Danger within

A GREAT deal of attention is being paid to the advance of the Taliban from the Swat valley into Buner in Pakistan, and on the proximity of Buner to Islamabad. True, there are reports, at the time of writing this article, that the Taliban are moving out of Buner, but they are firmly ensconced in Swat, although one hears that the Pakistan Army is preparing to move against them.

All this is certainly worrying to the establishment here, as it must see this, as many others do, as a prelude to a terrible internal conflict in Pakistan, into which the Pakistan Army will be drawn; there are stories that increasingly larger numbers of soldiers and lower ranks of the Army are being converted to the Taliban cause, if one can call it that.

One mentions this only to highlight that Indias gaze, like that of Sauron in the classic The Lord of the Rings, is fixed on Pakistan. It is not looking at a danger inside the country that may pose a greater threat: the activities of the Maoist terrorists.

It is astonishing that they have been active for over 10 years now, and operate in an area that stretches, according to one observer, from the Telengana region of Andhra Pradesh to parts of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, large parts of Jharkhand up to Bihar and to pockets of eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Orissa. This is a huge tract of Indian territory in which they have, over the years, carried out a number of attacks.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been one of the few to have seen the potential danger of this insurgency and called it the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country. In another context, but one that dealt with internal security, the Prime Minister urged those in positions of authority to think out of the box in tackling this problem. Sadly, there has been no evidence of this.

Recently, during the polling in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, when one would have expected a strong security presence in these areas, the Maoists blew up a railway station, an unused girls school, set nine buses on fire and killed one of the drivers, and then took over a train and held its passengers hostage for several hours. A few years ago, they raided Jehanabad jail and set free over 2,000 prisoners. Besides, over the years they have killed large number of policemen in different States.

True, some Maoists have also been killed, and it is said that Telengana is more or less free of them owing to the relentless combing operations by the police. But their writ certainly still runs in the sense that they are able to strike at will in the regions where they operate. Battalions of security forces have been deployed and helicopters, we are told, have been put into service (to do what is not clear), but the attacks and killings continue.

For some strange reason, this problem is not being given the kind of importance it deserves, despite the Prime Ministers own assessment of its danger. For one thing, the efforts to contain them have been left to the floundering State governments, who appear to have neither the wits nor the equipment and people capable of countering them. For another, there does not seem to be a carefully-thought-out strategy to eliminate this terrorist group or groups.

One does not need to tell the seasoned officers in the Home Ministry and the Intelligence Bureau (I.B.) the vital importance of trying to get into the minds of these insurgents, to try and anticipate what they would do, how they would act. One does not have to tell them about the paramount importance of training specialised units in counterterrorism, and about the need to take the battle to them rather than wait for them to kill more policemen. Above all, one does not need to tell them that it is the height of folly to leave the matter to the policemen in these States.

There is just one area in which the police forces could prove to be useful; they know the areas better, some speak the local dialects, and some even know the key people who could assist the counterinsurgency units. What is needed to meet the Maoist threat is to draw together the abilities of all the forces available, and to work to a careful plan. Something of the kind was done in West Bengal in the early 1970s by Siddhartha Shankar Ray, who was Minister for West Bengal Affairs in addition to being Union Education Minister. He worked closely with A.L. Dias, Governor of West Bengal, and between them they were able to eliminate the naxalite menace in that State; to this day it is free of naxalite or Maoist terror, except for sporadic hit-and-run cases near the borders with Bihar and Jharkhand.

It is true that the security forces may well be doing a good deal, about which we know little. But some information must be made available, as the lack of information is the first condition to the spreading of rumours and horror stories. In the absence of this information, one has to conclude, at the very least, that not much is being done.

Just two years ago a former chief of the I.B., Ajit Doval, said as much in an interview. He said the governments reaction was not enough, and as a reaction to the Prime Ministers appeal to think out of the box, all that one has got has been conventional responses. This has been Indias abiding tragedy. When insurgency was brewing in the northeastern region, little was done other than despatching troops there. It is only now the government seems to have realised that the problem is not one of shooting insurgents but of looking at the basic problems in the region.

The trouble is that, given our system of administration, everything ultimately goes to what is called office by all bureaucrats, even the best: (English grammar has never been their strong point). And office means a large number of babus whose notion of the northeast and now the Maoist-affected areas is as good as ours is of the moons of Saturn. So, couched in the best bureaucratese, persuasive proposals are put up to consult X or Y Ministry to set up a committee or fact-finding mission or something equally mindless, and our harassed senior babus just sign. And nothing concrete is done.

Nothing will happen now either, with the elections going on and on. But once there is a government, it must put aside all these files and proposals and the ruling parties must work out strategies in the party offices, with all the inputs they can get from local people, for these are, finally, political problems. Then they must get the administration to act on these strategies and plans quickly, and without demur. Inter-ministerial turf wars must be stamped out and clear orders given. They are what the system understands.

And the prime response that it is a matter for the States to handle must be given the short shrift; this is a national problem and must be tackled as one.