Stay the course on Maoists

It is easy to blame the government and the ministry of home affairs for continued strikes by Maoists. Such blaming can take the shape of scathing outrage and declare terminal failure.

Criticism of this kind is opportunistic and irresponsible. The Maoist challenge is not a partisan matter for responsible political parties to use for partisan advantage.

If this is not reason enough for the BJP to excise shrillness from its response to events such as Monday's landmine blast that has taken yet another 50 lives, it should consider the fact that the state government of Chhattisgarh is run by the party. And failure of local intelligence which allows the Maoists to carry out attacks taking the administration completely by surprise is failure of the state government.

Maoists will keep trying to stage such attacks, aiming to secure indiscriminate reprisal by the state that would alienate the local people. They must not succeed.

There is no gainsaying the need to use force to quell Maoist violence. The point is that the use of force will have to be surgically precise, aiding, rather than thwarting, the overall political battle to isolate and delegitimise the Maoists in the eye of the local people, in whose name the Maoists act.

The home minister, the prime minister, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Congress leaders who have direct exposure to tribal voters, all are now on record, on the need to have a two-pronged strategy to combat Maoist extremism: policing and development.
Development is not just a question of better delivery of government schemes; rather, it begins with political mobilisation of the people to make them the subjects, rather than the objects of development. Once they have agency, a whole lot of problems related to leakages, targeting, etc, would disappear.

Once people are politically mobilised, and have a stake in development, eliminating the Maoist security threat would become relatively easy. Andhra Pradesh showed how policing and development can achieve success against the Maoists. That should continue to guide policy, regardless of bloodyminded Maoist provocation.