The landmine blast which killed three jawans of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) in the Naxalite-ravaged Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh on Friday is apt to remind us of the brutal killing of some 70 CRPF men in the same district in May 2010. The comparison lies not in the level of fatalities — three might seem a relatively innocuous figure in the larger battle that has raged — but the manner in which our paramilitary jawans are made to die, almost helplessly, as a result of lessons not learnt, or area domination not achieved when it should have been.
The SSB boys were leaving the state in a truck that was blown up in the Bastanar area of the district, apparently not too far from where they were posted to guard some Salwa Judum camps. Insurgents are likely to nearly always have the element of surprise in their favour, for the boy riding the bicycle to market could be one of them, or the farmer tilling his field — both everyday activities of an innocent nature. This underscores the value of field intelligence in dealing with a problem such as the one posed by the Maoists, who are spread across most of the jungle terrain of central India. It is surprising that the truck carrying the jawans was allowed to leave the SSB camp without ascertaining whether the route was clear.
Even if neglect of obvious, routine tasks is highlighted here, concerns will also be raised whether the SSB, and they were in the area for about four years, actually enjoyed area domination of the place in which they have lived for some time. If not, that says something. When the killing of the CRPF jawans resulted from the landmine blasts about a year and a half ago, the event shook the country. Union home minister P. Chidambaram visited the site. He persuaded Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to hold a review of anti-Naxal operations and caused heads to roll. Perhaps if a stock-taking were to be done again, the government might just find that operations procedures continue to be observed in the breach, the discipline isn’t tight enough, and that the training needs to be reinforced. These had been found to be the core lacunae the last time round. So, what’s changed after all the chopping and changing that happened? The point is not three deaths, but that the number could have been a higher multiple of that. Of late, the home ministry has taken to saying that the anti-Maoist campaign will be a long-drawn affair. Let this not be an alibi for failures to do simple acts properly. Lives and morale depend on it.