Insecure State

Editorial
The Pioneer, 16 March

Cornered over Wednesday's pre-planned and cold-blooded massacre of innocent villagers at Nandigram in West Bengal, the CPI(M) has conveniently sought shelter behind the smokescreen of a State Government's rights as guaranteed by the Constitution. When the issue was raised in Parliament on Thursday, Marxist MPs were on their feet, insisting that "law and order is a State subject" and hence beyond the purview of any discussion in either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha.

That is utter balderdash, not least because the horrendous bloodbath at Nandigram and the subsequent reign of Marxist terror that has been unleashed have nothing to do with either law or order. The gross abuse of state power to enforce the writ of Marxist hoodlums not only exposes that the CPI(M)-led Left Front Government has scant regard and even lesser respect for the Constitution which is now being used as a shield to protect those with blood on their hands, but also that the Comrades, who are prompt in pointing their sullied fingers at all and sundry, believe they can get away with murder. Given the magnitude of the crime that has been committed by Joseph Stalin's admirers at Nandigram and its ramifications, the Union Government has every right to intervene, if only to save the people of West Bengal from Marxist mayhem. Seen in this context, Leader of the Opposition LK Advani's demand that the Centre must invoke Article 355 of the Constitution and direct the West Bengal Government to put a leash on the marauders of Nandigram and its trigger-happy police makes eminent sense. That an emasculated Government headed by an effete Prime Minister does not have the courage to do the right thing is another matter - it is as much a comment on the sorry state of affairs that prevails at the moment as a reflection of the Congress's inability to call the Marxists's bluff lest they decide to bite the hand that feeds them with crumbs of office.

What is, however, loathsome is that the UPA Government should try to portray the sinners of West Bengal as saints and gloss over the spilling of blood on Wednesday: The Prime Minister, pretending "pre-occupation", has shut his eyes to the horrors of Nandigram; the Union Home Minister, parroting the State Government's monstrous lies, has sought to absolve the criminals of their crime, and Minister of State for Home Affairs, who tried to play Sherlock Holmes in Gorakhpur, has declared that there is no need to send an official team to determine the truth of what happened on Wednesday. We need not elaborate on the silence of the Congress president who, it would be in order to recall, lost no time in rushing to Kalinga Nagar in Orissa after 12 tribals were killed in police firing. Is it merely the exigencies of politics that has led to such abdication of responsibility by the Centre? Or is it that the UPA Government, not unlike the Left Front Government, is too callous to bother about the plight of those whom the state, it would seem, has forsaken? Since it is unlikely that the Centre will invoke Article 355, responsibility devolves upon parliamentarians who claim to have been shocked by Wednesday's outrage to nail the CPI(M)'s lie. For starters, they must send an all-party delegation to Nandigram to determine for themselves the crime that has been committed. Those opposed to such a visit should be prepared to be bracketed with the murderous CPI(M).


Insecure state - learn the right lessons from Bastar

The attack by 300-odd armed cadres of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) on a security camp in Rani Bodi village deep in the forests of Bijapur, Chhattisgarh, in which 55 police and paramilitary personnel were killed till reports last came in, is one of the most audacious single assault ever on the diminishing might of the state in the far-flung regions of the country. In typical guerrilla strike, the red terrorists attacked the camp in the dead of the night, lobbing petrol bombs and hand grenades amidst bursts of gunfire and, by the time they decamped with arms and ammunition, the security post had turned into a veritable graveyard. The success of the attack must be viewed against the abject failure of intelligence, vigilance as well as the retaliatory powers of the security agencies in violence-prone Chhattisgarh, while proving yet again that the Maoists are militarily capable of inflicting the maximum possible damage at a place and time of their choice. Worse, these are not the only hard, unpalatable messages that the horrendous orgy of violence in Bastar sends down, for it also reveals the severe limitations of the state in the sphere of even basic comprehension of the Maoist problem. For the bare fact is that such wanton bloodletting - that reveals the mounting capabilities to inflicting damage of the guerrillas - is perhaps taking place at the fag end of mass mobilisation by the Maoists, which the state has been helpless to contain. It also exposes the effeteness of the state, faces as it does the problem of its own acute inability to use overwhelming force to neutralise the threat. Consider, for example, the nadir to which even routine policing all across the country has sunk. The States in the worst grips of Maoist violence, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh have an average of 57, 85, 90 and 103 policemen per 100,000 people. The Maoists, on the other hand, have built strong militia in nearly all the villages in the guerrilla zones, even as their true strength and number remains a matter of contention and argumentation within the establishment. Thus, while the Maoists are consolidating and enlarging their militaristic programme, the police - the first line of defence against Left-wing terror - continues to function in squalid conditions.

What is required is a radical improvement in the grasp and understanding of the security and political establishment in the country of the nature of the problem to prevent further Maoist consolidation. The success of the Maoists is a result of their working to a plan; success against them will require even more elaborate and organised effort by the state. One of the ways to begin could be to start a slow but sure crackdown on the various front organisations of the Maoists that exploit the vulnerabilities of constitutional governance and its liberal freedoms to expand their activities. The second would be to bolster recruitment in the security agencies and equipping them with the most sophisticated intelligence and weaponry to take the war into the Maoist training camps.