The meeting between chief secretaries and director generals of police of 13 Naxalite-affected states on Wednesday places the Naxalite issue on the front burner. It must remain there. After all, in his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh identified two security threats to the country — terrorism and Naxalism. He warned Naxalites against their misplaced romance of the gun in a democracy and nudged concerned state governments to focus on the speedy welfare and development of the tribals whose continued impoverishment is providing the Naxalites with foot soldiers for their ‘revolutionary’ forays against state and society. Yet on the same day, Y.S. Rajashekhar Reddy, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, presented Naxalism only as a law and order problem.

Ever since the Naxalites’ attack on the Salwa Judum camp close to a CRPF camp in Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh on July 17, confusion regarding the objectives of the ‘revolutionaries’ as well as the strategies of the state has been confounded further. Are the Maoists any closer to their ‘revolutionary’ goal? If yes, why indulge in brutal killings of the poor and innocent in whose name they claim to speak? In turn, the clichéd analyses describing Naxal attacks on the state’s security structure or on the people opposed to them as ‘desperate acts’, ignore the calm and precise strategy behind such attacks that has left security forces groping for a counter-strategy.

The Maoists may not have realised their aim of creating a red corridor from Pashupati to Tirupati but their expansion in recent years has been impressive, if not phenomenal: from 55 districts in nine states in 2003 to 156 districts in 13 states in 2004 to 170 districts in 15 states in 2006. In their strongholds in about 55 districts in 12 states, they run a parallel government, which is not surprising given the retreat, if not collapse, of the state in key social sectors such as education and health in many states and stranglehold on political power of those who control land and other economic resources.

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