The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Offer for talks
Maoists will be unwise to spurn overtures

The Union Home Minister’s olive branch to the Maoists appears to be getting longer. After holding out the threat of an all-out armed offensive against the rebels, widely expected to be launched after the monsoon, the Home Minister is increasingly seen to favour a dialogue with them. It is not clear whether this is part of a “carrot and stick policy” or if it is designed to make the central government look “reasonable”. May be, there is a subtle shift in strategy. Earlier Mr Chidambaram had called upon the Maoists to “abjure” violence or give up arms. But now he seems to be suggesting that they should merely suspend violence even if they do not give up arms. Apparently, engaging the Maoists in talks while keeping the powder dry is not a bad idea.

The Home Minister’s claim that Salwa Judum, the vigilante group in Chhattisgarh armed by the state to take on the Maoists, has ceased to exist is a welcome development. But just as vigilante groups are not desirable in a civilised state, armed or armchair revolutionaries are also an anachronism in a democratic state. The Maoists have consistently offered a “ceasefire” on condition that the government withdraws security forces from their strongholds. Over the week-end, while rebuffing the Home Minister’s overture, they have put forward their own set of pre-conditions for talks. They would like the state governments to stop or abandon all mining projects and scrap all MoUs they have signed with industrialists before they come to the table for talks. No government can, or indeed should, accept these conditions.

Mr Chidambaram wants to persuade the state governments to hold talks with the Maoists once the latter suspend violence. The Home Minister specifically singled out the concerns related to land acquisition, forest rights and industrialisation. Although all such concerns need to be addressed in any case, apparently these are being sought to be taken up to assure the Maoists that the government’s offer of talks is well-meant.While the underground leaders in different states, particularly in central India, are unlikely to surface, it is possible that non-official channels are at work creating space for the talks at the state level. It will be unwise of the Maoists to spurn the government’s overtures.

Police vs lawyers
TN advocates benefit from court leniency

The Madras High Court order holding four top police officials of Chennai responsible for the clash between the police and lawyers on the High Court premises in February last and directing the Tamil Nadu government to initiate disciplinary action against them is not entirely convincing. While letting lawyers completely off the hook, the two-judge bench has only handed out “friendly advice” to them, saying they should dispel the impression that they are a law unto themselves. Considering that this is not the first case of seeming leniency towards lawyers, one is left wondering whether the judiciary tends to be too magnanimous towards the lawyers, even to those who tend to violate law.

Surely, police high-handedness was manifest in the manner in which the policemen used disproportionate force, wantonly destroying property and vehicles parked on the High Court premises and beating up lawyers. But as Justice B.N. Srikrishna said in his interim report to the Supreme Court days after the incident, the police initially exercised restraint as the lawyers took to taunting, jeering, gesticulating, and hurling stones. At one stage during the clash with the police, the agitating lawyers even burnt down a police station located within the court campus. While the court has done well to call the senior police officers to account for the police having violated the sanctity of the court, it would be worthwhile to examine whether a mere advice would be enough for a belligerent group of lawyers who have been known to disrupt court work through agitations every now and then.

It is apt that the Tamil Nadu government is planning to go in appeal to the Supreme Court against the High Court order. It would be in the fitness of things if the judiciary were to lay down guidelines for the behaviour of lawyers within and without the court premises as Justice Srikrishna has suggested. His recommendation that the Advocate’s Act be amended to ensure a better disciplinary mechanism also deserves a close look. As for the police, they surely need to learn some lessons.

Thought for the Day

Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry. — Valentine Blacker

ARTICLE

The war within
Maoists must be defeated
by Harsh V. Pant

Recently the Maoists abducted Atindranath Dutta, Officer-in-Charge of Sankrail police station in West Bengal. After 55 hours in captivity, Dutta was released in the presence of national media by Maoist leader Kishenji, who underlined that this was the “first case of release of Prisoner of War” by the Maoists. Dutta’s release came hours after the state government let 22 alleged Naxals walk free by not opposing their bail plea. The West Bengal government later admitted that it gave in to the demands of the Maoists to secure the release of the police officer and cited the release of militants in the 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case and the 1999 IC-914 Kandahar hijack as precedents. The Home Secretary went to the extent of calling India a “soft state” while the Chief Minister’s Principal Secretary admitted that the government “had to bend over backwards”.

This prisoner swap happened even as the security forces had surrounded the Maoist abductors with their leader Kishenji also part of the squad. They were instructed to call off their operations. This incident once again underscored the growing might of the Maoists and the abject passivity of the Indian State even when its institutions are assaulted with impunity. Not a single day passes by these days when the Maoists do not make it to the national headlines.

