Miseries of the Red Corridor Region of India: What Do the Data Tell Us?

The fifth chapter of this volume has revealed a very interesting development-disparity landscape in India, where authors have compared some broad development indicators between the two contrasting regions of India, viz., the ‘Red Corridor’ region and its complement. While clustering these regions, they have gone beyond the state boundary and have taken districts, which are affected by the rising trend of Left-Wing Extremism and have experienced unrest and conflict for a persistent period of time. Such cluster of districts is being compared with another, which is free from such violence. This distinction has been made to explore the difference in the degree of underdevelopment of the ‘Red Corridor’ region of India vis-à-vis the rest of India (ROI). The popular notion based on mostly anecdotal evidence says that the ‘Red Corridor’ region consists of most backward areas, where socio-economic development has been abysmal since independence. Such a situation is a reflection of pro-longed feudal structure and exploitation of the natural resources of the powerful groups and marginalizing various indigenous communities. As a result, the extremists been able to win the confidence of the deprived sections of the population living here and have organized them to revolt against the state. Such anecdotal evidence lacks statistical rigour, which clearly can justify such development disparity. This chapter therefore, fills the gap in the existing literature by statistically analysing average outcomes of some key dimensions of development: access to health facilities, education, finance of the ‘Red Corridor’ region vis-à-vis other parts of India, where such extremism is absent. The results stunningly reflect that the ‘Red Corridor’ region is indeed impoverished and poor compared to the ROI in terms of average outcomes of the aforementioned development dimensions. Such detail empirical analyses is helpful for policy recommendations process and endorsing the need for voice representation to ensure justice and also to bridge the gaps between these two very contrasting regions in India.