Abstract: “If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is   our sin.” - Charles Darwin

Four fundamental objectives guide the focus of this presentation.

1. People Focus; They vs. US
2. Land and laws of land to interrogate the correlation of alienation and insurgency in the context of India.
3. Political economy of underdevelopment and the case and prospect of inclusive growth in the context of India.
4. Political economy of terror management and its short and long range implication to development funding.

India has heavily paid and set to pay more in the coming years for having institutionally neglected real time development and compromising the laws of land in the tribal and peasant heart land where the Maoists of India have chalked out the country’s red corridor. Popularly known as the Naxalites or Maoists, they are fighting India and all its symbols from within with varying degree of success since 1967 for land, for justice, equity and against alienation.

The home grown Left Wing Extremism (CPI Maoists), striking India’s vulnerable underbelly in over 182 districts, 92,000 sq.km of mineral and forest reach areas of the country in nine States (provinces) of India threatens to be the biggest security challenge to India’s internal security paradigm today. If not contained, it is assessed that New Delhi shall fall to the Maoists by 2025. In the last five years alone, LWE has claimed over 9628 Incidents and 3780 deaths and 1476 economic installations being hit. Irony is, the Red Corridor is India’s richest mineral resource zone with poorest socio-economic and wellness indices. The Forest Act 1980 virtually dissociated tribal and traditional forest dependent communities from the forests. Subsequent corrective legislations like The Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act, 2006 have not delivered any result. As per official judicial reports, 3.75 lakh cases of alienation of tribal land by the non-tribals have been registered for restoration, covering 8.5 lakh acres of land which is a small fraction of the area of land actually alienated. Of these, only in 1.62 lakh cases, the claims were decided in favour of the tribals covering an area of 4.47 lakh acres while 1.55 lakh cases covering an area of 3.63 lakh acres have been rejected by the revenue courts on various grounds (GOI Judicial Records, 2010). 

Displaced from their land and discriminated against in the industrial job market, they are now fighting for their land, their only remaining resource. Their organizational net worth is estimated to be around Rs.20billion which is bigger than most of the affected states education budget and nearly matching India’s international security planned allocations. It is estimated that by 2020, India shall be biggest consumer of global home land security purchases – a cost perhaps is big enough to deliver real time development to the people of the region.