Ending the Maoist insurgency is not a mission impossible

The Dantewada ambush of April, 2010 resulting in the death of 80 CRPF jawans shocked the nation; while the derailment of the Jnaneshwari Express last month led to 148 casualties. There is no doubt that in Maoist insurgency, India is facing one of its hardest internal security challenges yet.

Despite the growing strength displayed by the Maoist insurgents, ending the Maoist insurgency is not a mission impossible. Experiences of several nations suggest that such insurgencies can be brought to an end by the state through a deft application of political and security strategies.

The Maoist insurgents do not recognize the Indian state. They decry its democratic system, pointing out its many flaws, and prefer to pursue a "people's revolution". Most Maoist insurgents today have only a rudimentary plan for post-revolutionary governance, and ad hoc rule is the norm in areas controlled by the insurgents. However what the Maoists lack in terms of agenda, they make up in terms of ideological fervour as well as hard-learned tactics of guerrilla warfare.

Mao Tse Tung believed that if the countryside was liberated, the cities would fall by themselves. It is his ideology, rather than the tactics of Che Guevara and other Marxist revolutionaries, that guides the insurgents' leadership. Today's Maoists have inherited the experience of their predecessors such as the People's War Group in guerrilla warfare. Although police in various states cracked down on the arms supply routes of the Maoists at various points in time, lack of coordination between the various states' police forces has helped the Maoists.

The Communist Party of India (Maoist), created through the merger of the People's War Group and Maoist Communist Center (MCC) in September 2004, is currently active in 20 states and 180 districts of India. There are multiple reasons for the rapid expansion of their presence. The cohesion in the Maoist ranks stems in part from the fact that it is well funded. The Maoist insurgency is believed to make as much as Rs150 crore annually – primarily through extortion, with foot soldiers getting a stipend of up to Rs1,500 per month.

Why Maoists have prospered

The Maoists' links with the Nepalese Maoists has, among other things, been a source of concern, primarily because the latter have much experience in fighting against the royal Nepalese army which was trained along Indian lines which they could share.

In addition, political parties in various Maoist-afflicted states have used the movement and disaffected people to gain tactical political objectives. In some cases, these political parties have inexcusably ignored the Maoist infiltration of protest movements organised by them, as seen in the case of the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA) in West Bengal.

The Maoists have also been able to rapidly extend their base of supporters and sympathisers in the urban areas both in India as well as abroad through adept use of technology for propaganda. In addition to traditional print media, several Maoist blog sites have sprung up which use sophisticated methods to hide IP addresses and resurface with different names if blocked by the authorities. In order to reach their target population in the tribal areas with propaganda, Maoists in Chhatisgarh have even started an FM radio station. For now, the government is losing the information war against the Maoists.

In the tribal heartland, over the course of the late 1990s, by sending small squads of men into the forests such as Dandakaranya, Maoist cadres won over the confidence of the indigenous tribal population, recruiting them to provide intelligence on police movements and foot soldiers for the insurgency.

What propels a youth in the tribal heartland to take up arms against the state and join the Maoists? Deprivation, unemployment and exclusion from national mainstream are common grievances among the rural population in east and central India (especially east of the so-called "Kanpur-Chennai meridian"). States such as Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal and Jharkhand are the most mineral-rich states in India and yet Indians living in these states count among the poorest.

For instance, as against India's national per capita income of Rs24,295, the per capita income of Chattisgarh (2008-09) stands at a mere Rs16,740. Jharkhand and Orissa are not much better off, at Rs15,303 and Rs16,149 respectively. West Bengal has a more respectable per capita income of Rs23,229.

Some grievances are a by-product of the nature of the Indian federal system itself. For instance, tribals (adivasis) in mineral-rich districts such as Bastar in Chattisgarh do not get a fair share of the revenues from mining in the forests that they inhabit. The central government corners the lion's share of royalties from mining in India. Till a few years ago, the 'freight equalisation policy' of the government hampered these states from translating their natural resources advantage into industrial growth. The lack of investment in industrial skill development by successive governments has rendered the local population unemployable.