For some time now we have been hearing the government talking of Naxalism and Maoism in grave terms, labelling them as the greatest internal security threat facing the nation. Yet the policy response has not been up to the mark. It has been full of sound and fury signifying nothing. The UPA government in its first term failed to see the Naxalite threat for what it was — one of the most significant challenges to the very existence of India. As a result, its response was a mixture of denial, accommodation and neglect.

With the Left parties as coalition partners and an ineffective Shivraj Patil as Home Minister, the government ended up worsening an already serious situation, giving ample opportunities to the Naxalites to demonstrate their might across an ever-expanding swathe of territory called the “Red Corridor.” For years Naxals have been killing security personnel and civilians continuously and consistently with a ruthlessness that is unprecedented, but the Indian State has tended to look the other way while celebrity activists have tended to justify these acts on all sorts of moral grounds.

In the absence of leadership from New Delhi, the states decided to chart their own courses and their approaches ranged from offering amnesties to the raising of armed militias like the Salwa Judum. Realising that the situation has got out of control, the UPA government in its second term had no option but to take the threat head on, and it started with the new Home Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, admitting in Parliament that the national security threat posed by the Maoists had been underestimated for the last few years.

Conventional wisdom on tackling Naxalism, much prevalent amidst the Indian liberal intelligentsia, suggests that this is a mere socio-economic problem. And only if we can provide jobs to the disaffected youth and win their hearts and minds, we can prevent Maoism from spreading. This assumption is the basis for the developmental package that the government has announced for the Naxal-infested areas where significant development aid is now being channelled in the hope that this will help in alleviating the perception of alienation from the national mainstream.

It is indeed true that good governance and economic growth have simply passed over certain parts of India, and the Naxalites thrive in this developmental and governance vacuum, often supplanting the state’s legitimacy. And as the state’s authority has eroded, the Maoists have moved in to fill this vacuum by erecting parallel structures of governance. Development, however, is never the goal of such movements. It is all about power.

No doubt, a multi-pronged strategy is needed to tackle Naxalism, and one of the planks will have to be to ensure that developmental aid trickles down to those at the very bottom of the nation’s socio-economic ladder. But this should not mean that the military defeat of the Maoists should be put on the back-burner. For far too long there has been a complacent attitude regarding fighting these forces. There has been an absurd sentimentality about the Maoists’ Leftist pretensions. The argument went that these are idealistic, well-intentioned people who have gone awry but soon they will recognise the benefits of participatory democracy and start engaging with the nation’s electoral process.

The Congress party remained ambivalent about defeating Maoism and we kept hearing clichés suggesting that development was the only way to tackle the menace of Naxalism, and the Maoists were merely frustrated youth. It is indeed surprising because India has been rather ruthless in fighting other challenges to its internal security, be it in Jammu and Kashmir or the North-East, where all kinds of insurgencies have challenged the might of the Indian State and the nation has never been diffident in responding in kind.

As the Home Minister has pointed out, left-wing extremism affects 20 states, and over 2000 police station areas in 223 districts in those states. While 231 security personnel were killed in Naxalite violence in 2008, as many as 250 had already died this year till August. Despite this, the Naxalites have continued to be seen as misguided or harmless or even basically right in what they wish to achieve though, perhaps, a bit too harsh in their choice of means.

The Maoists have made it clear time and again that they seek the dismemberment of India and have cynically exploited the genuine grievances of the local population in their areas of operation toward their larger ideological ends. The Indian intelligentsia and the Indian government should disabuse themselves of any possible reconciliation with the Maoists at this juncture. The Maoists have made it clear that they will only come to the negotiating table if security forces are withdrawn from their areas of operation, all arrested Maoists are released and there won’t be any precondition of laying down arms.

There should be no question of accepting any of these demands. The extremism of their goals and the excesses of their method make them the most dreaded enemies of the country. The main task of great urgency before the government today, therefore, is a military defeat of the anti-democratic Naxal forces. The government needs to re-establish its authority, creating conditions for pursuing an inclusive political process and developmental agenda.

As recent events make it amply clear, India has been failing its paramilitary and police consistently. In the absence of adequate personnel, training and equipment, the Indian police have been reluctant to take on the Maoists head-on, making it even more difficult for the local population to challenge the Naxal’s might. In the absence of adequate security, a “hearts and minds” strategy is unlikely to work and the local populace will continue to get targeted by both the Naxals and the security forces.

