The subject of adivasi rights and industrial exploitation needs attention, and this book is a welcome addition to literature in this field, says ANUBHAV PRADHAN
In an increasingly intolerant and homogenising political atmosphere, where the spaces for dissent are being violently silenced by a collusion of state and private interests, to talk of adivasis and Maoism is as natural as it is risky. Rohit Prasad’s Blood Red River: A Journey into the Heart of India’s Development Conflict (Hachette, Rs 399) does as much, but in a manner which makes it a fairly curious book on a dangerous subject.
It straddles, generically, the academic study and the conversational anecdote, and in trying to be in two boats at the same time, it remains awkwardly suspended between both. While this might have been the author’s plan in order to make the book more attractive to lay audiences, the book’s analyses do not come across as well-argued and well-presented.
It is, nonetheless, a curious book, not least because of being somewhere in generic space at times. Prasad’s comment on Chhattisgarh’s infamous and bloody development crisis manages to be interesting and well-informed although it frequently also slides into the pitfalls of capitalist, bourgeois romanticisation.
Divided into five sections with varying number of chapters, it tracks over a two-year period from February 2014 to May 2016 Prasad’s exposure to and engagement with a range of stakeholders in the rapidly evolving saga of bad governance, exploitative industrialisation, rampant corruption and counter-productive insurgency in the forests and highlands of Chhattisgarh. The first two sections encapsulate Prasad’s travels from the rarefied environs of his workplace in Gurgaon to the jungles of Kanker, Bastar, and Dantewada, while the last three take the reader from Chhattisgarh to various nerve centres of the rich and powerful in the country in search of perspectives from the top of the development pyramid.
The narrative constantly invites the reader to experience the affect of this foray into the black holes of Indian democracy: Chapters such as ‘The Swamy and the Sentry’ and ‘The loss of Innocence’ give expression to a recurring sense of wonderment, outrage, and pathos which frame the book and much of its comment.
Unfortunately, the mediation of adivasi history, experience, and struggle through the prisms of such affect also work to undermine the text’s purported aim of attempting a “radical immersion in a world far away from the drawing rooms and malls where hegemonic public opinion is fashioned and purveyed”.
Prasad emotes and feels strongly for his subjects, but in romanticising them as age-old, dreamlike, and in a state of fallen grace comes across as too much of an awed outsider to fruitfully comment on the issues at hand. Much of his information on Maoist violence and agenda is also second-hand, on the basis of anecdotes and published reports and articles, and hence adds very little to the corpus of material already available on the subject.
Nonetheless, he puts his considerable social capital as a professor of economics in one of India’s premier management institutes to good use in getting access to the inner echelons of state and corporate power and presenting their opinions on the problems of land rights, industrialisation, corruption, and violence. From senior executives of the Tatas to bureaucrats and senior police officers, opinions of these corporate stakeholders, administrators, and law enforcers are what make this book different, and make up for the lack of critical appraisal of both adivasis’ issues and Maoist praxis.
A streak of academic consistency in the form of well-researched references also work in the book’s favour: The dramatic recreation of Mahendra Karma’s assassination in Section Three, for instance, is peppered with footnotes referencing a variety of sources. These notes lend the narrative merit and gravitas. It helps in places where the voice of the author falters and also counteracts, to an extent, the recurring romanticisation and homogenisation of adivasis.
An index, at the same time, would have been more helpful. With so many references and notes, and two appendixes, it is surprising that neither the author nor the publisher thought of realising the book’s potential to become a handy reference for the layman and uninitiated reader by presenting a well-arranged index.
There are a few proofing mistakes, but apart from those, Blood Red River is an interesting, curious book, written unlike most books on the subject, but still of pertinence for both informed and lay readers.
Most urban readers will also be able to relate to Prasad’s embedded cosmopolitan and bourgeoisie frameworks, and in identifying him as a person-like-us will find the book more interesting and readable.
The subject of adivasi rights and industrial exploitation needs all the attention it can get these days, and an accessibly priced book of this kind is, for all its shortcomings, a welcome addition to literature in this field.
The writer is Senior Marketing Editor with Primus Books. Views expressed are his own