Why are there naxalites?

I so wanted to write on this issue of Maoists and finally I am trying to pen down my thoughts on this issue. Our perception to many things is due to media. It is the news, debates, pictures shown to us etc, make our perception towards any subject. Maoists are termed as greatest concern for India’s security by our PM Manmohan Singh. Very often, in a week or so, we come across some news of violence in which CRPF Jawans killed, trains derailed and many horrifying pictures. When ‘Maoist’ term come to our mind; we kind of picture terrorists and violence.


I shall quote here some facts about Maoists and their activities:

1. They are spread across 8 states with estimated 2 lakh supporter and 10,000 armed men. They are confined to the tribal belt. This graph shows Maoists affected areas: map1 and this graph shows India’s mineral belt: map2


2. India doesn’t even have a full-scale survey on its mining resources. Illegal mining in India is wide-spread as concluded by Lokayukta reports. They have citied many reports where mining contracts have been granted to relatives of politicians. India has opened mining sector for foreign companies even including 100% FDI for many minerals including Titanium.


3. Maoist is someone who follows ideology of Mao Zedong, who based his teachings on the theories of Marx. One of the theories proposed by Marx was that, “There will always be a class struggle when rich class dominates poor class”. The first graph clearly shows Maoists being spread across the areas which are not so developed and majorly tribal areas.


Now, let us try to correlate these facts, Tribal areas in India are rich in minerals -> there has been wide-spread illegal mining-> though being rich in minerals, people in these areas are poor. So, we can clearly see indications of class struggle in this area where rich (politicians, corporate etc. ) dominating these areas and lower class people still being poor.


Coming back to ‘media’, I have always heard of brutality of Maosits. There have been allegations that media is being paid to portray only violent activites by Maoists and ‘not’ the problems faced by people in that region. I have not seen any media person surveyed that region. Activists like Arundhati Roy's views are never given hype by our media.


So, I believe government of India should take care of problems in tribal belt rather than sending more CRPF Jawans.


Note: I do not support violence and hence Naxalites’ activites. I do not mean to offend anyone and would love to debate about your point of view.