Opinion Where the buck stops
A rapid succession of major attacks on security forces by Maoists has forced the Centre into a visible retreat from its massive and coordinated...
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A rapid succession of major attacks on security forces by Maoists has forced the Centre into a visible retreat from its massive and coordinated operations across the worst afflicted states. While there were clear operational and leadership failures leading up to these tragedies,these were,in fact,the inevitable consequences of strategic infirmities. The Centre and separately,the Chhattisgarh police,had launched unsustainable operations to clear,hold and develop and to dominate vast territories,without providing even a fraction of the forces and resources necessary to meet these objectives. Essentially,given the tiny numbers available,their dispersal across vast areas,the impossibility of rapid reinforcement,the absence of fortification,the absence of adequate training and orientation,and the paucity of intelligence,disasters were simply waiting to happen. These operations were misconceived from the outset. Unless local capacities for intelligence and operations are enormously augmented,this can go nowhere,and a lot of lives are going to be lost for no useful purpose.
There are some who have adopted a martial posture to declare,with much bravado,that,in a war,such casualties are inevitable. This is incorrect. There is a difference between lives sacrificed to secure quantifiable and enduring gain,and lives simply wasted without plan or purpose,to sheer strategic or tactical stupidity.
A strategy that is not backed with proportionate forces and resources is a lethal illusion,a political slogan that places fighting men at unnecessary risk without any possible calculus of success. The battalion approach that still dominates the Centres responses is a failed paradigm and has no relevance for current or future counter-insurgency operations.
The Centres biggest problem,at present,is that it has projected this conflict as its own problem. However,as K.P.S. Gill has noted,the Union home minister cannot be the countrys field marshal. The centralisation of responses militates against the very nature of the Indian state,and also against the nature of the challenge that the Maoists currently pose. The principal responsibility for dealing with the Maoists remains that of the states; the first responders,the local police stations,have to be strengthened and equipped to deal with the task on their own. The best the Centre can do is to aid the states in acquiring the necessary capabilities and capacities aid that is already generously available.
Unfortunately,the current discourse has increasingly shifted all responsibility to the Centre the home ministrys own postures and projections are overwhelmingly to blame for this even as the states jealously cling to the Constitutional position that law and order is a state subject. Most states are failing to utilise the financial resources provided for police modernisation and capacity building. As for police reforms,these have entirely been forgotten. Indeed,the presence of Central forces and the Centres public postures over the past year,have become a convenient alibi for most states to do little or nothing about the problem themselves. Under the circumstances,nothing lasting can be achieved.
As the death toll mounts,calls for deployment of the army (and in more hysterical quarters,the air force) have become shrill. Such an idea,however,can only be disastrous. The Indian army is already over-extended in internal and external security duties,and has no surplus capacities to deploy in Maoist areas. Once again,the debate remains trapped in the general,with no one specifying how many battalions of the army are actually available for deployment in the areas of Maoist violence,what their strategic and tactical objectives would be,and how long such deployments would last. This is a protracted conflict and it must be clear that,if the army was,indeed,to be deployed,this would have to be a long-term and massive deployment something the army can ill afford at present. Deployment for internal security also results in a severe erosion of the armys conventional capabilities over time. On the other hand,sending small contingents of the army will have the same consequences as sending small contingents of other forces these will be isolated,ambushed and overwhelmed.
Moreover,there are structural disadvantages to army deployment (as with deployment of Central paramilitary forces). These are outside forces,lacking familiarity with local language,culture and terrain. Any dedicated counter-insurgency force has no natural interaction with local populations beyond its limited mandate. Local police stations and posts,however degraded their current capacities,interact daily with the public,and these can be tapped to create the intelligence flows necessary to design effective operations. Operational capabilities located within the state police networks offer the greatest potential for success.
Effective counter-insurgency models are to be found in the successful campaigns in Punjab,Tripura and Andhra Pradesh. Conflict with the Maoists is a protracted war that will require sustained efforts for capacity building,intelligence augmentation,targeted operations,and the sensitive management of populations. Consistently ignoring these imperatives over years,and going into hysterics about army deployment and a range of other non-solutions after every major attack can lead to nothing by an endless repetition of the disasters that the government has invited on itself till now.
The writer is executive director,Institute for Conflict Management & South Asia Terrorism Portal
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