Tackle Maoists with a top-down approach

Context: The latest attacks by the Maoists in the Bastar region calls for a change in India’ anti-insurgency operations.

Need for urgently dealing with the Maoist insurgents

• Expanding footprint:  Which now runs from Pashupati (in Nepal) to Tirupati (in south India).At its peak, Maoist insurgency was visible in over 200 districts across, most severely, in central India.
• Considered as single biggest internal security challenge: by the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
• Massacres on security personnel: Hundreds of policemen from various cadres have been killed in attacks, mostly in the past two decades, by well-armed Maoist rebels in the Bastar region.

Challenges in countering Maoist insurgency

• Federal nature of India: It limits the ability of the Central government to tackle the challenges comprehensively.
• Political challenges: One state’s insurgent cannot be a vote bank for another state! Politics often takes precedence over the safety of citizens.
• Lack of expertise and bureaucratic reluctance: It remains a challenge to get enough CRPF senior officers (IGs and DIGs) to move out of the comfortable cities.
  • IPS officers neither have the experience nor the inclination to battle insurgencies.

Ways to deal with Maoist insurgency:

• Continue with historically used three-part strategy: including following elements -
  • Use of force: The use of necessary military force to counter the aggressiveness of insurgents.
  • Address the grievances of alienated people: By infrastructure upgrades.
  • Address the political demands: With fixed timelines for political deliverables.
• Adopt a top-down approach (instead of a bottom-up approach): Based on an Army-led operation.
  • It will open up avenues for army officers: As the top-down approach will allow Army to depute senior officers (from colonels to generals) with experience in counter-insurgency operations.
• Empower security personnel to use “quick-fix-solutions”: To tackle threats posed on their lives.
• Assessing experimented strategies:
  • A low-key level strategy: Adopted for decades in the North-East rather,
  • Hammer and tongs strategy: As the Sri Lankan forces eventually did against the LTTE.

Conclusion: Government should get the forces to participate in and collectively address a problem (Maoist insurgency) that cannot have a knee-jerk approach.