What is the value of the life of a CRPF jawan in India?
Perhaps extremely low and that is why neither the country nor the Government
react much if CRPF jawans get killed with impunity time and again by the
Maoists. In April 2010, 75 Jawans of CRPF and 1 of the Chhattisgarh State
Police were brutally massacred by the Maoists in Dantewada region of
Chhattisgarh. Even when they were dead, their bodies were brutally mutilated by
the Maoists to instil fear among others. In July 2010, the Maoists derailed
Gyaneshwari Express in West Bengal leading to death of 150 innocent people. In
between there have been several such attacks in which hundreds of police
personnel and innocent civilians have been killed of police personnel, and
Maoists even going to the extent of opening up the stomachs of dead soldiers
and planting IED explosives with timers inside and then stitching them up again
so that when the bodies are carried back to hospital bombs would set off then,
killing more people. The Maoist attack on CRPF jawans in Chhattisgarh last
Tuesday in which 16 police personnel were killed was a repeat of what has
become a routine. Had it been any other country, it would have collectively
gone for a total war against the perpetrators of such heinous crimes but not
India. Thus the attacks kept on happening and the hapless Indian kept on paying
the price.
A Clueless Central Government Each time, after a Maoist
attack, the official statement from Government of India has been either that It
is too early to comment or that warnings were given to the respective state
about such attacks or that Law and Order is a state subject and that it is the
responsibility of the concerned state government to take care of it. Even
before investigations on one such attack gets over and blame games continue,
news of another such attack creeps in. When no defence works, one can hear the
Ministry of Home Affairs singing the same old song of not having any concrete
intelligence inputs about the impending Maoist attack, as if the Maoists were
supposed to courier or email their next destination of attack before committing
the attack. The Heinous Effort of the Left Liberal to Justify Maoist Terror -
The issue of relentless Maoist attacks and the brutal killing of hundreds state
police and central police personnel is just one aspect of it.
The other shocking aspect is the manner in which even today
there are people in the intellectual echelon of the Indian society who still
try to justify the actions of Maoists. There is no dearth of the likes of
Arundhuti Roy and her ilk who would say that the Maoists are doing it for the
rights of the hapless poor tribals (sic!!). Nothing is far from the reality
than this. The Reality of Maoists- Brutal and Ruthless Till 2013, in just five
years, more than 2500 civilians had been brutally killed by Maoists and on most
occasions, the victims have been hapless tribals of India. In 2009, the Maoist
had beheaded Inspector Francis Induwar, a tribal, in Jharkhand. The nation was
shaken by the cry of the child of Francis Induwar who had vowed to grow up and
become a police officer to take revenge on the Maoists for the death of his
father. In July 2013, the Superintendent of Police of Pakur district in Bihar,
Amarjeet Balihar, a tribal too, was killed along with his security personnel in
an ambush by the Maoists. In between, there have been countless such incidents
of killing of tribals. Incidentally, a sizeable proportion of police personnel
fighting the Maoists are tribal and the Maoists have been more brutal on them.
There have been several instances where it became clear that
Maoists have been forcing hapless tribal villagers to make their children join
Maoist movement. On several occasions it became apparent how the Maoists have
often used children and women as human shield when attacked by Police. And yet,
as a nation, India prefers to remain under the illusion that Maoists are
messiah for the poor. Yet it is not just the police and the hapless tribals who
have been at the receiving end. Attempts were made on the lives of former Chief
Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal namely, Chandra Babu Naidu and
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. In the recent past several top politicians of Congress
were killed in an ambush in Chhattisgarh.
The Systemic Problems of India's Policing System- No prize
for guessing that the Indian policing system is today in a mess and suffer from
a large number of deficits, the biggest of them being complete lack of decisive
leadership. Be it the Central Police Forces or the State Police Forces, most
the senior positions are held by IPS officers. And the biggest grievance of the
police forces engaged in anti-Maoist operations continue to be the fact that
their senior officers never lead from the front. It is extremely rare to find a
senior IPS officer leading men from the front in the anti-Maoist operations,
even though there were exceptions like K Vijay Kumar who as Director General of
CRPF always was by the side of his jawans. But he was an exception.
