The outcome in Lalgarh, once the police and Central Paramilitary Forces (CPMFs) moved in, demonstrates a single fact beyond dispute: Lalgarh was never “taken” by the Maoists; it was abandoned by the state.

There is much to learn here — not just for West Bengal, but for every administration confronted with the Maoist threat. It is not Maoist strength that is prevailing; it is the state’s endemic infirmity that is yielding. Governments simply abdicate their fundamental responsibilities at the first signs of disorder and violence. Few see the crisis in Lalgarh for what it really was: an opportunistic intervention by the Maoists exploiting extraordinary administrative ineptitude and a protracted failure by the state government and its agencies to respond to what was essentially a local flare-up. Crucially, for all the talk of “liberated zones”, the Maoists quickly faded away on the first signs of determined police and paramilitary action — something that could have been secured at the very outset, had the state’s Marxist leaders not been in a blue funk in Kolkata, crushed by electoral humiliation and haunted by nightmares of Nandigram and Singur.

Another notable aspect of the Lalgarh confrontation is how quickly it dovetailed into the wider Maoist campaign across the imagined “red corridor”, with a strike call and acts of sporadic violence across the five worst-affected states. This, and not the creation of any “liberated zone”, accurately reflects Maoist objective. Lalgarh has helped dramatically to take the processes of radical political mobilisation a step forward. The violent confrontation with, and selective targeting of, Marxist cadres, and the clashes with a demoralised police force, would have helped to break down psychological barriers. Scenes of triumphal Maoist “successes” — the ritual destruction of Marxist offices to tribal drumbeats, the macabre display of corpses of murdered party workers, interviews with Maoist leaders broadcast across the country on live TV — will have telescoped processes of political mobilisation across wide regions beyond Lalgarh at a scale that would have taken years to otherwise secure. For the Maoists, these gains will prove more enduring unlike their brief “occupation” of Lalgarh.

... contd.