KOLKATA —Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has often called the conflict against the Communist Party of India (Maoist) the greatest internal security threat that India faces. With some 6,000 dead in India’s heartland since 2005 alone, it has certainly been one of the most violent.
Mr. Singh’s lingering inability to quell the bloodshed through a “two-pronged strategy” of economic development and armed counterinsurgency has led to repeated howls of protest; from the left for human rights abuses committed by ill-trained troops, and from the right for not employing a heavier hand to crush the rebellion. Traditionally protected by tribal populations, which have struggled to take part in India’s booming economic growth, the mobile Maoists evaded disjointed state-by-state responses while traversing India’s heavily forested central states. Recently the conflict took a particularly gruesome turn, when the body of a constable was discovered in Jharkhand, with a bomb sewn into the abdomen.
But a surprising thing happened at the start of this decade. After years of feeling one step behind the insurgents, the conflict’s momentum has suddenly shifted to the government’s favor. This was nowhere more evident than in the state of West Bengal. In 2010, more than 400 people died here as the state became the epicenter of the long-running insurgency. However, according to newly released figures collected by the Institute for Conflict Management, a research organization based in New Delhi, there were a mere four Maoist-related deaths in West Bengal in 2012 – a 99 percent drop in two years. While Maoist violence across India has fallen by more than 65 percent during the period, in West Bengal it has been all but eliminated.
How did the state turn things around so dramatically – and so quickly? Inspector General Vivek Sahay, who leads the Central Reserve Police Force in West Bengal, is in charge of the state’s anti-Maoist operations. Mr. Sahay believes that a greater number of officers available to combat the insurgency was essential to the turnaround. However, he said renewed attention to developing the building blocks of governance was just as important in causing the turning point as any military or strategic gains.
By weakening the insurgency in West Bengal, the government has been able to re-establish a constructive presence in rural areas, something Mr. Sahay sees as crucial. “Our success can’t be judged merely by kills or arrests,” he said. “It should be judged by the ability of other (government) departments to spend, to ensure that there is no fresh escalation of violence.”
Mr. Sahay is speaking about the second leg of the government’s strategy, highlighting the Central Reserve Police Force’s mandate to create an environment secure enough for rural development programs like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and other service-minded efforts to operate. By directly engaging with citizens, the government hopes that programs like these are the key weapon in the battle to win rural hearts and minds. Meanwhile, members of Mr. Singh’s government are daring to project confidence for the first time, lauding the “two-pronged strategy” as central to its success.
Still, backroom dealings may have also played a role. The Trinamool Congress, West Bengal’s current ruling party, has been repeatedly accused of aligning with the Maoists to gain rural support before the 2011 elections that brought it to power. The Trinamool Congress’s electoral rival, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), alleged that the chief minster of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, orchestrated a cease-fire deal with the Maoists before elections in exchange for rural support. Ms.Banerjee denies the deal, but her colleague, Kabir Suman , recently gave the claims renewed validity, claiming that they would have lost several key rural constituencies (and perhaps even the election) without the Maoists’ help.
Yet this alleged alliance may actually have served as the inadvertent breaking point of the insurgency. After the Maoists broke a cease-fire by assassinating several Trinamool Congress politicians, members of the Central Reserve Police Force used information gathered from pre-election mingling to kill the then-operational head of the Maoists, Kishenji.
A combination of secret surrender packages and promises to other former Maoist leaders of government jobs – mainly spying on their former comrades – have decimated Maoist ranks, leaving few capable enough to lead guerilla battles. Ms.Banerjee has cashed in on these victories, and in presiding over a populist government that has actively tried to extend development to its rural base, has made more concrete attempts to weaken the appeal of the Maoists than any West Bengal chief minister in a generation.
Will this combination of military successes and new promises of rural development finally mark the end of the 45-year old Maoist movement? Strategic successes by state and federal forces and a supportive political climate in West Bengal have quelled much of the worst violence, but few see permanent victory as being just around the corner. Even so, most recognize the once-in-a-generation opportunity to win back rural populations who feel that their government has repeatedly failed them. As Mr. Sahay warns, “it would be a colossal blunder if we let it slip.”
Jason Miklian and Kristian Hoelscher are researchers at the Peace Research Institute Oslo in Norway working primarily on Maoist conflict in India.
