Opium Popular Funding Source In Red Zone

The produce is transported to illegal narcotic factories and dens across the country, particularly Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab

- Manoj Prasad

For more than three months in a year, vast swaths of land in the rain-dependent rice belts of Naxalite infested areas in Jharkhand remained barren, forcing farmers to migrate to other cities in search of livelihoods. The trend has reversed at least in one place — in the Maoist-infested Arki block in Khunti district where opium plants dot every farmer’s field in dense forest area now with the help of the suspected Maoist community initiative started after the decline in Naxal cases during past three years. (See the official data)

Apart from opium, farmers in this block are also growing guava, litichi, ginger, turmeric and chilli through the year. Till 2014, farmers used to worry about a recurring Naxalite violence involving two main outfits-CPI (Maoist) and People’s Liberation Front of India

Then, the Centre’s anti Left Wing Extremist policy was followed by the Jharkhand police whose objective was to contain Naxalism. Simultaneously, many local tribals who were against Naxal violence fought against the perpetrators of violence, condemned them and supported the security forces. In turn, the incidents of Naxal cases had started to decline during the past three years.

“We are obliged to the people, especially Adivasis (tribals) who had co-operated and supported the security forces and the police. Which is why the Naxal crimes have come down quite a bit. We are trying to ensure that this age-old problem of Naxal violence ends by the year end,” said DGP DK Pandey.

With the decline in Naxal cases, peace began to gain ground in the rural side, sprouting of small entrepreneurs such as paan walah, dhaba, saloon and stationery shop owners and rise in opium cultivation for money.