To tackle Naxals, see wider picture

Urgent corrective action is needed to push the Naxalites back after the massive security failure that led to the slaughter of top Chhattisgarh Congress leaders on Saturday. However, to conclude from this that the government must fundamentally change the way it has devised to tackle the Maoist insurgency in the country — and rely on the military approach alone henceforth — is to lose the plot.

The nuance can’t be lost sight of that the fight against Naxals is not the same as the fight against terrorists, although both use violence, learn tactics from one another, and share military resources. The home ministry, in particular, must bear this in mind while its head, Sushilkumar Shinde, is away in the United States.
In spite of the recent events in Chhattisgarh, the understanding holds true that it’s the denial of the fruits of development to poor tribal people in central India’s mineral-rich forest belt that encouraged the violent Maoists to enter these territories and take the tribal communities under their tutelage — frequently by force (just as the Taliban do in Afghanistan) — by issuing pro-poor slogans and flashing their arms as weapons for the defence of the poor.
Parading their armed might is also intended to show that they can make the State quake. In short, the Maoists sought to project themselves as messiahs of the people and the Indian State as a representative of exploiters; further, they projected themselves as strong and the State as weak and useless. Deep inside jungles, where tribal villages lack roads, electricity, schools or hospitals, the only representative of the State who occasionally shows up is the policeman to arrest a poor man over a trifling matter, and frequently in the company of the rapacious forest contractor. This only gives the Maoists strength in the ungoverned spaces that they dominate. It is this that has to be radically altered through the means of spreading the message of democratic development, and making this happen on the ground. For Maoists there is no greater fear than this. The Congress convoy that got shot up had gone to carry this message precisely.
Poor tribal people are dissatisfied that their traditional rights over land and forests are being overlooked although laws exist to protect these, and the mineral-rich land being given over to major companies for exploitation. As a people we need to think these things through if we have to take forward the fight against the violent ideology of the Maoists, and in the process make an advance against poverty and backwardness across great swathes of India.