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By:

Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Hostage City

For a city that prides itself on never stopping, Mumbai has been brought to a grinding halt by the stoppage of one of its most indispensable services. The indefinite strike by employees of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking has effectively paralysed the city’s bus network, leaving millions of commuters stranded and exposing deep fissures in the management of one of India’s largest urban transport systems. BEST ferries around 25 lakh passengers daily through a...

Hostage City

For a city that prides itself on never stopping, Mumbai has been brought to a grinding halt by the stoppage of one of its most indispensable services. The indefinite strike by employees of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking has effectively paralysed the city’s bus network, leaving millions of commuters stranded and exposing deep fissures in the management of one of India’s largest urban transport systems. BEST ferries around 25 lakh passengers daily through a fleet of nearly 2,800 buses. Yet over the past three days, the city has witnessed the near-total collapse of this network. On the first day of the strike, only a few dozen buses operated. By the weekend, not a single BEST-owned or wet-lease bus was on the roads. Local trains, Metro services, taxis and autorickshaws have been forced to absorb the shock and are predictably straining under the burden. The strike may be illegal under the Maharashtra Essential Services Maintenance Act (MESMA), and the industrial court may have ordered employees back to work. Yet laws and court orders cannot substitute for sound governance. When a public utility reaches the point where thousands of workers are willing to risk disciplinary action and legal consequences, it signals a failure that predates the strike itself. The demands raised by the unions are hardly new. Employees have long sought implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations, settlement of retirement dues, an end to contractualisation and the merger of the BEST budget with that of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Whether one agrees with every demand is beside the point. What is striking is that these issues have been allowed to fester for years without a credible roadmap for resolution. Equally troubling is the government’s reactive approach. Ministers and officials rushed into negotiations only after services collapsed and public inconvenience reached intolerable levels. Such crisis management has become a familiar feature of governance. The unions, too, must recognise the wider consequences of their actions. Public transport is the bloodstream of a city. Every day the strike continues, daily wage earners lose income and ordinary citizens bear higher travel costs. The disruption disproportionately hurts those who can least afford alternatives. Holding Mumbai hostage may attract attention to legitimate grievances, but also risks eroding public sympathy. Mumbai has spent years celebrating new Metro corridors, coastal roads and grand infrastructure projects. Yet the humble bus remains the most affordable and accessible mode of transport for millions. Policymakers often treat BEST as an ageing institution to be managed rather than a vital public service to be strengthened. The increasing reliance on contract workers and wet-lease operations may reduce immediate costs, but also weakens institutional stability and labour relations. A city of Mumbai’s scale cannot afford a public transport system perpetually balanced on the edge of financial distress, labour unrest and administrative uncertainty. Nor can it depend on emergency measures whenever disputes arise.

The Last Redoubt

The killing of Madvi Hidma suggests the long-running Maoist insurgency in Andhra Pradesh and central India is entering its terminal phase.

Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh

The recent killing of Madvi Hidma, one of the most feared commanders of the banned CPI (Maoist), signals yet another decisive turn in a conflict that has shaped the political and security landscape of India’s heartland for half a century. Hidma, who was Central Committee member, head of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) battalion in Chhatisgarh’s south Bastar and a symbol of Maoist battlefield lethality, was gunned down in the forests of Andhra Pradesh’s Alluri Sitarama Raju district. His wife, Madakam Raje, herself a senior zonal committee member in Chhattisgarh, died in the same encounter, along with four bodyguards.


For the Central government, the timing carries political significance given that Home Minister Amit Shah had set November 30 as the deadline to neutralise Hidma, and March 2026 for the dismantling of Maoism as a national security threat. Hidma was killed 12 days ahead of schedule.


To understand the implications of this encounter requires revisiting the arc of Maoism in Andhra Pradesh and the wider ‘Red Corridor.’ The state was once the ideological cradle of Naxalism outside West Bengal. In the 1980s and 1990s, the People’s War Group (PWG), the precursor to the CPI (Maoist), had found sanctuary in the northern agency areas of Andhra Pradesh. Rugged hills helped by a weak state presence and deep socio-economic grievances created fertile ground for mobilisation among Adivasi communities. The PWG perfected guerrilla tactics in these forests, pioneering the network of ‘dalams’ that would later spread across Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra and Jharkhand.


But Andhra Pradesh also became the first laboratory for effective counterinsurgency. The Greyhounds, raised in 1989, introduced a model of high-mobility, intelligence-driven policing that chipped away at Maoist capabilities. By the late 2000s, pressure in Andhra forced the insurgency’s centre of gravity northwards, into the contiguous forests of Bastar. There, Hidma emerged as a formidable field commander.


Born in 1981 in Sukma, he rose from a tribal recruit to the youngest member of the CPI (Maoist)’s Central Committee. This was remarkable in a hierarchy long dominated by ideologues from Andhra and Telangana. His military talent did not go unnoticed. Nambala Keshava Rao (Basavaraju), the party’s late general secretary, mentored him as the future architect of the PLGA’s operations. Hidma came to be associated with some of the insurgency’s most devastating attacks: the massacre of 76 CRPF troopers in Dantewada in 2010; the Jhiram Ghati ambush in 2013 that annihilated a generation of Chhattisgarh’s Congress leadership; and numerous strikes across the Bastar region.


For all his operational brilliance, Hidma was a man fighting for a movement losing coherence. When the CPI (Maoist) was formed in 2004 by merging the PWG with the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), it boasted around 42 Central Committee members and influence across nearly 200 districts. Today, the numbers have shrunk sharply. Barely 12 CC members remain active. This year alone, five have been killed including Basavaraju while stalwarts like Mallojula Venugopal Rao (Bhupathi) have surrendered.


Several factors explain this decline. Improved roads and mobile connectivity in formerly inaccessible forested belts have diluted Maoist control. Welfare schemes, though uneven, have expanded the state’s presence. Inter-state coordination, once patchy, has improved under initiatives such as Operation Kagar. Technology, from drones to better surveillance, has narrowed the hideouts available to leaders like Hidma.


The death of Hidma undeniably marks the end of an era. He was the last of the insurgency’s field commanders with both symbolic capital and operational skill. With his killing, the Maoist leadership’s hope of orchestrating a revival of armed struggle has dimmed considerably.


What has tipped the balance in recent years is not merely attrition within the Maoist ranks but a dramatic shift in the Indian state’s political will. Under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, New Delhi has treated Maoism not as an inevitable, slow-burning problem to be ‘managed’ but as a national-security threat to be confronted head on.

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