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Badi Soch: Rapprochement as a preferable recourse to confrontation

With the usual lack of imagination, the government is considering responding to the recent Naxal ambush of the Congress party convoy which killed at least 27 people and injured 32 others in Bastar district, Chhattisgarh. Surely the attack is an outrage. But it would be prudent to consider other approaches for a long term solution for the conflict over land issues and tribal displacement.

For successful examples, we can look westwards to Colombia, where the government and the hard-bitten FARC rebels have reached a consensus on the issue of land use in their peace talks after 50 years of armed conflict. The agreement calls for rural development, fair access to land and the creation of a land bank to reallocate land seized by far-right paramilitary groups on behalf of cattle ranchers and drug traffickers. The experience of other countries in Latin America such as Mexico also has lessons for India.

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