April 14 : DESPITE THE Niagara of words after the horrific massacre of an almost entire company of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) by the Maoists at Dantewada in Chhattisgarh, it is necessary to raise a few questions and offer some suggestions. The most important issue, of
course, is the training of the paramilitary personnel assigned the task of taking on the Maoist menace, rightly and repeatedly described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the “biggest internal security threat to the country”. Dantewada has cruelly demonstrated if Lalgarh and Silda in West Bengal had not done so earlier, that the Maoist People’s Guerrilla Liberation Army is very well organised, apparently has an effective intelligence network and is highly motivated and mobile, with a command and control structure of its own. Those CRPF jawans who sadly became sitting ducks were obviously neither so well trained nor so well led. Nor can this be dismissed as an aberration.
Instead of coming to grips with this grave problem the various elements in the ruling establishment at a rather high level immediately embarked on what can only be called a pettyfogging turf war. No sooner had the Army Chief said that the Alpha company of the 62nd Battalion of the CRPF was not adequately trained for the job that the director-general (DG) of the CRPF contradicted him flat, without caring to answer the general’s categorical statement that the battalion that conducted the “area domination” operation around Dantewada had “never trained with the Army”. The matter did not end there. Union home minister P. Chidambaram, obviously under stress on several counts, chose to confirm that the CRPF DG was working under his ministry and confute the Chief of the Army Staff. Ironically, only a few hours later, Mr Chidambaram’s own ministry disowned him. In a press release it admitted that only 45 of the 81-strong company decimated at Dantewada had received “guerrilla warfare training”.
Let this pass. The pertinent point is that a decade ago, the K. Subrahmanyam Committee on Kargil War had clearly recommended restructuring of the paramilitary forces, especially in respect of their training and command and control system. Had the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance government heeded the committee, the country would have been doubly blessed. Both the Army and the home ministry-controlled paramilitary organisations would have been much better off today than they are. This, along with the Kargil committee’s rationale, needs some explaining. Some time before the Emergency, the Army had raised the service of jawans under the colours from seven to 17 years. The ageing of the Army this had caused was manifest by the time of the Kargil War. Equally obvious by then was the inadequacy of the training of paramilitary forces in view of the proxy war in Kashmir and what V.S. Naipaul had exaggeratedly called “a million mutinies”. The committee suggested that the service under the colours should again be fixed at seven years and the recruits to the Army and the paramilitary outfits should all be trained by the Army. After initially serving the Army for seven years all of them should be accommodated in respective paramilitary services until the age of retirement. This would bring down the Army’s average age, save it a huge pension bill, and bring up to the mark the combat capacity of paramilitary personnel. Unnecessarily ignored in the past, this idea needs to be taken up seriously now. For one of the lessons Dantewada has driven home is that only those who have all the skills of an infantry soldier would be able to fight and defeat the Maoists.
A particularly distressing feature of the often inane debate after Dantewada has been the clamour for the use of the Army and the military’s air power against the Maoists. This is wrong, indeed unwise. Counter-insurgency within the country is the job of the civilian armed force with the best possible training, not of the armed forces meant to fight the external enemies. The use of the Indian Air Force (IAF) across the 223 districts in 20 states comprising the red corridor, with attendant risks of civilian casualties and collateral damage, would be particularly dangerous. I know that on one occasion in the 60s, Indira Gandhi ordered the Air Force to bomb Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, which had been overrun by the rebels. But that was in a small area and a one-time affair. What the civilian armed forces engaged in the fight against the Maoists should be enabled, even encouraged, to do is to acquire unmanned aerial vehicles for reconnaissance and helicopters for transport. Air strikes by the IAF would be counter-productive. It is no surprise, therefore, that both the Army and Air Chiefs opposed the involvement of the defence services in anti-Maoist operations. Unfortunately, what they should have conveyed to the government privately they broadcast publicly, the Air Chief more vehemently than his Army colleague. The Prime Minister has done well, therefore, to get it conveyed to the service chiefs to be silent rather than rush to the TV cameras at the drop of a peaked cap. Defence minister A.K. Antony has also some duty to discharge in this connection.
Finally, it is regrettable that Mr Chidambaram and serving and retired officers of the CRPF are going on with the refrain that it is the duty of the state governments to conduct operations against the Maoists, the Centre can support them only by providing them with paramilitary forces. Even if this idea had any validity ever, it is now totally out of date. By the home minister’s own admission — for once backed fully by the principal Opposition party, the BJP — that the Maoists have “declared war on the Indian state”. In that case, the Indian state in its entirety has to fight this war though with civilian armed agencies only. In any case, there never has been any ambiguity on the part of the Maoists. Their declared aim is to overthrow the democratically-elected Indian government by armed force by 2015. This leaves no room for incomprehensible quibbling over the respective responsibilities of the Union and state governments.
By Inder Malhotra
