The Burden of Hollowness

S.K. Sood

The ‘sacrifice of martyrs will not go in vain’ is the common refrain of politicians after every tragic incident of loss of life of soldiers. The media attention and public sympathy ebbs in due course of time. All is forgotten after a few days and life goes on as usual except for the family members of the soldiers killed who not only lose a loved one but also perhaps the only bread winner of the family. The loss for them is permanent. Soon they are left to their own devices to cope up with the trauma of sudden void in their lives.

Reams of analysis is written by the strategic community and several recommendations are made. That these recommendations are taken note of is uncertain because another similar incident after few days overtakes the narrative leading to similar sequence of noisy protestations.

Poor governance and lack of development are the basic causes of Left Wing Extremism including the current Maoist movement in central India. The tribal are aggrieved by the fact that they have been pushed out of their traditional habitat and rich mineral resources of the area are being exploited by big industrialists. While the industrialists are becoming richer, the tribal continue to live in abject poverty. They do not possess skills to be employed by the industrialists nor have the industrialists invested for improving their skills or development of the area. Facing this double jeopardy, the tribal have been pushed to the margins of survival as socio-economically backward sections of the society.

Then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in November 2005 had described the Left Wing Extremism as the most serious security threat to India. He had called upon the strategic community to evolve comprehensive strategy to overcome this challenge. Any strategy to tackle this challenge has to include use of security forces to bring down the levels of violence, followed by developmental activities and negotiated settlement of the problem.

Realising that the grievances of the tribal of central India can be addressed only by bringing down the levels of violence within acceptable limits, the government inducted large numbers of central armed forces in the area. However, except for intermittent periods of lull, the security forces have so far failed to control the levels of violence in the area and prepare ground work for ensuring sustained developmental activities.

This tenuous peace was once again broken on 3 April 2021 in the area Tekulguda, Bastar in Chhattisgarh. Loss of life of 22 CRPF and police personnel and apprehension of one