Word: chhattisgarh
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Late-night digging along the back roads of Bastar, a dense jungle region in India's northern state of Chhattisgarh, can only mean one thing if there's nothing to show for it the next day: Maoist rebel activity. So when a group of villagers in the state's Kanker district, the gateway to Bastar, were kept awake for nights on end last month by repeated chinking from metal striking rock on a nearby road, they knew something...
...through the college's training are later used for what they are being trained for, so the effort is often for naught," Sahni laments, comparing the police commandos to students trained in neurosurgery who go on to become store clerks. Only half of the college's graduates from Chhattisgarh are deployed in areas with substantial Maoist activity and, according to Sahni, police corruption and grasping politicians are to blame. "It's a well-known fact that if a police officer doesn't want to be deployed to dangerous district, he bribes his way out," he says. "Many of the warfare...
...previous years, Chhattisgarh took the biggest hit, sustaining 237 casualties. While last month's brazen attempt in the state to attack India's only anti-Naxal police training camp reveals how low the insurgents' perception is of the state's ability to fight them, it also, says the college's director, gives the institution further insight into how to fight this battle. "I've always told our men that they can't win the war against the Naxals without gaining the trust of the villagers and forest dwellers," says Brigadier Basant Ponwar, who served in the army for 35 years...
...become battlegrounds of a different kind. Maoist Naxalite groups have attacked more than a dozen polling stations in five different states since voting began, killing 29 security personnel. Vinay Ikka, a 30-year-old farmer and social worker, lives in Jashpur, a village in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, in a small house surrounded by a mango and lychee orchard. He loves the forest life, but fears getting caught between the Naxals, a Maoist group that dominates the area, and the government's counterinsurgency force. He doesn't just want protection; he wants security. "I will vote for someone...
...Naxalites say it is. A central government committee has recommended closing the camps and disarming the special police officers, whom India's Supreme Court recently termed illegal. Salwa Judum supporters say the criticism is proof of how widespread sympathy for the Naxalites is. "Should we stop fighting terrorism?" asks Chhattisgarh opposition leader Mahendra Karma, a member of the Congress Party and a strong backer of the militia. "Even [Mahatma] Gandhi had his dissenters, and Salwa Judum, which is a peaceful movement, is facing attacks by those motivated by political ideology...