Chhattisgarh offers Congress a chance to show if it cares about adivasis

In its manifesto, the Congress has promised to raise the prices of forest produce, to implement the Forest Rights Act 2006 and the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation Act (LARR) 2013.

After 15 years of repression, misrule and loot of Chhattisgarh’s natural resources, the defeat of Raman Singh’s BJP government offers a historic opportunity for the state. In voting so decisively for the Congress, the people have not just unseated an incumbent, but signalled the kind of change they want.

Some of these aspirations are presaged in the Congress’s manifesto, prepared, we are told, after extensive consultations with different sections of society.Apart from the farm loan waiver, increased minimum support prices and unemployment allowance, an emphasis on quality healthcare and education seem to be priorities for people, and the Congress would be wise to treat these as its priorities too.

But where the Congress has the chance to be really transformative is in how it addresses the Naxalite conflict. This is Rahul Gandhi’s litmus test to show if he and his party care about India’s adivasis.

If the Congress initiates talks with the Maoists, as they say in point 22 of their manifesto, they will have the full support of the people of Bastar. Far from “teaching Congress a lesson for supporting urban Maoists”, as Modi repeatedly said on the campaign trail, the people of the region have given the Congress 11 out of 12 seats. There are indications in this win – for instance, the fact that they allowed Congress candidates to campaign in interior villages – that the Maoists too are ready for some kind of talks. They would be colossally foolish to give up an opportunity for a negotiated peace.

But equally important, a foundation must be built for such talks to succeed, and this can only be built on the basis of justice. ‘Development’ is no substitute for justice; both are rights but in different spheres and cannot be traded off against each other.

It is perhaps divine providence that the Delhi high court judgment on Sajjan Kumar came on the same day as the swearing in of the new Congress governments. Even though the party failed the test of justice in Madhya Pradesh by appointing Kamal Nath as chief minister, it has a chance in Chhattisgarh to redress its own historic wrongs.

Mahendra Karma, the Congress leader who was the local face of the BJP-backed Salwa Judum movement is no longer around to haunt the Congress. But the legacy of entire villages burnt, rape survivors, and children whose parents were brutally killed under the banner of Salwa Judum will continue to dog the footsteps of both the Congress and the BJP.

In a country where violence piles up on violence and every part of the country is torn and bleeding due to its own history of pogroms and massacres, it is easy to forget. Let me therefore quote from just one fact-finding report of December 2007, by Shanta Sinha, then the chairperson of the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, J.M. Lyngdoh (former CEC) and Venkat Reddy:

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