Comments on Haq's Musings: India Deploys 100,000 Troops Against Maoists Revol...

Here's Ravi Rikhye, editor of Orbat, criticizing I...

2010-03-15T11:14:17.898-07:00

Here's Ravi Rikhye, editor of Orbat, criticizing Indian home minister's boast about defeating Maoists in three years:

We told you speaking first thinking later is not just a Pakistani trait but is a subcontinental trait. Now the Indian Home Minister has announced that the Maoists, who are active in one-third of India's districts (counties) will be defeated in three years. What's so sad about this amazingly stupid statement is that the Minister is actually quite a brainy fellow and an effective administrator. The Maoist problem has plagued India for 40 years, and a lot of it tied up with social injustice. Its absurd to think its going to solved in three years when India has not been able to defeat straightforward secessionist insurgencies in its northeast for 40 years.

for more details refer http://thebiggestlandgrabaf...

2010-03-14T11:58:45.655-07:00

for more details refer http://thebiggestlandgrabaftercolumbus.blogspot.com/2010/03/biggest-land-grab-after-columbus.html

Here's Maoist leader Kishenji threatening to overt...

2010-03-06T10:26:34.472-08:00

Here's Maoist leader Kishenji threatening to overthrow Indian government "much before 2050", according to Times of India:

Tags:G K Pillai|Koteswar Rao|Kishenji
KOLKATA
: A day after Union Home Secretary G K Pillai said Maoists had plans to overthrow the Indian state by 2050, top Naxal leader Koteswar Rao alias Kishenji tonight claimed it would be achieved much before that date.

"We will overthrow the Indian government much before 2050," Kishenji said from an undisclosed location.

He claimed the Maoists had their own army with the help of which it would overthrow the Indian state much before 2050.

He said the Maoists had offered a 72-day peace offer and "the question of regrouping does not arise. (Union Home minister P) Chidambaram is trying to divert the attention of the people from the real problem."

He said it was for the Centre to act on the peace offer. "We are fully prepared for a long-term revolution against the government and so we don't need any specific time to restructure ourselves."

On Pillai's contention yesterday that some ex-army personnel were helping Maoists, he said "we don't need the support of any army man. For the last 30 years, we know the type of war we do better than any military officer."

Reiterating that the repeated offer of talks by the Maoists had been turned down, Kishenji said "we have repeatedly offered talks to the government but it has been turned down."

Claiming that innocent people were being killed in the name of tackling Maoists, he said "we are trying to save them from state-sponsored terrorism."

He also denied West Bengal Director General of Police Bhupinder Singh's claim that arrested Maoist leader Telegu Dipak had links with ULFA and Kashmir militants.

"A lot of rumours are being spread deliberately about the arrest of Telugu Deepak. He does not have any connection with any terrorist organisation."

He said Deepak was not a member of the Maoist military commission as the ultras did not have any such organisation. "We have only a state committee, central committee and politburo."

Dipak, he said, was only a state committee member who was in charge of Nandigram.

Indian home secretary Gopal Pillai says Maoists wa...

2010-03-05T08:26:17.259-08:00

Indian home secretary Gopal Pillai says Maoists want to overthrow Indian by 2050, according to Times of India:

NEW DELHI
: Maoists have plans to overthrow the Indian democracy through their armed struggle and want to control the government by 2050, home secretary Gopal K Pillai on Friday said.

Addressing a seminar on "Left Wing Extremism Situation in India", Pillai said the Maoists might be getting the help of some former soldiers in carrying out subversive activities.

"The overthrow of the Indian state is not something they are willing to do tomorrow or the day after. Their strategy, according to a booklet they circulated, is that they are looking for at 2050, some documents say in 2060," he said.

According to Pillai, Naxals were not looking at to overthrow the Indian state in 2012 or 2013, it was a long steady plan and in the past 10 years they slowly build up the movement.

"Now they can bring many sectors of Indian economy into their knees. But they don't want to do it today. They know that if they do that now, the state will come very hard. They are not fully prepared to face the onslaught of the state machinery. So, they would rather go very slowly," he said.

