“Our policy must rest on the twin pillars of development and security”, said Chidambaram as he concluded his statement in Parliament on dealing with the Naxal ‘menace’, as he describes it. The pillar of ‘development’ was a concession to or acknowledgement of the growing voices of dissent even among the establishment, which have been saying that the Naxal problem cannot be solved by heavy handed military means alone. But then, Chidambaram says that the Naxals are preventing the government from carrying on any development in the areas that they control. Hence, he adds, unless we clear the areas of the Naxals first, we cannot take development to the tribals in these areas. Therefore, he says, we must “hold one’s nerve and stay the course which has been carefully charted out to deal with them.” That course is Operation Greenhunt, or the use of overwhelming military force to crush the Naxals.