Red Corridor to be redrawn by Government

• The government is planning to reduce the number of Maoist-affected districts by about a fifth in the country.
• Over 20 of the 106 districts which have been described as being Maoist-affected and are part of the Red Corridor will be removed from the list.
• This is being done for the first time since 2006, when the Maoist-affected districts were identified and graded on the basis of their violence profile.
• Any district which is taken off from red corridor list will get deprive of 30 cr annual development fund.

About Red Corridor

• There are total 106 districts which span 10 States — Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — are described as those affected by Left Wing Extremism (LWE) and constitute the ‘Red Corridor.’
• This is almost contiguous from India’s border with Nepal to the northern fringes of Tamil Nadu except some parts in Coastal Odisha, where there is comparatively better development. (This is called Odisha Gap)
• In three states viz. Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand, Naxals are able to get popular support, easy movement and safe passage.
• In the early 1990s the number of districts affected by varying degrees of Maoist violence stood at just 15 in four states. This rose to 55 districts in nine states by the end of 2003 and to 156 districts in 13 states in 2004.
• Maoists are currently believed to be operating in around 200 districts (of a total of 604 districts in the country) in 17 states. The worst affected states are Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and Orissa.
• Unification of dominant Naxal factions into CPI (Maoist) in 2004 has sure made the activities in the Red Corridor as the most serious threat to India’s national security. The central government has banned the CPI-Maoist in 2009 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, calling it a terrorist organization.

Analysis

• The Maoists believe in armed agrarian revolution to establish a classless society and have their roots in the Naxalbari uprising of the 1960s.
• The districts that comprise the Red Corridor are among the poorest in the country. A key characteristic of this region is non-diversified economies based solely on the primary sector – converting natural resources to primary products. Agriculture, sometimes supplemented with mining or forestry, is the mainstay of the economy, which is often unable to support rapid increases in population.
• Despite being rich in minerals such as iron ore and bauxite, the people living there, who are largely Adivasi or tribal are desperately poor. Exploited by forest officials, contractors, mining companies and middlemen and neglected by the state, villagers in the Red Corridor are among the worst off in the country

By: Vishal