The home secretary said the Maoists were a very highly motivated and well trained force like any armed force of any country and they could be help by some ex-army personnel.

"They are very highly motivated, highly trained. I am quite certain that there are some, may be some ex-army or some people who have been with them," he said.

Giving reason for this conclusion, Pillai said after launching any attack, the Naxals conduct a post-mortem and analyse the whole operation.

"After every attack, they do a post-mortem and analysis. The analysis is as good as armed forces of any country does," he said.

The home secretary said 908 people have lost their lives last year, the highest since 1971, in Naxal violence and it may go up in this year and next year become coming down.

"It is quite like that the violence will go up in 2010 or 2011 before the tide is begin to turn," he said.

According to Pillai, even though the joint anti-Naxal operations were going on, the Naxals have not suffered any significant reverses so far and the government would need seven to eight years to have full control over the areas which were lost to the Maoists.

"The operations have not hit even five per cent of hardcore militants. The real armed cadres are yet to come out," he said, adding unless they feel the heat they will not come for talks and whatever statement they were making about peace were not serious.

Here's part of a personal story about Maoists in J...

2010-03-02T18:29:52.130-08:00

Here's part of a personal story about Maoists in Jharkhand by a Newsweek reporter Sudip Mazumdar:

The Maoists finally got word that I wanted to talk. It was well past midnight when my mobile phone rang. The caller gave no name and spoke in a local Hindi dialect that I understand and speak well. He gave a little speech about "establishing a classless society." Before he could hang up, I asked him why the Maoists terrorize ordinary people. He denied harassing "the poor and the powerless." End of phone call.

It would have been nice if he had conveyed that message to the gang of Maoists who raided the house of a former village headman a few days earlier near Gaya, in the neighboring state of Bihar. The man and his son happened to be away from home when it happened, visiting a nearby village. Someone rushed to warn them that a company of Maoists had been spotted heading for their home village, and the son called the police immediately. The Maoists rolled into the village unchallenged and looted the house. Then they ordered the women out, dynamited the place to rubble and melted back into the countryside. The district police chief later claimed that a team of police was sent to the scene. Villagers said the cops showed up nearly 15 hours after the raiders left.

A few days later, nearly 100 Maoists swarmed into a village near the Jharkhand town of Hazaribagh in the dead of night. They seized a schoolteacher and dragged him away despite his wife's entreaties, accusing him of being a police informer. They tied him to a tree and tortured him to death.

The more horror stories I heard, the harder it was to understand how any government could tolerate such atrocities against its people. I decided to call on the deputy commissioner of Dhanbad district. A computer-science graduate from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Ajay Kumar Singh is the man in charge of both district development and law and order in Dhanbad. He's an earnest young man who lives in a well-guarded bungalow with a manicured lawn in the heart of the city. Singh blames the state's crushing poverty for the Maoists' influence. "It is a Catch-22 situation," he says. "There are no roads, so there is hardly any development. And when we go to build roads, the Maoists attack and destroy all efforts, because roads will expose their hideouts." Besides, he says, the state's officials don't live in the impoverished villages and therefore they have no stake in developing the backcountry areas.

For a senior government functionary, Singh is unusually candid. He's convinced that the Maoists couldn't prevent development if the politicians considered it important. "Human beings have built tunnels under the sea," he says. "Obviously we can build roads into remote villages." It's not as if the Maoist leaders were committed revolutionaries, he says; many of them are only hoodlums who use villagers as hostages and human shields. They keep the ill-paid local cops terrorized by attacking them with overwhelming force and no warning.

I asked Singh what happens when people get extortion threats. Most pay up, he said. The state can't provide armed guards for everyone who needs one. I didn't have the stomach to ask about people who don't pay. It was getting dark outside the bungalow. I asked Singh if I'd be OK driving to Giridih, about 40 miles away through some desolate stretches of forest. Wait until morning, he said. I walked out of Singh's bungalow into the dark streets. Until India's government gets serious about stopping the Maoists, I have no answer for my sister and her husband.

