Indian Defence Review

As defined, development is a process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage. It involves a process of becoming deeper and more profound. It is a progression from simpler to more complex forms – the growth of culture. In general parlance, it is an improvement from the past to the present, moving steadily to a better future. Development can always be good, provided it is perceived and accepted with a positive mindset. It occurs whenever and wherever there is a need for improvement in the existing system. With the inclusion of modern technologies, especially networking, the world has become one small piece of land and India is not away from the impact of globalisation and consumerism growing quickly everywhere. Children no longer stay in the shadows of their parents. They independently strive to achieve their goals through cut-throat competition. They have become altruistic and dreamers for a glamorous and glorious future.

Any development, be it any form, has some fallout. Resistance comes from different sections of society or from think tanks, which retards the growth. Some people are left behind in the race while others run so fast that they become the front setters. Those who are marginalised nurture anger and disappointment against others. A rift is, therefore, created between the rich and the poor. As development proceeds, consumerism increases and wealth gets amassed with some sections while the rest remain where they have been. The wealthy and the powerful indulge in scams and white-collar crimes, while the deprived and the poor adopt the criminal career. It is the middle class in our country that strives to do well, maintaining a balance between its rights and responsibilities, but there is no doubt that it remains under severe mental and economical stress.

If development is not equivocal, society is not completely empowered and progress has not touched everyone, and this is exactly what we are witnessing in India today. Home-grown terrorism is the result of it. Small factions of people in different parts of the country are often disrupting our country’s peace by imposing war on the government and taking innocent people to task. Lives are lost, and work comes for a moment to a halt. So, a modern India has in store problems emerging from casteism, regionalism, communalism, sectarianism and many others.

Aggression can be a symptom of many different underlying problems. It’s a polymorphic thing, a commonality for any number of different psychiatric conditions, medical problems and life circumstances. And so, at the very essence of treating aggression is first to find out what’s driving it. For a diagnostic approach, it is necessary to begin from the home where everything is shaping in an undesirable manner.

In India, the youths in their early to mid-twenties and the juveniles from the age of 10 years onwards are exhibiting aggression and their behaviour no longer conforms to the standards and established norms of Indian society. The age-old culture does not satisfy them. Rejection of any control, be it social or filial, is prominent among them. Violence is conspicuous in their personality characteristics. This is of course a global phenomenon, and this deterioration in the perceptions and attitudes of the present youths is generally explained by some people as all due to the generation gap. Researchers,1 while studying individual characteristics contributing to aggression, stressed that a number of individual characteristics have been shown to increase a child’s risk for aggressive behaviour. These include a difficult temperament as an infant, low intelligence, hyperactivity, impulsiveness and attention problems. Additionally, aggressive children frequently have poor social problem-solving skills: they often misinterpret other children’s behaviour as hostile, and they are often unable to find non-aggressive solutions to conflicts.

Home environment is equally responsible for the increase in aggression among youths. Some characteristics of the home environment can increase the risk that a child will eventually become involved in aggressive behaviour. Children and teens who come from homes where parents are coercive or manipulative with their children, provide little emotional support, do not monitor their activities or have little involvement in their children’s lives are at a greater risk for engaging in aggressive behaviour. The use of harsh punishments or inconsistent discipline has been shown to be related to aggressive behaviour in children. The relationships with peer groups and their negative effects also add as risk factors for teens. Because of their aggressive behaviour and lack of social skills, highly aggressive children are often rejected by their peers. This early rejection is predictive of later aggressive and violent behaviour. However, by the time they are teenagers, most aggressive youths are not friendless but have developed friendships with other teenagers with antisocial attitudes and behaviour. Friendships with antisocial peers can be an important predictor of aggressive behaviour and violence in the teenage years. Youth violence can take several forms: verbal, psychological and sexual forms of assault; gang violence; bullying; gender harassment and the use of child soldiers in armed conflicts.

The community from where the teenager comes matters immensely in moulding his or her personality. Poverty, joblessness, discrimination and societal acceptance of aggression all increase the risk of violence in the person. Besides exposure to violence, the availability of drugs, alcohol and firearms; extreme poverty and neighbourhood disintegration make things worse. All these factors cited in the studies are common to all countries, and India is no exception. The rate of increase in crime rate among the youths in India in recent years is shocking and painful. There is no remorse or empathy for the victims, be it a woman, a child or an elderly person. We note incidences of rape, murder and other heinous offences committed by juveniles, but the law of the land is unable to punish them because of their age. As a result, we find repeat offenders among youngsters and at one point of time, they join the bigger gangs of antisocial elements, who are committing crimes ranging from drug trafficking and organ trafficking to waging wars against the government by joining rebel groups. In all these incidents, the common factors are the intolerance and aggression among the youths, which are shaking the total fabric of the society of the country.

