If you've been following the recent spate of Naxalite (Maoist) violence in several states of India.. you'd wonder what the law and order machinery in this country is doing? The massacre continues... everyday these naxalites attack our security forces and civilians with daredevilry and kill in scores... they have the audacity of challenging the state itself, declaring that they are on track to overthrow the state by 2025.... the audacity to attack at will and get away with it.
And what is the government's response?? well what did you expect... have we not be desensitized to violence and gore already, with the gaping wounds in Kashmir, in the NorthEast, and now all over India. It is not even front page news nowadays unless the casualties are in the hundreds, and our government does nothing but bury the incidents in stong condemnations, investigation committees, blame games, and political one upmanship... "How dare you challenge my government??... so what if terrorists attacked the parliament, or held the country hostage in Mumbai, or hijacked our airplanes and got our home minister to personally deliver terrorists languishing in our jails across the border... if there were 5 such incidents during the tenure of this government, there were more when the opposition was in power... so please don't politicize the issue... and let us sleep!!"
The maoists are on the rampage, the numbers of casualties pour in daily - 20, 15, 40, 200, 10, 12, 25... and our home minister is struggling to get cabinet approval to use airpower (read helicopters, gunships, reconaaisance aircraft etc.) to help our land troops in their fight against the guerillas. The government is wary of losing support at the grassroots level in the maoist dominated villages, where many of them are known to support the maoists covertly, and hence no political party wants to risk an all out confrontation. Hence all sorts of rubbish arguments against the use of military and airpower and any kind of meaningful strict action... instead meek talk about engaging them in dialogue, bring them into mainstream, and maintaining a superfluous facade of state resistance in the form of undertrained and demoralized reserve paramilitary forces, with little or no strategy and no firepower, fed like fodder in this war, while the sucker politicians and bureacrats can ponder forever in inaction. The poor and brave policemen, who lay their lives everyday, are like expendable pawns for our government.
I still remember that day when I was in Canada, and the news came in about a few policemen that were killed fighting some drugs mafia holed up in a farm in some suburb. The whole country mourned the loss with such grief.. the flags were lowered to half mast across the country, people paid their homage to the slain martyrs and government gave all the aid and support it could to the families. I only wish, that all politics aside, if we could atleast give the due to the security forces in this country, we could claim to be a responsible nation capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with the greatest world powers.
