brihaspati wrote:It is natural to expect that Maoists would concentrate on Dantewada. Maoist attack appears to intensify whenever the regional regime appears to fall out with Congress - even if the regime was perhaps in virtual or real alliance before. Salwa Judum poses a threat to Congress monopoly over rashtryia violence hence it will be targeted with all the resources of the Maoists.
Brihaspati-ji: clearly so!
The fusillade of strawmen and red-herrings being showered on this thread clearly shows that the agenda is in dire need of some serious covering-up. At this point, the thin fiction that Salwa Judum is an inadequate device to combat Maoism has become so overstretched that... well, only rank shamelessness can hold the weave of its figments together!
Not that some can be faulted for failing to try... feeble as their attempts may be. In the social mainstream, dominated as it is by Mainovadi media, the tack has been to impose a "human rights/tribal suffering" spin on the Chhatisgarh counter-insurgency program. Here on Bharat-Rakshak, where readers belong to the national security constituency... the "operational efficiency" of Chhatisgarh’s efforts is the favoured angle adopted by RANDE "civil society" enthusiasts. The agenda is one and the same, however.
Since last time, new red herrings seem to have spawned from the detritus of the old spurious arguments.
1) "The Centre's no-refund grant to states for modernising their police forces to <sic>
fight terrorists" was allotted on the basis of
existing police strength per state!
Earlier, I had pointed out that
Chhatisgarh (facing "the greatest threat to India's internal security" per MMS) has been allotted a paltry Rs. 42 crore. As compared to Haryana, a state with no significant law-and-order issues, that has been allotted Rs.100 crores! Other states affected by Maoism are getting 223 crores (Maharashtra), 206 crores (Bihar), 180 crores (MP), 113 crores (AP)... but Chhatisgarh must make do with a mere 42 crores according to this allocation of Central funds for "police modernization"!
So the logically unimpeachable, "comprehension-based", "data-driven" justification for this farce? Apparently because Chhatisgarh has fewer cops, therefore it should get less money... never mind the fact that it is facing India's "most dangerous threat to internal security!"
The Elite-Iskool reasoning we are expected to buy here is that a state with fewer cops and a grave terrorist problem needs less money than a state with more cops and a smaller, or non-existent terrorist problem. Brilliant!
2) "Chhatisgarh has received 5k crore in central grants anyway!"
Those who extol this "big favour" being done by the Centre in granting funds to Chhatisgarh (about 7.5% of total Central grants to States in 2011-12 by the way), conveniently fail to mention that what the Mainovadi regime gives with one (GOI) hand, it is busy trying to take away with the other (NGO) hand.
That is exactly what we're seeing with the pressure campaign being brought by Ramchandra Guha, Swami Agnivesh et.al. against the use of central funds by Chhatisgarh to recruit tribals in SPO units, after all. As I've pointed out, these sorts of campaigns have been run by "civil society" groups, using the SC to forward their aims, in the very recent past... and somehow the aims of these "apolitical" agencies always seem to coincide exactly with those of the Mainovadi regime.
3) "Punjab/J&K VDCs were soooo successful only because they were deployed as auxiliary units, after the state police had established control over the districts concerned!"
Not a surprising claim coming from someone whose favoured tactic is to cram facile, irrelevant comparisons together in “nutshells” of sublime ignorance. Or maybe it is deliberate ignorance... while VDCs in Punjab/J&K are being touted as against the “failed/atrocity-committing” Chhatisgarh SPOs, some essential ground-level points of difference between the Punjab/J&K and Chhatisgarh insurgencies are being deliberately papered over.
What are the logistical implications of the dramatic differences in infrastructural development between Chhatisgarh and Punjab? How often was it the case in Punjab that guerillas could establish parallel administrations in regions so remote, that it would take many hours after an attack for any police presence to reach there? Chhatisgarh inherited a defunct administration when it became a state in 2000, and has had to build infrastructure from the ground up. Meanwhile the Maoists were already active and building strength. Today the Maoists are hardly likely to extend Raipur the benefit of time to catch up with Punjab. Comparing this situation to Punjab is laughable!
Comparing it to J&K... a state with significant army presence in addition to central and state security forces, and one in which VDCs of Doda have been supplemented by central paramilitaries using Mi-17s since the mid-1990s... is completely delusional.
This illustrates the difference between learning how to spell "non-sequitur" (an Elite Iskool) and actually knowing what the term means!
Is it reasonable to think that in Chhatisgarh today the State Police could gain operational dominance and control of remote areas of Dantewada, as Punjab police could in Gurdaspur or Jallandhar districts? Clearly not in the short-term.
Is waiting to establish police control over the tribal villages, a luxury that Chhatisgarh has, before it
only then thinks about recruiting SPOs from among the tribals?
