The clichéd “time alone will tell” is perhaps the most charitable response to the home minister and key officials attempting to convince people that the Central and state governments in Chhattisgarh have “crossed the hump”, and the endgame in the campaign against left-wing extremism is now being played.

They have been selling that line for quite some time, and while such talk might serve as a morale-booster for stressed-out security personnel, it is not an accurate projection of the ground situation. Figures of Maoists neutralised (killed/arrested) are not a fair index either, the administration will always have greater firepower/manpower than the insurgents, and pressure them to hunker down.

Hence fewer incidents might not reflect ground realities. The Maoists will remain a menace until they lose the capacity to strike at will ~ as they did when blowing up a vehicle carrying a police squad a few days back. Or there is a substantial drop in those joining their ranks? For which more than police action is required, but hardly forthcoming.

What is worrisome is that the security forces have yet to work out a suitable strategy and tactics. That became apparent when on the very day that the home minster commissioned the CRPF’s “Bastariya Battalion”, he also announced plans to create a crack squad of “Panthers” on the pattern of the “Greyhounds” that have met with considerable success in Andhra. Why such a unit was not planned earlier is difficult to understand ~ unless the BJP government in Chhattisgarh had ego problems emulating the move made by a non-BJP administration in undivided Andhra Pradesh.

Still, better late than never, for there has been insufficient/ineffective force applied to pressure the insurgents into a re-think. The timing of the “Panthers” announcement also indicated a lack of confidence in the Bastariya Battalion ~ even before it had sniffed cordite. That battalion of men and women recruited from the local populace ought to have had a better feel of the conflict zone than outsiders, but it appears to have lost out to the Panthers, whose creation could have been a knee-jerk reaction to the most recent IED strike in Dantewada.

The Bastariya Battalion could also have only been a bid to create employment opportunities in the region: if so added incentives could be offered to those willing to work on development projects ~ roads should not be perceived only as a facility to expedite troop movements. Although the government claims a two-pronged strategy is being followed, more attention ~ certainly on the publicity front ~ is being paid to the military prong. A possible result being that several locals remain unaware of other activities, and the alienation gets exacerbated. Nor has much been done to convince the people that they are being denied the benefits of the mineral wealth of their land. Core issues are being sidelined by the focus on crushing dissent.