Anarchy vs hierarchy

The furore over the abduction of R. Vineel Krishna, IIT Madras alumnus and Malkangiri district collector, by Naxalites died down with his release from captivity after nine days. Malkangiri district is an appendix of Orissa jutting into Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh — an administrative never-never land with the barest traces of official

governance — lying on the extreme tri-junction of all the three states. Not surprisingly, it has become an ideal sanctuary for Naxalites who have de facto control of this no man’s land. But unlike the state governments, they have a clear chain of command and hierarchy emanating from the Andhra Pradesh-Orissa Border (AOB) Special Zone Committee.
The Malkangiri episode briefly occupied national headlines and provides an interesting case study of “Clear, Hold and Build”, the basic philosophy of counterinsurgency. Media accounts of the incident have given rise to several anecdotes about Mr Krishna who comes across as an unorthodox civil servant quite untypical of the normal career bureaucrat. To begin it with was his idiosyncracy in volunteering for assignment to this difficult tribal district, prostrate and comatose from extreme backwardness and prolonged neglect, with the added disincentive as the focal point of a Naxalite “liberated zone”. (The Army equivalent would be volunteering for service on the Siachen glacier, which, by the way, happens with reasonable frequency, thanks to our young officers.)
Mr Krishna also had the unwise but nevertheless admirable propensity of moving around without an armed escort to facilitate personal interaction with the local population of Koya and Bonda tribals in the deep interiors of the district, where several public works had been initiated by him during his relatively short tenure of 13 months. In short, an ideal “frontier administrator” whose proactive perceptions of governance had turned the principles of Maoist propaganda on its head and applied them on behalf of the government in a “hearts and minds” approach to the local people. Knowingly or unknowingly, Mr Krishna was attempting to practice the first principles of counterinsurgency as taught in the Indian Army’s Counterinsurgency and Jungle Warfare School at Vairangte, Mizoram. It says: “Fight the guerilla like the guerilla”, integrating socio-political and administrative initiatives in tandem with action by security forces.
Mr Krishna’s activities were a threat to the Maoist agenda, hitherto unchallenged in the region. He was accordingly abducted and taken hostage at Badapada, in the utterly remote Chitrakonda tehsil of the district, during one of his periodic programmes of public interaction and inspection of projects in the deep interior. At the time he was very typically riding pillion on the motorcycle of a subordinate officer Pabitra Majhi, since there were no roads for four wheeled vehicles in the area. Fortunately, the story had a fairy-tale ending, because after eight days in captivity both were released unharmed. Mr Krishna has only himself to thank for his good fortune, because the local tribals held him in high regard and put pressure on his captors to see that he came to no harm.
However, Naxalites are no fuzzy-headed idealists, but shrewd, ruthless, hardheaded tacticians who gauge every move to obtain maximum effect. In this instance, they judged that a happy ending would pay better dividend and released Mr Krishna. But there should be no doubt that had they calculated differently, the ending could just as likely have been exceedingly tragic.
Of course, there always has to be a price to be paid for such transactions. In this case a list of 14 demands put forward by the Naxalites before Mr Krishna was released, chief amongst which were the release of high-profile Naxalites in prison, Gauti Prasadam, Padma and Sriramulu Srinivas, as also cessation of counterinsurgency operations in the region. The government had no option but to comply with all demands, though still attempting a feeble defiance by proclaiming that the state government had not “capitulated” to the Naxalites.
There is barely any mention of police and paramilitary forces in the entire episode, though a fairly substantial quantum in the shape of three battalions of the Border Security Force (BSF) and six units of the Special Operations Group of the Orissa Police are reportedly deployed in the Malkangiri region. These are controlled by the district superintendent of police Anirudha Kumar Singh who would certainly have his own viewpoint on the entire incident, whose fallout put all police operations on hold.
So the larger issue here is the mechanism by which the “clear and hold” activities of the police and paramilitary and the “build” agenda of development and administration are formally dovetailed overall into a cohesive “clear, hold and build” strategy of counterinsurgency. Therein lies the basic weakness in the administrative organisation at the cutting edge level of the district, where the district collector and the district superintendent of police are co-equals, even though the district collector is in full charge of the district. This is a cultural relic of the old British Raj, where the district collector and district superintendent of police were both largely expatriates in an alien environment, and hence more socially homogenous and compatible.
Interactive coordination is personality-oriented and what may have worked in the Raj era, might not be ideal in a totally transformed environment. Some thought must be given to review the existing system, to establish clear and separate departmental lines of command for police forces and state administration, from state headquarters down to district and sub-divisional level, with adequate cross linkages for coordination and interaction at each stage. The complexity is further intensified when paramilitary troops, with their own channels of command and operational ethos are inducted in substantial numbers as reinforcements to state police.
So, the Malkangiri dilemma continues —which way lies salvation? Is Mr Krishna an individual phenomenon or the general rule amongst civil servants and police officers? Much will depend on the answer, because the civil and police services are required to operate in an increasingly combatant mode in areas affected by insurgency and must refurbish their professional culture appropriately.

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament