How much credibility does West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee think his state government now has? He might have been partly chastened by the storm of anger caused by the West Bengal government’s decision to capitulate miserably to the CPI (Maoist) by accepting, on their terms, the release of a police officer they had kidnapped in a daring raid on a police station — apparently in exchange for the government not opposing the release on bail of several prisoners accused of links to the Naxalites. But his response is truly laughable. The day after he surrendered to the Naxalites, he thundered angrily that he would not surrender to the Maoists. The day after they showed him who was boss, he declared that he would teach them a lesson. Does he even know how weak he now appears?

Bhattacharjee also took a moment to attack his home secretary, Ardhendu Sen, for reports that he had made an impolitic comparison between the “swap” and, among others, the Kandahar and Rubaiya Sayeed episodes. And yet, his words were revealing. Where Bengal’s top civil servant in charge of law and order apparently shrugged his shoulders and said that such things would happen, because India was a “soft” state, Bhattacharjee chose to take exception to Sen speaking out of turn. He did not engage with the accusation implicit in Sen’s words, a concern which all those who believe that the time has come for the state to re-impose its writ in India’s lawless interior must share. What people need is strong reassurance that the state it relies on for security is not weak, is not soft; but neither is Bhattacharjee willing to give either his state’s residents or those beyond that reassurance, nor is it the case that, even if he did, he would be believed.

... contd.