PRAGOTI

Uncle Joe,

You obviously are unfamiliar with what the Maoists are doing in West Bengal. Perhaps you should get a hold of facts and what even Maoist sympathisers such as Sumanta Banerjee are saying about it.  And then there are others from the Left who have examined the Maoists' work in Chattisgarh as well - scholars such as Nandini Sundar. They don't get all mushy and romantic about Maoist soldiers watching film of killing state security forces.

One can't be enamoured by what the Maoists suggest as political praxis without looking at their praxis at work in its entirety. Its almost like Truman Capote admiring Perry Smith's brilliant art work and writing paens about it ignoring that Smith used his hands for some other purposes as well (such as killing Herb Clutter's family) (Trying my hand at an American example). 

As for your later part, those very same Dharnas and relay hunger strikes have also resulted in alternates to the New Economic Policy (by which you mean the neoliberal policies) in terms of codified rights of forest people. Ever heard of the Tribal Forest Act? Why couldn't the Maoists work in the forest (here and now) and see to it that the Act is implemented in both letter and spirit? Why can't they exhaust the democratic process and defeat the inimical forces and become the accountable democratic body that the tribals have recourse to? Why should the tribals be reduced to watching films of ambushes and murders?