India, of late, is witnessing numerous home-grown insurgencies and rebel movements, which have posed a challenge to the system.

The Maoist insurgency, which had surged after the unification of the erstwhile People’s War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in September 2004 and had come to be regarded as the country’s “gravest internal security threat,” has also witnessed a dramatic decline in violence and fatalities. From a peak of 1,080 fatalities recorded in 2010, there was a near-halving, to 602 in 2011, and a further and substantial drop to 367 in 2012, but the figures are always conflicting as violence occurs frequently in a sporadic manner.

India’s prime minister identifies the Maoist (or “Naxalite”) insurgency as India’s “single biggest internal security challenge.” The insurgency today is severe in scale and violence, with 2,212 violent incidents in 2010 causing 1,175 casualties (713 civilian, 285 security force and 171 guerrilla), a 63% increase since 2008. Today, about 10,000–40,000 full-time insurgents wage a protracted people’s war to overthrow the Indian state across a vast “Red Corridor,” affecting 20 of India’s 28 states as reported by Vira in his article.2 It is clear that India has progressed rapidly, leaving behind widening gaps and discrepancies between rich and poor, town and country and upper castes and lower castes. Conditions for large swathes of rural India still compare with the worst of sub-Saharan Africa, and in many remote areas, the state has long been absent.

When India was under the British regime, the country was reeling under discrimination and injustice, which led to the historic freedom movement. Unfortunately, even when the country got free after a long struggle from the foreign hand, it could not overcome the shackles of inequality injustice and poverty, which is still mercilessly bleeding many remote and distant states in the country. This fight is of a different nature. Here, one poor and underprivileged joins the other unfortunate to fight their own countrymen for rights and justice. Therefore, this fight, though not unified, has a magnitude and is capable of disturbing the peace of the nation.

According to Eric Randolph, “People can put up with a great deal of structural violence in their lives particularly when it is all they have known. Instead, what tends to trigger acts of violent rebellion are specific flashpoints of injustice.” For the Adivasis and tribal people, there are plenty such flashpoints. India’s tribal people – in particular the Gonds of Central India – are under intense assault from state and private corporate interests and are being pushed off their forestlands by giant hydro, logging and mining projects for little compensation and rehabilitation. The Dalits, already the bottom rung of landless agricultural farmers, are similarly disproportionately impacted by the tumultuous changes of modernisation on the Indian countryside and discriminated against daily despite legislation. Tribal people make up the core fighting strength of the Maoist insurgency – their narrow 8 per cent share of the population is still sizeable, given India’s 1.2 billion people.

The Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE)3 is initiating a programme of research on inequality and poverty, with an initial focus on South Asia. Illuminating the processes of the persistence of poverty amongst some of the world’s most marginalised communities, in the next few years, research will focus on the underbelly of the Indian economic boom. The target of the study will be, for instance, Dalits and Adivasis, who account for a quarter of the subcontinent’s population, were historically considered so low as to be thrown outside the caste system as “untouchable” and “savage” and suffer from the greatest poverty. Research will ethnographically investigate, analyse and explain the transformations producing poverty amongst marginalised communities, why and how they affect some groups more than others and understand people’s creative responses to the conditions they find themselves in. It is hopeful that the study will envisage the depth of miseries of the disadvantaged groups who are imposing guerrilla warfare on the country and expressing their discontent with the policies of the government.

Kamal Davar4 has rightly said that the reasons for insurgencies are the lack of fair national policies in combating indigenous insurgencies; political differences between many states and the national government; woefully poor intelligence, especially at the ground level; ill-equipped, undertrained and poorly motivated police and central police forces; a lack of coordination among states and central security agencies and, above all, the total neglect of locally significant development and legal issues in the insurgency-infested regions.

The government at the centre belonging to any party has to be prudent and develop strategies to improve the conditions of the people living under the shadow of poverty and starvation in the remote areas of the country.

