Operation Green Hunt was launched by the Congress led UPA Government some one and a half months ago and what has happened after that! During the intervening night of the 7th and 8th of April, the Maoists launched one of the deadliest attacks yet on the security forces when they managed to kill 75 CRPF Jawans. And now that the carnage has taken place we are seeing more and more drama being doled out by the Congress government and Mr. P. Chidambaram, Union Home Minister with him sending a letter to the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh accepting moral responsibility for the attack on the jawans and offering to resign from his post as Union Home Minister and with his saying that the buck stops at his desk and the Prime Minister refusing to accept his resignation from the post. How much more drama will we have to endure in the days to come is a matter that is of great interest for, now that the Congress Government has got into a mess and a big one at that, I don’t see this drama ending very soon as everyday something or the other will be said in the media which will spice up the situation and create a flutter and in the end what will happen is that the whole matter will get brushed under the carpet and the whole thing will be done and dusted with, if we are to get any indication from the track record of various governments be it run by the Congress or the BJP. What was the need for the Government to put preconditions for talks with the Maoists in the first place? The foolishness started from there itself. You cannot have a successful dialogue with a violent group of people by keeping the precondition that Maoists should give up their ammunitions and only then will the government hold talks with the Maoists. Of course they will not give up their arms till their demands are not met and we have to understand that they have a justified demand and the government has itself to blame for the bad situation that they are in with the Maoists, simply because they have been constantly ignoring the demands of the Maoists, which is that there should be development in their area too. There areas are the most underdeveloped areas in the whole country and Bengal is the best example to show how the government there has done absolutely nothing to develop the area and the most shocking thing is that, that government has been ruling there for the past 32 yrs and still there has been no development in those areas which are affected by Naxalism and surprisingly or unsurprisingly it is the Communist Party of India which has been ruling there and which claims that it stands for the people and will continue to fight for their rights. Its so ironical but it is so true, that once one gains power, one looses all sense of morals, ethics, values and promises that one makes before gaining power and that is exactly what has happened with the Communist Party of India and it’s a wonder how the people have continued to vote for a party that has done no work for the past 32 yrs! The fact is, everywhere vote bank politics is prevalent so that’s why they have managed to survive for these many years. The problem that the Central Government should look into is why, though they give so much money to various states for their development, yet very little amount of money reaches the people who actually need it! A case in point, during the Kosi floods in Bihar, for the relief of the people in the areas affected by flood the government allotted around 500 crore rupees for proper rehabilitation and other purposes like healthcare problems and the like, but yet the people in Bihar, who were most severely affected by the fury of the floods got cheques worth rupees 5 from the government!! Now where did the rest of the amount go? If people are receiving 5 rupees cheques then there is a lot of pilferage of money that is taking place which the government has no idea about! And then when the Bihar State Government asks for more funds for rehabilitation they are refused flatly by the Central Government saying that they have already given whatever money they could for the rehabilitation and they should have managed the money in a better way! While it might be true that the State Government is itself siphoning off the money for its own purposes, the fact remains, that whatever amount the state government got was way less than what was the requirement because half the money has been siphoned off by the middlemen on the way and of course the state government itself siphons off some money with the result that the people who actually need the money, the areas which actually need money, including areas where Naxalism is at the forefront and areas otherwise affected by the floods in the case just discussed, never reaches them, with the result that they remain under developed and remain without proper rehabilitation facilities. So, there is an unholy nexus between state government, central govt. and the middlemen and the central govt. is at the forefront of this unholy nexus since they are the ones who have created these middlemen.
The second foolishness committed by the Congress led UPA alliance was that when the Maoists refused to hold talks with the government without giving up their arms, then the decision that was taken was that they will launch an attack on the Maoist affected areas and eliminate the Maoists and this operation was called ‘Operation Green Hunt’. The foolishness in this decision was that they did not learn there lessons from what happened in Sri Lanka, where the Sri Lankan Government tried to do the same thing with the LTTE and while they managed to finish off the LTTE the fact is that this decision will come back to haunt them later as another organization similar to the LTTE will come up in Sri Lanka to fight for the rights of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Will the government do the same thing when the new organization comes up? It seems most likely that there will be a repeat of what they did with the LTTE. Little did they realize that this decision of there will anger the Tamils in Sri Lanka so much! Similarly, in India itself they could have learnt from what followed after the Operation Blue Star in Amritsar when incidentally it was again the Congress Government which took this decision with the result that there was a backlash by the Sikh Community which led to ultimately the killing of Mrs. Indira Gandhi and what followed was the most chilling attack yet on a particular community, and that was the Anti Sikh Riots of 1984 where there was a systematic targeting of the Sikh community in Delhi which was led by the Congress Government with members of the parliament of the ruling party, Congress, instigating Hindus to attack any Sikh that they found on the streets. And the rest is history!!!
Yet the current Congress government went ahead with its decision to launch Operation Green Hunt thinking that the Maoists will be eliminated and then the whole issue would get resolved. Little did they realize that the Maoists had far superior warfare technology than the armed forces and that it ultimately would lead to the killing of 75 CRPF Jawans off the 82 that had been sent for the mission to eliminate the Maoists!!
The third and final act of stupidity by the Congress Government was Mr. P. Chidambaram’s statement in the press, just a couple of days ago before this unforeseen carnage, took place at Lalgarh in West Bengal where in a press conference Chidambaram said that the Maoists were cowards as they were fighting from behind the trees and if they have the courage they should challenge the armed forces head on and not from behind the trees. Now what was the need for Mr. Chidambaram to make that statement from as sensitive a Maoist area as Lalgarh, and even if it was said not in Lalgarh what was the need to say it at all in the first place!! Then they were planning to launch the air force to annihilate the Maoists but thankfully good sense prevailed and they decided not to bring the air force into the picture. It seems Chidambaram has not learnt his lessons from what happened as just a few days ago he made a similar statement and said that if need be the air force will be pressed into service. Lets hope Chidambaram stops making these embarrassing comments in the media and lets also hope that good sense prevails in the Congress decision making and the foolishness ends here just like Chidambaram said that the buck stops at his desk although that was just a statement made to please the people in the country that he was setting an example by accepting moral responsibility for a thing which should not have taken in the first place!!
