New Delhi policymakers do not need to go far to see that there is something wrong with their development model. While one part of the capital city witnesses a booming economy, there is a systematic assault on the city's poor. A pumped-up judiciary and insensitive executive together demolish 'illegal' slums; the working class is deprived of livelihood, dignity and social security, because labour laws in the unorganised sector are not enforced by the administration. If this is the pattern in New Delhi, where government planners at least have a need to make a show of working for equity, the injustice rampant in rural, semi-rural and urban India alike can only be imagined.
The inequity, economic distress and discrimination across the teeming metropolises and large swathes of rural India breed alienation, anger and violence. For long, this was dismissed by security and neoliberal hawks as too 'romantic' a vision of dissent. But this is the essence of the conclusion of a report released in late April by an expert group appointed by the Planning Commission of the Indian government, tasked with looking into the causes of discontent, unrest and extremism in the country. Perhaps for the first time, an official document pointedly states that the development model pursued since Independence has actually aggravated the restlessness among marginalised sections of India.
The report's conclusion is not new. What is striking is that the commission was composed of former intelligence officials and police chiefs, bureaucrats who have served in Naxalite areas, a human-rights activist, academics who have studied left extremism for decades, and citizens who have direct experience of negotiating with such groups. That people from such diverse professional backgrounds – who have often been at loggerheads in the past – could reach a consensus on the roots of rural violence is itself extraordinary.
Their consensus is that India is in deep trouble. The continuing discrimination against Dalits and Adivasis, the absence of any credit mechanism, and the weakening commitment to land reform, addressing displacement and a coherent forest policy – all have contributed to discontent. In turn, this is easily harnessed by politically extreme movements such as Naxalism. In particular, the report focuses on ten reasons for the growth of Naxalism, amongst them poverty, low literacy, high infant mortality, and low foodgrain production.