With the upsurge of Naxal activity, there has been a rethink on development and land reform programmes. Some efforts are being made, especially by the centre, to push the programmes in tribal belts. The perception that Maoist violence is not just a law and order issue is gaining ground.
The Errabore camp was set up in February to shelter tribals fleeing the Salwa Judum-Naxalite conflict. It had about 4,500 refugees packed into a little over a square kilometre. The numbers vary as people come and go. Many have moved to districts like Konta and Jagdalpur, or crossed over to Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.
The Chhattisgarh government has suspended Salwa Judum, launched as a people's awareness campaign to oppose naxalites, in the wake of the killing of several of its activists in Dantewada district and the spurt in naxalite attacks on civilians. The movement had become controversial after the exodus of tribal people from villages because of extremist.
DEEP in the jungles of Bastar, a few kilometres off the dirt track that runs between Bijapur and Gangalur, in the adivasi village of Irullipallan, it is almost noon. Marvinda and his family have just arrived from a refugee camp at Shevnaar, about 10 km away, to inspect the old, burnt remains of their home before cooking and eating lunch.
The iniquitous development agenda pursued by successive governments at the centre and the state has rendered several tribal groups in Orissa, who reside in some of the poorer, more inaccessible districts of the state, largely marginal to the governance process.
Burgeoning population and agricultural encroachment in the last half century have erected artificial walls within the Gond tribes. These ethnic groups, dominating the Bastar district, have little social or economic interchange today
Naxalism started as a movement against land alienation. Today it has become a popular movement against natural resource alienation, particularly forests. Large areas of densely forested regions in the country are controlled by Naxalites. In these
