Tom And Jerry: Government of India and Maoists

News reports have stated that the Chief of Army Staff General V K Singh met Home Minister P Chidambaram recently and that armed forces are finalising action plans to meet any contingency if their role in the ongoing anti-Naxal operations is extended beyond the present one, which is restricted to training and surveillance. A senior army officer is reported to have said:  “If the Government orders us, we will have to step in. Drawing up of contingency plans gained momentum after the Commander’s conference this month”.

Drawing up contingency plans, finalising strategies and tactics, and training for various real and perceived threats – present or future – is the normal function of the armed forces. There is nothing wrong in armed forces  drawing up contingency plans to deal with the Naxal problem. However, this meeting of the Army Chief with the Home Minister in the wake of spectacular successes by the Maoists in attacking government forces, namely killing of 24 policemen in Silda , West Bengal on Feb 15, 80 CRPF men on April 6 in Dantewada, 8 CRPF men in Bijjapur on May 8, 40 including SPOs on May 17 again in Dantewada and over 150 killed and 200 injured on May 28 in a train blast in West Bengal,  conveys that the government is losing its nerve and preparing to use a sledge hammer to swat  irritating mosquitoes. This reminds one about the Tom and Jerry comic series where the small, agile, innovative and intelligent Jerry makes life miserable for the all powerful cat, Tom. Tom uses various tactics, weapons, big guns, etc, trying to lure Jerry with promises of talks to catch him. All his tactics and weapons fail, and often boomerang on him.

There is an impression further gaining ground, that the Government is confused and indecisive. The Home Minister is on record saying his hands are tied. The major party in the ruling coalition is talking in many voices. Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s  ’cause and consequence’ statement published in her party’s mouthpiece Congress Sandesh and her condoning of the attacks by Digvijay Singh and Mani Shankar Aiyar on the Home Minister, have caused a strange situation which gives an impression  that she doesn’t approve of Chidambaram’s approach. Furthermore, there is no consensus among the various political parties about how to deal with the problem. In fact, major political parties are taking pot shots at the ruling establishment for lack of direction, failures, high handedness, etc. The Home Minister is obviously looking demoralised. The Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, who is spearheading the fight, is also isolated without any support. The morale of the police forces is at its rock bottom and whenever they venture into the forests, they are likely to make mistakes and be killed. Every such Dantewada will further sink the lawkeeper’s morale. Under the circumstances, when the political leadership is undecided and unclear about its objectives and the police force is untrained and ill-equipped with low morale, it is a ripe situation for the Maoists to strike and seize power.

It is high time the political parties sit together and decide whether they want the democratic system to survive, or they will be happy to live under a Maoist dictatorship. If we keep floundering like we currently are, Maoist dictatorship is a distinct possibility in the not too far future, as the events in Nepal have demonstrated. Clarity of direction and determination of the political leadership is the precondition for ensuring the defeat of the Maoists. The Prime Minister should call for an all-party meeting, to take everybody on board, and give the nation a clear signal that we cherish democracy, and are prepared to protect it by all means. Once this political message is conveyed, the fine tuning of the operations should be left to the government. It is not to say that government actions should not be examined and criticised. The criticism should however be constructive in nature.

Coming to the operational aspects, the armed forces are the sledge hammer and an instrument of last resort. They should not be involved in the operations against the Maoists. This will do more harm than good, like the big guns used by Tom against Jerry, that ricochet on Tom. The operations should be handled by the police. Agreed, that the police forces in the affected states – except Andhra Pradesh – are not self-sufficient in numbers, training, equipment and morale. They will need lots of resources and time to be able to take on the Maoists. We have allowed the Maoists to come to this stage due to neglect over the past 40 years. A few more years will not matter much. What will matter, is how quickly we get our act together and strengthen our police forces – both at the state and central level. In the fight against a local guerrilla, it is the intimate knowledge of the area and people that is critical. Something only the local police possess. The central police forces that are deployed after short periods of familiarisation do not possess that knowledge. The best intelligence is received by the SHO of the area who lives and works in that area, and with whom people interact on a day-to-day basis. In both Andhra Pradesh and Punjab, it was the state police that defeated the Maoists and the Khalistanis. And in both the states, the central forces had suffered heavy causalities in their security operations.

The Maoists have gained influence over more than 200 districts over the last 40 years, by a strategy called oil spot strategy. Their approach was to gain control over a small area and then increase their control in the surrounding areas like an oil spot that spreads on the water surface. The government should adopt a counter oil spot strategy. Instead of spreading resources thinly all over the affected states, it should identify areas where it can gain and maintain control and apply resources – vis-a-vis men and material – sufficient to achieve the intended objective. Once the Maoists are driven away from that area, the socio-economic programs and services should be expeditiously and effectively provided. Such successes will convey to people in other areas that the government is serious about providing to them the benefits of democracy and development. Once certain areas are liberated from the Maoists, the neighbouring areas should be targeted and liberated like the oil spot spreading across the water’s surface. Once such a situation is obtained, the inflow of actionable intelligence will reap dividends.

