The Naxal problem: Onward and upward

They have a long history of splintering into several factions and after tiring themselves of internecine fighting, uniting on “ideological” grounds. For, their central ideology has always been killing or intimidating civilians in the name of “class war” waged against state authority. However, a terrifying moment in their history of ideological unity happened in September 2004 when two leading such groups, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War — infamous as the People’s War Group (PWG) — and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) merged to become the CPI (Maoist). The aim was to build a “formidable force to further our revolutionary cause,” declared PWG Secretary Ramakrishna a month later.

The PWG and MCC were the first and second largest, respectively, groups of a growing Maoist insurgency, better known as Naxalism, in India.

Ever since its was founded in April 1980, the PWG had been assiduously trying to bring all ML groups under a common flag in a wider strategy aimed at replacing the country’s “imperialist rulers” with what it hazily termed “the rule of the masses”. The PWG-MCC merger story had an on-and-off history of almost two decades.

But when the merger deal was clinched in 2004, it signalled a major step in consolidation process among Maoist groups before the “revolutionary cause” was taken up in right earnest. Earlier, in 1998, the CPI (Marxist-Leninist Party Unity), the third largest group then, had merged with the PWG following nearly five years of talks between the two banned radical revolutionary outfits. With this, the PWG — which was until then contained to a few pockets in central and south India — found space to operate in north India. The remaining groups, notably CPI(ML) Janashakti, were either too small to make a national impact or busy splitting their way to oblivion. Even at the present, it’s estimated that more than 25 naxal groups operate in India.

Nevertheless, the coming into being in 2004 of the CPI (Maoist) was a landmark event in India’s Naxal problem. Since then, what is known as Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) has turned parlous.

Mindful of the propaganda mileage it gets from high-profile attacks, the Naxals are predisposed to stage headline-grabbing mass murder. Among the many such spectacular attacks they carried out, one came on May 25, 2013 when about 200 armed Maoists, both men and women, ambushed a convoy of 20 vehicles carrying Congress leaders in the Bastar-Sukma national highway in Chhattisgarh. The Maoists first carried out a blast and then opened indiscriminate fire at the convoy Almost the entire top rung of Congress leaders in the state was annihilated in the attack, in which 28 people were killed. Some of the victims were dragged out of their cars and shot dead at point-blank range, witnesses reported. Among the leaders killed was V C Shukla, a former Union Minister.

However, from the naxal point of view, the prized target was the controversial party leader Mahendra Karma, whom his supplicants ingratiatingly called “Bastar Tiger”. Karma was the mastermind behind a civilian vigilante organisation formed in 2006 with government connivance to deal with the Maoist menace in Chhattisgarh —  the Salwa Judum (Purification Hunt in the local tribal dialect). The Salwa Judum, composed mainly of tribal youth, assisted the local police and central paramilitary forces in their counterinsurgency initiative known as Operation Green Hunt.

In fact, the Naxals loathed Karma — whose Salwa Judum had become a thorn on their side while attracting criticism from human rights campaigners for fashioning itself into a rogue force — so much that he was singled out for the biggest savagery: 78 stab wounds were discovered on his body.

Another notable Naxal attack was the grisly beheading of policemen in Jharkhand in 2009. The attack was so fierce that at that time, questions were raised about the government’s knee-jerk response to the mounting insurgency. This massacre gave new impetus to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to reshape the counter-insurgency policy.

The building of a “formidable force” that the Naxal leader Ramakrishna talked about occurred just months after the UPA formed its first Union government. Since then, naxalist-inspired LWE has gained such an alarming traction in the country that it has become the most vicious and violent movement in India. In September 2011, the then Union Home Minister P Chidambaram told a gathering of collectors of LWE-infested districts that the insurgency has killed 10 times more people in the country that year than those killed by terrorist groups that take the name of religion to slaughter innocent civilians. “While 26 persons were killed in terrorist violence and 46 killed in insurgency (27 in Jammu and Kashmir), 297 persons were killed in Naxal violence. That is 10 times of those killed in terror incidents,” he said.

For the government could douse the fires of LWE, he declared, three issues — trust, governance and development deficits — must be sorted out. As in any war-like situation, he added, winning the hearts and minds of villagers in naxal-affected states are the key to resolve the issue.

