Book: Red Revolution 2020 and Beyond: Strategic Challenges to Resolve Naxalism Author: Lt General (Retd) Vijay Kumar Ahluwalia Publisher: Bloomsbury Price: Rs 795 Pages: 276 After hanging up their weapons,do top security personnel discover the futility of fatigues? Chhattisgarh DGP Vishwaranjan,a staunch supporter of Salwa Judum and war against Maoists,did a volte face when he remarked after his retirement that encounter killings are unjust as you brutalise your own people. Now,retired Lt General VK Ahluwalia,a veteran who helped induct the Bofors gun,and former chief of central command,who has served in states with left-wing extremism,tells us that Maoists are not enemies but are fighting for socio-economic justice. Ahluwalia predicts the trajectory of Maoist resistance to 2020 and rejects army deployment and Judum-like initiatives as solutions. Instead,he suggests poverty alleviation and land reforms,the absence of which,he says,caused the Naxal uprising. In rare criticism from a former field officer,Ahluwalia spares none; he assails government for governance and trust deficit,and industry for its emphasis on profit and failure to protect tribal interests . Insurgency is an accumulation of a large number of grievances and the problem cannot be solved without addressing them,he writes. So overwhelming is his emphasis on social amelioration that save for a few references to police reforms,you would believe this PhD thesis came from a Cuban cloister. But though he punctuates his argument with Joseph Stiglitz The price of inequality is intolerable and Aristotle Poverty is the parent of revolution his voice lacks the passion and persuasion of a genuine believer. Sermons from a neo-convert may be theoretically similar to that of a master but they sound uninspiring. From the book it appears that a few mornings after retirement,the soldier was suddenly struck by a poverty vision and words tumbled out. The first miss is the absence of convincing case studies,from which he deduced his conclusion. The Maoist movement crisscrosses one-third of the countrys geography and psychology,but he does not show people,their conflicts and suffering,merely throwing in data culled from varied sources. Discrimination and deprivation are not figures,they are ossified and seemingly irreversible realities stunting generations of people living in the central Indian forests. The gravity of the crisis is lost in statistical tables. Second,his solutions are so diffuse that instead of spelling out a strategic vision to curb Maoists,the book appears to be a treatise on an ideal society. Besides land reforms and resource distribution,he prepares a formidable charter the end to corruption,implementation of CSR by industries,better Centre-state relations,implementation of the Directive Principles of the Constitution,power to panchayats,rural electrification,encouraging cash crops and using media to spread the message. He even advocates compulsory NCC in schools and colleges of the affected areas to encourage patriotism. NCC,really? The only innovative suggestion is to create a Ministry of Naxal Affairs. Third,he rightly underlines the significance of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology for the movement and notes that guerrilla war is an extension of politics,but does not explore its nuances. From an offshoot of the CPM in 1969,Charu Mazumdars CPI(ML) saw amoebic divisions before the predominant unit PWG and,later,the CPI (Maoist) proposed and established themselves as political parties. Maoists strongly resist the tags of terrorists or insurgents,and call themselves a political movement to bring about a New Democratic Revolution. Few mainstream politicians can match their vocabulary. Which party would resolve to defeat post-modernist and revisionist theories and make it as important an agenda as armed insurrection? Maoists do. This movement,precisely therefore,poses a different challenge. All comparisons with past insurgencies in India,as Ahluwalia draws,are irrelevant as none was so deeply nurtured by ideology. Like classical pundits and theologians,Maoists love theory and are driven by the sheer passion for an idea. They need to be engaged in a discourse. Give them mainstream space to explain the devastating effects of postmodernism on society. Debate with them their version of democracy and politics. They will not surrender but,argumentative as they are,the outcome could be surprising. Ahluwalia also gets some crucial facts wrong. The 2010 Gyaneshwari Express incident was not caused by Maoists as suspected. They immediately refuted media reports and no probe has established their role yet. Second,the March 2013 Chatra encounter in which 10 Maoists were killed involved not the police but a similar ultra-Left group,Triteeya Prastuti Sammelan Committee. Ahluwalias prose is tedious,his arguments flaccid; yet the book is significant. Just when the state has portrayed Maoists as terrorists and force is considered the only solution,a former army officer,and a pretty senior one,offers a sociological reading of Naxalism and asserts the need to ensure equality. It may not eliminate Maoists,but it will counter their ideology. If a bourgeois state can meet their socio-economic charter,which corresponds with the basic Constitutional guarantees,they will be forced to revisit their manifesto and the state will gain a morally superior argument. Else,Ahluwalia predicts that in the next decade,urban areas may see an unprecedented Maoist spread with vastly different manifestations in comparison to the rural insurgency. The confessions of a retired soldier? Lets see how the establishment reacts to this bell-ringer from a member of the Armed Forces Tribunal.