Let us take lessons from the trials and tribulations of Tom and not be tempted to use the Army or air power to deal with the Maoists. Strengthen the police, especially the local police, use the oil spot strategy, and ensure that the socio-economic concerns of the people are met in real terms.

Ram Avatar Yadav, IPS (retired) was the Director General of Police of Andhra Pradesh.

Surviving Narendra Modi’s Gujarat…

I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks in Gujarat, from the day Chief Minister Narendra Modi appeared before the Supreme Court-constituted SIT, till the day the Supreme Court temporarily ordered Shivanand Jha and Geeta Johri – two Gujarat cadre officers part of the SIT – to stay away from the investigations.

I travelled across Gujarat, visiting some of the worst-hit cities during the 2002 riots, meeting politicians and former Ministers accused of collusion with the rioting mobs; IAS and IPS officers who are too afraid to speak the truth; and victims still picking up the pieces of their lives torn to shreds in the mayhem.

I’ve seen attempts first by the Gujarat state and later by the Supreme Court constituted SIT, to link the Sabarmati train burning in Godhra to the subsequent riots across Gujarat. I’ve even seen a sign board at the SIT office referring to Godhra riots – not too sure whether the passage of time or bad penmanship was to blame for that!

I’ve heard the political rumblings underfoot – from dissidents within the BJP, to former Ministers who now attack Narendra Modi on every issue, except the 2002 Gujarat riots. I’ve listened to the helplessness of Congress politicians in the state.

But three things struck me the most, and I’ll tell you about them in order of occurrence:

1. On the 27th of March, Chief Minister Narendra Modi enters the SIT office for questioning, and emerges hours later, striding confidently towards the breathless media gathered outside. He cracks a few jokes, asks the members of the Press whether they had had their “chai, biscuits, chaach”, puts on his humble-citizen-before-the-law look and then deftly announces that he’s given the SIT some time to “do their homework” before he submits himself to questioning again. All the while, not a single member of the press – from among the dozens present there – dare to ask him a straight question about the Gujarat riots, 2002. Narendra Modi, the man accused of effecting a complete breakdown of the Constitutional machinery in the state, walks away, the hero of the moment and the darling of the fawning press.

2. A few days later, I have a chance run-in with Rahul Sharma. We exchange pleasantries and continue on our respective paths. But that chance meeting fills me with hope. Who is Rahul Sharma, you ask? Well, to many who have followed the aftermath of the Sabarmati train burning in Godhra and the Gujarat riots in 2002, even the fortuitous course of the initial investigations, Rahul Sharma is a national hero. An upright police officer, who refused to succumb to pressure, even as his colleagues around him buckled pliantly. On the 2nd of March, 2002, as Gujarat continued to burn, an angry mob of hundreds surrounded the Akvada madarsa on the outskirts of Bhavnagar city, threatening to burn down the madarsa, which had close to 400 children taking refuge within it at the time. Rahul Sharma, despite the handful of resources at his disposal, fights off the blood-thirsty mob, rescues the children and personally escorts them to safety. It’s a singular act of courage that prevents the raging fires in Gujarat from spreading across India. God knows what would have happened had those children been killed in the madarsa that day. But that’s not all. Rahul Sharma is also a national hero, because in the brief window of time in which he was asked to assist the investigations into riots cases, Rahul managed to get hold of the phone call data records of both mobile companies operating in Ahmedabad at the time – CelForce and AT&T. Till today, those phone call records – running into millions of calls – are being analysed and are helping investigators and journalists like me, connect the dots and unravel the conspiracy that led to the riots.

3. Gordhan Zadafia was the Minister of State for Home in Narendra Modi’s Cabinet in 2002, when Gujarat was burning. Rahul Sharma’s CD with the phone call records analysed by the likes of Teesta Setalvad and Mukul Sinha show how Zadafiya was in touch with the main accused in the Gujarat riots even while they were absconding. Zadafiya is no longer part of the BJP today. In fact, since 2007, he’s floated and led his own party, which is called the Maha Gujarat Janata Party (MJP). Gordhan Zadafiya is a Sanghi at heart and still remains close to his ideological roots. He criticises Modi on every front, be it bringing about the political stagnation of the BJP in Gujarat or forgetting the VHP and RSS that stood by him throughout his political career, even abject corruption.

In my quest for a better understanding of the Narendra Modi-Hindutva symbiosis in Gujarat, it is not surprising when it turns out to be Gordhan Zadafiya, who gives me the deepest insight. He says: “Narendra Modi is like a scorpion sitting on top of the Shivling. You can’t hit it with a stick or a stone because that will be sacrilegious and ruinous for Hindutva. If you try to brush it off, it will sting you. The only way to defeat Narendra Modi, is to convince people that the Shivling isn’t really a Shivling – that it’s only a stone.”