India’s best-performing Union Cabinet minister is P Chidambaram, in charge of the Home portfolio. Yet he’s currently under pressure from the threat posed to the country by left-wing extremism (namely Naxalism), and the mood of the ruling class is slowing turning against his anti-Naxal policies.
Naxalites, insurgent in almost two dozen districts across twenty states, some 40 percent of the country’s geographical area, killed almost 100 CRPF paramilitary soldiers in two attacks in Dantewada in the past couple of months. Chidambaram’s plea for military operations against Naxals has been rejected, while civil rights activists and NGOs have carried out a high-powered campaign stating that Naxalism has been provoked by the denial of land and forest rights to tribals and their eviction from mineral-rich ancestral territories (claims which happen to be completely true).
[...]