GIST

Am not a fan of armed struggle or terrorism. And I nearly hate essays by Arundhati Roy. This one was hard to ignore or hate though: Walking With The Comrades

It is hard to realistically align with Roy’s tactics of painting Maoists as angels. But then, she has a very valid question – what alternative should be advised to these people?

This vast population of poor people is caught between the Maoists (who is ill with a paranoia of establishments of all kind) and the government (which has people capable of erroneous decisions and corruption, to say the least) and corporates (who measure success only by money). It is hard to believe the amount they get paid for work, and easier to see why they get drawn to organisations like the Naxals. They had a strike to raise payment for a certain work from 3 paise to 10 paise, and the people not paying reasonable wages are multi-billion giants!

This is one part in the article, among many, that left me disturbed.

See Ma’am, frankly speaking this problem can’t be solved by us police or military. The problem with these tribals is they don’t understand greed. Unless they become greedy, there’s no hope for us. I have told my boss, remove the force and instead put a TV in every home. Everything will be automatically sorted out

This police officer’s sarcastic way of putting it gives a fair idea of what the conflict is.

Tagged as: politics