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/195669

War on terror has degenerated into war against tri...

2010-03-02T08:28:32.203-08:00

War on terror has degenerated into war against tribals: Prashant Bhushan published in the Hindu:

“For every 100 Maoists eliminated, thousands more are created”

“Suppression of dissent is fascist and will escalate into civil war”

NEW DELHI: Human rights activists, journalists and fact-finding
committees were being targeted to intimidate them so that there could
be no dissenting voices against the State’s alleged war on terror,
which had degenerated into a war against the tribals, advocate
Prashant Bhushan alleged here over the week-end.

He was speaking at a press conference held to protest against the
alleged labelling of civil rights groups and peoples’ movements as
Maoist front organisations.

Charge-sheet against Ghandy

Reading from the charge-sheet filed against Maoist leader Kobad Ghandy
by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police, Mr. Bhushan said: “Their
other front organisations like Revolutionary Democratic Front,
People’s Democratic Front of India, Committee for Release of Political
Prisoners, Indian Association of People’s Lawyers took up the issues
of human rights violation, civil liberties, atrocities by the police…
Other civil liberties and human rights organisations i.e. People’s
Union for Democratic Rights, People’s Union for Civil Liberties
(PUCL), Association for Protection of Democratic Rights also take up
the issues of their outfit — CPI (Maoist). These organisations play a
very important role to broaden the base of the outfit.”

People, who expressed sympathy with human rights activists or exposed
and criticised government actions, were accused of being front
organisations of the Maoists, he added.

Tribals harassed

Mr. Bhushan said: “The government has done little for the tribals and
now they are trying to snatch their land. When tribals agitate
peacefully, the State security forces descend on them, harass them and
burn their villages.

“About 700 villages have been burnt in the past two years in
Chhattisgarh. People are bound to protest and take up arms. For every
100 Maoists eliminated, thousands are created through collateral
damage.”

The country was turning into a fascist State through suppression of
dissent and this would lead to an escalating state of violence
resulting in civil war, he added.

Talks favoured

Stressing that the State could not use illegal means to curb violence,
retired Justice Rajinder Sachar said: “The State cannot be a
terrorist. It is the ultimate repository of law and order.

"Talks should happen between the government and the Maoists in an open
atmosphere where there is no fear. Both sides should cease hostilities
for dialogue to take place. The Maoist representative should be
granted immunity for the period of talks. In case the talks fail, both
sides should be able to return to their respective areas.”

To approach court

“PUCL will go to court to remove its name from the charge-sheet,” he
added.

Concurring that the government and Maoists should have talks amid a
ceasefire, writer Arundhati Roy said: “Fight for civil liberties,
prisoners’ rights and mere thoughts are being criminalised. If those
who support human rights activists in their struggle are considered
front organisations of the Maoists, by the same argument the Home
Ministry too should be considered the over ground representatives of
big corporations.”

Here's an opinion arguing that India is a failed s...

2010-02-20T22:48:16.816-08:00

Here's an opinion arguing that India is a failed state:

Inspite of the fact that India has been living on the old crumbs of outsourcing for the last 10 years the situation has hardly improved in the cities and villages of India. The poverty in India is reaching its new hieghts with every passing day. Thousands and thousands of people commit suicide every year just because they either don't have enough to eat or they simply can't feed their children/family. The Socialistic economic system in India has suddenly been changed to capitalistic one but trickle down effect has hardly taken effect. The whole nation is facing terrorism from left right and center. 25% of the country (areawise) has no writ of the state as MAOISTS (Communists) have demolished the capitalistic structure in many districts of India. They have their own laws and their own courts. There are at least 10 insurgency movements in India starting from Kashmir in the east to the whole of North East which has 6 or 7 states. Indian Govt. seems helpless.

Here's a recent BBC report on increasing Maoists v...