Is building the necessary infrastructure a luxury that Chhatisgarh has before it thinks about recruiting SPOs from among the tribals?
Certainly these are not luxuries that the tribals have... for them it is a matter of life and death today... not of financial variables in the next n-year-plan.
The only people who would argue in those terms are the ones who have nothing to lose (maybe much to gain?) by the continuance of Naxal domination in the hinterlands of Chhatisgarh. The sort of people who think everything can be resolved by the manipulation of excel spreadsheets, “fiscal space” and “expenditure outlays” while making fraudulent claims on behalf of the “
vox pop”!
Here is the actual vox populi of Chhatisgarh, the tribals living in Salwa Judum camps, as articulated to Swapan Dasgupta (some have derided him as an entertaining commentator with no knowledge of the ground situation... but apparently he has been to Bastar and heard the voices of the people, and is capable of dispensing gyaan from domains beyond his rectum.) Here is his eyewitness account of the camps:
The Maoist reign of terror has yielded results. The 50,000 people living in the relief camps have not been forcibly relocated—as Maoist pamphleteers suggest. They are refugees who have fled their villages with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. During a visit to the Dornapal and Kutru camps earlier this month, I was struck by the absence of cattle and livestock. The adivasis said they had left all their possessions in the villages where, presumably, the Maoists had appropriated them. “We are willing to return, but only with protection” was the universal refrain in the camps.
So the RANDE misquoters of the “vox pop” would evidently prefer that these tribals left the camps and went back to their villages, to wait without protection until a Punjab model could be superimposed on Chhatisgarh (utilizing expenditure outlays and fiscal depth over the next n-years!) Whoever the Maoists leave alive by the time Chhatisgarh’s infrastructure is improved to Punjab levels, and by the time state police units establish operational dominance in areas where they currently take several hours to even reach: that handful of fortunates, if they are still able-bodied, can constitute the “VDC”s then!
Besides all this, it’s not as if VDCs in Punjab/J&K have never been accused of involvement with corruption or criminal intimidation. Accusations of this kind, whether justified or not, will always be made. Ideally they will be investigated, and guilty parties if any will be punished... but a Paki would argue that Punjab or J&K VDCs need to be scrapped or disbanded as a solution!
http://punjabnewsline.com/content/speci ... s-chiralla
What is unique in Chhatisgarh’s case is that the Mainovadi “civil society” mafia has selectively amplified allegations of criminalization and corruption related to Chhatisgarh SPOs and Salwa Judum... a simple google search will reveal the extent to which the media has been hijacked to target Chhatisgarh’s counter-insurgency efforts.
Expect an endless series of such hastily-googled hit pieces to spam this thread as the SC-theatre of the pro-Maoist campaign gathers media momentum!
4) “Chhatisgarh’s strategy of raising SPOs is somehow responsible for discord between Central Paramilitary Forces and State Police Forces!”
The discord existed anyway. Institutional hostility, and difficulties in operational compatibility between State and Central police administrations is hardly unique to Chhatisgarh (how long did it take NSG to deploy against the 26/11 attackers in the commercial capital of India, was that a “smoothly run” operation?)
To the extent that SPOs are involved in combating terrorism in Chhatisgarh, Central (that’s right, Central) paramilitary officers actually serving in the region are asking that MORE of these should be recruited because of the extent to which they have benefited CPMF operations!
Interestingly, it seems the Home Ministry is (accordingly) backing the recruitment of more SPOs from among Chhatisgarh tribals—a policy that Chhatisgarh’s raising of the Koya Commandos represents.
No wonder the missionaries, Mainovadis and other Maoist camp-followers have kicked their shrill defamation campaign into high gear. Chappal marks on “Swami” Agnivesh’s face are being trotted out before the Supreme Court to demand that Chhatisgarh be barred from funding SPOs with Central Govt. grants!
http://naxalwatch.blogspot.com/2011/01/ ... ategy.html
New Delhi, Jan. 11: The Centre is honing its anti-Maoist strategy by pumping in additional funds, recruiting new personnel and bringing more rebel-infested areas within its glare.
…
Sources said the number of special police officials (SPOs) would be increased to 25,500 from 13,500 now. Their salary of Rs 1,500 was also likely to see a substantial increase, the sources added.
SPOs have been a big help to paramilitary forces who have often not been on the best of terms with state police forces. These officials, mostly tribal youths with anti-Naxalite leanings or with a history of being Maoist, have excellent local knowledge that come in handy when security forces conduct operations.
“When we do not have enough policemen like in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada, we take SPOs, so an increase in their number is a welcome move,” said a CRPF officer.
A senior police officer from Chhattisgarh said Bastar alone needed around 100 battalions of security forces to overcome the Naxalite challenge. At present, the state has about 40,000 personnel aided by about 25,000 paramilitary personnel — far from the one lakh needed in Bastar.