Dealing with Urban Naxals
Recently, the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh has raised concern that the term Urban Naxalhas become a jumla and anyone can be arrested or implicated in the name of being an urban Naxal.
- In 2018, the Maharashtra police arrested five prominent activists in connection with an ongoing investigation related to the Bhima-Koregaon caste flare up.
- In June 2018, the Maharashtra police had arrested five more activists claimed to have close contacts with Naxals and allegedly involved in organising a public meeting right before the Bhima-Koregaon caste riots broke out.
- The police conducted the raids and arrested these well-known activists naming them as “urban Naxals” which raises vital questions about the new labeling by the state.
- It is well known among analysts tracking Left-wing extremism (LWE) that for logistics and reasons of getting trapped by the security forces, Maoists have been avoiding urban surge for a long time.
Urban Naxals: An old wine in new bottle?
- The origin of Left-wing extremism (LWE) or Maoism started in the 1950s and itsideological appeal continues to attract followers and revolutionaries across many parts of the world.
- In India, while LWE has remained largely a rural phenomenon, yet since its appearance in the 1960s, the movement has been drawing great following and leadership from the urban areas.
- The term Urban Naxal has entered popular usage recently but the concept of Urban Naxalism emerged with the birth of CPI (Maoist) in 2004.
- The Urban Naxalism is an age-old tactic used by the Maoists to target mainly the urban centres, organise a large number of masses which in turn will help them provide military personnel, infrastructure and material.
Rise of Urban Naxalism in India
- Merger of insurgent groups: The combination of 40 odd splinter insurgent groups in 2004 leading to the creation of a new group and the new formation brought out two major documents detailing their urban ambition.
- ‘The Strategies and Tactics of Indian Revolution in 2004’ and ‘Urban Perspective: Our Works in Urban Areas in 2007’ spelled out strategies and tactics to spread into urban areas.
- Both the documents created an elaborate network of underground and over-ground support for the armed movement.
- Establishment of urban cells across industrial belts: The Maoists have been able to form urban cells in the industrial belts of Raipur, Durg, Surat, Faridabad and Bastar.
- There have been reports indicating their strong gains in semi-urban centres such as Haryana’s Yamuna Nagar which has several sugar mills, timber and wine mills with history of labour unrest.
- The Intelligence Bureau officials have identified the Surat-Pune industrial corridor, Bengaluru, Coimbatore and Kolkata to be the epic-centre of the urban naxal problem.
- Steady collapse of Naxalism in rural areas: Several organisations have come up in urban areas through which desperate attempts are on to bridge the movement between the urban and rural areas.
- There has been a steady rise in the urban movement because the movement is seeing a steady collapse in the rural areas.
Reasons for growth of Urban Naxalism in India
- Growing incidence of protests used as platform for infiltration: The most predominant and visible modes of penetration appear to be infiltration into protests, agitations or demonstrations carried out against the government in urban areas.
- Mobilization of working class groups: The modus operandi of the Urban Naxalites organization remains mobilising the sections of societies like the working class, semi-proletariat, students, middle-class employees and intellectuals.
- The organization’s document mentions that the mobilization aims at a “revolutionary movement”.
- Lack of Police Modernising Techniques: The government realised that the Maoist insurgents were able to work vast swathes of territories largely because of lack of strong and effective policing.
- Inefficient infrastructure to tackle naxalism: The poor intelligence infrastructure at the national and state levels was a major bane in counterinsurgency and provided an easy path to Naxalites to expand their network from rural to urban regions.
Concerns associated with Urban Naxalism
- The urban naxalism involves the sending of cadre to the countryside, infiltration of enemy ranks, organizing in key industries, sabotage actions in coordination with the rural armed struggle, logistical support, etc.
- Invisibility of threats: The experts have raised concern about the Urban Naxal phenomenon and pointed out that the activities are generally covert which makes it hard to detect and identify those running this drive.
- Lack of definition of Urban Naxalism: The experts have argued that the definition of Urban Naxal is too vague and classifies every critic of the present-day government as Urban Naxal.
- The Urban Naxals have not only supported anti-India movements and slogans but they have also gone to the extreme lengths of discrediting the Constitution of Indiaand every one of its laws therein.
- Naxalism is the real threat to our internal security and Urban Naxalism is nothing but the backbone of Naxalism because without that ideological support, it is not possible for anyone to go against the sovereignty and integrity of a nation.
- Convenient label to crush dissent: The critics of the phrase “urban Naxal” pointed out that it is vital to make a distinction between people who work to ensure human rights for all and those who participate in violent movements.
- The agencies have unearthed several plots and it had been found that the naxalites operate largely on the agenda set by their mentors in the cities.
Challenges to Naxalism growing in Urban Centres
- The urban surge of Naxalism has proved a disaster for them as they lost many of their top leaders who were arrested by security forces from their urban hidings.
- The urban fallouts and massive losses in the “heartland” in the last few years have made Maoists to retreat and abandon their urban ambitions to cope with difficult time.
Initiatives taken by government to address Naxalism in India
- Law and Order Approach: The law and order approach continues to be the key pillar of the Centre’s counterinsurgency strategy.
- In 2006 the Central government under then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the first time issued a security blueprint to tackle the Maoist threat which was featured in the government’s 14-Point Policy.
- Modernisation of Police Forces: The government sought to strengthen and improve the quality of policing in the Maoist-affected states and implemented a Police Modernization Scheme.
- The Centre channeled substantial sums of funds to aid states in modernising and upgrading their police forces in terms of acquiring modern weaponry, communication equipment, mobility, and infrastructure.
- Strengthening Intelligence Networks: The Centre adopted round-the-clock intelligence-sharing through Multi Agency Centre (MAC) at the Central level and through State Multi Agency Centre (SMAC) at the State level.
- Aiding States in Security-Related Infrastructure: The Security Related Expenditure (SRE) scheme allowed state governments to reimburse 50 percent of their expenses on provisions like insurance scheme for police personnel, community policing, rehabilitation of surrendered Maoists, other security-related items.
- Deployment of Central Paramilitary Forces: The most critical counterinsurgency initiative from the Centre has been the creation of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) to assist the Naxal-affected states.
- Mission SAMADHAN: In 2017, the government launched SAMADHAN which stands for Smart Leadership, Aggressive Strategy, Motivation and Training, Actionable Intelligence, Dashboard Based KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and KRAs (Key Result Areas), Harnessing Technology, Action plan for each theatre and No access to Financing.
Measures to be adopted to address Urban Naxalism
- The most glaring needs are the formulation of a coherent national policy to address the insurgency and unified direction of the federal and state governments’ efforts to implement it.
- P. V. Ramana committee has recommended the creation of an Independent Ministry, reporting directly to the Prime Minister, which would take charge of all Naxalite-related security and development efforts throughout the country.
- The enforcement of legislation such as protection of land rights of tribals must be dramatically improved, and funding increased for other rural aid and development initiatives can address the problem of rising inequality in the countryside.
Road ahead
- It is time the Indian state stay away from raising the ghost of an almost dying ideology and should not waste opportunity to root out this five-decade-long insurgency.
- The government should organize debates and discussions surrounding the determination of specifics for the term ‘Urban Naxal’ because one has to acknowledge that the threat does exist and India needs to do more to fight it.
- India as a country with such a rich culture, democratic approach and Unity in diversityis much more above the aspirations of the Urban Naxals.
- The Indian state combined both population-centric and enemy-centric approaches in dealing with the Maoist insurgency which demonstrated in going after the Maoist rank and file by committing substantial state resources to strengthen the security-intelligence infrastructure.
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