It is not clear why Union home minister P. Chidambaram has chosen to make a comparison between the dangers posed by Naxalism (“left-wing extremism”, or LWE, in official jargon) and the threats presented by terrorism to India. Both are serious problems faced by our society and the Indian state which have proved hard to shake off for over two decades. Yet the home minister, inaugurating a national workshop on Tuesday on strategies for the effective implementation of rural development schemes under the Integrated Action Plan (IAP) in 60 Maoist-affected districts, chose to rate them on a scale of hierarchy of risks. This appears to be a simplistic look at issues that threaten us.
The data given by the home minister on numbers killed on account of LWE and as a result of terrorist violence — the former apparently being higher — do not help us gain clarity on the type of dangers posed by the two distinct problems that appear to reach a crisis point from time to time. Indeed, they cannot be seen as appropriate categories for comparison. If terrorist violence leads to fewer people dying in Jammu and Kashmir in a year than traffic accidents in the Delhi area, it will still be inappropriate to conclude that the national capital is a more dangerous place than Kashmir, or indeed that traffic accidents are a bigger national threat than terrorism. Regrettably, this is the sort of error that Mr Chidambaram appears to have inadvertently slipped into.
The question of Maoism was not long ago projected by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the most serious security threat for the country. There was some let-up in such a portrayal when political voices within the Congress began speaking of the socio-economic dimension of life in rural India and in the tribal tracts being no less important in dealing with the problem as the military or armed policing aspect. Indeed, it is this which can be said to have led to the genesis of the IAP, on which large sums of money are proposed to be expended by the Centre. Even while pushing the IAP, Mr Chidambaram has seen it fit to promote the idea of comparing LWE with terrorism, possibly with a view to underlining how serious the issue is.
It may well be the case that the question of Naxalism needs to be emphasised with a darker pencil. Nevertheless, it is risky in policy terms to make it appear more deadly than the question of terrorism in India at this juncture. The comparison is false and is apt to promote false
policy choices, besides making the populace complacent in respect of terrorism.