"Green war" update

In a previous post, we expressed our skepticism about the Government's willingness to carry out a war against the Naxals. However, we never imagined such an about face in such a short time:

After heavily publicizing the government's intention to launch an attack on Maoist headquarters in the jungles of Chhattisgarh for weeks, Union home minister P Chidambaram took a U-turn on Friday by saying that the proposed "Operation Green Hunt" was an invention of the media. All that the centre as was doing was to help the states by deploying paramilitary forces in the fight against left-wing extremism, the home minister said at the passing out parade of IPS probationers in Hyderabad. [link]

Coming from our smartypants Home Minister, this should hardly be a surprise. Earlier, he had made an even stranger statement:

"We never said lay down the arms...We said halt the violence and talk...If they halt violence, the Centre will persuade the state governments to talk to them on issues like land reforms, land acquisitions," he told reporters here. [link]

Lay down arms vs. halt the violence - what's the difference? This is virtually conceding a parallel Government to the Naxals.

There is simply no reason for the Naxals to come to talks with the Government unless they find their movement under serious threat of attrition. The ringleaders are all underground, having propped up "tribal" faces to create a convenient image for the hard left to run with. Meanwhile Kobad Gandhy and overt and covert support from mainstream people clearly proves the movement is anything but "tribal".

There are ways to create pressures on the Naxals by sanitizing zone by zone but it is beyond the capabilities of our current political and economic framework. The secular party honchos are too busy looting the spoils of a virtually guaranteed single party rule for the foreseeable future.