The capital-intensive nature of the mining and mineral processing industry meant that those who stood to lose their land to such projects opposed them vigorously, as witnessed in the cases of the Posco steel project, Tata Steel and Vedanta. However, these inequalities may only be part of the story. Empirical evidence suggests that in any country with robust economic growth, the Gini Coefficient (a measure of economic inequality) undergoes an initial increase before it begins to decline. India is now in the first half of this cycle of growth and hence economic growth has happened in parallel with a rise in inequalities and the quantum of disaffected people.

The big debate in Indian policymaking today lies in deciding whether the Maoist insurgency should be addressed as a development issue or a security issue. Most people agree that it is both. But if so, in what sequence should development and security measures be applied?

The Indian government's traditional strategy in dealing with insurgencies is to first wear out the insurgents through a war of attrition, and then offer them the olive branch through measures such as a general amnesty, co-option into the governance structures and selective acceptance of the insurgents' demands subject to constitutional limits. This process has been employed with varied amounts of success against the Khalistani, Mizo, Bodo and ULFA separatists. However this strategy may not work in the case of Maoists for at least three reasons.

Firstly, the Maoists are not an ethnic or region-specific entity that can be dealt with in isolation. The Maoist agenda serves as a platform for a section of the population disaffected from or opposed to globalisation, poor governance and corruption. Secondly, unlike regional separatists, the Maoists have not declared war against India, only against the Indian state. This distinction makes the use of force against them a less popular option among policymakers. Thirdly, the demands of the Maoists are not only disparate but inasmuch as they demand the change of the very nature of governance in India, ie democracy, they are impossible to reconcile with. This however does not mean that the causes of disaffection cannot be addressed. It is clear therefore that only a mix of security and development approaches can end the Maoist insurgency.

International precedents

Given the highly organised and multi-state nature of this insurgency and the complicating factor of centre-state relations, there is no precedent in India of eradicating such an insurgency. However such precedents exist in other countries. Columbia, after a two-decade long struggle with the FARC Marxist rebels, used sustained military action including airpower to defeat the insurgency. Philippines which fought the CPP-PLA (Huk Balaha) formed special paramilitary forces, enlisted local leaders and undertook reforms to eradicate the "Huk" militia and their support base.

Ending the Maoist insurgency is not a mission impossible
Ending the Maoist insurgency requires different strategies towards different layers of the insurgents, argue Manu Sharma and Raja Karthikeya

Sendero Luminoso or "Shining Path" movement in Peru is another movement similar to the Maoists. After the Senderistas enforced a widespread boycott of elections in 1980, the government declared an emergency and gave extensive powers to the army. The authorities there created a peasants' militia called "Rondas" (similar to Chattisgarh's Salwa Judum militia) which only led to an escalation of violence. Ultimately the movement was eliminated through military action and decapitation of the leadership.

The British experience in Malaya in the early 1950s is often considered a copybook case for counterinsurgency. A national "liberation" struggle launched by the Leftist guerrillas against the British led to widespread violence and human rights abuses from both sides. The strategy eventually adopted by the British had two key elements. Extensive propaganda warfare was launched against the guerrillas and the testimonies of captured guerrillas were deftly used to sow dissension in the guerrillas' ranks.

The British also adopted an "oil spot" strategy (often used when the guerrillas have extensive control over a large swath of territory) in which small pockets were "liberated" by the government, and provided focused rapid development, which slowly reduced the guerrillas' support base in the neighbouring districts and helped the government then extend its control over them. The oil spot strategy has been employed by the French in Algeria and the Americans in Iraq with mixed results.