In this context, while the recently launched Operation Green Hunt against the Naxalite movement is a step in the right direction, the government will have to think about building institutions of governance rather rapidly after clearing the areas of the Maoist cadre if it wants a permanent solution to this problem.

The Maoist insurgency is a blatantly illegal and a no-holds-barred war against the country, against the idea and existence of Indian democracy, and that includes the poor tribals and farmers in whose cause the Maoists claim to fight. It is not only ignorant but also extremely dangerous to romanticise the Naxalite cause. While recognising the limits of Indian democracy and developmental model, there is no need to be apologetic about the ability of Indian democracy in bringing an ever greater number of people, especially the marginalised, into the mainstream. Today it is the Maoists who, because of their destructive tactics and senseless violence, are actually the greatest impediment to the development of the areas for whom they are ostensibly fighting. It is time for India to assert itself as well as expose the intellectual vacuity of their ideology. Anything less would allow such forces to keep working towards the weakening of the Indian State.n

The writer is a Visiting Professor at King’s College, London.

MIDDLE

Dread of vasectomy
by G.K. Gupta

In the mid-1970s a widespread family planning programme was initiated by the government. Police and other officials were asked to forcibly perform vasectomies on men. In order to meet the target, a number of unmarried young men and some ignorant yokels got sterilised.

Those days, I occasionally passed through Purkazi, a sleepy town on the G.T. Road, near Roorkee, with a colleague on business trips to the BHEL complex. We usually stopped at a particular shop famous for tea and snacks. Once our halt was much longer due to heavy rain.

We enjoyed this forced stay in the midst of a motley company and found ourselves talking to one Chowdhury Ram Singh, who had the bearing of an affluent and influential person. He invited us to his village Kheri some 3 km from the main road to taste fresh gur which he averred was more delicious than the celebrated chocolates. The opportunity to be the guests of an important person was quite appealing. We agreed to visit on our return.

On our way back, the weather had become quite pleasant. But the rain had left the area slushy. Our driver was confident of locating the village. Just before entering Purkazi, he took a right turn on the narrow road passing through fields and dwellings. Then, at last, we hit Kheri village.

We were sure the villagers would guide us to Ram Singh, who was an important person in the village. There were not many people around but they were avoiding us and quickly getting out of our way. We stopped a few persons but they turned away their faces or took to their heels. They all betrayed some sort of unmistakable hostility. Hopefully, I tapped at a half open door but it was rudely shut and bolted from inside. I could hear low voices of people inside.

We were getting late and abandoned the fruitless search. On our way back we entered the shop where we had met Ram Singh. The shopkeeper heard about the queer behaviour of the villagers but then to our surprise, he burst into uncontrollable laughter.

When composed, he said that we were lucky for not being badly manhandled as it happened to some people earlier.

Undoubtedly, the villagers thought that we were from the government’s family planning office and had come to carry out vasectomy operations. Stories of such forced operations on unwilling males were rampant those days.

No doubt, to the lynx-eyed villagers, the picture of vasectomy perpetrators was complete — two formally dressed sarkari looking guys with brief-cases, the khaki-clad driver and the while ambassador car.

OPED

Need to link development, security in Afghanistan
by Robert B. Zoellick

As governments reconsider strategies in Afghanistan, stories abound about why achieving progress in this "graveyard of empires" is so challenging: The country is racked by violence and opium production; confidence in the government is weak; its neighbours meddle; and fiercely independent tribes distrust any intruder — whether from Britain, the Soviet Union, NATO or Kabul.

The World Bank Group's experience in Afghanistan reflects all these problems. This is one of the most difficult environments in which we work. Yet we have seen real, measurable progress: in the health sector, education, community development, microfinance and telecommunications. Since 2002, the World Bank has committed nearly $2 billion to these and other projects and manages, with partners, a $3.2 billion trust fund for 30 donor countries.

Here are some of the lessons we have learned:

First, we need to "secure development" — that is, create a strong link between security and development. Each reinforces the other, especially when we focus on communities and on resolving local-level conflict. A dysfunctional police force, justice and prison system feeds a lawlessness that breeds disillusionment with the government and sympathy for its opponents.

Second, corruption can be fought better through design than through calls for virtue or even a slew of investigations. Afghanistan's drug trade risks the criminalization of the state. But there are steps one can take to make corruption harder and less likely.

Afghanistan's reform-minded finance ministers have taken practical steps to simplify government processes and add transparency to reduce opportunities for corruption, already raising government revenue 75 percent in the first part of this year. Recently the government slashed the number of steps to register vehicles from some 55 to just a few, reducing opportunities for bribes and increasing revenue.

