Who let them in?

The underground, extremist Communist Party of India (Maoist) has been branded a terrorist organisation and banned by the Centre.

This decision has come in even as the Centre’s paramilitary and special security forces and the West Bengal police conduct an operation in Lalgarh in West Midnapore to restore normalcy, re-establish the rule of law and enable the administration to function.

Lalgarh, therefore, has become the testing ground for the Centre’s policy on ending Maoist insurgency, described by prime minister Manmohan Singh as the greatest threat to India’s internal security. It has also become, unfortunately, the testing ground for the codes by which democratic politics in India are conducted.

With hindsight, helped by the extraordinary revelations of the CPI (Maoist)’s high-ranking politburo member Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji, who is leading the Lalgarh “resistance”, a pattern is emerging of the underground party’s modus operandi. It now seems that the Maoists and the Trinamool Congress worked alongside even though their “agendas were different”. Kishenji has confirmed that in Nandigram, Singur and now Lalgarh, adjacent to the proposed steel plant in Salboni, the Maoists and the Trinamool Congress had a common target.

The unfortunate convergence between the Maoist agenda and the Trinamool Congress’s hate campaign against the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) —  the intention to oust the West Bengal government — created the ideal conditions for the growth of the terror network. In each of these places, a Peoples’ Committee — against land acquisition in Nandigram and Singur, against police atrocities in Lalgarh — emerged and the Trinamool Congress raced to take up the leadership. What followed was a series of well-planned and executed violent confrontations.

Even though Banerjee is trying to deflect attention by accusing the CPI-Maoist of being counterfeit Maoists, she does need to offer some explanations for being named as an accessory by Kishenji.

Even though the ruling CPM has been relieved of the pressure to confess to its cumulative acts of abuse of power, it cannot duck undertaking a ruthless clean-up exercise internally. Nor can chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee evade acknowledging that the failures of his administration in delivering development programmes and insensitive and high-handed methods of bull-dozing genuine local anxieties have contributed to the problem.

Under the civil contract that underlies the enjoyment of a democratic way of life for citizens, forces like the Maoists who reject India’s Constitution and therefore its laws have no place. It now appears that when the civil contract is abused, when parliamentary politics resorts to deploying extra-parliamentary methods, the breeding ground for anti-State forces is established.

As much as the ruling CPM in West Bengal used its uniquely privileged regime to subvert systems and establish a party Raj, the Trinamool Congress has campaigned relentlessly to bypass the election process to power.

There is a connection between the degree of dysfunction and abuse of the idea of democratic politics by parliamentary parties and the emergence of the Maoists. Where states have failed to be inclusive and sensitive to the sentiments of people living in the deepest pockets of poverty, the Maoists seize political ground.

This is not to argue that the Maoist strategy of exploiting poverty in order to make a living is a holy or noble ambition. On the contrary, the ruthless use of frustration and despair among the local populations based on experiences of government neglect makes the Maoists an ugly political force. Using hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, using women and children as human shields, the expensively armed Maoists are an elusive target.

Banning them is a risky gambit as they operate underground. The ban can push them deeper underground even as it encourages a pooling together of resources and strategies of all other banned organisations, all of whom have a common agenda in attacking for the purpose of destroying the Indian State.

While the parliamentary CPM aspires to deal “politically” with the Maoists, it lacks the capacity to do. If it could not identify the Maoists before Lalgarh and tackle them politically, the CPM’s chances of succeeding now are doubtful. A dysfunctional leadership that spends more time in factional fights, a weak leadership that lacks administrative ability and an organisation weakened by rot — both identified and admitted — adds up to a poor bulwark against determined disruptions by Maoists.

The pity is that the Mamata Banerjee alternative in West Bengal, no matter how charismatic, is also ill-equipped to deal with the menace of the Maoists. After all, it, either wilfully or with dangerous naivette, nurtured the Maoists during its “struggles” for the people in Nandigram, Singur and Lalgarh.

The writer is a Kolkata-based political commentator