It’s remarkable here that six years earlier, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs had set up a high-level committee to recommend ways to contain the LWE resurgence. In its report, the Committee noted: “While the mechanism constituted for countering naxalism envisaged a multi-pronged approach, over the years the State response has tended to remain largely police centric, with the main effort being to counter the movement with superior force. The approach has often swung from one extreme—that of using overwhelming force—to the other, structured around “ceasefires” and “peace talks.” While it is recognized that the naxal problem goes well beyond mere law and order dimensions, the broader socio-economic issues have not attracted serious attention….” In 2006, the ministry had created a Naxal Management Division “to effectively address the Left Wing Extremist insurgency in a holistic manner”.

By the time Chidambaram took office as Union Home Minister in December 2008, the Maoist insurgency was gaining from strength to strength in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Parts of these states lumped together comprised the so-called red corridor. According to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs statistics, the violence in the red corridor touched its peak in 2009, with 2,258 incidents (“incident” is the bureaucratic term for violence) that resulted in the killing of 591 civilians, 317 security forces personnel and 220 Naxals.

The “incidents” declined in intensity in the following years, but the death toll climbed to a new high in 2010. In that year, the 2,213 incidents produced a civilian death toll of 720. The number of security forces men and Naxals killed was 285 and 172, respectively. However, after 2011,  there were marginal reductions in the death toll, but the number of violent attacks continued to drop. In 2011, 469 civilians, 142 security forces men and 99 Naxals were killed in 1,760 “incidents”. In 2012, 301 civilians, 114 security men and 74 Naxals were slain in 1,415 such cases. The number of “incidents” declined further to 1,129 in 2013, but 279 civilians, 115 police personnel and 99 Naxals were killed.

According to the ministry data, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand are the hardest-hit by LWE violence. Bihar and Odisha come next. Violence in West Bengal reached a high in 2010 before dropping off. Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh mirror a similar trend.

Yet, it’s striking that Andhra Pradesh, the state where PWG and the MCC, together with myriad other groups, were most active for two decades — 1980s and 1990s — had somehow lost its “class war” appeal as the focus of the Naxals moved towards North and East.

Many observers credit Home Minister Chidambaram for ushering in policy clarity and instilling political will in the country’s fight against LWE. That is despite the fact that his tenure at the Union Ministry of Home Affairs was brief (he given the portfolio in December 2008 following the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack and his charge ended in July 2012 when he was made Finance Minister again to replace Pranab Mukherjee, who was soon to become the country’s President).

To combat LWE, especially in the red corridor, the Home Ministry in 2009 devised a two-pronged strategy that laid emphasis on efforts of state governments by way of security-related and development-related interventions. In security intervention, besides the deployment of the central paramilitary forces, the government geared up for capacity-building efforts of the LWE-affected states through programmes like boosting the security-related expenditure, building special infrastructure and construction of or strengthening fortified police stations in LWE-affected areas.

The Home Ministry also moved vigorously to fill vacancies in central paramilitary forces, earmarked more funds for schemes for their modernisation including upgradation of their weaponry and infused latest technology in counter-insurgency measures taken by central and state governments.  The ministry sanctioned occasional air support to anti-LWE operations. Most important, the government gave a new push to the security forces’ training in jungle warfare. The raising of Commando Battalions for Resolute Action (COBRA),  a specialised force trained for counter-insurgency and jungle-warfare, and deployment of India Reserve battalions added muscle to the government’s determined efforts to combat the LWE.

The second approach that Chidambaram adopted took the shape of a two-year Integrated Action Plan (IAP) in 60 naxal-hit tribal and backward districts. The IAP, announced in November 2010, was basically economic development packages announced for the red corridor spread over nine states.  It envisaged additional central assistance scheme on 100 per cent grant basis for projects aimed at building or improving basic physical infrastructure like roads, and health and education facilities in these districts. The plan focused on implementation of the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996) and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (Forest Rights Act). The district component of the IAP was husbanded by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj and the state component was administered by the Planning Commission. In 2010-11, each of the 60 districts was given a block grant of Rs 25 crore. In 2011-12, the grant was increased to Rs 30 crore and 12 more districts were added to the beneficiary list.

