Gudsa Usendi on Maoist modes of Communication

The many lives of Gudsa Usendi

Phantom spokesman is emblematic of Chhattisgarh's secretive yet media-savvy Maoists
‘Today I am Gudsa Usendi, tomorrow it could be someone else'

Maoists keenly aware of connection between surveillance and communication

Raipur: In the autumn of 2007, a suave, middle-aged man with a military bearing walked into Naresh Bazaar cloth store near the Bilaspur bus stand and bought a thousand metres of olive green tericot fabric for Rs. 101 a metre. According to a shop assistant, the man looked like an ex-serviceman, spoke in English, introduced himself as Sunil Choudhury, a private security contractor with contracts to secure factories across Chhattisgarh, and said he needed uniforms for his guards.

Later that year, Choudhury appeared at Dayaram Sahu's workshop in Raipur's Purani Basti and asked the struggling tailor to stitch him trousers of waist sizes 28, 30 and 36 inches with corresponding shirts. “He said he employed more than 50 security guards and each watchman needed three sets of uniform,” said Sahu. “He asked for 35 uniforms, and promised another 100 sets if he liked my work.”

It appears that Choudhury liked Sahu's work; when the Raipur police raided the workshop in early 2008, they claim to have found 634 metres of military green cloth, 200 trousers and 107 full-sleeved shirts.

Sunil Choudhury, the police said, was not a security contactor but was Katta Ramchandra Reddy alias Vijay alias Gudsa Usendi, a high ranking member and spokesperson of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal (DKZ) Committee of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). The uniforms were meant for Maoist guerrillas rather than private security guards.

According to police charge sheets and court documents, Gudsa Usendi is the shadowy figure who sent compact discs of Maoist propaganda to Raipur politicians in 2006 and was the source of a consignment of 91 country-made shotguns recovered from a busy intersection in Raipur in 2008. The police claim he was in frequent contact with jailed human rights activist and award-winning paediatrician Binayak Sen and independent filmmaker Ajay T.G., an association denied by both Dr. Sen and Ajay. Gudsa's supposed wife, K.S. Malti, is currently in Raipur Central Jail; another alleged associate of his was arrested in Durg as recently as September last year. But who is Gudsa Usendi? “Gudsa Usendi is just a name,” said a smooth voice over the telephone in August last year, “Today I am Gudsa Usendi, tomorrow it could be someone else. Gudsa Usendi is the title taken over by the spokesperson for the DKZ.”

Maoist spokespersons have long had a fascination for aliases. Before he was slain in a police encounter last year, Maoist central committee spokesperson Cherukuri Rajkumar was known to the outside world as Azad (translated as Free), but within the party he went by several names including Madhu, Gangadhar, Uday and Dinesh. His successor goes by the name of Abhay (translated as Fearless); the spokesperson who handled the abduction of Malkangiri District Collector R.V. Krishna in February went by the name of ‘Prasad,' but Dandakaranya's Gudsa Usendi is different, because Gudsa Usendi was once a ‘real' person.

“It was at about three in the morning in Potenar village in Abujmarh. It was June 25 2000, it was raining heavily. There were six comrades in a hut when they were surrounded by the police,” said a young Maoist fighter who called herself Rehmati. “Five comrades were killed, one of them was Gudsa Usendi. He was 17.”

When he joined the Maoists, Gudsa Usendi dropped his given name and took on the moniker of ‘Ramesh.' He was of the Maria tribe from Chhattisgarh's Abujmarh region, according to the Maoists. A year after his death, the Maoist spokesperson of Dandakaranya (broadly corresponding with South Chhattisgarh) took on his name to keep his memory alive and the practice has continued ever since.

The Maoists are wary of sharing organisational details with reporters, but anecdotal evidence suggests that Gudsa Usendi functions at the centre of a cloud of cell phones, laptops and individuals. A message from Gudsa Usendi could appear as a note under your door, a letter postmarked by a small town on the Chhattisgarh-Andhra Pradesh border, an email from an IP address that traces back to a neighbouring State, or a micro-SD card stuck to a sheet of paper.

In a recent meeting, a member of their communications team explained that every Maoist division (equivalent to a zilla in the panchayati sytem) has access to a laptop, memory cards, a portable inkjet printer and a cell phone. The netbook examined by this correspondent ran an open source Linux-based operating system with open source text, image and video editing software. Gudsa Usendi usually prepares a press note and hands it over to one of his assistants. Major press releases (like the announcement for Martyrs Week) are designed using crack versions of software like Adobe Pagemaker and converted into PDF format, before being sent to printing presses installed in secret locations.

“We prefer PDF format, because it removes the problem of fonts when issuing press releases in English and Hindi,” explained an assistant, referring to a document format created by Adobe. The files are emailed from the top of a tall tree on a mountaintop where a GPRS enabled phone can log onto a stray network

All the devices are charged by truck batteries connected to solar panels. “Batteries provide direct current (DC); laptops and phones need alternating current (AC),” explained the assistant patiently, “So we add a DCAC inverter to the circuit and use solar power to charge our devices.”

The Maoists are keenly aware of the connection between surveillance and communication. In the forests, only certain senior cadres are allowed to carry cell phones and use their devices sparingly. “We have to secure an area and post sentries before making a phone call,” said a Maoist commander who carries a Nokia phone. However, the poor density of cellular towers in Maoist territories makes it hard to pinpoint the location of a particular phone.

