A grass-roots response to Naxal terror

Some excerpts from a recent interview with Senior Congress leader Mahendra Karma, a frontline anti-Naxalite campaign leader

Salwa Judum observed its fifth foundation day on June 5. For the past two-and-a-half years, there have been virtually no activities like rallies or public meetings on the ground in Bastar. What is the future of this movement?

After serious thought, we have changed the decision on how to go about our campaign against the Maoists. A new strategy has been worked out during the foundation day meetings where it was decided that anti-Naxal campaign activists would visit the villages and make the people aware that they should not extend any cooperation to the Naxalites. We don’t want any direct fight or conflict. We want to create such awareness so that the villagers themselves will request the Maoists with folded hands: “Let us be, leave us to our conditions”. This non-cooperation campaign is in its preliminary stage and is confined to few villages. It will be gradually extend to other Naxalite affected villages.

What went wrong with the previous form of Salwa Judum —which started in June 2005 as a spontaneous movement against Maoists and later became controversial?

As such, there is nothing wrong with Salwa Judum. We, being from Bastar, are well aware about the Naxal network, their over ground wings functioning in the guise of NGOs and other so-called pro-people and human rights outfits — who enjoy considerable influence in the media. While they unleashed a systematic campaign to defame Salwa Judum and made it controversial, both the state Government and the anti-Naxalite campaign activists could not match their propaganda skills. I have no qualms in admitting that the propaganda by the Maoists and their supporters was a complete success.

Thought-provoking Op-Ed from Pioneer: This is war.
Excerpts:

…Unfortunately, India’s strategic and security establishment has stubbornly refused to learn any lessons from the disasters they have invited upon hapless security force personnel and civilians, and have persisted with incoherent responses that yield no enduring gains and put more and more people at risk.

…The problem with talks — or even with talking about talks — is not just that they have no possibility of success within the circumstances that currently prevail in the Maoist insurgency in India, but that they create expectations that they do. Within the existing situation, all talk about talks projects an enveloping incoherence on the perspectives of the state and its agencies, undermines the determination and will to fight and, indeed, even to prepare for the fight that is inevitable.

…It is within this context that the farce of mutually rejected offers of ‘talks’ between Union Home Minister P Chidambaram and Maoist politburo member Koteswar Rao aka Kishenji occurred.

…It must be obvious that fishing for talks in these circumstances could serve little purpose. Significantly, Mr Chidambaram had himself noted, on February 19, that intellectual support to the Maoists made the task of tackling them “very difficult”, as it confused people. Far from injecting some clarity into the discourse, the futile talk about talks can only have further confounded issues.

…Critically, Mr Chidambaram has already noted that 223 districts across 20 States in the country are already infected by Maoist activities, up from just 55 in 2003 — though areas that “consistently witnessed” violence covered just 400 police stations in 90 districts in 13 States (there are 14,000 police stations in the country). The seven worst-affected States in 2009, in terms of fatalities, were Chhattisgarh (345 killed), Jharkhand (217), West Bengal (159), Maharashtra (87), Odisha (81), Bihar (78), and Andhra Pradesh (28) (SATP data).

It is now evident that the Maoist potential to penetrate other States, which had hitherto remained outside their grasp, has evolved enormously. On February 20, 2009, for instance, Kerala State intelligence sources indicated, against the backdrop of the launching of operations to flush out Left-wing extremists from Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, that the Maoists had penetrated into rural areas of Kerala in the guise of labourers.

…It is evident that the Maoist geographical extension is continuing and, as in the past, may indeed be facilitated by the ‘squeeze’ that operations are exerting on them in certain areas.

…Maoist networks of extortion are further testimony to this dynamism. Documents and hard disks seized from Misir Mishra, a central committee member of the CPI(Maoist) who was arrested in Jharkhand in March 2008, had revealed that the Maoists collected over Rs 1,000 crore in 2007 through their State committees, and had set a target of Rs 1,125 crore for 2008.

Mr Vishwa Ranjan, Director-General of Police, Chhattisgarh, stated on November 29, 2009, that the Maoists annually extorted up to Rs 20 billion across India, mostly targeting iron and coal mining companies, infrastructure project contractors and tendu patta (leaves of Diospyros melonoxylon used for bidis, local cigarettes) businessmen.
…
It must be evident — and this is something that MHA rhetoric has repeatedly confirmed — that an enemy as relentless and well-organised as the Maoist can only be countered through a coherent and well-thought-out strategy. If, however, even a basic consensual assessment of the threat is lacking — and is further undermined by the inconsistent public postures of the top Central and State leaderships — it is not clear how such a strategy is to be framed.

Unsurprisingly, the operations that have been fitfully launched over the past year have little potential to secure any enduring gains.

A tremendous effort of capacity consolidation and building will have to precede any effective operational strategy to stall and then neutralise the Maoist rampage. The most significant component of this process will have to be distributed across the State’s forces, and cannot be engineered through CPMF augmentations alone. In the absence of any consensus on the Maoist threat and counter-insurgent strategy, however, there has been increasing reliance on Central forces and agencies. Astonishingly, the Government has reduced allocation for the CPMFs from Rs 30,900 crore in 2009-10 to Rs 29,940 crore in the next fiscal, introducing a new element of incoherence in the state’s responses.

A societal consensus clearly does not exist with regard to the Maoist conundrum in India. A range of Maoist front organisations, as well as sympathetic and often simply confused ‘intellectuals’, systematically undermines the possibility of the crystallisation of such a consensus (it is unsurprising that, while making his conditional offer of a ceasefire, Koteswar Rao appealed to ‘intellectuals and human rights activists to mediate’ between the Maoists and the Government). This is to be expected, and can be countered, if the state and its agencies are able to project coherent assessments, policies, strategies and perspectives. When the state itself sows confusion, there can be no prizes for guessing who gains.

From a comment by Sh Maloy Dhar on facebook (most of you would recall he is the ex-chief of IB):
SC order on Salwa Judum has created several crisis siruation. People in so-called Maoist Liberated areas have the fundamental right to protect themselves with or without state help. This was practiced in North East- Village Volunteer Force, in Punjab as SPO. Why is it now illegal in Maoist affected areas? The state has to provide protection to villages which took part in Salwa Judum. Otherwise they would be massacred by the Maoists.
From experience in fighting guerrilla insirgency, I suggest formation of Village Protection Force by the states, if necessary by passing Act, and raising commando forces from the villages affected by Maoist rampage. Such a regular force will be ‘legal’ and will be capable to deny ‘mass control’ initiative to the Maoists. The Union Government may also pitch in to help the states in this direction. Otherwise the Maoists will emerge as a greater threat. Only people’s will to fight Maoists can thwart so-called Maoist ‘people’s war.’ State alone cannot do the job.