Whatever you do, they come and undo.

Sudha Pillai said in a interview to TOI:

It's accepted that lack of development triggered the Maoist problem. What went wrong?

• It's a fact that tribals have got a raw deal. State governments have acted in a colonial manner, disenfranchising tribals. Managing forest produce is a basic plank. Nobody can take the people's livelihood away. Tribals had a certain way of life in the forests, which need not be romanticized. But they had access to forest produce like honey, lac and resin, through which they earned a living. The biggest failure of state governments is that they denied them access to non-timber forest produce. We have suggested implementation of Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act 1996, which recognizes the traditional rights of tribals over community resources. Even after 14 years, the 73rd Amendment which gives constitutional status to panchayati raj institutions has still not been implemented everywhere.

But the dangerous thing she said in the interview is:

Do the benefits from various schemes reach the people?

• ….When I was in the labour ministry, we started the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana to provide health insurance coverage for BPL families. Wherever it was implemented, I was told, money lenders had run away. That's the nicest thing I ever heard.