The moving force

8216;8216;Don8217;t look at Maharashtra in isolation. It8217;s happening in all affected states. In Chhattisgarh, for instance, it8217;s much worse than here,8217;8217; says joint commissioner state intelligence department, anti-Naxalite Operations Pankaj Gupta.

The police have been explaining how Naxalite leaders, headquartered in Andhra Pradesh, have used the lean period of their talks with the government there to amass arms and mobilise cadre in non-ceasefire states. That8217;s evident from the arrests of Naxalites and their sympathisers from districts which had till recently been Naxal-free: Yavatmal and Wardha in Vidarbha and Aurangabad in Marathwada. A firearm manufacturing unit too was unearthed in Nagpur.

8216;8216;But that can8217;t be an excuse for slack action,8217;8217; says Paromita Goswami, a tribal activist. 8216;8216;The police have clearly failed to measure up to the challenge,8217;8217; she adds.

The numbers add up. In the worst affected Gadchiroli district, the police tally since the Naxalite reign began has been much higher 67 than the Naxalite tally 42.

Special inspector-general of police Nagpur Range S.M. Mushrif says: 8216;8216;They use guerilla tactics, we can8217;t.8217;8217;

BUT that is only half the truth. As the Gadchiroli superintendent of police Shirish Jain admits, in most of the blasts cases, the police have paid the price for not following the drill. In the Gondia blast last month, the police jeep did not check the road for landmines. And that8217;s just one instance.

To be fair to them, they have worked overtime to hold rallies in remote villages, many of them Naxal strongholds, to win over villagers. But the effort was undone when the police allegedly first molested a woman and then killed her husband Shankar Perkiwar, at Vyankatapur village in Gadchiroli early last month.

The state government, meanwhile, hasn8217;t delivered many of the long-standing promises. 8216;8216;Of the 232 gaonbandi villages, only 112 have so far been given only half of the

Rs 2 lakh reward. In our public awareness rallies, we hear tribal grievances and pass them onto the officials, but very few are redressed. The anti-landmine vehicles proposal has been gathering dust. The government has failed to compensate many civilian victims of Naxalism. And importantly, while the Naxalites organise their cadres, the government takes great interest in effecting frequent transfers of officials in anti-Naxalite operations and range departments. Such things are exploited by the Naxalites to the hilt,8217;8217; says a police officer.

Last year, the Nagpur divisional commissioner and Gadchiroli collector were directed by the High Court to regularly visit Gadchiroli8217;s farthest Binagunda village, a known Naxal hideout, to give a sympathetic hearing to the villagers. The villagers, who hadn8217;t seen the world beyond Bhamragarh, a tehsil town 40 km away, were taken to Nagpur so that they get to see the modern world. No one knows what happened to the campaign after that.

Despite the alarming situation, state home minister R.R. Patil last week tried to bide time by repeating the old announcement that local tribal youth will be recruited as police to counter the Naxals. The proposal is certainly not new. And many in Gadchiroli are convinced it will always remain a proposal. One that could have been initiated to stem the violence.