Following the horror of Dantewada, the UPA government embarked upon a public soul searching exercise to identify the vulnerabilities in its strategy against the Maoists. It was a needless exercise. All they could do was take a leaf out of the book of Andhra Pradesh, whose government has done wonders in its anti-Maoist campaign.
The reasons behind the success of Andhra Pradesh government's drive against the Maoists over the past six years are complex. On the one hand, the government adopted a three-pronged strategy of treating left wing violence as a law and order as well as socio- economic problem and adopting a carrot-and-stick policy towards the Maoists. It was also fortuitous for the regime of the late Rajshekhar Reddy that the ultras themselves dug their own graves by committing a series of strategic blunders. However people like Vara Vara Rao and Ghaddar were in the forefront of criticising the government and the police for what they called "fake encounter killings" of Maoist leaders. "The State is acting like a terrorist. They are talking about the issue as a socio-economic one but both the Centre and the Andhra government wants to deal with it as a law and order issue", said Ghaddar as Maoist losses mounted.
Though land reforms has been always the major plank of Maoist or Naxal struggle, the state government's programme of distribution of land among the landless has failed to get the support of these intellectuals as they dismissed it as "too little too late". Ghadhar said: "Look at the government figures itself. It tells us that 1.26 crore acres is available for distribution among the landless poor. Now out of that you choose a meagre 2 lakh acres. Then why do you expect us to support such meaningless decisions?"
Many of these intellectuals had anti-government leanings. The state has seen several confrontations between the pro-Maoist intellectuals and human rights activists, as the police alleged that they had nexus with the Maoists and were helping them. Ghadhar himself was underground for close to a decade till a government amnesty enabled him to come out in 1990. Vara Vara Rao, a founder of Revolutionary Writers Association, who was arrested several times, does not mince his words when it comes to supporting the Maoist movement.
In the context of the spiraling violence in other states like Chattisgarh and Jharkand, VV blames the government's policy of depriving tribals of their land and livelihood by taking over their forests and lands. Alleging that Operation Green Hunt was directed against the tribals, VV says: "It is to weed out the adivasis and to loot the natural resources which would be handed over to multinational like Tata, Vedanta and Lakshmi Mittal".
The intellectuals don't think they are breaking any law. Rather they charge the police with having acted extra-constitutionally by killing people in fake encounters. The clash between the two has some time taken bl**dy turn.
Vara Vara Rao says that several rights activists were abducted and killed by the police in the name of shadowy organisations like "Green Tigers". The attempt on the life of Ghaddar in 1997, when unknown assailants fired at him and injured him serious is counted among such incidents.
Despite such incidents, Maoists sympathisers are quite active and have been raising their voices from different platforms and on different issues. Reacting to the killing of a prominent Maoist leader, Shakhamuri Appa Rao, last month, Ghaddar said: "the police is killing those fighting for the poor and oppressed in continuing". Adds VV: ""If the state stands for violence, then counter violence will continue".
Even before the short-lived peace process between YS Rajasekhara Reddy's government and the then CPI (ML) People's War and CPI (ML) Jana Shakti in 2004, the State had started getting an upper hand over the extremists by modernising its police force in terms of weapons, communication networks, intelligence gathering and training of forces, especially the Greyhounds.
The State believed that the Maoists agreed to come to the peace table as they had suffered a series of setbacks and had started losing ground. This explains why the People's War leadership readily agreed for negotiations and nominated three of their known sympathiser intellectuals: VV, writer G Kalyan Rao and balladeer Ghaddar. These people were expected to bargain for safe passage for the underground leaders.
The police's change of strategy also helped them gain an upper hand. Instead of pursuing the hackneyed tactics of targeting the villagers and sympathisers for giving shelter or providing food and water to the Maoists, the police started to go only after the big fish, sparing ordinary villagers. The government's policy of announcing rewards on the head of the important leaders ranging from Rs 15 to Rs 20 lakh. It offered the same sum to the Maoists if they surrendered and availed rehabilitation schemes.
The police also adopted a more humane attitude towards the villagers who had helped the policem in intelligence gathering and tracking the movements of the armed squads. "Strengthening the intelligence network at the grassroot level marked the turning point in this fight", said former Director General of Police Swaranjit Sen, whose tenure saw many major successes against the Maoists.
The emphasis on socio-economic aspects of the problem, especially employment generation in the under-developed rural areas and recruitment of tribal youth in the police by raising a tribal battalion, helped in weaning them away from Maoist influence. But above all the complete political unanimity on the need to fight against the Maoists and curbing the violence and lawlessness played no minor role in changing the situation.
The drastic fall in the Maoist violence in Andhra Pradesh could be gauged from the few statistics. In 2003, the state witnessed the killing of 339 people both in Maoist attacks and the counter action by the police. They include 151 civilians including 15 policemen and 175 extremists. In 2005 the total number of extremist related incidents went up to 576 in which 166 civilians and 25 policemen were killed and police killed 162 extremists.
By 2006 tide had started turning against Maoists as the number of offences came down to 212. The loss of civilian life and police men came down significantly and many top Maoist leaders were killed. That year Maoist killed 52 people including 11 policemen and police in turn killed 134 extremists including 42 senior leaders like a central committee member called Chandramouli and state committee chief "Burra Chinnaiah" alias Madhav.
By 2008 the number of incidents came down to only 96 as 45 civilians and 37 extremists were killed. However the year was bad for the police as Maoists killed 34 policemen, 33 of them were drowned in a lake in Orissa when Maoists attacked their launch. In 2009 the state recorded an all-time low level of violence with 56 incidents. No policemen were killed, but the Maoists slaughtered 15 civilians and lost 16 of their own including important leaders like central committee member Patel Sudhakar Reddy.