On most occasions the CRPF and the state police forces are
led by Sub-Inspectors or Inspectors during operations while at times one would
find Assistant Commandants or Deputy Commandants of CRPF joining the
operations, neither being an IPS. Sad part is that on most occasions the men on
the ground are given directions by their senior officers who prefer to be at a
safe distance. In fact it was reported in 2012 in an article published in The
Telegraph, how a top level Indian Army officer had told the then Home Secretary
"Get your IPS officers to command battalions and lead from the front
instead of making them babus behind desks."
It was similarly reported by India Today in 2012 as to how a
large number of top level posts in the Indian Central Police Forces have
remained vacant because of the reluctance of IPS officers to get posted in
difficult and challenging terrains. Is it possible for any police force to ever
win a battle against perpetrators of crime if top leadership's commitment to
lead from the front remains a questionable issue? One would simply have to ask
the hapless CRPF or the state police jawan battling the Maoists in the deep
forests to find out as to how many times he found top officers of his battalion
by his side in the battlefield.
The management of the Central Police Forces in this country
have been so lacklustre and so much devoid of any imagination or rather common
sense, that over the last four years alone more than 16,000 CRPF jawans and
including many officers quit the force. In the last few years more than 65,000
have quit jobs from all Central Police Forces, a further reflection of the
sheer mismanagement of the Central Police Forces in India, especially at a time
when it has been facing major internal security challenges from all fronts.
The Mismanagement of Central Police Forces The shocking saga
is the manner in which CRPF has been used as nothing less than a beast of
burden with companies and battalions of CRPF being made to be on harsh
anti-Maoist and counterinsurgency duties all the year round. In most cases they
are made to be in J&K, then posted to Norhteast and then back to Maoist
regions followed by J&K again. In between they would be taken to any part
of the country wherever there is a law & order problem or would be deployed
for election duty. For all practical purposes it is impossible for a normal
human being to be on harsh duties for whole of the year. The Army makes it a
point to have timely rotation of duties between field posting and peace time
postings but not the Central Police Forces. The CRPF japans hardly get leave on
time since being far away from their battalion headquarters (another major
reflection of mismanagement), sanctioning of leave take lot of time. In
addition to that, very high level of stress, lack of even the very basic amenities,
worst kind of living conditions, shortage of basic necessities and a hopelessly
ridiculous promotional scheme wherein most japans of CRPF remain at the
constable rank for almost 20 years before getting the first promotion to the
rank of a Head Constable, have all contributed to the creation of the mess, In
20 years of service , a jawan of the Indian Army becomes a Junior Commissioned
Officer while a Central Police jawan can at best hope to become a Head
Constable.
When Will India Wake Up? But before everything else, the
nation as a whole would need to decide as to whether it wants to continue with
this mayhem or solve it forever. It needs to decide if it wants to fight the
war against Maoists or let them continue with the mayhem and brutal killings.
It is either India fight the war against Maoists in the manner in which a war
is supposed to be fought or it not fight it at all. But let us not fight half a
war. A war against terror cannot be won with demotivated soldiers and self-serving
top officers. If India has to win the war against Maoists, it has to make sure
that its foot soldiers are given their dues in terms of timely promotion,
adequate compensation, timely leave, rotation of posting. Further, they need to
be led from the front by the top officers. The legacy of deputation of IPS
officers in the Central Police Forces need to be replaced by more avenues for
the officers of the Central Police Forces who should be restructured into an
organised cadre.
It is also imperative for the nation as a whole to come out
of the illusion that Maoists are a good lot. Today they have been reduced to
nothing less than an organised crime syndicate or a terror group which is
brutal, which is exploitative and which has a dangerous agenda. Most of their
top leaders are filthy rich and dream of ruling India one day after brutal
suppression and devastation of the Indian state that they want to bring. And
the hapless tribal is their cannon fodder for all this. It is time the Indian
state wakes up before it is too late. India has been extremely successful in
quelling terrorism in J&K, Punjab and in Northeast. There is no reason why
it cannot root out the Maoist menace.
Source:http://news.oneindia.in