2010-02-15T21:21:50.911-08:00

Here's a recent BBC report on increasing Maoists violence:

At least 21 troops were killed when armed Maoists attacked a camp of the paramilitary forces in India's West Bengal state, officials said.

Nearly 50 rebels on motorcycles encircled the camp of the Eastern Frontier Rifles (ERF) at Silda village on Monday and started firing on it.

More fighters joined the assault on foot, firing from automatic weapons.

More than 6,000 people have died during the rebels' 20-year fight for communist rule in many Indian states.

The Indian government recently began a major offensive against the rebels in several states.

Indian Prime minister Manmohan Singh has described the Maoist insurgency as India's "greatest internal security challenge".

The rebels now have a presence in 223 of India's 600-odd districts.

Landmines

The camp was overrun by the Maoists after the troops put up brief initial resistance, district magistrate of West Midnapore district NS Nigam told the BBC.

"The Maoists then burnt down the camp and planted landmines on the entire length of the road leading to the camp. Reinforcements with night vision and anti-landmine vehicles reached the camp late at night," Mr Nigam said.

At least 21 bodies have been recovered from in and around the camp and some of them are badly charred, he said.

The BBC is reporting that the Church of England h...

2010-02-05T17:58:21.510-08:00

The BBC is reporting that the Church of England has pulled its investments from India mining company Vedanta after criticism of its Orissa bauxite project:

The decision has been welcomed by campaigning groups including Survival International (SI) which has been lobbying the church to disinvest from Vedanta for more than a year.

SI says that the bauxite mine will destroy a large part of the Niyamgiri Mountain in Orissa, damaging the lives of Kondh tribes people who live in the area.

Needs 'ignored'

Vedanta has been accused of forcing tribal people off the land, damaging the environment and destroying wildlife.

No-one from the company was available to comment on the decision of the church.

But last year Vedanta argued that it had the support of the Orissa state government and the Indian judiciary - and that before it went ahead with the project it consulted exhaustively to assess its environmental and social impact.

The company accused campaigning groups of focusing their objections solely on the concerns of the tribal community and ignoring the needs of other people in the area for jobs and improvements in education and healthcare.

Here's a recent piece by Arundhati Roy about India...

2010-02-04T08:52:53.021-08:00

Here's a recent piece by Arundhati Roy about India's war against Maoists:

"The government has announced Operation Green Hunt, a war purportedly against the "Maoist" rebels headquartered in the jungles of central India. Of course, the Maoists are by no means the only ones rebelling. There is a whole spectrum of struggles all over the country that people are engaged in–the landless, the Dalits, the homeless, workers, peasants, weavers. They're pitted against a juggernaut of injustices, including policies that allow a wholesale corporate takeover of people's land and resources. However, it is the Maoists that the government has singled out as being the biggest threat.

Two years ago, when things were nowhere near as bad as they are now, the prime minister described the Maoists as the "single largest internal security threat" to the country. This will probably go down as the most popular and often repeated thing he ever said. For some reason, the comment he made on 6 January, 2009, at a meeting of state chief ministers, when he described the Maoists as having only "modest capabilities", doesn't seem to have had the same raw appeal. He revealed his government's real concern on 18 June, 2009, when he told parliament: "If left-wing extremism continues to flourish in parts which have natural resources of minerals, the climate for investment would certainly be affected."

Right now in central India, the Maoists' guerrilla army is made up almost entirely of desperately poor tribal people living in conditions of such chronic hunger that it verges on famine of the kind we only associate with sub-Saharan Africa. They are people who, even after 60 years of India's so-called independence, have not had access to education, healthcare or legal redress. They are people who have been mercilessly exploited for decades, consistently cheated by small businessmen and moneylenders, the women raped as a matter of right by police and forest department personnel. Their journey back to a semblance of dignity is due in large part to the Maoist cadre who have lived and worked and fought by their side for decades.

