April.10: Union home minister P. Chidambaram did the decent thing by offering to resign in the wake of the massacre of CRPF jawans by Maoists in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district earlier this week, the worst instance in the country’s history of the mowing down of jawans of a paramilitary force. 

The force is under the direct charge of the home minister and Mr Chidambaram took constructive responsibility for the tragedy. In recent years it has been seen that ministers — both at the Centre and in the states — not only do not acknowledge their moral responsibility when things go wrong, but stoutly resist calls for their resignation and shamelessly advance arguments to explain why they are God’s gift to government. Unmindful of the likely political consequences, the Union home minister has done well to distance himself from this unconscionable tradition, although it can be argued that his offer to resign could have come right after the CRPF men were slaughtered. That may have been a notch more appropriate. That is what Lal Bahadur Shastri had done after a train accident when he held charge of the railways. Madhavrao Scindia too quit the P.V. Narasimha Rao government owning responsibility after a aircrash. Nonetheless, the Prime Minister has responded adequately and with the right sense of balance in rejecting Mr Chidambaram’s resignation. The point has been made and it is time to get on. The BJP, the main Opposition party, has also asked the home minister not to resign at this juncture as the gesture can be interpreted by Maoists as a victory.

It is clear enough on hindsight that Mr Chidambaram’s policy toward the Naxalites wasn’t finetuned enough, although he has taken a number of steps that needed to be taken. He has also with verve made the appropriate political points about dealing with Naxalism which seeks to mask itself as a pro-poor ideology. For all the impression of aloofness (some say arrogance) that he gives off, the home minister is energetic, articulate, innovative and transparent. These are strong and desirable qualities in a senior minister who is also a member of important committees of the Cabinet. Mr Chidambaram did much to inculcate confidence in the country in the wake of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai the minute he took charge from his predecessor Shivraj Patil, whose approach was bureaucratic, dilatory and ineffective.
Along with jihadist terrorism, Naxalism has emerged as a challenge to the template of a democratic India. Approximately three divisions of the security forces — chiefly CRPF and state police — are engaged in dealing with the Naxalites alone. This is a significant investment. The home minister will henceforth need to ensure that this battle is conducted thoughtfully and efficiently. The instrumentalities need to be sharpened. The forces sent in to deal with the armed Naxalites have to be trained and equipped in the context of the terrain of deployment. At the moment, they appear quite unfit to be posted in the Naxalite areas deep inside forest country, although the same men may prove top class in other settings. Dantewada showed that the CRPF’s intelligence resources and sense of tactics are inadequate. Lessons learnt from states such as Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir — which have waged counter-insurgency with fair success — need to be imbibed. The leaders of these campaigns may also need to be coopted in the anti-Maoist battle. A change of advisers suggests itself. Using the Army and the Air Force, and deploying gizmos such as unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) in the jungle war might not be what the doctor ordered. Let the home minister take a deep breath and start afresh. The Naxalite groups are not the formidable foe they are made out to be in the popular media.