Third, locally led projects are the most effective. The National Solidarity Program, which the World Bank helped launch in 2003, empowers more than 22,000 elected, village-level councils to decide on their development priorities — from building a school to irrigation to electrification.

So far, the program has reached more than 19 million Afghans in 34 provinces, with grants averaging $33,000. Development owned by the community can survive amid conflict: When an NSP-funded school was attacked in August 2006, the villagers defended it. The community councils also help build
cooperation among villages and with the government.

Fourth, while local progress matters, government responsibility and capacity must be built at the national level. Currently, two-thirds of aid to Afghanistan flows outside the government because donors lack confidence in its competence and transparency.

But this undermines those trying to build legitimate Afghan institutions. It can also grossly distort resource allocation: Some relatively secure areas are starved of money when they could be producing results. We can work with Afghans to strengthen public financial management.

That said, in the absence of strong institutions, and facing considerable corruption, good results have been dependent on one-by-one partnerships with honest, reformist ministers. The new Cabinet must include more such individuals.

Fifth, Afghans need to see measurable improvements to their lives, or they will not feel they owe anything to Kabul or local governments. There are success stories: More than 12,000 miles of all-weather rural roads have been built, connecting communities to markets; today, 80 percent of Afghans have access to basic health services, compared with only 9 percent in 2003; 6 million children are enrolled in school, nearly 35 percent of whom are girls, compared with about 1 million students and no girls seven years ago; competitive telecommunications networks now serve about 10 million subscribers. But a lot remains to be done.

Stability in Afghanistan also depends on good leadership — especially in critical areas that have lagged behind, such as agriculture, energy, mining and private-sector development. The challenges of securing development so that it is self-sustaining are formidable.

But progress is possible if safety is strengthened, the Afghan government assumes ownership, its partners build development through the choices of the Afghan people, and Afghanistan's neighbors decide they are better off with a successful state than with a perilous buffer zone that could send trouble back across their borders.n

The writer is the president of the World Bank Group operating in Afghanistan.
— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

UP’s dreams and challenges
by Shahira Naim

An anecdote recounted by former CPM MP and member of its central committee Subhashini Ali needs to be related to understand the complexity of modern Uttar Pradesh.

During the assembly election after the Babri Masjid demolition a journalist friend covering Mulayam Singh Yadav’s rally in Etawah had come for dinner. She described Uttar Pradesh as the weirdest place.

Substantiating her statement she told Subhashini that when she asked a man his estimate of the crowd, he said: “Barely 10,000 to 15,000 and even they are mostly policemen in plain clothes”. The second man believed it to be around 50,000, while the third perched atop a tree claimed that there were no less than 2.50 lakh people, maybe even more!

Subhashini told her journalist friend the need to decode each statement. “The first was a Brahmin and a right wing person; the second in all likelihood was a Samajwadi Party supporter and the third on top of a tree was definitely a poor Muslim who would go to any length to keep the BJP away!”

This caste and community-tainted looking glasses through which everything is perceived in UP is a major challenge due to which even the fundamental issues of ‘roti, kapda and makaan’ do not bring the toiling ‘aam aadmi’ together to question things, said Ali while giving her view on the state of affairs in Uttar Pradesh today.

She was speaking at a panel discussion “Uttar Pradesh 2020:Dasha-Disha” (situation and direction) organised by Hindi Hindustan as part of the Hindustan Samagam 2009 to discuss the dreams and challenges before the state during the next decade.

Eight prominent personalities participated in the discussion. They included Yugratna Srivasta, the school student who recently made an impassionate speech at the UN, film personality Mahesh Bhatt, young MPs Jayant Chadhury and Jitin Prasada, CPM leader Subhashini Ali, the BJP’s Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, former Director General of Police KL Gupta and Magsaysay award winner and social activist Sandeep Pandey.

While some painted a dark gloomy picture with little to look forward to, others conducted a post-mortem giving their own reasons for the state’s steady decline. The Mandal and Kamandal phase of the state’s politics was held responsible for the complete fragmentation of perspectives and even human beings.

Most speakers believed that this fragmentation had resulted in a situation that has made the political class believe that it did not have to provide good governance in order to survive. Tokenism and lip service to their specific vote bank are enough to manage a return to power.

But perhaps Mahesh Bhatt set the mood in perspective by challenging people to continue dreaming. “A defeated person can rise again but not the hopeless”.

Describing himself as the peddler of hope, he said that UP with a population of close to 18 crore must be having 18 crore stories – all equally valid. Despair sets in when one believes only one story.

