E
ach new day for India’s establishment, it appears, begins with a blank slate, and is then inscribed only with the minutiae of the most recent set of statements, events and manoeuvres. Politicians regurgitate tired platitudes as new ‘agendas’, and the media and ‘civil society’ whip themselves up into a frenzy, examining nuance, gesture and symbol, with as deficient a long-term memory as the illusionists who generate the first falsehood of something new and historical being done. Appearance, evidently, is everything; substance is naught.
So it was at the meeting of Chief Minister’s of the Naxal affected states at New Delhi on July 14, 2010, where the ministry of home affairs (MHA)
unveiled a ‘new agenda’ and ‘strategy’ to counter the Maoists and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh threw his weight behind
an appeal to "be and also appear to be united and one in our resolve and in execution of our strategies."
There is, unfortunately, little – beyond some vacuous symbolism – that is new in this ‘new strategy’, and as little that will alter conditions on the ground in the struggle against the growing Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) peril. The ‘two-pronged approach’ of taking security and development forward together has been with us as far as memory goes, and has produced neither security nor development in the widening target regions. Among the most significant proposals of its new avatar is the decision to set up a Unified Command (UC) for the four worst affected states – Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal (Bihar appears to have chosen to remain out of this scheme; so much for unity of purpose). It is useful to put on record, here, that the UC structure has had, at best, very mixed results in a number of other theatres of insurgency in the country. It is also, of course, not surprising that everyone has by now forgotten that the idea of a ‘Joint Operational Command’ (JOC) for the then six contiguous Naxal-affected states of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, UP, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa (Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand were yet to come into existence) was approved by the Centre as far back as in April 2000. More than a decade later, it is evident that that exercise was a non-starter, and the general feeling, then, was that the JOC was just an excuse to avoid direct responsibility. There is little reason to believe that the proposed Unified Command structure will be any different this time around.
Stung by the rejection of its ill-conceived proposal for Army deployment in anti-Naxal operations, however, the MHA has now managed to smuggle in a retired Major General and a few retired Brigadiers to pepper up its proposed UC framework. This is, however, just wasted symbolism. It is unlikely that the unfortunate officers who are eventually selected for these august positions will have any significant say on policy or strategy, and it is more than likely that they will be resented by the police and paramilitary leaderships who will actually be charged with the design and execution of campaigns, and who will carry the can for operational failures.
In any event, far too much is being made out of the bogey of coordination failures and the failure to share intelligence – the ‘lacunae’ the UC is purportedly intended to address. It is significant, in the latter context, that virtually every major arrest of top Maoist leaders in the recent past across the country, and including the arrests as far afield as in Delhi, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, has come as a result of intelligence developed – and freely shared – by the Andhra Pradesh police. As for the operational debacles in the Maoist-dominated forest areas, these are not the result of a failure to share intelligence – they are the consequence of a complete absence of credible and actionable intelligence. The apparent lack of ‘coordination’ in these operational disasters, moreover, is a consequence, essentially, of a lack of capacities on the ground. It is significant that, in the wake of the Chintalnar incident, the MHA has somewhat vindictively sought punitive action against top officers of both the state police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), not for any coordination failures, but for jointly planning an operation that went horribly wrong. There is no suggestion that either was trying to keep the other in the dark on operational issues. Unless the issue of capacities is addressed, creating layer upon layer of meta-institutional arrangements for ‘better coordination’ will achieve nothing beyond a waste of scarce leadership resources.
Further, on the security front, there were some routine announcements of capacity augmentation – 16,000 new Special Police Officers (SPOs), appeals (we have heard them before) to the sates to fill up gigantic vacancies in police ranks, and an allocation of INR eight billion for fortification and upgradation of 400 police stations. The fortification plan is, again, old hat, and the problem here has not been a paucity of funds – the Centre has been liberal in its support for years now – but the under-utilisation or mis-utilisation of such funds, particularly in police stations in the worst affected areas, which are most urgently in need of improvement. 20 additional helicopters are also to be made available to support anti-Maoist operations – but reports indicate these would only be inducted once they have returned from United Nations peace-keeping missions, where they are currently deployed. The cumulative impact of these measures, whenever they are fully implemented, would be no more than marginal.
T
he idea of expanding the list of 35 worst affected ‘focus districts’ under ‘integrated security and development’ has also been proposed. The ‘integrated security and development plan’, originally covering 32 districts has, however, been around for more than five years, and has already recorded significant expenditures, but little success. Not one of the earmarked districts can boast a turnaround on either security or development parameters as a result of this programme.
Indeed, the entire developmental aspect of this pseudo-strategy is linked to extremely uncertain capacities of implementation. It is all very well to talk about ‘comprehensive’ and ‘special’ plans, with their focus on connectivity, health, education and poverty alleviation, but, as the Prime Minister very rightly noted at the Chief Ministers’ meet, "Without adequate and reasonably efficient staff, it would be difficult to implement any strategy or programme for these areas."