Reena's Woes

Reena Kangale is the District Magistrate of Dantewada. A District Magistrate - DM - as we all know is a big shot in India. But Reena has a different problem - Naxalites have made at least 108 villages in 23 panchayats of Dantewada inaccessible to her and thus to the local administration...if the Frontline magazine is to be believed. The article by Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta hits home at the crux of the problem - that "the tribal population has a deep and ingrained sense of injustice here." Reena goes on to state that "No contractor is willing to take up development projects in these areas. A health worker or a teacher who is not from the area refuses to go into the jungle."

Dantewada: The Way Forward

The tragedy of Dantewada brings home a sad truth; our reluctance to learn from mistakes already made. My previous post on the Sildah Massacre had brought out some aspects of how underprepared and untrained the Eastern Frontier Rifles (EFR) had been, but here was a company of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), better equipped and trained in comparison to the EFR, probably better led as well, but they suffered even greater casualties. So what happened - or rather what now? Having gone through the media reports, the reason for the casualties in unclear, but what seems to be emerging is that