If the tribals have taken up arms, they have done so because a government which has given them nothing but violence and neglect now wants to snatch away the last thing they have – their land. Clearly, they do not believe the government when it says it only wants to "develop" their region. Clearly, they do not believe that the roads as wide and flat as aircraft runways that are being built through their forests in Dantewada by the National Mineral Development Corporation are being built for them to walk their children to school on. They believe that if they do not fight for their land, they will be annihilated. That is why they have taken up arms."

Here's an LA Times report on the vicious cycle of ...

2009-12-13T09:07:50.912-08:00

Here's an LA Times report on the vicious cycle of poverty in rural India:

India has long been plagued by unscrupulous moneylenders who exploit impoverished farmers. But with crops failing more frequently, farmers are left even more desperate and vulnerable.

Reporting from Jhansi, India - She stops for long stretches, lost in thought, trying to make sense of how she's been left half a person.

Sunita, 18, who requested that her family name not be used to preserve her chance of getting married, said her nightmare started in early 2007 after her father took a loan for her sister's wedding. The local moneylender charged 60% annual interest.

When the family was unable to make the exorbitant interest payments, she said, the moneylender forced himself on her, not once or twice but repeatedly over many months.

"I used to cry a lot and became a living corpse," she said.

Sunita's allegations, which the moneylender denies, cast a harsh light on widespread abuses in rural India, where a highly bureaucratic banking system, corruption and widespread illiteracy allow unethical people with extra income to exploit poor villagers, activists say.

But here in the Bundelkhand region in central India that is among the nation's more impoverished areas, the problem is exacerbated by climate change and environmental mismanagement, they say, suggesting that ecological degradation and global warming are changing human life in more ways than just elevated sea levels and melting glaciers.

"Before, a bad year would lead to a good year," said Bharat Dogra, a fellow at New Delhi's Institute of Social Sciences specializing in the Bundelkhand region. "Now climate change is giving us seven or eight bad years in a row, putting local people deeper and deeper in debt. I expect the situation will only get worse."

An estimated 200,000 Indian farmers have ended their lives since 1997, including many in this area, largely because of debt.

A 2007 study of 13 Bundelkhand villages found that up to 45% of farming families had forfeited their land, and in extreme cases some were forced into indentured servitude. Tractor companies, land mafia and bankers routinely collude, encouraging farmers to take loans they can't afford, a 2008 report by India's Supreme Court found, knowing they'll default and be forced to sell their land.

"While a few people borrow for social status or a desire to buy a new motorcycle, in most cases it's for sheer survival," Dogra said. "When they see their children starving after several years of crop failures, many feel they have no choice."

Recent amendments to a 1976 law in Uttar Pradesh state have increased the maximum punishment for unauthorized money-lending to three years in jail, up from six months, but many loan sharks are well-connected and elude prosecution. The law specifies that lenders must obtain a state license, but the requirements for obtaining it can be vague, a situation that critics say gives bureaucrats significant leeway to enact arbitrary rules and exact questionable fees.

"I take occasional loans when we're desperate," says Jhagdu, 50, a farmer in Barora, 60 miles south of Jhansi, sitting on his haunches with teeth stained red from chewing betel nut. "When there's no rain, like now, you can't repay for a year, so the amounts can double."

Here is a report in the Indian media with an India...

2009-12-12T09:34:26.698-08:00

Here is a report in the Indian media with an Indian official Syeda Hameed admitting that India is doing worse than Pakistan and Bangladesh on nutrition:

New Delhi, July 2 (IANS) India is worse than Bangladesh and Pakistan when it comes to nourishment and is showing little improvement in the area despite big money being spent on it, says Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed.

'There has been an enormous infusion of funds. But the National Family Health Survey gives a different story on malnourishment in the country. We don't know, something is just not clicking,' Hameed said.

Speaking at a conference on 'Malnutrition an emergency: what it costs the nation', she said even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during interactions with the Planning Commission has described malnourishment as the 'blackest mark'.

'I should not compare. But countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are better,' she said. The conference was organised Monday by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Ministry of Development of Northeastern Region.