The basic challenge that he saw before the state was to try to imagine what kind of human being would walk on the surface of the state in 2020. “Technology and development can bring material prosperity, nothing more. Only a cultural renaissance can revitalise the human spirit and save a person from becoming rootless”.

The youngest participant Yugratna set the ball rolling by quoting statistics to prove that despite 8 of the 14 prime ministers since Independence belonging to the state (A B Vajpayee won from Lucknow), the state has the worst social and economic indicators. This young participant voiced the need for a vision document to take the state from where it has reached.

Talking of dreams, Sandeep Pandey, who quit his teaching job at the IIT, Kanpur, to devote his time to translate his dream of a more equitable society into reality, confessed that today he feels happy if he manages to get 35 kilograms of foodgrains for a BPL cardholder.

Strongly believing that most of the problems of the state would be solved even if the large number of innovative poverty alleviation schemes likes NAREGA, Indira Awas, pensions and scholarships reach the truly deserving.

Pointing to a very real problem of a Red Corridor extending toward the state, Sandeep introduced three persons – a stone cutter, a whitewash worker and a basket maker whose lives recently turned upside down when their hutments were demolished in the name of cleaning the river Gomti or their reportedly being Bangladeshis or for the sake of a VIP passing that way.

“If the system continues to ruthlessly push such people to the margins it should not surprise anyone if they decide to barter their instruments of earning their livelihood with arms”.

Advocating a participative democracy instead of a representative one, he said that the time had come when the person who is paying for it should endorse every decision before the nation. “Let the gram sabha clear if India should go in for nuclear power or even if more memorials are required”.

Jayant Chaudhury, the grandson of Chadhury Charan Singh and first-time MP from Mathura, cited the example of Haryana to advocate that smaller states can be better managed. “Today UP is too big to be governed efficiently. In fact the situation is so grim that the state is playing a ‘drag factor’ in bringing down the averages of various social and economic indicators of the country.”

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi of the BJP, however, was hopeful that the very fact that people from all walks of life and political affiliations had gathered to ponder over the furture of the state was a positive sign. “ I don’t remember when I had such a healthy and positive discussion with fellow politicians. Even inside the Lok Sabha we do not listen to others any longer”.

Chatterati
Thieves target Delhi’s VIPs
by Devi Cherian

Plenty of money is spent on the security of politicians and VIPs in the capital. Yet security is lax. On Monday morning a red alert was sounded across the city when the pilot vehicle of the Rajya Sabha's deputy chairman K.Rahman Khan got stolen. It was fitted with a radio tag that allows its entry into Parliament. It was stolen from the residence of Khan's driver.

Burglars struck at the residence of none else than Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Maken on Saturday. The Delhi Police functions under the MHA. Three unidentified masked men attempted to steal the stereo from a car parked inside the ancestral house of Ajay Maken after tying the hands of the security guard.

Then a burglary was reported from the same building where the Makens live. On Friday, the laptop of an officer on special duty (OSD) to Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit went missing. The laptop is always personal and obviously contains sensitive data.

Another laptop of an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer from Kerala was stolen from the FICCI auditorium. The officer was accompanying Kerala Chief Minister V.V.Achuthananda at a function held at the auditorium where Chief Minister Dikshit was also present.

But Delhi is full of VIPs and thieves really don’t want to leave them out.

Catching them young

Rahul Gandhi now plans to start training programmes for students. He also wants to give a "national structure" to the party and build a national student cadre for the Congress.

Rahul's is all for democracy, even up to the student level. He has ensured free and fair elections to the Youth Congress and has earmarked a 25 percent quota for women in the NSUI.

He is focussing on the NSUI to make it a "vibrant effective body", especially to bolster the Congress's electoral base. An institutionalised form of training will be provided to students on campuses across the country. This class will cover a range of issues: from economic, social and academic to local ones.

This is the way to groom future leaders.

BJP factionalism

The three state election results have obviously deflated the BJP, not that it was in any good state before the elections. Time and again one notices that after a loss the BJP leaders who have the gift of the gab are never seen on television. It is left to general secretaries to explain the reasons for the defeat.

And spokespersons’ loyalties change according to the group they are in. With the Advani phase over, Rajnath Singh is having problems with both the Vajpayee and Advani groups. He will most probably have to form a new team of trusted people.

The “have-beens” of these two camps are busy trying to deflate him from behind the scenes. The BJP leaders at the Centre are guys who have no base and think politics can be run sitting in their drawing rooms and giving sound bytes on television while smirking with a know-all expression.

It is a sad situation to see how infighting and ego hassles take a national party down. Trying to befriend the ruling party for your benefit can also lead to a poor opposition, which is also happening in the BJP today.