For long, the states infested with insurgencies have been absolutely apathetic and indifferent to the ongoing problem, and whenever there is an attack, the blame game starts, rather than the states trying to reach the root of the problem. In a recent incident at Bastar, where there was a highway ambush by the Maoists on 26 May 2013, the Times of India reports that there were at least 300 Maoists. On finding their prized catch, Mahendra Karma, founder of Salwa Judum, the rebels stabbed him mercilessly to death after showering him with bullets.5 Later, they danced with joy. The aftermath of the attack once again discloses various lapses, and the state’s security was seen in poor condition. While one party accuses the other for the holocaust, one interestingly overlooks the fact that among the 300-strong Maoists, many were women aged 18–20 years. Why these young women got engaged in this bloodbath can surprise many, but if the reasons are diagnosed properly, it can be explained that young men and women are joining the rebel forces not out of coercion but because they are frustrated and disillusioned.

Women have been the steering force in their homes, in driving out drug addicts from their vicinities and can also become key members in rebel groups, as witnessed in many countries. Their potency and motivation are matchless when they decide to do something. Today, the fear amongst the netas is so intense that they are seeking security against the threats of the Maoists. The Times of India of 15 June 20136 stated that netas from the Red zone seek cover, and the report mentions that all the requests have come in from the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha. The question remains, is this a permanent solution to the unending and worsening situation? Should the government not think about talking to the leaders of the Maoists and developing a strategy that would bring both parties to the round table for a consensus decision?

Maoism is not the only issue of concern for the country. Time and again, we get a setback from the youth of Jammu and Kashmir, who are often described by some as Indian Mujahedeen. They attack the government by targeting the security forces. This has been continuing since our independence, and till date, no forthright and pragmatic approach has been arrived at. Similarly, a simmering disturbance is visible in Assam, Manipur and Nagaland, which often culminates in guerrilla warfare, leaving many dead among both the security forces and the community. In this crossfire, it is the innocent people who not only lose their lives but also get bruised egos and feel helpless and hapless being, as they are, in the midst of the armed forces, who they detest, on one hand, and the rebels, whom they fear, on the other hand. These disillusioned people have no faith in the government and, therefore, opt for a revolutionary role. So we can see that wherever there is unequal development, some sections move into the grooves of no return and continue to be impediments to the peace and tranquillity and progress of the country.

There can be some psychological explanations to all these terror-related activities. One is that the lower castes, who have suffered for decades, even before independence, at the hands of the upper castes, are seeking revenge and so we often witness incidents of class and caste fights. Second, those who have been displaced from their roots and natural resources due to industrial development remain maladjusted in a new environment, where they do not have proper succour and the government has done nothing to mitigate their grievances. Third, the landless labourers, who have been treated miserably by the landlords, have now sought to settle their scores. There can be many other factors, but basically all these movements are the creations of inner hatred and longstanding deprivation and insecurity and the final outcome is the growth of rebels whose leaders have only one thing in mind, how best to exploit the innocent, illiterate, poor and highly frustrated population to settle their scores against the government. The latest incident at Bastar disclosed the ugly side of the story, shifting the responsibility on to the police and authorities of the area, with one party blaming the other and no productive solution in sight for the people of the area.

The Task Force Report on National Security and Terrorism published by FICCI7 has made some recommendations to curb the spread of insurgencies:

• Find a long-term solution that ensures rapid economic growth that is inclusive of and sustainable for India’s largely rural population.
• Address the issue of land reform and redistribution to prevent the spread of Naxalism.
• Upgrade education, healthcare and general infrastructure at the village level.
• Upgrade intelligence, infrastructure, rural policing and inter-linkages while seeking local solutions to local instabilities.

The respective governments have not yet woken from their slumber, and steps for immediate redressal of the locals have not formulated. These terror-stricken states are sitting on volcanoes whose eruptions are time and again destroying the peace and prosperity of the region. Tolerance has run out, and the locals are no more willing to listen to any lip service of the administration; they want results.

This is parallel to what happens when there is cross-border terrorism: blame game begins, and finally the accountability is laid on the country that has sponsored terrorism. Some relations can be drawn from Rohit De’s article,8 where he states that when the government has no serious proposal about problems such as health, education, unemployment, etc., it is necessary to divert the “bewildered herd” and whip up the fear of the enemy. Just as Hitler, in the 1930s, focused on the Jews and the gypsies, India is doing the same. Instead of targeting the actual problem and diagnosing the psyche of these unfortunate people, the government is declaring them as outlaws and terrorists and exiling them from their own homelands.

