Govt scales down tough talk, realises the need to reach out to tribals.
After the sabre-rattling of the past few weeks, the government is adopting a softer approach to the Maoist problem. The change is the result of opinion building in the Congress in favour of a more subtle approach to the Maoist problem as opposed to the all-out crackdown being talked about by a section within the government.
Senior members of the Congress, including general secretary Rahul Gandhi, believe that the root of the problem lies in the inability of state governments to reach out to the people. These leaders are in favour of a multi-pronged approach with a strong socio-economic component as the way forward to tackling the problem.
A former Congress chief minister from one of the affected states has urged prime minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and home minister P Chidambaram to scale down the aggressive posturing against the Maoists. He said if the government launched a mammoth security operation against the Maoists, it ran the risk of alienating the locals of affected states.
“At the end of the day, this is not about recapturing land, but about recapturing the hearts and minds of the local people. An all-out offensive operation will result in collateral damage, innocents will get killed, which in turn will be exploited by the Maoists,” he said in the letter.
Several senior leaders from Maoist-affected states fear that the Congress runs the risk of alienating the huge tribal population if it adopts a uni-dimensationl approach, without a socio-economic component in it.
“We must win over the people first. We must realise that the side which has the people’s support will ultimately win this battle. These Maoists will all flee, leaving their sympathisers — ordinary tribals brainwashed by them — to be killed. This will further alienate the tribal community. We should win them over and isolate the armed Maoists,” another senior Congress leader said.
The churning within the party is beginning to have an affect. After the initial burst of aggressive statements, the government is scaling down the tough talk. Both the prime minister and the home minister have over the past fortnight expressed their readiness to talk to Maoists provided they lay down their arms.
The pro-dialogue approach is in line with the recommendations of a committee that Sonia Gandhi had set up under Andhra leader Sashidhar Reddy to study the Maoist problem during the first UPA regime.
The committee had advocated a three-pronged approach - economic, political and maintenance of law & order with special emphasis on welfare programmes, construction of roads and bridges, education and healthcare in remote areas to resolve the problem.
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