'The problem with the state governments of Assam,
Nagaland, Manipur and Meghalaya is that all chief ministers enjoy a cosy
relationship with militants'
This country is never short on drama. The surgical strike by Indian security forces inside Myanmar territory on June 9 to avenge the killing of 18 soldiers of the 6 Dogra Regiment in Chandel district earlier that week saw several self-styled experts commenting on covert operations in another nation's territory. They see a new security doctrine in the offing.
The covert operation and its aftermath were quickly eclipsed by the shenanigans of Lalit Modi, the audacious czar of the multi-crore Indian Premier League. Lalit used his Indian connections to get clearance to fly to Portugal for his wife's treatment for cancer. No less than the external affairs minister of the country, a suave politician of many years, used her clout with the British government to facilitate Lalit's travel documents. Later, leaks of Lalit's business relations with Dushyant Singh, the MP son of Vasundhara Raje Scindia, chief minister of Rajasthan, became public and the media is agog with this latest expose.
Well spoken, Jitendra Singh!
Symbolic visit
When we say the entourage was traversing three states of the Northeast, the visit is only symbolic. The minister and his team were in Dimapur, Imphal and Itanagar. At all three places, civil society groups met with the DoNER minister and his team. In Itanagar, civil society groups from Tirap, Changlang and Longding came all the way to make their representations. While there were some murmurs that the Delhi team met these groups at the Itanagar helipad, if sources are to be believed a lot happened at that meeting. The people of Tirap, Changlang and Longding asked for more security. They said they were harassed by both factions of the NSCN and had to pay taxes, apart from having to provide meals to the cadres whenever they landed at their homes.
The harassed citizens said the districts did not have enough police personnel. Each police station had only 10-12 men. Even if the police had actionable intelligence, they could not move out of the station because they were vulnerable. Ravi then asked a minister, who was present at the meeting, as to what happened to the specially trained force of 1,900 able-bodied men picked up from the three districts and specially trained for counter-insurgency operations and policing. They were supposed to be posted in these three districts to raise the strength of each police station to about 200 personnel, which is 10 times the existing strength.
The ministry of home affairs had made this special sanction in 2010 when late Dorjee Khandu, the then chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, had pleaded with Union home minister P. Chidambaram that the three districts of eastern Arunachal Pradesh, bordering Nagaland, were under the grip of the NSCN. Chidambaram was told then that an external force like the Assam Rifles did not gel with the local population and that a local force was better suited to defend the districts. So the force was raised and all security-related expenditure, including salaries, maintenance and POL/diesel, was to be borne by the home ministry. The trained force took up position in 2011. This special scheme was also to address the unemployment issues in the three neglected districts of Arunachal Pradesh. Interestingly, this force is nowhere to be seen in these three districts.
The state minister present at the meeting apparently had no answer to this pointed question. It was later learnt that the force of 1,900 was deployed for personal security duty of VIPs and were mostly posted in Itanagar. Ravi apparently told the minister that this was a grand deception on the part of the state government.
Foe or friend?
After Khandu's demise, there was a scramble for chief-ministership of the state. Late Jarbom Gamlin from the Adi tribe became chief minister for a brief while but was upstaged by Nabam Tuki, a Nyishi. Intelligence sources also alleged that when the political drama was staged at the time, each MLA was shadowed by NSCN cadres so that Nabam Tuki could be elected chief minister unopposed. Pretty much the same thing happened in Nagaland many years ago when Neiphiu Rio was made chief minister at the behest of the NSCN (Isak-Muivah).
The problem with the state governments of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur and Meghalaya is that all chief ministers enjoy a cosy relationship with militants. The only chief minister who has no truck with any outfit is Manik Sarkar of Tripura and that is why he has been able to contain militancy. But it is the politics of Tripura that allows Sarkar to deal with militancy the way he has. The militant outfits of Tripura are mainly tribals who feel alienated from the politics of their land while the government is not just perceived to be run by non-tribals but is also seen to be favouring the non-tribal majority.
In a region where ethno-nationalism runs deep and citizens are themselves unsure where to repose their loyalties, fighting militancy will continue to remain a challenge for the Indian state.
Pradip Phanjoubam, editor, Imphal Free Press , had recently written that each time there is news of a militant being killed and the body recovered, women would rush to the morgue to find out if the body was that of their son/husband. This is a difficult situation to fathom. Further, on reading Rajeev Bhattacharyya's book, Rendezvous with Rebels, one is hardpressed to believe that the militants roughing it out in the inhospitable terrain of eastern Nagaland, bordering Myanmar, are not fired by some kind of passion, however, misplaced that may sound.
The problem with using the army to fight militancy is that they cannot grasp the complexities of a region whose people pride themselves as being of a different race and culture. While anthropologists argue that culture is invented and used in ethno-political instrumentation, the fact remains that people still prefer to remain trapped in a hoary past rather than step into an uncertain "Indian" future.
(The writer can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com)