Maoists hold up development in Bastar

DANTEWADA - The road to development has almost hit a dead end in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region with Maoist rebels holding up construction of rural roads and blowing up more than 200 school buildings, virtually bringing education in the region to a halt.

“Leftist insurgency has absolutely choked development in Bastar. Over 300 road projects under the central government’s Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) have been stuck due to Maoist terror,” Panchayat and Rural Development Minister Ramvichar Netam told IANS.

A senior official in the school education department referred to a recently compiled report and said: “Around 210 school buildings have been bombed and damaged in Bastar by rebels since 2007, which forced the department to relocate some of the schools near central paramilitary camps.”

He added: “Attendance of students dropped heavily as parents are reluctant to send their children to gun-guarded schools.”

The nearly 40,000-sq km restive Bastar region comprises five districts - Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Bastar and Kanker. Maoists haved been running a parallel government since the late 1980s in the interior of the region that has about 20 percent of the country’s total iron ore deposits.

“Normally contractors shy away from working in Bastar and those who bag orders for constructing roads in forested areas under the PMGSY pull out from the project purely due to Maoists. The situation is so alarming that not a single PMGSY road is completed in Bijapur district and just one out of the 50 PMGSY sanctioned roads is completed in Dantewada district,” the minister said.

The condition of schools seems to be more alarming in Bastar.

“The school education set-up has virtually been destroyed in the Bastar interiors, Maoists have bombed over 210 school buildings since 2007 after paramilitary men flooded Bastar for anti-Maoist operations and took shelter in schools in remote hamlets,” an education department source said.

He added that some 250,000 students have been denied access to school education since 2007 after Maoists made school buildings their prime targets.

“They (Maoists) have frightened teachers as well and they are unwilling to attend schools located at sites close to police stations or paramilitary camps,” the source added.

“School education and the life of children have been severely hit in Bastar’s interiors. In most areas where schools were bombed by the rebels, students are refusing to attend schools shifted to new locations because the Maoists consider it going against their dictates,” Raja Toram, a teacher based in the violence-hit Dornapal area of Dantewada district, some 500 km south of capital Raipur, told IANS.

Rajendra K. Sail, president of the Chhattisgarh unit of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), told IANS on phone: “Schools are being used in Chhattisgarh and other states by the government as shelters for paramilitary personnel for the anti-Maoists drive. Schools should never be used by forces because it will disrupt education and educational atmosphere.”

“Maoists are deliberately targeting school buildings and holding up rural road works in Chhattisgarh as they want to keep a vast Bastar population illiterate and away from the mainstream of development,” Anil Vibhakar, a media analyst, said.

He added: “It’s always easier to fool illiterate people and that’s what the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) is doing in Bastar to keep their movement alive.”

“The Maoists first blow up primary schools in forested hamlets and then forcibly recruit school students of the area into the Bal Sangham, a child unit of the outfit where recruitment starts at age six.”

However, Sail feels the government is also responsible for the lack of development in the region.

Sail said: “The Chhattisgarh government has failed to bring development to the state and accuse Maoists of holding up road projects and disrupting education, which is not correct. In fact, in areas where there is no Maoist problem, the Chhattisgarh government has totally failed to undertake development.”

Officials at the police headquarters in capital Raipur say some 1,600 people have been killed in Maoist violence in Bastar since 2005, including the massacre of 55 policemen in an overnight attack in Bijapur district in March 2007.

(Sujeet Kumar can be contacted at sujeet.k@ians.in)