Psychological Explanation for Terror

Giving psychological explanations for all these terror-related activities, we must look into the psyche of the actors and their backgrounds. To begin with, we must understand that each one of them has a personality that determines his or her behaviour. Personality is a complex set of emotional and behavioural attributes that tend to remain relatively constant as the individual moves from situation to situation. It is a uniqueness and consistency in the behaviour of the individual that differentiates him or her from the others. To know what makes a person behave in a particular manner, it is important to understand his or her personality.

Sigmund Freud, the prominent psychoanalyst, analysed the conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind and explained that anything unpleasant is pushed to the subconscious and unconscious mind and remains dormant until the arrival of the actual stimulus to elicit the response. If we attribute this to the violent and aggressive behaviour of the rebels involved in insurgencies, we will observe that their deprivation in terms of basic needs, their disturbed self-identity and their frustration with being continuously and discreetly wronged place them in the opposite camp. The unpleasant thoughts in the unconscious mind never let them rest in peace and spontaneously push up as soon as any precipitating factor comes in their way. In brief, it is said that they are highly frustrated and are not hesitant to become aggressive.

Frustration has a close link to aggression. In 1939, Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer and Sears9 published a monograph on aggression in which they presented what has come to be known as the frustration-aggression hypothesis. Dollard et al. (1939) posited “that the occurrence of aggressive behavior always presupposes the existence of frustration and, contrariwise, that the existence of frustration always leads to some form of aggression.” They proposed that a particular frustration instigates aggression primarily against the source of the frustration but also instigates aggression against targets that are to some degree related to that source. The strength of the instigation was seen to vary as a function of associative ties between the actual source of frustration and the alternative target.

Researches on frustration and its link with aggression explains that both traits are linked both from social and psychological perspectives. Frustration is the by-product of the experience of relative deprivation. Some individuals feel anger more intensely, more often and for a longer period. Besides, people who are high on trait anger are predisposed towards responding angrily when they are criticised, treated unjustly or treated badly. In Why Men Rebel (1970),10 Gurr defines related deprivation (RD) as the perceived discrepancy between men’s value expectations and their value capabilities. “Value expectations are the goods and conditions of life to which people believe they are rightfully entitled. Value capabilities are the goods and conditions they think they are capable of getting and keeping.”

This is further expanded by Huntington (1968, 1971),11 who speaks on political violence in what he terms “transitional” societies, societies that are in the mid-process of modernisation. His analysis suggests that rapid modernisation always involves intensified relative deprivation because it widens the gap between the changing aspirations and capabilities of the groups involved: social mobilisation, education and increased opportunities of political participation enhance aspirations while the already inadequate levels of production, employment opportunities and governmental and administrative resources cannot keep pace with fresh expectations and needs. For some groups, capabilities actually decline (for example, peasants who are made landless by agricultural modernisation programs and who cannot find work in the cities). Huntington observes that deprivation of political capabilities such as the basic civil liberties and the right to vote is more likely to lead to civil violence than purely economic deprivation. He argues that the modernisation process even stimulates and intensifies traditionally rooted communal conflicts and that most of the forms of political violence likely to ensue from development – praetorian violence, political repression and communal conflict – are of a destructive and debilitating character.

Feierabend & Nesvold (1969, 1973)12 are of the opinion that the modernisation process tends to simultaneously intensify modernising groups’ aspirations while challenging the entrenched positions of traditional groups. Hence, the probability of conflicts between “modernisers” and “conservatives” is enhanced as socioeconomic development accelerates. The faster the rate of modernisation, they conclude, the greater the degree of disruption and the conduciveness to civil violence.

Another view, from Davis (1969),13 says, “Revolution is most likely to take place when a prolonged period of rising expectations and rising gratifications is followed by a short period of sharp reversal, during which the gap between expectations and gratifications quickly widens and becomes intolerable. The frustration becomes focused on the government, the violence becomes coherent and directional. If the frustration is sufficiently widespread, intense, and focused on the government, the violence will become a revolution.” Finally, the theory propounded by Marx and Engel indicates that the working-class masses were all efficient maximisers who would be able, unaided as it were, to arrive at an adequate understanding of the nature and causes of their oppression and the means of their emancipation. The very famous sentence of Marx14 reads as follows: “Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.”

Comment

Rising expectations and the gap between those expectations and reality are the breeding grounds of rebellion. This inequity that economic progress brings in its trail, if not corrected, negates the progress itself. Unless empowerment covers all sections of society, disparity of all kinds is removed and education and a general social awareness are established, a society remains vulnerable to violent methods of change. In such a scenario, it is imperative that we revisit our idea of development and progress and adopt a long-term strategy of development.