BackMaoists, money and business
Rebels may thrive on causes, but a rebellion's critical components inevitably makes it a cash and carry enterprise
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The arrest last week of two Chhattisgarh-based businessmen on the charge of being financial and logistics conduits for rebels has again highlighted the aspect of how loudly money talks for Maoists.
This ought to come as no surprise. Rebels may thrive on causes, but a rebellion’s critical components such as food, weapons, ammunition, communication, propaganda and healthcare inevitably makes it a cash and carry enterprise. Moreover, though operating in areas of conflict is always complicated and risky in terms of life, limb, lies and liability, even businesses that ought to know better seem unable to keep away.
In late 2011, a contractor for Essar was arrested by Chhattisgarh Police while carrying more than a million rupees in cash, which he claimed he was carrying to the Maoists on behalf of Essar, which mines and ships iron ore from the heart of Dantewada—in several ways the heart of the Maoist rebellion.
Within days, a general manager with Essar was arrested on various charges, including that of sedition. Essar put out a denial with key phrases like “vehemently rejects" and “baseless allegations". WikiLeaks later added fuel to the fire by mentioning a January 2011 cable between officials of the US department of state: “A senior representative from…a major industrial company with large mining and steel-related facilities in Chhattisgarh, told Congenoff (consul general’s office) that the company pays the Maoists ‘a significant amount’ not to harm or interfere with their operations."
Tables can turn too. In June 2013, a senior executive at Lloyds Steel, a contractor and a local village elder were killed in Maoist-affected Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. In the subterranean world of business and conflict, reasons ranged from Maoist rebels being upset over the company’s incursions into nearby iron ore-rich areas against local opposition, to an example made so that in future, businesses would kowtow to Maoist diktat and levies in exchange for permission to operate in rebel zones, to a rogue Maoist leader ordering the hit.
I’ve heard executives describe this sharp business practice as minimizing tension. It is all too-clever-by-half and illegal, and plays almost seamlessly into the schema of rebels—no slouches when it comes to leveraging the profit motive of the running dogs of capitalism, even as they question capitalism itself.
In an interview published in May 2010 (a short version appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly and I received the uncut version via a Maoist-friendly Internet newsgroup), Alpa Shah, an academic with Goldsmiths, University of London, queried a Maoist leader about it. The response of a Maoist spokesperson who went by the nom de guerre of Gopalji, was revealing.
“This is not corruption," the rebel claimed. “This is taxation. In the areas of our struggle, we are the authority that is serving the people… We are using the funds to accelerate our struggles and we are using them in radical reform programmes."
The rebel added: “We have rules and norms around how we tax people. For instance, large schemes and operations are taxed more than smaller ones. We don’t tax the building of schools, hospitals, small tanks, tube wells, etc. We also have rules and norms around how we use the fund collected. So we are not simply collecting money for private gain—that would be corruption. We are collecting money for the service of our toiling masses." His chief, Muppala Laxman Rao, better known by the nom de guerre Ganapathy, claimed as much in other media interviews.
Another overlooked reality is the practice of the political nudge-and-wink when it comes to such everyday relationships. This has been reflected in my conversations with senior police officials in several Maoist-affected states since 2006. Big and medium businesses alike—in states such as Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, this can include those in mining, their contractors, timber merchants—engage in what is clearly a productive relationship with all sides.
“Such mafias have a symbiotic relationship with the state as well as the Maoists," one of Jharkhand’s top policemen told me in 2013, unsparing in his inclusion of business as a mafia in such geographies of conflict. “It’s difficult to determine who is exactly what, and who is with whom. They are all hand in glove."
He added: “Business cannot operate in several of the areas without having such a relationship."
So I wonder what political compulsion finally led to the arrest of the two businessmen in Chhattisgarh after they had the run of the land for several years.
Sudeep Chakravarti is the author of Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country and Highway 39: Journeys through a Fractured Land. This column focuses on conflict situations in South Asia that directly affect business. Respond to this column at rootcause@livemint.com
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