A few good men: How Alex Paul Menon nailed the Naxals' lies

From all accounts, Sukma district collector Alex Paul Menon is a conscientious IAS officer who wants to use even his posting in the boondocks to make a difference for the better in people’s lives. And in the few months that he has served as the district collector of a newly carved district, Menon has not let the total absence of infrastructure or facilities interfere with his mission. The earnest young officer could often be seen operating from a rudimentary makeshift office that did not have even walls, reports the Indian Express correspondent who visited him in Sukma. “What else can I expect?” Menon told him. “It’s a new district. I have been given this responsibility. I will have to begin from scratch.” Menon was working on rebuilding roads and schools that had been demolished by Maoists as part of their campaign of violence. “Why do you think I have come here?” Menon had asked the Indian Express correspondent. “I risked everything… I could have lived a safe, comfortable life but I want to work,” he had said. [caption id=“attachment_284691” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“At work, as on this field visit in a backward area, Alex Paul Menon presented the human face of the Indian state. PTI”] [/caption] A photograph of Menon’s (which appears at right), taken on one of his field visits to a tribal village in Chattisgarh, offers a glimpse into his endearing way of working. Menon is seated on the floor, cross-legged, chatting with two elderly women who are going about their household activities. There is a smile on his face as he chats with them; the elderly women in turn are chuckling, as they would when their favourite grandson comes home and indulges in playful banter. There is nothing about the image to suggest the trappings of state power – of the sorts that an IAS officer represents. On the other hand, it shows up civil service administration in India at its best: in touch with the people at the lowest rung of the economic and social ladder, and with enormous empathy. So why do the few good men like Alex Paul Menon, who are working to improve the condition of the people in some of the most remote and backward areas of India, get abducted by Naxalites and Maoists, who claim to be fighting on behalf of these same groups of people? It is precisely because officers like Menon are offering a human face of the government, which the Maoists and Naxalites demonise. The myth that sustains the Maoist and Naxalite movements is that the “state” and the “government” are outright evil entities, and every instrument of the state is therefore a justifiable target for violence. And that the Naxalites themselves, in turn, are the only protectors of the people against the evil state. There is, of course, much that is venal about governments: and people at the lower end of the social and economic spectrum do face formidable odds. But the unnuanced narrative that presents the state in its entirety as the epitome of evil is the Big Shining Lie that the Naxalites and the Maoists have to perpetuate in order to justify their own existence. “The Maoists are clearly threatened by bright young officers like Alex,” Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh noted . Far from being ideological purists waging a “class war”, the Naxalites today have become mercenary “guns for hire”, and have no inhibitions about targeting the very people they claim to be fighting for. Even schools in rural areas, which would give children the rudiments of an education that could help them break out of the poverty trap, have been blown up by Maoists – for whom every educated child represents the potential loss of a blinkered recruit. And officers like Menon are, with their deep sense of empathy, a commitment to do real good at the grassroots level, and their common touch, demolishing the myth of the “evil state” that the Naxalists perpetuate. By showing up the human face of the Indian state, the few good men like Menon are nailing the Naxalites’ lie. As much as they give cause for despair, abductions by Naxalites of sterling young officers like Menon also symbolise the frustration of the Maoist movement: all it takes to demolish their myths of a class war and of the state-as-evil are a few good men like Menon.