It is reassuring that the Centre appears to have at long last prepared the blueprint for a comprehensive strategy of defeating the Naxalites. The recently imposed ban on the Communist Party of

India (Maoist), which even the hitherto reluctant mainstream Left has in effect come to view as a fait accompli, was an important legal, albeit symbolic, step in the new multi-prong strategy about to be implemented in the Naxal-affected states. The trip of the Union secretaries, led by Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar and Home Secretary designate G.K. Pillai, to Jharkhand to review the new approach and sensitise the bureaucracy in the troubled areas should be productive.

Figures are often quite telling, if not in absolute terms, at least comparatively. While approximately 210 civilians and 215 security personnel fell to leftwing extremism in 2008, this year already about 130 civilians and 180 securitymen have died, and that excluding Lalgarh and despite the near erasure of Naxalite violence in Andhra Pradesh. As per the new plan, the government will promote development in the Maoist-affected areas and review its approach towards tribal laws in order to meet legitimate local demands. This will help eradicate socio-economic deprivation in the long term. But as the figures argue, Maoist violence is also, and primarily, a law and order problem. To ensure that development gets the promised security cover, the government must actuate its planned counter-offensive along the Jharkhand-Orissa, Jharkhand-Orissa-West Bengal, and Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh borders, securing the area first and then beginning the developmental activity.

... contd.