A thing worth doing well
There is no alternative to this war against the Maoists. It must be thus resourced to the full.
There are two types of opposition to the anti-Maoist security operations planned by the Home ministry. The first one are the left-liberal bleeding hearts who are dead against any kind of security operations against the Maoists. It would be foolish to give these protestations any serious attention. They are, in the words of Macbeth, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
The other kind of opposition is the one that ought to be taken seriously by the policy makers in the Home ministry. These opponents agree with the necessity of security operations but believe that the government is getting too caught up in this rhetoric of proactive action.They believe that while the intent of the Union Home minister is laudable, the approach and the execution of these operations leaves a lot to be desired.
Hurried and ill-planned operations, using troops that are unfamiliar with local conditions, lacking hard intelligence, in many cases, under-trained, ill-prepared and under-equipped, and in all cases, lacking the critical mass of manpower needed to saturate the areas in which the Maoists have established their disruptive dominance.
But hasty and misdirected initiatives, far from advancing resolution, will undermine the legitimacy and authority of the forces and infinitely compound the basic problems themselves. Policymakers are yet to understand the fundamentals of protracted war, and remain trapped in the obsolete ‘battalion approach’ – mechanically shuffling troops around from theatre to theatre – with little regard to force composition and capabilities, the imperatives of local conditions, and the need for responses based on detailed local intelligence and understanding.[Outlook]
While poorly executed security operations in no way take away from the necessity of these operations against Maoists, decisiveness and urgency can not be an excuse for ill-conceived operations. Even if the policy decisions have been taken at the highest levels, and a sound strategy is in place, the resources to successfully execute that strategy — not only in terms of quantity, but equally importantly in terms of quality of resources — have to be in place. Training, equipping, intelligence gathering, COIN tactics and junior leadership provided to the security forces employed in anti-Maoist operations have to be of the highest standards.
In a sense, India is lucky to be conducting these operations during a period when a plethora of literature and resources are available on conducting COIN, courtesy US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. If these can be combined with the lessons learned by Indian army and paramilitary forces in fighting other insurgencies in the country — Punjab, Kashmir and in the North East — and adapted to suit the local environment, there would be no need to reinvent the proverbial wheel again. There can be no better motivation for the government and the security forces than getting it right the first time around.
The spirits are high right now at the Home Ministry with the visible public support as the country is expecting a swift and sure victory against the Maoists. But once there are some setbacks encountered during these operations, the situation will be rather different for the gung ho Home Minister: public and media will get exhausted of these unending battles, political will at the highest level will start flagging, human rights groups will come out with scathing reports of HR violations and vested interests in keeping the conflict economy afloat would get more deeply entrenched, thereby making his job extremely difficult.
The war against Maoists is a necessary war, not a war of choice, and the nation cannot even contemplate fighting its way to a defeat in this war. It is perhaps time for Mr. Chidambaram, and his team at the Home Ministry, to remember that worn-out cliché: a thing worth doing is certainly worth doing well. They should not only do this, but do this well.
“The spirits are high right now at the Home Ministry with the visible public support as the country is expecting a swift and sure victory against the Maoists”
Sure, he will win. The Mao fellows are small fry, can well be sorted out by a few hundred good constables plus a dozen SHOs led by three score DIG’s, IGs. A stray thought niggles, however, please:
From Lt General JFR Jacob’s book:
“Shortly afterwards, I was visited at my residence in Fort William by a delegation from the BSF. headed by it’s DG K. Rustamji… They were very excited. Rustamji said he was in a great hurry as he had much to do. Intrigued I asked him what it was about. He told me that since the Eastern Command would not throw the Pakistanis out of East Pak, the Govt had asked the BSF to do so. I thought he was joking and just laughed. But he replied in all seriousness that the object of his visit was to invite Eastern Command to send a contingent to the victory parade in Dacca that he intended to hold in about 2/3 weeks. ..I was taken aback. I realised that they were serious and that they believed they could achieve what the Army with all its resources could not. Read on….
@Prince:
I have deleted your comments because they are irrelevant to the blogposts at hand. If you want to know the philosophy behind this blog, please check this post of last year. That should help clarify matters. I find no reason to defend myself against baseless allegations and innuendos from anyone. Please learn to focus on the message rather than on the messenger.
Remember that I am focusing on issues, not personalities and thus I am keen to keep the spotlight away from me as well.
“junior leadership provided to the security forces employed in anti-Maoist operations have to be of the highest standards”
Pray where is this “junior leadership”going to come from?? IPS fellows in these forces have already enmasse started asking for revert to thier states/study leave etc etc!!Not that they are anywhere near the envisaged the “highest standard”. So it is the ill trained poor constables,SI’s,SHO’s etc who are going to be the canon fodder.And do you seriously imagine that the Chinese will ever let the Maos be defeated by indians??
How is this in the “NAtional Interest”? We seem to still be living in colonial times, with IAS officers having 18 peons in their retinue, washing dishes at home!
Civic head has 11 peons at home, 3 in office!
Sachin Dravekar, TNN 16 October 2009, 05:36am IST
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NAGPUR: The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) takes the job of keeping its top officials happy very seriously. A few months back it came to light
that mayor Maya Iwnate had five peons deputed to her office.
Now, it has been revealed that municipal commissioner Aseem Gupta leaves her far behind in the race for more peons. Thanks to the RTI Act, NMC has been forced to reveal that the civic head has 14 NMC peons at his beck and call .
11staffers at his residence for personal work while three peons are assigned for official work at NMC headquarters. As per the reply given by NMC municipal commissionerfs office to the answer sought under Right to Information Act (RTI) by a vigilant citizen and member of Jansamsya Sangharsh Niwaran Samiti, Rajendra Gangotri, 11 NMC staffers are deputed at the official bungalow of Aseem Gupta for personal work
Prgmatic!!! Plethora of literature are surely available today. However our optimism should be lace with caution atleast with respect to the hands on leadership and selfless leadership that is required for such operations. We must put our hand on our hearts and ask ourselves; ‘Do we have such kind of leadership in the police and the CPOs. Do we have it. Are there young officers who are prepared to go and die there. If the answer to this question is a question than we are in for trouble. And the maoist are a motivated lot with an ideology and an aim and are prepared to fight for it. Only a novice would dream of easy victory. We are in for a hard fight and the police and paramilitary should gear up to meet this challange. Young police and paramilitary officers should create a culture of leading their men from the front. There is no other alternative; none at all.
If we leave the risk taking to the constable and inspector level this will backfire badly; so a cultural change in these force.
As far as the knowledge and expertise for such a fight is there it a simple matter of commonsense. We do not have too much to learn from Americans or others. The whole winning concept for winning this kind of battle can be condensed in few pages; the only problem is the movement on ground. Hopefully our police and CPOs will rise to the occassion