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7/8/2013 6:43 PM
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responded with an offer to post the lathi-yielding home guards - security in place a risk allowance - but the employees are not amused.
] Image used for representation. Reuters Neither the chief minister or any other minister or leader of the ruling BJP has visited the area after the May attack. No Congress leader, including the party's newly-appointed working president Charan Das Mahant has visited the area either. This has more significantly brought to the fore the glaring absence of a vibrant political milieu in the region. The chief minister started his highly publicised Vikas Yatra' on 6th May in Dantewada town in the area and traveled full one kilometer in the bus to reach the Circuit House from where he took off in the helicopter. He hasn't returned to Bastar since. The Congress had been making some efforts in the months preceding the May attack to raise the interest level in the masses. Parivartan rally' was a part of that campaign. It is ironical that the rally that was intended to be the curtain raiser for the political fight before the impending assembly elections later this year effectively put a curtain to whatever nascent activity was there till then. The ostensible reason - given by both the parties - is the rains. The MLAs have shifted their bases to towns further away from their constituencies. Their public appearances have virtually dried up. So has the contact with their constituents - with perhaps one exception of that of the Jagdalpur MLA Santosh Bafna who has come out with a unique model. As the Hindi daily Deshbandhu reports he has pitched a tent in the lawns of his fortified residence in Jagdalpur town where his constituents, loaded on trucks, are brought to him to meet the representative. The ride comes with the promise of food and gifts as bonus. In a small pocket in the south, the health and education services have been outsourced to the NGOs. In the rest, the state has simply put the shutter down. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which had been working in the area since 2010 was asked to leave last month
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when eyebrows were raised on realization that their services in the tribal villages were benefiting the Maoists too. The ICRC was ensuring that people have access to clean water and proper sanitation in two districts - Bijapur and Sukma of south Bastar. Another NGO -The Nobel Peace Prize winner Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) - popularly known as Doctors without Borders - is under scanner of the state government. That leaves only Ramkrishna Mission with a base in Narayanpur. The political activities have dried up. The MLAs - both sitting and prospective - have virtually fled the scene, the offices are deserted as the employees have gone on strike, the school buildings are either destroyed or damaged, no teacher is to be found when the new academic session has started, no doctor is found in the season of what the department call seasonal diseases. A good part of the nation's geography has been abandoned by the state, a good part of its population forgotten and this has failed to make headlines. Is it because the news does not carry gore?
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