The unified command, which will include a former army general, underlines government urgency to tackle a rebellion that has roiled poor rural regions where a sense of official neglect runs deep.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants decisive actions against the rebels, not only to show the government is in charge but also to free up vast tracts of mineral-rich forests with billions of dollars in business potential.
The rebels, inspired by China’s Mao Zedong, say they are fighting for the poor and landless and have backed farmers in land disputes with industry, one of the main obstacles in Asia’s third largest economy to higher growth and more rural jobs.
While the economic impact may be small compared with India’s trillion dollar economy, the insurgency has taken some toll on business.
Work on a $7-billion steel plant by India’s third largest steel producer, JSW Steel Ltd., has been delayed. Frequent rebel attacks have hit production and shipment at firms such as India’s largest miner of iron ore, NMDC Ltd. Violent land protests backed by Maoists forced the scrapping of a Tata Motors’ Nano car plant and delayed work on two separate plants by the world’s leading steelmakers Arcelor Mittal and POSCO in eastern India.
The campaign against the rebels has suffered because of the decision to avoid using the army for fear of alienating locals, leaving ill-trained police to fight a guerrilla war in the jungles of central and east India.
Poor coordination between state security forces has also hampered the fight, and the central government in New Delhi now hopes that a unified command would be able to fine tune the security offensive. “The efforts of the state governments... have met with mixed results,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram told a meeting of chief ministers of the affected states in New Delhi. The chief ministers also discussed the insurgency with Singh.
Views diverge on the right response to the rebellion. Many, including a section within the ruling Congress party, see the insurgency more as a problem of poverty and underdevelopment that could not be solved by force alone. The new plan also involves the use of more helicopters and logistical support from the army. And as a measure of balance in the government response, Chidambaram announced more money for development projects in the Maoist-dominated areas.
But many security experts were unimpressed with the latest plans, including the unified security command structure, saying the strategy lacked detail. “The cosmetic measures they are talking about do not in any sense increase the capability of the forces and there is no talk about how they will counter the Maoists in their heartland,” said Ajai Sahni of New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management.
The insurgency, which Singh has described as India’s biggest security challenge, is now present in a third of the country. A string of deadly attacks this year has undermined the government’s claim to be winning the war on the Maoists after it launched a security offensive with thousands of police last year.
The rebels are blamed for derailing a passenger train last month, killing at least 145 people. There were two other incidents since May that testified to their strength - the killing of 76 police in an ambush and an attack on a bus that killed 35 people.
