Cutting the thread of insurgency

Four alleged Naxalites from the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur were arrested from hideouts in faraway Goa in a joint operation involving the Goa and Manipur police and Army intelligence. Even though the main planner seems to have escaped the dragnet, it was nevertheless a successful and well-coordinated joint operation by a number of disparate agencies, and undoubtedly flows from the concept of the national intelligence grid being propagated by the ministry of home affairs at the Centre, often in the face of opposition because of inter-agency turf wars and vested interests. At the same time it raises concerns that militants under pressure in their home regions are increasingly seeking sanctuaries elsewhere, particularly in urban conglomerations in other states whose police forces are less acquainted with such problems.
The “Northeast” has become almost a cliché now for militancy in a region that is still largely a closed book to mainland India. This needs to be systemically and patiently rectified. Amidst all the fog and confusion surrounding the assorted militancies in the region, a major success story has almost totally escaped the spotlight. This is Tripura, a forgotten state in a forgotten region where a state government under a strong and able chief minister has succeeded in stabilising a situation in a region otherwise in turmoil.
Tripura raises some obvious questions — if one small state in a distant and neglected corner of the country can achieve a fair amount of success, why not other states with similar issues? Good governance requires good political leadership as well as positive personal qualities personified in a single entity — the chief minister. Tripura’s chief minister fits the bill admirably, and has done much to administer the state well, provide a responsible administration yet maintain total touch with people, both tribal and settlers.
Tripura’s problems reflect the general pattern in the entire Northeast where indigenous tribal people have been overwhelmed by a growing ingress of “outsiders”, a detestable word with increasingly dangerous connotations. The situation is being replicated in many parts of the country each with its own potential for future conflicts, which almost inevitably require deployment of security forces whether police, paramilitary, and in extreme cases, the military to maintain peace and law and order. Security forces require to be well-trained and disciplined, which is often not the case with half-trained, minimally educated ranks of the state police forces. However, it is generally recognised that compared to police and paramilitary forces, the armed forces in aid
to civil authority are much better disciplined and restrained in their interaction with the local environment, due to the quality of personal leadership at all
levels.
The common thread that runs through all these internal interventions by the government whether state or Central, is the intense hatred for the police and armed forces that it creates amongst the local population. The anger is justified but misplaced and misdirected, because the real culprits are the local political machine, which has allowed matters to drift, but itself always manages to remain out of the line of fire, especially where party affiliations at the Centre are in common. Inferior political leadership at state level is responsible for instability in the region, often intensified when governments at Centre and state belong to mutually adversarial political parties, where resentments often descend to individual personalities and local power figures. The pot is kept boiling by aggressive media commentators, out to boost their own ratings, though in their defence it must also be said that had it not been for hue and cry raised through media exposures, most gross irregularities and crimes would not have been brought to the public notice.
As a matter of policy, internal conflicts are being dealt with by police and Central paramilitary forces, without involving the Army. This is an encouraging trend and must continue.
It is obvious that if the almost permanent unrest in the Northeast and elsewhere is ever to be controlled, changes in attitude are required amongst administrators and political leadership mainly at state levels, though successive Central governments too cannot escape their share of the blame. Of particular concern are the state police forces, which are widely held to be brutal and biased in their dealings with the civil population. One remedy may be to incorporate the so-called “India Reserve” police battalions raised by individual states into the Central Reserve Police Force”, which are better trained, led and generally impervious to local politics.
There are many similar spots in the country with the potential for trouble, and it may not be out of place here to mention another “Forgotten Front” — the idyllic Andaman and Nicobar Islands, particularly the latter, where settlers have totally swamped the tribal “Bhumiputra” (sons of the soil).
In the Andamans, the Onge tribals are extremely few and underdeveloped (some say they are a dying race perishing through lack of reproduction and regeneration) but that is far from the case in the Nicobars where the indigenous people are a vigorous race with distinct Mongolian features who are recruited into the local police as also Army and paramilitary forces in numbers, commensurate with their overall population. There is a remarkable degree of harmony between the various communities, some thing that could well be emulated in other regions in the heartland of the mother country.

The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament