Tuesday, September 19, 2006 (Raipur): After fighting insurgency in Punjab and Assam, supercop KPS Gill has now zeroed in on Chhattisgarh to take on the Naxals. The man who became a household name across the country in the early 1990s is now the state's Security Adviser. At his headquarters in Raipur, security is tight. A CRPF team is on alert. But Gill says the only way to end the battle is by outsmarting the Naxals. "We are training the police. We are taking the help of the army and getting better equipment. We have posted young IPS officers to the affected districts. That's what I did in Punjab, soon you will see the results," said KPS Gill, Security Advisor, Chhatisgarh government. Part of the strategy is to consult the adivasis, already involved in an anti-Naxal movement. A local citizens group as the precursor to a civil war describes the Sulwa Judum but Gill is all praise for the adivasis. "Never in the history of India have unarmed people stood up to insurgents, not even in Punjab and even the Naxals say it is the biggest setback to their movement since 1972," Gill added.It is from the heavily fortified state police mess that Gill plots and plans the fight against the Naxals. It is not an easy task. The Chhattisgarh police are one of the most ill equipped forces in India, but the man who won back Punjab from the militants has taken the new challenge head on.

I don't know where to start with this because there is just so much in this small news item. But HOW CAN THEY DO THIS??? Do we not learn from our mistakes??!!!
I suppose there is always a larger design or as people would like to say "security/ safety strategy"... but some times it just amazes me how daft we can get... Especially the media, since we do go around flashing human rights violations on front page… or at least we used to in our whole self claimed avtar of being “the fourth pillar of democracy and upholders of democracy”.
All the Human Rights violations in Punjab are only now being brought to light… about the mass cremations and disappearances, rapes, molestations and harassment cases conducted by the cops, ten years after the militancy and efforts at curbing the militancy.
And a number of testimonies reinforce the belief that cops and army did as much if not more damage than the militants.

Ashok Agarwal is a Human Rights Lawyer based in Delhi and at present perusing the disappearance cases of Punjab, where randomly young men were picked up for an enquiry or questioning and predictably they never came home... I attended a lecture by him last year and one of the story still haunts me and frightens me regarding the brutality and insensitivity of the armed forces...
A young boy studying at Khalsa College Amritsar was picked up by the cops for questioning in broad day light in front of the neighbors and passer bys and did not come home for three days... The father filed an FIR, went looking for him all over the city to all the police stations etc etc but there was no word of him... One day he got to hear that the Police were cremating unidentified bodies at a cremation ground so he rushed there and pulled out the half burnt body of his son screaming "he is not an unidentified body... he is my son..." That is one such case but there are hundreds of others where "unidentified bodies " were cremated by the cops while families keep looking for them.

My father has lived in Punjab for the last 22 years, he has had friends, students and colleagues who have disappeared during the 80-90 period… And people, who do look beyond the jargon people like us in the media keep feeding them, strongly believe that the only reason they were able to undo the violence in the state was because the people stood up and said NO to both the army and the militants…
Or
Maybe the state was able to instill enough fear through violence and suppression that they succeeded… I really don’t have the answer but I do know that what the state does through supposed preventive acts and anti terrorism acts is not justifiable in any way. It is the local people who suffer the most, and the State gets the power to exercise unbridled authority that is harmful to itself in the long run… AFSPA, POTA and Patriot Act (USA) are enough proof of the fact that authorities only take away freedom and democratic rights on the pretext of Security.

And as far as the Sulwa Judams go… that is just another ball game altogether.
Will be writing about it soon, since I had gone to the areas that they are active in relation to a project earlier this year, have some interesting inputs from the villagers and adivasies that Mr. Gill has praised so whole heartedly… And it is not a pretty tale to tell.
And as usual after visiting the "naxal infested" areas I do perceive them a little differently... Theer are all kinds of complexities in the whole naxal movement but they are doing more than just "shooting innocent villagers" as we the media would like you to believe...
A small example- village in west Guntur of Andhra Pradesh is high security and tension cause it is close to teh nalamala forest where the naxals stay.. but villagers have evening markets and melas and see no danger to their lives other than being caught in the cross fire.. where as the cops live in constant fear and surrounded by electric fences and do not step out after dark... I wonder how that fits into the whole state discourse of 'naxals being a threat to the civilians'. A police post in a village called Durgi, even gets local villagers to spend the night at the outpost so that the naxals do not attack them, and it has worked so far...
Will write more later.