Maoist incidents of violence and disruption continue to be seen as discrete events, demanding no more than specific and localised response, whereas the Maoists are working with a coherence of specific initiatives and actions across the country.
The 9th Congress of the Maoists, held in the latter half of January and early February 2007, attracted some media comment, but has failed to provoke any sense of particular urgency inIndia's establishment at the national or state levels, nor have events thereafter been coherently linked with what is known to have been decided at this convention. The discomforting reality, however, is that the Maoists are, as in the past, deadly serious, and their plans and projections have already been moved into the phase of active implementation. If there was any scope for doubt on this count, it should have been convincingly settled by the two-day Maoist blockade across six of the worst affectedstates on June 26 and 27, 2007. The blockade was organised in protest against the economic policies of thegovernment. Regrettably, far from being recognized as a small taste of catastrophes to come, the blockade evoked a sense of relief in the security leadership, with the top Police official in Jharkhand declaring,"We were expecting major attacks by Maoist rebels, but their reaction has been rathermild."
June 26:
June 28:
Summarizing these developments, an assessment by the union home ministry on June 28,stated that 20 incidents took place in states affected by Naxalite violence during the two-day economic blockade.10 incidents pertained to damage to railway property, mainly in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal. The other incidents related to obstruction of the movement of goods on highways passing through thestates. Though the Railways were yet to make a detailed assessment of the losses incurred by it during the blockade, preliminary estimates suggested that this could be aboutRs One billion.
Given the scale and lethality of some recent Maoist attacks, the violence witnessed during the blockade would certainly seem'mild'. The core error of such an assessment, however, is that the Maoist protracted war is simply equated with Maoist violence, and the significance of the widespread disruption of activity across sixstates in a centrally coordinated programme is not recognized. As Muppala Laxmana Rao @ Ganapathi, the'general secretary' of the Communist Party of India - Maoist (CPI-Maoist) declared recently,"we use both violent and non-violent forms of struggle."
The Maoists recognize clearly that they have suffered 'tactical reverses' in somestates, particularly in Andhra Pradesh, where the counter-insurgency effort spearheaded by thestate Police and its elite Greyhounds Force, has squeezed the rebels out of their strongholds, and into neighbouringstates. The Maoist leadership has made "an in-depth study of the enemy's counter-revolutionary tactics, plans andmethods" and drawn "lessons from these". As a result, "the Party is now more equipped to defeat theenemy's tactics." Ganapathi explains the essence of this tactical readjustment: "A specialised study of the strength and weaknesses of the Indianstate is taken up. As you might be aware, even the mightiest enemy will have the weakest points. We have to correctly identify these weak points and deal effective blows so as to achievevictories."
The reason for the self-imposed limits on both violence and geographical spread of the blockade are strategic and are based on a recognition of the unique infirmities of the Indianstate and its capacities for response. The numbers of swarming attacks are also deliberated limited as a matter of choice, and do not reflect actual Maoist capacities, which would be significantly greater. The objective of these various operations is to widen the mass base, to'blood' cadres, and to augmented morale, without carrying the violence and disruption beyond the threshold that would provoke massive and coordinatedstate response. It is assumed--correctly--that as long as these incidents and episodes remain sporadic and apparently unconnected, thestate and its agencies will be tempted to lapse into habitual somnolence soon after each provocation, leaving progressively augmented operational spaces open for the Maoists. There is an underlying recognition, here, that violence beyond a certain level could provoke powerful and coordinated responses which the current Maoist capacities may be insufficient to resist. Recognizing the"tough situation" faced by the Party and its cadres in Andhra Pradesh, for instance, Ganapathi notes,"There is an immediate need to transform a vast area into the war zone so that there is enough room for manoeuvrability for our guerrillaforces." This transformation is the objective of coordinated blockades and the increasing frequency of swarming attacks.
As in the past, the Maoist perspective is rooted in the context and philosophy of the protracted war. Thus, Ganapathi imposes a timeframe of decades on his war plans:
The next 10 to 20 years will witness massive political and social upheavals… in several states against the onslaught of imperialism, anti-people policies of the Indian ruling classes such as carving out neo-colonial enclaves called SEZs, massive displacement of the poor in both urban and rural areas, against draconian laws, state repression, unemployment, corruption, inflation, neglect of social welfare and so on. Militant confrontation between the people and the state will become a general feature throughout the country…
The Maoist consolidation has already secured unprecedented sway and, "After a long time in the history of the revolutionary communist movement in India since the 1970s, a single directing centre has come into existence... today the revolutionary movement has become further strengthened, has spread to large tracts of the backward countryside, has well-knit Party structures, Army and vast massbase."
The Indian state is yet to recognize the coherence of specific initiatives and actions within the broad framework of the Maoist campaigns and strategy across the country, and unless the unity of purpose and of the underlying rationale is recognized and confronted with an equal, indeed, greater, coherence and lucidity, the creeping malignancy of Maoist subversion will continue to extend itself.
Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management.Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal