Andhra Pradesh

Maoists to focus on urban centres

HYDERABAD: Maoists in the country are in a quandary. After a three-decade-long bloody revolutionary movement, the naxalites managed to acquire military capabilities that could challenge a State’s police force, but they could not extend their influence to urban centres.

The rebels carried out military actions in some urban centres displaying their prowess and their ability to carry out precision attacks. But their failure to rope in urban sections, especially the middle and working class and students, has caused concern to Maoist ideologues.

Though Maoist activity surfaced in major cities such as Chennai, Mumbai, Bhopal, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chandrapur, Nagpur, Rourkela and Hyderabad, it was confined to maintaining secret dens or arms-making units. The anonymity an urban area provided to its resident helped Maoists take shelter or even run arms-making units, but it did not help spread underground activity by mobilising people.

Police, however, busted Maoist shelters and weapon-making units in urban centres. The raiding of arms-making units in Bhopal and Rourkela, the rocket launcher-making centres in Chennai, and the arrests of top Maoist leaders in Mumbai recently exposed how difficult it was for Maoists to keep bases.

Mass organisations, with the covert support of Maoists, have launched a few agitations in urban centres. But, the Maoists have failed to extend their area of operation to industrial workers.

This ‘uneven’ growth of the revolutionary movement has been a contradiction. Maoist strategies enunciate area-wise seizure of power with the rebel control spreading from forest/rural areas to towns and then engulfing the urban areas. However, the trajectory of the revolutionary movement has not been along expected lines. While the movement strengthened itself in forest areas and in areas with a marked lack of governance, the urban centres have been unaffected. This aberration has been engaging the attention of the Maoist think tank. A meeting of the powerful Maoist Central Committee held in January this year extensively deliberated on this contradiction, according to a document made available to The Hindu.

The document said that the Central Committee formed a five-member Urban Sub-Committee (USCO) and entrusted it with the task of preparing an Urban Perspective document. The document was to be approved by the Polit Bureau later. The USCO has been asked to keep in focus past successes and failures in organising the workers of Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), Multi-National Companies (MNCs) and other organised sectors, contract and casual labour in unorganised sectors.

The Central Committee identified four core areas for concentration. “The coal mineral belt in and around areas of struggle in Eastern and Central India, the Golden Corridor (possibly Bihar to Singareni collieries belt), other industrial areas, Railways and the MCD workers (MCD might denote Municipal Corporation of Delhi, which employs a large number of sanitation workers).

The earlier Maoist ‘urban perspective’ also came in for discussion among the naxalite leadership. Differences in Karnataka led to a split in the party. The breakaway group’s emphasis was that more focus should be laid on urban areas. Though the Karnataka split was dubbed as a ‘minority section’ breaking off from the main revolutionary line, the Maoist party recently issued a 40-page document rebutting the ideological moorings of the splinter group. That showed how rattled the Maoist leadership was about the split.

This development, sources said, might have forced the Maoist Central Committee to re-examine its urban perspective and hence the formation of the USCO.

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