On a windy day in Konta in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district for instance, it is possible to pick up reception from a tower in Andhra Pradesh's Khammam district; by moving 50 km northwards from the same spot in Konta, a user can start ranging towers in Orissa's Malkangiri district, moving further towards Chintrakonda in Malkangiri, the Andhra network comes back into range. Somewhere in that broad stretch of land, a man climbs up a tree, pulls out a cell phone from the folds of his clothes and makes a phone call. “Hello? I have a statement from Gudsa Usendi,” he says.

Source:

http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/13/stories/2011031355331200.htm

Interview with E N Rammohan on the CRPF and the CPI(Maoist)

‘I do not believe the Maoists are exploiters’

Distinguished IPS officer E N Rammohan, a former BSF director general who was especially called by the Centre to look into the massacre of 75 CRPF personnel in Dantewada on April 6 this year, is a deeply perturbed man. To him, the unfolding labyrinth of Maoist insurgency is being tackled in an utterly unprofessional manner by the Indian State.

And, if this course is not corrected quickly, he says it could develop into an inferno, engulfing vast tracts of the country, including urban centres which the government now consider as safe zones.

Despite being a thoroughbred police officer from the Assam cadre who dealt with insurgencies in the troubled states of the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir,

Rammohan's prescription to tackle the Maoists insurgency relies far less on security perspective and more on the socioeconomic aspects. "Give land to the tiller and forests back to the tribals. Implement these two things with the help of strong willed and honest administration," he says. "Plus, bring down the vast gap between the rich and the poor and you would start witnessing that Maoists are on the wane."

In a freewheeling three hour chat in Delhi where he lives, Rammohan lets out his anger against a social system without any remorse. "You are wrong if you think that doling out money through funds and schemes can help solve the problem. The money will be routed back here, to Delhi, in to the deep pockets of corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen. The answer, as I said, is absolute implementation of the Land Ceiling Act and giving forests and its resources, including the lucrative mineral wealth, back to the tribals," he retorts.

"Why cannot we, a welfare state based on socialist tenets, do the same with our tribal people that America and Australia did for their past mistakes against Red Indians and Aborigines by seeking their forgiveness and giving back reserved lands to them?" he says. Despite the fact that his family lost vast tracts of land during the "Land to the Tiller" movement in his native Kerala, Rammohan is an ardent supporter of late Communist chief minister EMS Namboodaripad. "I have no regrets, no illusions. EMS did the right thing. It is because of his policies that the Maoist insurgency could not take root there. If other states followed the same exa mple you would see that more than half of the problem is gone."

"You know it is caste and the unbridled exploitation carried through it that is the root cause of the problem. For how long can you hide that the majority of the people have been reeling under this exploitation for ages? Can their aspirations for a just society be quelled by quickfix solutions like deploying security forces or the Army? No, it is a gross misnomer and the sooner our leaders understand this, the better for the country."

"If you bring the Army in, the situation will improve temporarily as they will quell the rebellion. But the quiet will remain only for some time. It is like putting a lid on a boiling pot only to let it explode later. Without the permanent removal of social injustice the insurgency will come back again, perhaps more viciously," he adds.

Rammohan's take on the Maoists is radically different from most of his colleagues. "I do not believe in the propaganda that they are extortionists and exploiters. Their leadership comes from a determined lot of people who lost faith in our system because of its failure to remove injustices, and took to a violent ideology to form an equal society. Their intention is not bad, the method is.

"Ownership of the land has always been with three upper castes - the Kshatriyas, Brahmins and the Vaishyas. Among these, the Vaishyas or the Baniyas - the Marwaris, Chettiyars, Reddys and the Kammas - have been the most vicious. Besides land, they also exploit the lower castes and the tribals while doing business with them. The police - the supposed protectors - also help the baniya, the exploiter and not the poor tribal, the exploited. Naturally, he goes to the Maoist fold that has given him justice by distributing land and punishing the baniya," he laments.

"It is beyond my comprehension why our State develops cold feet when it comes to removing injustices. Why cannot India, the so called welfare that has socialism as one of its tenets, make the society more equal?" he questions and then proposes his own remedy.

"The upper castes should be prevented from entering the forests altogether. The baniyas, including their modern avatar, the corporate, should be barred from having business and only the tribals should be allowed to carry out their trade, including mining, through cooperatives owned by them."

The genesis of the Maoist insurgency, according to Rammohan, goes back to the Tebhaga Movement of 1946 when the undivided CPI started working with the exploited peasants in the Rangpur and Dinajpur regions of Bengal and forcibly took away land from the exploiter landlords. It then spread to the Telangana region during 1946 to 1951. And then came the Naxalbari insurrection of 1967 after the split of the CPI.

"It spread among Girijans (tribals) of Srikakulam in 1968 and during the same time to Midnapore and Birbhum districts of West Bengal and then among peasants of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Its spread widened to Andhra, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and Bihar again in 1980s. Wherever you see, the spread took place because our so called welfare democracy could not get the poor their due," says Rammohan, getting back to his sober self.

The former DG, who still has a gait that can rival officers half his age, differs hugely with the present government policy of dealing with the Maoists with the help of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

"Instead of hunting down Maoist guerrillas, the paramilitary forces should be used to enforce the right of the tribals on forests and its wealth. And in place of the CRPF, the Centre should use more disciplined and resolute force like BSF and ITBP. The state police should be put under strict supervision so that it works only in the interest of the tribals," he says.

Via - Indian Express