Posted on 04/02/2006 7:45:49 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Under pressure to crack down on a Maoist rebellion, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, will review counter-insurgency plans at a meeting with state chief ministers to be held on April 13.
In the wake of a recent hijacking of a train by Maoists in the northern state of Jharkand and the storming of a jail in neighbouring Bihar, Mr Singh has been criticised for failing to prevent the collapse of local government in vast swathes of the country.
Thirteen state governments met in New Delhi on Friday to thrash out a strategy to combat Maoist guerrillas operating with increasing impunity in a “red arc” stretching from Nepal to south India.
The home ministry, which has been keen to avoid deploying serving army personnel to crush the movement, moved in that direction, saying it would enable Maoist-affected states to call on retired soldiers to help clear rebel landmines.
V.K. Duggal, home secretary, urged Maoist-affected states to fill the massive number of vacancies in their police forces. In Bihar, a slow-moving recruitment process is under way to fill no fewer than 17,000 police vacancies.
The Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights last week urged the government to set up a separate ministry for the development of areas affected by the 40-year-old Maoist movement, which emerged in the village of Naxalbari in West Bengal in 1967.
Mr Duggal said that while the number of attacks by “Naxalites”, as the Maoists are known, had fallen by 18 per cent in the first quarter to 391, from 475 in the same period of 2005, the number of deaths had increased by 38 per cent to 157 from 114.
The home secretary said the increase in fatalities had been almost entirely limited to the central state of Chattisgarh, where the government is backing what it calls a “voluntary people’s movement” that it says has risen up to oppose the Maoists.
The home ministry said “local resistance groups” were “useful instruments” in countering Naxalite activities, but that they needed to be “encouraged” with care, suggesting a possible change in approach.
The influence of Maoist militants, who run parallel justice systems in 165 of 602 districts, has grown steadily in recent years, threatening national cohesion and rural stability. Civil servants claim it is too dangerous to enter these zones.
The insurgents, who have ideological and communication links with their revolutionary Nepalese counterparts, feed off the alienation of people in poorer rural areas, where many are landless and often victims of a corrupt bureaucracy.
“The Maoists at least offer a functioning justice system through their people’s courts, which has enabled them to displace the state and occupy the moral high ground,” says Jaiprakash Narayan, founder of Lok Satta, a movement for governance reform.
Unlike in Nepal, where the Maoists have formed alliances with mainstream political parties to push for radical constitutional reform, nobody believes they can achieve such success in India. Even so, there are fears the insurgency could disrupt economic growth.
Addressing investors in Shanghai in February, Lord Meghnad Desai, a professor at the London School of Economics, said India’s path to rapid economic growth would be “bumpy” if it failed to tackle the militant anti-state movement.
“There is no immediate danger to the Indian state since it is capable of immense repression,” he said.
“But the democratic system of which India is justly proud will exacerbate rather than ease the tension in the fight with Naxalite forces.”
This is one of the "human rights" NGO's giving aid and comfort to the Maoist revolt in Nepal.
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