According to India's National Family Health Survey, almost 46 percent of children under the age of three are undernourished - an improvement of just one percent in the last seven years. This is only a shade better than Sub-Saharan Africa where about 35 percent of children are malnourished.

Hameed said the government's Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme, which is a flagship programme to improve the health of women and children, had not shown results despite a lot of money being spent on it in the past few years.

'We have not been successful in improving the status of health of our women and children,' she added.

The annual budget for women and child development (WCD) ministry in 2008-9 is Rs.72 billion. Of this, Rs.63 billion is for ICDS.

According to Unicef, every year 2.1 million children in India die before celebrating their fifth birthday. While malnutrition is the primary reason behind it, other factors like lack of health facilities, hygiene and good nutrition compound the problem.

Narrating her experiences while travelling the length and breadth of the country, Hameed said in many areas women were still starving and finding it difficult to feed their children.

She said emphasis should be given on inclusive breast-feeding for six months after a child's birth, maternity benefits for pregnant women and food fortification of ready to eat mid-day meals.

'We are concerned and worried that we are losing human beings in such a manner. It is a disappointment and a blot. We have just improved a fraction and we are determined that we do not let it get worse,' she said.

'It is frustrating to see this dark and dismal picture of undernourishment in the country. We have to learn the experiences from other South Asian countries,' she added.

The NFHS survey found that levels of anaemia in children and women had worsened compared to seven years ago -- around 56 percent of women and 79 percent of children below three years are anaemic.

Vinita Bali, managing director of Britannia Industries, said the problem was very critical and action was needed from both the government and the industry.

She said their 'Tiger' biscuits had been fortified with iron and had shown amazing results. These biscuits have been provided to children in Hyderabad with a midday meal.

'We conducted a study and found that in six months of taking these biscuits, the haemoglobin increased. The biscuits are not only healthy but also fortified,' she said.

'There should be a balance between prevention and treatment. Our focus should be to target the most vulnerable and then only we will have a much healthier future for India,' he added.

http://newshopper.sulekha.com/india-worse-than-pakistan-bangladesh-on-nourishment_news_927008.htm

Here are excerpts from a BBC report by veteran cor...

2009-11-16T23:08:36.511-08:00

Here are excerpts from a BBC report by veteran correspondent Mark Tully:

Being central government forces and recruited from all over India they will be strangers, not speaking the tribal languages or understanding their ways.

The central forces are not exactly known for their softly, softly approach.

When they were very active in Kashmir, I remember having several conversations with the governor about the failure to punish police responsible for human rights abuses.

The governor was a humane man himself, and he had the honesty to admit the government feared the forces would be demoralized if action was taken against them every time they went too far.

The tribal people, who both sides claim to be representing, will be crushed between security forces demanding they provide information about Maoist movements, and the Maoists themselves who have already shown how brutally they treat anyone they believe has betrayed them.

Once again, the root of the problem is the Indian government's inability to provide what those they govern rightly feel is their entitlement.

Nowhere is this more manifest than in the callous handling of tribals who have been dispossessed of their land.

Reading Arundhati Roy, I was reminded of a visit I made to a resettlement villages for tribals, who had twice been evicted in order to make way for power stations.

When they complained to the official accompanying me that they were not being provided with electricity, he shot back: "Well you cannot afford it, can you?"

With that sort of callousness all too common amongst officials, is it any wonder that tribals support Maoists who promise to protect their lands?

Biggest Land Grab After Columbus By Devinder Shar...

2009-11-15T20:09:36.222-08:00

Biggest Land Grab After Columbus

By Devinder Sharma

Countercurrents.org

14 November, 2009
Devinder Sharma Blog

I think the eulogisation of Tata's has gone too far. Behind all the glamour, sobriety and humanitariasm that we read and hear about Tata's, there is a dark hidden side which is kept under wraps. It is time we look at the destructive role Tata's have played over the years in uprooting thousands of poor families, and the resulting destruction of livelihoods and the environment.

