Will Modi walk his talk?

Sitting ducks, a tale of how 99-strong CRPF troops were easy prey for 300 Maoists in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district last week resulting in 25 massacred. The second deadly attack in less than two months which left 12 dead and the third in seven years. Underscoring, tall talk of containing internal terrorism is simply banal and a hog wash!

Yet, post assault, things ran par on course. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh called an emergency meeting of top security officials, asserting, “This cold blooded murder showed the Naxals' frustration over the success of our crackdown operations in the recent past.” Sic. Tweeted Prime Minister Modi, “Cowardly and deplorable. The sacrifice of the martyrs will not go in vain, we have taken the attack as a challenge and will enforce the State’s writ.”

Really? Then why hasn’t accountability been fixed? And heads not rolled? Will the State admit it has blood on its hands? Specially, after the DGP CRPF accused the Chhattisgarh government of being laggard in constructing the road in the Maoists den. Shockingly, the road, where the attack took place has been in the making for years.

More scandalous, the security personnel have been crying hoarse for new technology which shortens construction time of one km road to just two days. Alas, this proposal too has been gathering dust for three years with the State Administration. Alongside policemen acknowledge they were soft targets due to the route’s predictability for the road construction side.
Tragically, the government is insensible of how it should tackle the growing menace. At last count Maoists had spread their poisonous tentacles in 20 States and 223 districts (7 States have already slipped beyond State control).

Worse, they have assumed alarming proportions, ratcheting up the stakes at a potent level to destroy democracy and replace it with anarchy. Intelligence sources assert the Maoist game plan is to occupy the countryside, surround cities until they can force regime change. Simultaneously, they want to transmute the social structure through the barrel of the gun. Towards that end, they are getting moral & material support from Nepal, China, and Pakistan’s ISI, Lashkar-e-Tayiba, HUL and other Islamic terror outfits.

Their ambition: Have a ‘red corridor’ from Pashupati to Tirupati. Sadly, for a year, the government has talked ad nauseum about its ‘anti-Naxal strategy’ couched in jingoistic jargon of “challenge, clear, development” et al. Used grand language like tackling terror “on the political, security and development fronts in a holistic manner."

Shamefully, New Delhi is fighting this violent movement with not even one tenth of the total security forces required to contain it. Worse, more than 30% of the Centre’s outlay towards modernisation of the police in the Red corridor hasn’t been released. Of the amount released only some has been used.

In addition, the tribals feel if security forces could be killed where do we go? So willy-nilly they start obeying the so-called diktats of the Naxalites. There must be a clear determination to contain the Naxalites on their peripheries, to engineer their expulsion from areas in which their influence is nascent, and ensure that they are not able to expand into new areas.

As also deal with distortions in the social system on a war footing to alleviate poverty, ensure speedy development and enforce law and order strictly. Time to send a clear message that senseless violence wouldn’t be tolerated. Remember, nations live or die by the way they respond to a challenge. Do our leaders have the stomach? The ball is in NaMo’s court. Can he walk his talk?

By Poonam I Kaushish