While learning from international precedents, the government must also note that state borders and jurisdictions have little meaning for the Maoists. Although the central government has institutionalised an intelligence sharing mechanism to improve information sharing between the police forces of different states, this is yet to deliver comprehensive results. Schemes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREGA) have been implemented in the insurgency affected areas but have not delivered expected results since the Maoists have been more than ready to allow schemes that involve direct cash transfers in areas controlled by them. What is now needed is a coherent new strategy, ideally led by the central government, which can deal with the insurgency at various levels.

A layer-based strategy

The government needs a strategy that recognises the different strata to the insurgency. There are at least three layers apparent to the Maoist insurgency. The first layer consists of the sympathisers and ideologues that are above ground and often resident in cities and urban areas (such as Kobad Ghandy and Gaddar). The second layer consists of operational commanders at various levels (Kishenji is one of the more senior ones among them). The third layer consists of foot soldiers who are mostly semi-literate or illiterate youth. These three layers have different reasons for being part of the movement, and different levels of motivation, and hence need to be addressed through different strategies.

Implementing the layer-based strategy would involve several policy reforms.

The intellectuals of the first layer are hanging on to irrelevant and redundant ideologies and are suspicious of every move of the state and distrustful of democracy in general. While their propaganda networks should be disrupted, these individuals should in general be simply ignored. The operational commanders in the second layer are vital. They can be attracted into the mainstream through co-option into democratic governance at various levels of the government. If necessary, quasi-autonomous bodies such as Tribal Area Development Councils under the sixth schedule of the Constitution could be created to accommodate some of these leaders.

The third layer of the Maoists, the foot soldiers, can be separated from the insurgency through socio-economic initiatives in the region, such as programmes which involve better distribution of mining royalties as well as a sustained de-radicalisation programme to prevent recidivism. The foot-soldiers also need to be offered a general rehabilitation package which consolidates various local amnesty schemes. Surrendered foot soldiers must be provided security guarantees against retribution, but where feasible, should also be used in crafting an aggressive information warfare campaign against the Maoists.

Encouraging civil society activists to use the Right to Information Act to force local authorities to yield information about developmental schemes can and lead to real, tangible change in governance by ensuring transparency. A responsive and responsible government can go a long way towards alleviating grievances and restoring the rule of law in the Maoist affected areas.

Use of force

Solutions composed of military force have only been partly successful at ending insurgencies in India. That the Naxalbari Andolan was finished through ruthless application of force should not be adequate reason to implement the same against the Maoists. Creation of civilian militias such as Salwa Judum should be shunned because they expose civilians to unnecessary danger, and only translate into an abdication of security responsibility by the state. While the Army can be used for training paramilitary forces, it should not be deployed against the insurgency itself. Instead a special recruitment drive should be launched to take in tribal youth into the police and army from the insurgency affected areas. If wielded well, a carrot and stick policy can wean away less motivated Maoist cadres into the mainstream.

The deprived population of the mineral rich regions should be provided conditional cash transfers that focus on hindering the inter-generational propagation of poverty, thus reducing the recruitment pool of Maoists. A self-sustaining economic scheme funded largely by mining revenues of the state can be implemented to provide skills, literacy, healthcare, employment and above all dignity and social justice to the people on the fringes of the national mainstream.

Civil society organisations comprising of intellectuals, eminent citizens, businesses, politicians, spiritual leaders and NGOs need to step forwards and mediate between the union government and the Maosists. Instead of consistently taking the path of mere protection of human rights or intercession in large scale development projects, civil society organisations should act as neutral mediators at the local/district level to persuade the insurgents to give up arms and convince authorities to deal justly with those that surrender.

The consequences of the Maoist insurgency are severe enough to warrant any kind of action and use of resources by the Indian state. India cannot afford a "lost generation" in the insurgency-affected areas even as it takes rapid steps towards becoming a major power in the international arena. Ending the Maoist insurgency cannot be a subject of partisan political debates. It has to become the pre-eminent national priority.

This article is extracted from a report brought out recently by The India Research Group, a non-partisan think tank of Indian policy professionals. Manu Sharma and Raja Karthikeya were among the lead authors of the report. © The India Research Group, 2010