and international capital. Circumvention of labour laws through SEZs and police repression is routine. The Foreign Universities Bill, opening up of the energy sector, first electricity and now nuclear through the act to put a cap on liability on private suppliers, rocked the parliament. The imposition of 'New Agriculture” through floriculture, genetically modified crops, cultivation of exotic food items and new contractual farming by food packaging corporates, is undermining the food security of the country.
Operation Green Hunt seeks to open up mineral resources. As per the Ministry of Mines, of the States that fall under the proposed area of operations under the Operation Green Hunt, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Bengal alone account for 59% of the country’s mineral production. Bihar's contribution is small, but in the year 2008-09 its value of mineral production went up by 44.54%. In the period from 2006-09 environmental clearance was given to 120 projects to either expand existing or to open new mines in the States of Jharkhand and Orissa alone. Almost all the major corporations in cement, iron and steel, and energy have MOU's in the area. The draft report of the Ministry of Rural Development “Unfinished Task of Land Reform” (2008) had mentioned that Tata and Essar had designs to acquire the large tracts of land cleared after the displacement of villages. Unfortunately, for the corporates these mineral rich areas are also desperately poor and hence have been fertile ground for a wide range of movements both those rooted in the traditional Adivasi social and political processes, and those that are inspired by ideologies—Gandhian, Socialist, Marxist. Increased demand in the international economy has impelled the government to try and cauterise these areas from any kind of resistance politics to enable a smooth transfer of mineral extraction rights.
Operation Green Hunt exposes the changes in the character of the state. With liberalisation rendering the state incapable to meet the aspirations of the less privileged sections of the society, it has reworked structures of governance to dispense with public accountability. The state is rapidly expanding its powers at the expense of the citizens’ rights. Since Rajiv Gandhi initiated liberalisation, some 28 draconian laws such as TADA, POTA, UAPA, MACOCA, Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, etc. have been promulgated. Operation Green Hunt also seeks to enhance the powers of the state. By deploying troops, while circumventing periodic review, government has claimed unfettered power, i.e., it has claimed impunity. Such unfettered power proves costly to the life and rights of people as it happened in the North-East and J&K. The operation further seeks to restructure and centralise the internal security apparatus. Thus, there is a decisive shift of law and order and policing from being a State subject. Over the last more than two decades several State subjects have been taken over by the Centre: forest, roads, special assistance programmes, etc. These are portents of a shift towards an even more unitary form of government. Could this also be seen as a shift towards the Presidential form of government? Two PMs, Mrs. Indira Gandhi and Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had mooted the idea.
In the light of the above we demand:
- Immediate and complete withdrawal of military and paramilitary forces.
- Allow independent observers to visit the place.
- Make public all MOUs concerned with natural resource extraction and industrial production from 2005-09.
- Immediately initiate process of dialogue.
Please attend the following programmes
Public Meeting Against State-Military Offensive On People's Life & Resources
6 April, 2009. 4.00 pm at Central Park C. P.
Independent People's Tribunal on Land Acquisition, Resource Grab and Operation Green Hunt
9th to 11th April, Speakers Hall, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi.
Cultural Event and March to Parliament
26th-27th April, Mavlankar Auditorium, Rafi Marg, New Delhi.