Opinion
The Maoist Threat:
Lies, White Lies and Statistics
by
P.V. Ramana
The Indian
home ministry never tires of finding newer classifications to present a
much diminished perception of the intensity and spread of the Communist
Party of India-Maoist, better known as Naxalites.
Based on information provided by his officials, Home Minister Shivraj
Patil told the Rajya Sabha March 19 that "a mere 14,000 villages out of
a total of 650,000 villages are Maoist-affected, which accounts for just
two percent of the total number of villages in the country".
It is intriguing why mention was not made of the number of towns that
are Maoist affected, and their percentage. The omission was perhaps made
because no violent activities were reported from towns and cities.
Nevertheless, it is by now well known that the rebels use towns and
cities for rest, recreation and recuperation as well as for logistics
support.
It is an altogether different issue that the Maoists have a certain
'urban presence', and have devised an action plan to build a strong and
vibrant 'urban movement'. In 2007 alone, three top-ranking leaders of
the all-powerful Central Committee and the Central Military Commission
(CMC) were caught in towns/cities: Malla Raji Reddy in Kerala, Sridhar
Krishnan Srinivasan alias Vishnu in Mumbai and Misir Besra alias Bhaskar
alias Sunirmal in Jharkhand.
Barely three weeks ago, the West Bengal State Committee secretary of the
rebels, Somen alias Sumanand alias Suman, was arrested in Kolkatta. It
is believed that Somen heads the five-member Urban Sub Committee set up
by the Central Committee in January 2007 to review the Urban Perspective
Plan -- which is some kind of blueprint to spearhead the urban movement.
The home ministry, it appears, is of the view that as long as statistics
present a 'rosy picture', it does not really matter if the Maoists run
an elaborate logistics network stretching across towns and villages in
various states. Thus, one should turn a blind eye to the unearthing of
an arms-making-cum-R&D unit of the Maoists in Bhopal Jan 10, 2007.
On Jan 12, 2007, another arms-making unit was busted in Rourkela,
Orissa. Raids in Andhra Pradesh in September 2006 led to the unearthing
of an elaborate pan-India network -- involved in manufacturing empty
rocket shells and knocked-down kits of rocket launchers -- which
originated in the Ambattur industrial estate, a suburb of Chennai.
For long, the home ministry has maintained and disseminated statistics
about the number of affected districts. At the time the Congress took
power in 2004, the common perception was that 53 districts in nine
states were Maoist-affected. The previous government was revealing just
the number of highly affected districts. The figure 53 corresponded to
this.
Breaking from practice, in early 2005 the government informed parliament
that 126 districts in 12 States were Naxalite-affected; of these 76
districts in nine states were said to be "badly (highly) affected". The
126 districts included "highly affected", "moderately affected",
"marginally affected" and "targeted districts". Thus, suddenly, the
expanse of the Maoist presence seemed huge. This created a flutter. Ever
since, the home ministry has made tireless efforts to retrieve lost
ground, to present a diminished view of rebel-presence.
As part of its efforts to address the issue, the home ministry has an
initiative known as "Public Perception Management". Its objective is to
create antipathy among the people towards the Maoists by highlighting
their misdeeds, mistakes and macabre violence. Instead, this exercise
has degenerated into 'managing the people's perception' of the Maoist
problem through a clever concealing of facts and playing with numbers.
Thus, in 2006, in the annual report of the home ministry and in the
"Status Paper on the Naxal Problem", the ministry introduced this "new"
classification of the number of police stations where Maoists were
active. It contended that a mere 509 police stations of the total 8,695
police stations in 12 states had reported Maoist violence. This would
account for 5.85 percent of the total.
Two points need to be noted. One, the home ministry statistics relate to
the number of police stations from which Maoist violence was reported,
not the number in which Maoist presence has been noticed. Two, if one
were to consider the 509 stations as a percentage of the total number of
police stations in the country -- 12,476, then the figure will be
different -- and lower. In its annual report for 2006-07, the ministry
noted: "Of the total 12,476 police stations, Naxal violence has been
reported during 2006 from 395 police stations..." This would give the
impression that only four percent of the stations are problematic.
Patil also said in his reply on March 19 that 300 police stations in the
country were Maoist affected - this comes to 2.14 percent of the
stations nationwide.
By merely changing the denominator from total number of police stations
in affected states to the total number of police stations across the
country, the percentage figure just dips!
As it were, in their latest endeavour to assure us that we are safe and
secure, home ministry officials seem to have prompted Patil to say March
19 that "the Naxalite problem is confined to only two percent of the
country's 650,000 villages". It was added that the number of Naxal
violence related incidents at 700 accounts for a mere 1.1 percent of the
total extremist-related incidents.
(P.V. Ramana is Research Fellow at
the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. He is author
of "The Naxal Challenge - Causes, Linkages and Policy Options"
and can be contacted at
talepuramana@gmail.com)
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