To overcome their guilt, and that too aimed at pacifying the liberal voices in the urban centres, I am sure Ratan Tata would be thinking of setting up schools and funding some NGO activities in the tribal lands as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

What a sophisticated way to cover your dark underbelly !

I was quite taken aback today to see a frontpage headline in The Hindustan Times: The biggest land grab after Columbus. As the blurb says: Government report criticises corporate exploitation of tribal lands; tribals turn to new friends: Maoist. And if you remember only a few days back, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had publicly accepted, and made a promise: "The systemic exploitation of our tribal communities can no longer be tolerated."

Do you think Manmohan Singh will do anything to stop this? You bet, he will simply push for more such projects that will eventually destroy the social fabric of these tribal lands. If you think I am wrong, let us take the land-grab in Bedanji, a remote rural expanse in Bastar in Chhatisgarh, as a test case. The Tata's plan to set up a Rs 19,500 crore steel plant for which ten villages have to be emtied.

Interestingly, a report of the PM-appointed Ministry of Rural Development committee on Land Reforms has succinctly said: "This open declared war will go down as the biggest land grab ever, if it plays out as per the script." The Hindustan Times report quotes the just-released government report warning against the corporate takeover in the Bastar hinterland: "The biggest grab of tribal lands after Columbus."

cat is out of the bog. Arms are supplied by the...

2009-11-08T21:52:57.817-08:00

cat is out of the bog. Arms are supplied by the us, china, pak and iran.

==============================

US, China, Pak, Iran supply 80% arms

New Delhi: Home secretary G K Pillai on Sunday indicated that Naxalites might be smuggling small arms from China, though he declined to give the exact source.
Speaking at the conference organised by South Asian Free Media Association, Pillai said the small arms business was the largest and the most profitable in the world. He said he had attended an arms convention in Vienna where everyone wanted to have control on arms. The only condition that all the nations wanted to have was that every country, every arms units and ordnance factory should have a unique number.
You will be surprised that the only four countries which opposed the move were the US, China, Pakistan and Iran. Every other country in the world said yes. Because these four countries together supply 80% of the worlds small arms, Pillai said. If you cant stop small arms business in the world, if you stop something here, something will come there. It is because of continuous supply of millions of small arms. A bulk of it is coming into the Third World. Third World countries are suffering the most and all manufacturing is taking place in the four countries, he added. TNN

http://nithinkamath.info/archives/2005/07/story-of...

2009-11-06T22:25:45.276-08:00

http://nithinkamath.info/archives/2005/07/story-of-narayana-murthy-and-sudha/

proabably these maoist leader can take a leaf from naryana murthy who was a communist by belief but took the challenge of capitalism and won them by their rules.

He rather chose to create and distribute wealth rather create havoc and mayhem in the society

Further my fear is that the guts have come due to ...

2009-11-06T19:46:48.920-08:00

Further my fear is that the guts have come due to the funding in money and arms by the western world to these so called corrupt leader.

In the world of gandhi where he fought with ahimsa for liberation where are these jonny coming from.

People like arundhati roy are cheap intellectuals who easily fall in prey without understanding the whole game of the scheme `masters.

http://secular-hindu.sulekha.com/blog/post/2009/11...

2009-11-06T07:30:31.525-08:00

http://secular-hindu.sulekha.com/blog/post/2009/11/fourth-generation-war-has-it-been-open-on-india.htm

It might be the design of the friendly americans to destabilize the country.

HOpe the indian have sense to be alert on all. AFter all it learnt thelession that russian are not dependable when they let india down during the chinese war. Hope india remembers the lesson and be careful with america so that it does not be foolish enough to allow the history to repeat itself

Riaz That is the greatness of india. Everything i...

2009-11-06T05:54:07.608-08:00

Riaz

That is the greatness of india. Everything is not seen as black and white but with some amount of humanity. Even the army has clarified that they will not take on the maoist.

India is still trying to get them on the negotiable table which will happen over the period of time.

Curse of democracy is corruption at the highest level and that triggers these extremist.