Such a death is sanitisation of murder as a part of the hygiene of law and order. All it needs is the legitimisation of the word security. The encounter death becomes the first great ritual of the new regime. As a journalist Pavan Dahat put it: “It impairs the objectivity and fairness of enquiry. The new enclosure movements of our time begin with law as deceit. Mass media cannot ask for me. The violence of development is compounded by the violence of security operations.

All the demonology that India needs is the word “Naxal”, which evokes threat, disorder, sedition, insurrection and all the forms of behaviour that threaten an orderly state. Police offices eliminating and torturing tribals are now heroes honoured for their services to the nation. If India is to develop, the tribe and the peasant must lose their land.In these processes, the tribal might be the victim, but law is the first casualty. Development by corporations needs land and in Chhattisgarh the land belongs to the tribals. The logic that drives it is that of development. The word “Naxal” has become an omnibus one for all that the nation state detests. Now development as the highest form of patriotism demands elimination of the tribal. Worse, it might take the responsibility of human rights seriously The press or parts of the press may want to tell the truth in a system where the lie is a form of convenience. It becomes a symbol of a behavioural pattern, a fragment of غير مجاز مي باشدmology and a metaphor for a way of life or thinking. Its symbolic grammar is something that we need to understand and exorcise.For tribals land is life, a way of life.

Sometimes in the annals of history, a place evokes more emotions than the mere idea of territory. A free press might be curious and inquisitive.Development today loves this sleight of land. Chhattisgarh in that sense is a warning signal of an India that is becoming less democratic. The free and fearless press is a hallmark of democracy, but a free press is a nuisance in a place like Chhattisgarh. The word “security” allows for tremendous licence in a democracy which otherwise restrains power. He is no longer the owner or possessor of land, he is a poacher, a trespasser and an encroacher to be shot or arrested. In fact, it doesn’t take much effort to create a local manch to protest against outsiders interfering and threatening development. All it needs is a touch of Orwellian language and an attempt to play on middle class anxieties.If the lie and label is the beginning of governance, security is perpetuation of that lie. Open genocide is painful, but development allows for deceit, for conceptual sleight of land where the innocent can be painted as evil. It is governance as tailor-made extermination refined to a fine act. In terms of a theory of governance, Chhattisgarh is a lie, an attempt to look at an act of extermination as an internal security operation.To the media today, Chhattisgarh evokes the violence of encounter deaths, Thermostatic Shower Panels of Naxalite battles and the sad fate of adivasis.Despite all the violence, the Chhattisgarh syndrome needs a screen of normality. Goa carries a sense of something Indian and yet exotic. To label a community Naxal is to sign its death sentence, to call it an enemy of the state. Security is that epidemic word which allows for states of exception that allows one to suspend the rights available in a democracy.

The beauty of the process called Chhattisgarh syndrome is that violence can be enacted within democracy in the name of democracy. This area gave us two of the greatest contributions to the Guinness book of corruption — Dantewada in Chhattisgarh and the Vyapam scandal in Madhya Pradesh. One has to create simulate incidents where fake villages create a sense of order. News reports and World Bank consultants must show it rising in the world of indicators like a taximeter on New Delhi’s roads. The legitimacy of the police as sarkar must remain immaculate. To label a tribal as Naxal is to present him as a threat at the very moment one emasculates and disempowers him. Chhattisgarh in that sense evokes no heroic moment of history. The media often shows police-orchestrated events where villagers are lined up. It is seen as an act of police hygiene where innocent people can be eliminated by labelling them as gangsters or insurgents. Development as the new Camelot has numerous local Galahads. In fact, the police archives and Bollywood, that feeds on police lore, hails the encounter specialist as a special kind of expert and hero. A tribal who resists is a law and order problem who can be arrested on grounds of security, jailed and tortured. In fact, one uses law to eliminate the tribal. Law and order should be seen to be working. It marks a mentality of governance, of Machiavellian violence that can corrode Indian democracy. Each place becomes as it were a mentality, a syndrome and a style of behaviour. For the companies it is revenue, rent and real estate. The logic is simple. All that development as an enclosure movement needs is a sleight of hand that turns the rule of law into a law and order problem.

Independent journalists are harassed, social scientists like Bela Batia presented as intruders.The writer is a professor at Jindal Global Law School and director of the Centre for Study of Knowledge Systems. Even a cynical social scientist is awed by the nature of the achievement. As a set of propaganda and management technicians, it is awesome. One labels a tribal who objects to his land being taken as a Naxal or Maoist to deprive him of his rights. One should simulate which show life as normal, portray Naxals as giving up arms. It is what management experts call a social innovation incubated in the best behavioural science. The tribal is now a seditious creature who questions national purpose and priority. It is usually a fake occurrence, a simulated act where an irritant or protester is eliminated. It is livelihood and غير مجاز مي باشدmology.

The next day’s report announces it as “Naxals surrendering arms and asking for police protection”.The Chhattisgarh syndrome begins with this act of devious labelling as an act of deceit. Earlier, during the Naxalite phase, the emergency brutality is rebranded as security and reworked as a governance rite. Security destroys the truth, makes information suspect.”The emasculation of the media is the next movement in the Chhattisgarh syndrome. The word security allows you to paint protest as evil. Torture evokes the pragmatism of governance. Genocide begins at least in Chhattisgarh with an act of labelling. For many, Varanasi is a place where one goes to die, Kolkata an emblem of poverty or failed revolutions.