On April 6, in the Mukrana forests of Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district in India, 72 members of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and one member of the District police force were killed in a gruesome attack by the Naxalites. In addition to the number of causalities, the planning and precision of the Naxal operation stunned the country. India’s Home Minister P. Chidambaram accepted full responsibility for the attack and offered to resign. As the country recovers from the shock, a national debate has surfaced on the strategy for countering the Naxal threat.
Many explanations are being offered for the Dantewada incident– the intelligence was faulty, the local police not fully supportive, it was not the mandate of the CRPF to venture that far on its own, the forces got sucked into a trap, they were outnumbered. CRPF’s Special Director General (North) NK Tripathi and Home Minister P. Chidambaram have disagreed with the view that there was lack of training in the force and that the particular company which was attacked in Dantewada was ill-equipped. While the Home Minister appears resolute in punishing the Naxals responsible for the recent attack, there are some larger issues which will have to be addressed for the Government strategy to succeed.
First, after years of countering the naxal/maoist threat, the Indian state has still not learnt lessons from previous mistakes. In June 2008, 35 commandos of Greyhound, an elite anti-maoist unit, were killed a river ambush in Chintrakonda, Orissa. The Greyhound unit had navigated from Andhra Pradesh to Orissa and was literally mowed down as their boat entered the Balimela reservoir in the territory of Orissa. K. Subrahmanyam expresses disappointment that not much was done even after the Kargil Commission had made suggestions to the central government on the training of paramilitary forces fighting insurgency within the country. The challenge is not in understanding the problem but in implementing solutions.
Second, political issues complicate the implementation of strategic offensives. According to Minister Chidambaram, “We will provide paramilitary forces to the state governments to assist them to carry out anti-naxal operations, regain control so that they can restore the developmental process.” This implies that onus for countering the naxal menace will rest on the state governments while the Central Government will assist in capacity building. Coordination of operations across state borders will be difficult given the fact that some political parties like the JD(U) and CPI(M) disagree with the Central Government’s offensive approach towards the maoists/naxals.
Third, the naxal/maoist threat is heterogeneous in nature, thereby necessitating a coherent yet diversified approach. The Naxal movement that began as a small agrarian rebellion against local landlords in Naxalbari, West Bengal has turned in a major insurgency movement spanning across the states of Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. According to Ajay K. Mehra, naxalism in India typifies a particular kind of militant and violent armed struggle by the peasants, led by a leadership drawing doctrinal support from Marxism/Leninism and strategic inspiration from Mao. But despite periods of co-operation and co-ordination, the movement has not been unified in different parts of the country. In fact, it has at times been fragmented even at a particular local context. This adds to the challenges in countering the Naxal threat; a generic military or socio-economic solution cannot be operationalized across the country.
Minister Chidambaram has accepted that the buck stops with him but he will have to devise a strategy in which all stakeholders join as active participants. From the Indian Army which trains units for counter-insurgency to state police units, from state governments to social activists, the Minister will require cooperation from all parties for countering the naxal threat. For countering the naxal menace it is important that the social activists stop romanticizing the naxal issue and state governments stop politicizing it.
