Straws in the wind?

The latest police revelation on Saturday,about six “professional revolutionaries” recruited and sent to Andhra jungles for arms training,was also not different. This one dated back to 2004.

A senior police officer put it this way : Gujarat is a cooler for the ultras — a place to retreat when things get too hot in their own states, pick recruits from among the migrant workers coming here from their states,mop some handy funds from sympathisers.

But it is not known how many of those arrested so far were actually caught doing that and how many because they were believed to have done any of it,at some point of time.

Some of those detained or arrested had spent many years doing far less blood-curdling stuff than armed uprisings. Such as working for tribal and forest rights,literacy and empowerment,conducting awareness programmes.

If there is evidence that they were also planning a few things on the side like spreading ultra networks,conducting sneak attacks,designing genocides or waging war against the state — it remains a police secret.

The generic Naxalite tag may not commonly define what every CPI (ML) outfit does. Not all of them live and die by the gun. Many,like Dipankar Bhattacharya’s,have taken the same Parliamentary route that they once abjured,contesting polls in many states like any other party — the S N Singh-Pulla Reddy outfit had fought elections as far back as in 1977. There might also be two opinions if the law says all former Naxalites should be arrested and paraded with their heads secure in black bags,no matter what they had been doing ever after.

There is also another dimension. As in the case of one of this state’s best known environmentalists who,until now,is known to have used only the laws and the courts — not guns or landmines — to get things done on Gujarat’s industrial pollution and ecology.

After the Naxal hunt began, he has got used to policemen dropping in almost every other day to peer through things,ask for updates on his movements. They had also grilled his school-going son,when he could not be around.

Should there be a few lines drawn somewhere?

The week also had the Tatas roll out the Nano from their Sanand plant,Narendra Modi gleefully fingering a V and Ratan Tata looking suitably solemn. Around the same hour in Kolkata,West Bengal’s commerce minister Nirupam Sen was busy berating himself (and Mamata Banerjee) for his state losing the plant. But the Bengal minister did not mention if his Government would have been as happy as Modi’s,to let the Tatas have all the exclusive sops that they managed from Gujarat.

Gujarat was hit with a central probe on how it was going about with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS).

The Central funds for it is supposed to be used to generate and guarantee a minimum of 100 days of employment in the rurals,help build assets in the process — and,as the Gujarat High Court said,not to pay workers being paid by the state government since long.

But this is precisely what the state Government would appear to have been trying to do.

Once the Central probe settles the issue either way,it may have a bearing on how much elbow room states can have to manoeuvre the substantial NREGS funds,at a time when scams and misuse dog implementation in many places.