During 2010-13, funds worth Rs 4,177.65 crore were spent covering 82 districts in nine states. Given the visible impact the IAP has made in the red corridor, the Union government decided in May 2013 to extend the IAP for four more years. Some say the government was spurred into action on the IAP front, at a time of fiscal prudence, by the brutal Chhattisgarh attack by the Naxals days before the announcement to this effect, which came on May 30.

Yet, it appears the naxals have a two-pronged strategy of their own, too. In their efforts to spread their network, they are looking at cooperation from other insurgent groups and are also extending help to them, said a damning Ministry of Home Affairs affidavit filed in the Supreme Court in November 2013. The affidavit was filed in response to a notice issued by the Supreme Court on a public interest litigation filed by a former Madhya Pradesh MLA that the Maoist problem was consuming larger parts of India.

The ministry affidavit stated that as part of their strategy, first, the Naxals are laying the ground for a “rainbow coalition of various insurgent groups in India so as to launch a united front attack against the existing state machinery”. Although the affidavit stopped short of revealing names of such groups, observers say this is a subtle hint at militant groups operating in the North-East and Jammu and Kashmir.

Security and intelligence agencies reckon that the naxals have established a new chain of supply of weapons and don’t rely on the snatching arms from security forces, as was the practice earlier. Intelligence reports divulged that cooperation with even the Indian Mujahideen is not frowned upon by the naxals. The Indian Mujahideen is known as the Indian collaborator of the Pakistani terror exporter groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Intelligence cites the seizures of bombs and explosives from Indian Mujahideen operatives in the naxal-affected areas of Jharkhand to conclude that an active arms smuggling ring relationship exists between the CPI (Maoist) and the Indian Mujahideen. Intelligence agencies also suggest that the Naxals are getting assistance from insurgent groups in Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The second element of the naxal strategy is urban penetration. The Home Ministry affidavit pointed out at an important CPI (Maoist) document titled “Strategy and Tactics of the Indian Revolution”. In it, the CPI (Maoist) outlined the method to penetrate India’s urban centres — and boasted how they are succeeding in this mission. The affidavit said that one of the strategies adopted by the naxals is to mobilise certain targeted sections of the urban population through mass organisations which are otherwise known as “front organisations”. According to the Home Ministry, ideologues and supporters of Maoists “have kept the Maoist movement alive and are in many ways more dangerous than the cadres of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army”.

“The mass organisations mostly operating under the garb of human rights NGOs are organically linked to the CPI (Maoist) structure but maintain separate identities in an attempt to avoid legality,” the MHA affidavit notes.

Despite the dip in violence brought about by tenacious government action since 2009, the naxals are far from being a spent force in India. On the contrary, they are trying to outfox the government by forging new alliances and trying to extend their tentacles far afield.

Many analysts say the government dealt with the problem mostly as a law-and-order issue, even after the two-pronged “heart and minds” approach was set in motion in 2010. The government’s response sometimes veered off course, as it happened with the Salwa Judum. In 2011, acting on a petition by human rights activists, the Supreme Court declared the Salwa Judum unconstitutional and ordered the government of Chhattisgarh to dissolve the outfit. By this time, however, the vigilante group, paraded as village self-defence group,  had already done the damage.

At the moment, the Operation Green Hunt — the biggest and long-running counter-insurgency step taken by the government at the heart of the red corridor — rolls on,  but it has become plain that for the government that to diminish the naxal momentum, it has to reinforce its efforts and sharpen its focus on the implementation of socio-economic development and poverty alleviation programmes. The only way to achieve this goal is to implement them by chipping away at the corruption, favouritism and rent-seeking structure the political, bureaucratic and middlemen class has instituted in the welfare scheme delivery system. That must be the starting point towards a broader push towards good governance. Moreover, the smashing of the Naxal extortion racket in the natural resources-rich areas of the red corridor — Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, in particular — will play a crucial part in defanging the organisation by draining it financially.

Almost 10 years after the tectonic shift in the insurgency, the Naxals remain “formidable”,  but their “revolutionary cause” is as bankrupt as ever.