P Chidambaram's efforts to make India safe

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Fractures in the Plan
Sahni is right. There is no point in Chidambaram only creating new institutions on the lines of what the US has; you have to strengthen state police. India's police to population ratio stands at 145 : 100,000, which is a fraction of the required strength.

The crisis in the police leadership is even more acute with the deficit in the Indian Police Service cadre pegged at 17 percent. States that have the most urgent security requirements are worst placed in terms of capacity. Orissa, for instance, has a sanctioned strength of 207 officers but has only 97. What is worse is that the Intelligence Bureau has only around 3,000 officers actually available on the field to collect intelligence, though its strength is said to be about 25,000.

General V.P. Mallik, former Chief of Army Staff, says Chidambaram had made the right moves to begin with but it was too early to judge. "I think there is political consensus on how to tackle Jihadi terror. It [consensus] evades us when it comes to the Naxalites."

There were 1,591 Naxal-related attacks in 2008 that resulted in the death of 721 people. The highly organised Maoist guerillas have targeted with impunity police stations and institutions symbolising government.

In April 2006, after an assessment by the home ministry, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that over 160 districts in the country were affected by Naxals. "It would not be an exaggeration to say that the problem of Naxalism is the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country," he said, adding that issue needs to be treated as a high priority concern.

To tackle Naxals effectively, the use of force has to be complemented with developmental schemes for the affected districts as well. As Forbes India had documented in a previous issue, intelligent use of development schemes such as NREGS helped rid Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh of the menace. One of the key strategies that helped in the fight against Naxalism was the building of a network of roads in inaccessible forested hills that helped movement of people, which, in turn, helped information gathering. It also helped the police to respond and reach remote locations faster, restricting the movement of Naxals who depend on forest cover and terrain for their cuts and thrusts.

The government has now rolled out a Rs. 7,300 crore special roads package for the Naxal-affected areas.

"The problem in these places is that we have no access to information. There are districts where intelligence personnel are simply unable to operate. So how do you gather information?" asks an officer who handles anti-Naxal operations at the Centre. To enable smooth operations in Naxal areas where the government is building roads, it  sends in para-military troops to counter them. In Chattisgarh, there are highway projects that are being constructed by the police as contractors have fled the area.

"Even a super Chidambaram would find it difficult to contain these threats unless the states begin to fulfil their responsibility," says former special secretary in the home ministry, M.L. Kumawat. According to him, the home ministry filled up over 2 lakh vacancies in the past five years, half of which were supposed to be filled by the state governments in their police forces.

The officer from the anti-Naxal team  quoted earlier says that the morale of the forces have improved since Chidambaram took charge. "We have carried out more operations in the last one year compared with those conducted in the last five. There is a clear message from the top and that does instill confidence among the jawans."

Faster response from the central ministry, which Gujarat chief minister Modi had alluded to, has also helped police forces from different states to exchange information and carry out joint operations under the leadership of the para-military forces.

The aggressive stance of the Centre seems to have had its impact. When this story was going to print, the Maoists had made an offer for ceasefire. But the Centre made it clear that it will not accept
any pre-conditions for talks with "ifs and buts" and asked the Naxals to come out with a simple statement saying they will shun violence.

Maoist leader Kishenji, in response to Chidambaram's statement, has asked the minister to contact him on his mobile phone. Clearly, the battle has only begun.

By: K.P. Narayana Kumar