Combating the Maoists/Naxals requires the most energetic steps, firm action and leadership which operate up front ensuring avoidance of collateral damage

Nearly 200 districts in the country are in the grip of Maoists/Naxals. This situation developed over a period of time and all this while state governments and the Centre turned a Nelson’s eye to the emerging scene. There appears to be no one accountable for the current state of affairs. No heads ever rolled, but all those who failed the State kept climbing the promotion ladder. Now when the Home Minister has named some police officers who had failed policemen at Dantewada and wants action against them, we are told that these officers are the very best.

If they are so good, then how did we reach this sorry state, where policemen, state and central police organizations (CPOs) are easily targeted, their weapons taken away, they face regular ambush, and police stations and CPO camps are routinely raided. How have the police, both state and CPOs in the Red Corridor, descended to such poor state of training and low morale. This state of affairs does reflect on the quality of leadership in these forces. There is no accountability and there are no sackings, while more and more senior level posts are sanctioned, making the police extremely top heavy.

Lack of inclusive growth

The Indian State has been painfully slow in waking up to the Maoist/Naxal threat. There is largescale disaffection, deprivation and despondency amongst vast sections of marginalised and dispossessed population. All development and poverty alleviation schemes have simply bypassed them. For them, there has been no “inclusive growth”. No one in Delhi, Ministry of Finance (MoF) and Planning Commission, etc, bothered to find out where were the large funds being made available for inclusive growth have been disappearing. Among them, Adivasis have suffered the most. Their small land holdings have been taken over by mining mafias (plundering the wealth below these lands) hydel projects, multinational corporations (MNCs) and some others; whose forest rights have been dissolved, leaving them with no means of livelihood. Forced evictions from their dwellings and land had become a routine affair. No roads, no schools, no hospitals, nothing were built in these areas.

There has been a gradual withdrawal of governance at the district level. To stay in power, the political class found it more profitable to keep the people in a state of poverty, ignorance and deprivation. Turmoil and unrest in these areas made siphoning of funds much more easy. At the same time, these conditions created fertile grounds for the Maoist/Naxal groups to spring to life and find wide ranging support among the dispossessed. Maoists terrorrised the locals to draw their support on the one hand, and to deny their support and intelligence to the police and security forces on the other.

As governance shrank, police high handedness increased and allocations for poverty alleviation schemes ended in the pockets of corrupt officials and colluding politicians, Naxals ranks kept increasing. District officials never stirred out and functioned from within their high security residences and offices and on return to Delhi, became experts in dealing with Maoists. Given such conditions, Maoists kept enlarging their foothold, while Delhi and the affected states slept and took no corrective action or held any one accountable for this downslide.

Aftermath of Dantewada

Now after the Dantewada ambush and the targeting of a civilian bus in the same region killing over 35 people, suddenly everyone has come to life and all manner of solutions to the problem are being fielded. The media has gone into an overdrive, demanding all-out and immediate action against the insurgents. Wisely, as of now, the deployment of the military is not being considered as an option, but there is demand both from the Home Minister and the affected states for deployment of the Indian Air Force (IAF). Use of helicopters, even in a logistic support role could result in casualties as these will often fly low over insurgent-infested areas. Given the terrain conditions and poor intelligence, gunship helicopters will not be that effective and could cause considerable collateral damage. Use of offensive air support will throw up a whole range of wrong signals to the world and adversely affect foreign investment in the country. The fact is that Maoists will have to be defeated, essentially, by the security forces in ground action. There is no getting away from this.

The call for talks with the Maoists is misplaced and inopportune. Such renegade groups should be invited to the table for talks when they have been driven against the wall. Only then there can be a hope of arriving at viable and acceptable solution. To expect them to shed arms when they are on ascendancy is a bit unrealistic. Often, as has been our experience in the past too, this period of ceasefire and talks is used by the insurgents to regroup and reorganise themselves. We should seek talks once we have put them completely on the defensive and in a bind.

Senior leadership is CRPF’s weakness

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has 210 battalions and many more are now being raised. Most of these units and the state police forcecs in the Red Corridor have been fighting Maoists/Naxals; so they ought to have learnt enough about fighting insurgents and have had own schools for counter-insurgency training. The answer to this intriguing question perhaps rests in the fact that the higher hierarchy in the CPOs and the affected state police have no ground level experience in counter-insurgency operations, there is no accountability and there is little central and state policy or doctrine on the subject.

The hype created over the Dantewada incidents portends ill for the developing situation. Elimination of Maoists has become the top priority without regard to means and methods. Terms like revenge, enemy and war are being freely bandied about. What may follow are excesses by the police, provincial and CPOs. Arrests, interrogations, torture and torching of villages, dislocations and fake encounters, etc will become common occurrence; more so, when the senior leadership stays away from the field. Troops with low morale and poor discipline are more prone to brutalities. Remember the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

Fighting insurgency is a serious business and leadership in the forces has to be led from the front, setting an example in discipline and risk-taking. The military has been in this business and the casualty ratio between troops and officers in these operations is 1 to 13.4. The figure of officer killed in the last decade and a half is by now well over 560. These are commissioned officers, from Lieutenants to Colonels, and in a few cases even of higher ranks. The military has been combating motivated, well-trained and hardcore insurgents in the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir.

Maoists are a ragtag force in their present state. Yet success has eluded the police and there are hardly any casualties among IPS officers while policemen (including those from CPOs) have died in thousands. To achieve results, the police leadership will have to be upfront and run the same risk their subordinates routinely face. During the Punjab problem in the Eighties, only when the Army was deployed, the police started operating in a meaningful manner. Such a system should not become a pattern and CPOs and state police forces should not require military crutches all the time.

Combating requires energetic steps

While law and order remains a state subject, the present situation cannot be considered as a mere law and order problem. Though the Centre would extend all help to the states to combat Maoists/Naxals, the states will have to show greater involvement. To take this challenge head-on, there is a need to bring in legislation where the Centre can take over direct control over operations against Maoists/Naxals in the Red Corridor, create central controlling authority which coordinates intelligence and operations of CPOs with the state police and administration. Gray Hounds, Cobras and Vipers, all should join the fight in a coordinated manner. India can ignore the Maoist/Naxal threat at its peril. Combating Maoists/Naxals requires the most energetic steps, firm action and leadership which operate upfront ensuring avoidance of collateral damage.