Absolute rubbish—they know we don’t run away, but say so because neither can they ignore us nor can they fight us. Even on 2 November, when Buddhababu’s (West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee) convoy was attacked, I was within a kilometre of where the blast took place. Huge forces were deployed, the area was combed, but I did not run away. All our comrades in (West) Bengal are sons and daughters of the soil. Where will they run away? For the last five years, I am camping here and helping the organization grow. The Intelligence Branch knows everything. They know what I look like—they even have a picture taken last year. We are not scared of appearing before people. Lakhs of villagers and tribals know what I look like since I interact with them regularly.
That we do not go out of the area controlled by us is because our central committee has decided that the strategic leadership team would stay put in the forests. That’s out of concern for our security. I hide only from a select few, such as the police and completely unknown persons.
How do you forge ties with locals?
We play very diverse roles, which the people don’t get to know. Because they have lost faith in the administration, villagers approach us with their day-to-day problems. We organize camps in villages so they can voice the grievances. We deal with the villagers with a lot of compassion and kindness, which is why they love and protect us. We also work for women’s liberation. There are many women who are tortured by their (parents) in-law, husbands or parents. But they cannot protest because they are dependent on them. We fight for liberation of such women. Women are very important for our movement. Many oppressed women have joined us in our struggle across the country.
They have led from the front in many a battle that we have fought. However, in terms of the strength, our women cadre in (West) Bengal is slightly weaker compared with other areas such as Jharkhand, Dandakaranya and Andhra Pradesh. Whereas elsewhere the ratio of men to women is 50:50, and even 60:40 in favour of women, in Bengal, the ratio is around 70:30 (in favour of men). Besides our guerilla operations, we also lead strong mass movements in many parts of West Bengal such as Lalgarh and Nandigram. A lot of women are participating in such movements, though they may not be members of the party. Exposure to such movements leads to political maturity. We need mature organizers for the party and would look to recruit women who have actively participated in these movements.
How do you fund your operations?
We mainly depend on donations and mass collections. Mass collections are of two types. In the harvest season, we go door to door collecting quintals (1 quintal is 100kg) of rice. In (West) Bengal, we depend on cooked food from villages and so don’t go for collection of foodgrain, but in Dandakaranya, Chhattisgarh and Bihar, where we have bigger camps and run our own kitchen, collecting foodgrain is essential.
Apart from this, we also collect cash. We appeal to villagers, who earn their living by selling kendu leaves (used to roll bidis) or by selling bamboo to paper mills, to donate a day’s wage—typically Rs50-160 each a month. That apart, we impose fines on rich peasants and charge 2-5% levy on government contractors.
We punish corrupt landlords and drive them out from the village. The properties that we seize from them—such as farm equipment and cattle—are used for village development in places where we run a parallel administration.