Opinion Are we really fighting the Maoists?
It is the considered opinion of this Fifth Columnist that every single man who died in Dantewada was worth more to India than all our politicians put together.
It is the considered opinion of this Fifth Columnist that every single man who died in Dantewada was worth more to India than all our politicians put together. And yet,if 76 politicians had been murdered,the government would have fallen. Flags would fly at half-mast,there would be days of national mourning. It is the Indian way to honour those who profit from this country and treat those who die for it with disdain.
By the time you read this,the nameless men who died in Dantewada,because of the failures of our political leaders,will have been forgotten. Some news channels attempted feebly to put faces and human stories behind the cold numbers. We know that one was on his way home for a sisters wedding,that another has a son who wants to join the CRPF to avenge his fathers murder and that for most of their families,life will change forever because the single breadwinner is now dead. Brought home in a cheap coffin draped with garlands of dying flowers and a wilting Indian flag.
You would have read much learned analysis from many security experts on what went wrong in Dantewada. Most of the analysis I heard on television ended up almost blaming the dead men for what went wrong. They should not have taken the same route,they walked mindlessly into an ambush,they should have been better prepared. A few blamed what happened on intelligence failure and bad training. It did not surprise me that the men who remained behind in the squalid barracks of CRPF Company 62 refused to let TV cameras in. They told an NDTV reporter that they thought the media reports were biased against their fallen comrades.
My own non-expert view is that the crux of the problem in Dantewada,as with all security operations in India,is that we consider the lives of our soldiers and policemen worthless. When 76 CRPF men are killed together,we are forced to pay attention,but we pay almost no attention when Naxalites kill them in smaller contingents of 16,20 and 30. This they do almost every month. Since November 2004,when the Prime Minister declared that the Naxalites were the single biggest security challenge India has faced,more than 1,000 policemen and paramilitaries have been killed. Why have they been allowed to continue being killed in such large numbers?
Why,if the Prime Minister knew that the country was confronted with its worst internal security threat,did he do so little about it? Till 26/11 he gave us a Home Minister who during a terrorist attack in Delhi was busy changing into a fresh pair of clothes. Why was he allowed to stay in his job? Mr Chidambaram inherited a ministry that was defunct. Brought to this state by what he admits have been decades of neglect. The Naxalite problem has been around since the 1960s. Yet,so casual has been the Government of Indias approach to our worst internal security challenge that,until Mr Chidambaram took charge,only token efforts were made to stop the Maoists from spreading their malevolent campaign across a huge swathe of central India,now acknowledged as a red corridor.
Until Mr Chidambaram decided to declare war on the Maoists,the Government of India seemed to be as much on their side as a certain ex-novelist who was famous long ago. The Prime Minister owes it to us to explain why he did no more than hold routine meetings in Delhi to discuss the Naxalite problem with chief ministers. Was he unable to act because of pressure from his Leftist friends? The Marxists are no longer the dangerous pressure group they used to be in Dr Manmohan Singhs last tenure,but they were the first ones to berate the Home Minister after the Dantewada attack for not understanding the political nuances of the Naxalite problem.
There are none. What we need to understand is where the strategic mistakes are being made. What we need to understand is why there are so few policemen in Naxalite districts despite the Prime Minister being acutely aware of the seriousness of the problem six years ago. What we need to understand is why men who are putting their lives on the line for India cannot get minimum facilities like clean water,decent food and comfortable,mosquito-free accommodation to sleep in at the end of the day. Why is Malaria endemic in the war zone?
From the ex-novelists recent,lengthy Naxalite travelogue,we gather that Maoist leaders ensure that their troops live in fine huts in beautiful villages. While those who give their lives to save India from being destroyed by a defunct,violent ideology do so from squalid,mosquito-ridden lodgings without basic amenities. Shame on the Government of India.
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleens
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