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Security: Drifting downhill

I read the two articles, “Drifting downhill on internal security” by Dinesh Kumar and “Wanted: A specially trained force to combat Naxalites” by Lt-Gen Harbhajan Singh (retd) (Perspective Page, April 25).

Since Independence, India never had respite from conflicts — internal and external. It may be easy to address trouble from across the borders. Formulating a strategy to combat belligerent rebellions within (call it by any name, i.e. insurgency, terrorism or Naxalite movement) is not easy.

The causes of such uprisings in the states are correctly attributed to ill-governance, corruption, lack of development and absence of equal opportunities to earn, educate and excel. All these can be dovetailed into ill-governance.

The solution entails a serious action on the part of the government, political parties and officials. Deployment of security forces to quell disturbances or internal strife would not help resolve the problem permanently.

Consider the expansion and expenditure on maintaining, manning, equipping and arming of military, paramilitary and Central Police Organisations. I agree with Mr Kumar’s observation that we need to introspect “whether we as a people make good managers, leaders and governors of a country that is among the world’s most multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-ethnics.”

Motivation and training of security forces and administrators emphasised by the scribes are extremely difficult to qualify qualitywise to be quantified.

Lt-Col BACHITTAR SINGH (retd), Mohali

I read Harbhajan Singh’s article on the Naxalites menace. He rightly says that we shall have to train a special force to combat Naxalites. They are trained, have local support, enjoy board and lodging. And on top of all this, they are being provided with arms, ammunition and the hiding places after the operation.

We can root out the menace by identifying and isolating these people from a position of strength.

DALIP SINGH WASAN, Patiala

III

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has rightly said that the Naxalites are the greatest challenge to India’s internal security and that this cancer has spread to many states.

Admittedly, it is critical for the anti-Naxalite forces to have much greater mobility than the insurgents. It is true that only helicopters can provide such tactical mobility in the jungle and semi-hill terrain. Excellent communications including phones should be provided to the troops. Clearly, if tactical mobility is provided to anti-Naxalite forces, many innocent lives can be saved.

PARTAP SINGH, Kainthan (Dasuya)

Atrocities on rise

Prof Ranbir Singh’s article, “Checking atrocities on Dalits: High time to liberate rural Haryanvis from neo-feudal culture” (Perspective, May 2) is very informative. Globalisation has led to isolation and marginalisation of Dalits and poor tribals from socio-economic and cultural fields, consolidating power and opportunities in the hands of the privileged and opening new areas of conflict. That is why caste conflicts and atrocities are on the rise against the SCs and STs.

The prevention of Atrocities Act mainly focuses on redressal mechanisms, but in the changed scenario of social life, there is an increasing need to formulate multi-dimensional laws, programmes and policies to address the structural roots of violence.

Mass movements coercing the state to discharge its duties in true constitutional spirit needs to be built up taming the menace of neo-feudal elements.

Dr VITULL K. GUPTA, Bathinda

Death debate

I am a regular reader of Khushwant Singh’s column, “This above all”. Letter writer S.C. Taneja is disillusioned by his piece “Drama of life and death,” and I would fully share the views of the other letter writers (April 18). As God lives within, so noble deeds and clean hearts with a true conscience can only bring solace and prosperity and not bathing in polluted rivers like the Ganges.

Truly, life is incomplete without death, so why should we be frightened of this natural phenomenon?

Sunder Singh Giani, Mohali

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor, neatly hand-written or typed in double space, should not exceed the 150-word limit. These can be sent by post to the Letters Editor, The Tribune, Sector 29, Chandigarh-160030.

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— Editor-in-Chief

Murakami: A reputed litterateur

I read Khushwant Singh’s piece on the Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami’s novel, Norwegian Wood, which he assessed as “enjoyable waste of time” (Saturday Extra, April 17).

Murakami is a leading representative of the post-war Japanese generation fiddling amongst the ruins. His fiction as such depicts the generation’s trials and turmoils, their feelings and fervour, their earnestness and ardent devotion to rebuild as also the search for freedom which subsequent generations find in the popular US culture. He has pioneered a new Japanese literary style in the depiction of post-war alienation.

It is also a blend of science fiction, metaphysics and hard-boiled reality. This novel is about the youth, their troubles due to a drug culture eating into the entrails of the Japanese youngsters in the post-war generation. His other important works are Pinball, Hear the Wind Sing, A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, which is about the Japanese-Chinese war, retrospectively remembered by participants, and Underground, which is a collection of interviews with survivors of the Aum Cult’s 1995 gas attack in the Tokyo underground.

Projecting a cool image with ironic observations, Murakami is a brash, yet significant and widely honoured contemporary Japanese litterateur.

Deepak Tandon, Panchkula