How India ignores conflict-affected Adivasis

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Editor's note: On 23 March, a group of young Adivasi men and women will embark on a cross-country motorcycle journey. Beginning in the forests near the tri-state border region of Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, they will ride under the summer sun to New Delhi. Three years ago, they had cycled their way to Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh. Their demands have been the same, and concerns a mix of conflict, human rights, forest laws and a fate that is not supposed to befall citizens of a modern country.  To know what’s going on, let’s rewind to the mid-2000s. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance had just recorded a surprise win in the general elections, stock markets the world over were on a high and Nokia 1100 phones were all the rage. Central India’s forests, though, were at their lowest point in history. The Naxalite/Maoist conflict had intensified, as the union government was desperate to defeat the guerillas who lived deep inside the forests. The Chhattisgarh government (led by the BJP) formed an armed militia of local Adivasis called Salwa Judum, which translates …