Opinion The camps and the spotters

Chhattisgarh is a cash-rich state,primarily because of the mineral-based industries that occupy the flatlands in its central region,coupled with the relatively low population density. But that has not made the state administration particularly efficient. And just one more piece of data: the Salwa Judum and special police officers are not the same. The former are basically refugee camps,from where some of the people have got drafted into an irregular police support group.

This is the context of the Salwa Judum problem. Almost every commentator is correct that the movement is a response of the local population to the civil war. But you cannot connect the development to a “rapacious state at war with its own population.”

Essentially Salwa Judum was not planned for by the state government. In the years 2005-07,when the Maoists decisively gained control of the tract of land that is Abujhmad — spanning the tail of Chhattisgarh where it joins Orissa and Andhra Pradesh — they made it clear to the local population which way their loyalties should lie.

Those segments of the population which resisted had to flee. This is an important development in the entire narrative,which the Maoist sympathisers gloss over. The refugees landed up near the block offices of the government for shelter.

Initially they numbered not more than 100,sitting helplessly in the open,said a very senior officer of the government who has been decorated for his pioneering work in rural development. The state had little idea of what to do with them,except to provide them with plastic sheets and a meagre ration.

But even that was a better deal for the escapees. The doles drew in several thousands,making each of those camps large shantytowns. These are incongruous towns in the middle of thickly forested lands,but they are zones of safety for the migrants.

The four districts of the original Bastar range are now the location of one of India’s major mass migrations,of people caught in crossfire between the Maoists/Naxalites and an ill-equipped state government. The short point is none of these shantytowns are heavenly locations which a crafty state government has created to lure and trap unsuspecting tribal people into. They are the response of people for whom successive state governments had failed to ensure basic security.

It is from these camps then that Chhattisgarh started recruiting its special police officers. The SPOs have a massive advantage that the police constables didn’t have: They know the local region extremely well and are therefore fabulous spotters for the police. This neutralises the advantage of the Maoist guerrillas,who also employ the same pool of local people to guide them.

So it is not the arms these 4,000 men sport which annoy the Maoists,and possibly their votaries,too. The SPO are the arms — and in jungle warfare they are the vital difference between two combatants. Anybody who has not seen the dense foliage and the crazy shadows those forests throw in day or night will not be able to appreciate the key difference the spotters create. (An aside: remember the deadly spotter in the Hollywood classic,Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.)

In the summer of 2010,the CRPF senior brass refused to accept this basic lesson. Never having been pushed into an engagement in such terrain,they went in with no role assigned to the SPOs. The carnage that followed within two months needs no retelling.

Even with these people,the entire anti-Maoist operation is now confined to merely securing the area outside the Abujhmad no-go area. The picturesque falls outside Jagdalpur serve as a limit; beyond them the writ of the state police does not run. The Indian army has,for the first time,set up a base camp this month in that region — for which no land revenue record exists. The recent blast on a Congress convoy was the expression of a protest against this camp.

Yet,since few of these SPOs receive detailed training in arms,it is impossible to expect them to stand any chance in a skirmish,leave alone a fight with any half-decent policeman or the even better-equipped para-military forces. It makes no sense,therefore,to paint them as our versions of Nazi stormtroopers marching down the streets of Raipur.

On the larger issue of Salwa Judum,as I said before,dismantling the camps will serve no purpose. The refugees will not melt away. The slums where they stay will,if possible,degenerate if shorn of even the rudimentary state support they now get. What this will do to the social fabric of the state is easy to guess.

Chhattisgarh,like most of our northern states,takes time to get its act together. The evacuation of the camps to forcibly take the population back to the homes from where they have come will be an enormous crime. The alternative is to develop the region,provide employment avenues,and pull people out of the cycle they’re caught in.

The writer is Executive Editor (News),‘The Financial Express’