In India, the distinction was clearly established during the colonial period. But even before it could get consolidated after Independence, new paramilitary entities emerged: the reconstituted Central Reserve Police Force and its state variants, the Border Security Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Rapid Action Force, National Security Guards, etc. The paramilitary forces are the fastest-growing component of India's security/police personnel.

Nevertheless, a clear, healthy line of demarcation stands established between the paramilitary forces and the armed services. The former report to the Home Ministry, the latter to the Defence Ministry. The paramilitaries are meant to look after internal security; the armed services are supposed to tackle external threats. Given this distinction, there has been a strong consensus that the paramilitary forces must be “non-military in culture, ethos and training”. Unlike the defence services, they are not meant to inflict maximum damage on adversaries, only to contain them so they can be prosecuted under normal civil and criminal laws.

Today, both the rule of law and the paramilitary-armed services distinction are under threat. There are strong pressures from security hawks and self-styled insurgency specialists to throw the rule of law to the winds, and also militarise the paramilitary forces by altering their culture and raising the standard of training and permissible force levels. This is one of the toxic effects of the debate triggered by the Maoist attack on a CRPF company in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh in which 76 paramilitary personnel were killed.

There are strident calls for defining Naxalism or Maoism as an insurgency, much like militarist separatism in Kashmir and the Northeast, for treating counter-insurgency as a combat operation, and hence for transforming the role of the paramilitary forces deployed in Operation Green Hunt along explicitly military lines.

The Dantewada debate was shaped by lurid media descriptions of the killing as “war”, “massacre” and “butchery”. TV anchors exhorted the public to “take sides” between the Indian state, democracy and the Tricolour, on the one hand, and the forces of subversion, lawlessness and violence, on the other. Naxalism, extremism and terrorism were all bundled into one indivisible whole. All distinctions between gun-wielding Maoists, sympathisers of justice for tribals, civil liberties activists, and even Gandhians, were erased. If you are not with the Indian state, you are with the Maoists—as their accomplices and collaborators.

The hysterical message was: “Shoot first, think later”. Top government functionaries, from Home Minister P Chidambaram down to state directors-general of police responded uniformly to this: Dantewada marks a watershed and an act of war by the extremists who want to destroy the state; the state must respond by stepping up the scope and level of force. So, threatened Mr Chidambaram, the state could consider using air power against the Maoists, for which there's no mandate so far. Talks with them are firmly ruled out as that would “mock the supreme sacrifice made by 76 jawans”.

Such intemperate responses, coupled with the quasi-self-incriminating admission that “something went drastically wrong” in the CRPF-state police “area domination” exercise, don't speak of maturity, sobriety or wisdom. Rather, they are reminiscent of President George W Bush's knee-jerk response to the September 11 attacks—namely, to launch a Global War on Terror, which has since led to tens of thousands of civilian deaths, chaos in Afghanistan, huge discontent in the Islamic world, widespread loss of the US's credibility, and a seven-fold rise in terrorist incidents globally.

Escalating Green Hunt will inflict enormous damage upon innocent civilians in the tribal belt, three lakhs of whom have been displaced by unremitting violence by the police and paramilitary forces and by the super-criminalised militia called Salwa Judum, sponsored, funded and armed by the state.

Three questions arise. Can the Maoists' Dantewada attack at all be justified? Is the state right to unleash overwhelming force against them, with Green Hunt's 60,000-plus paramilitary troops, which will inevitably cause huge civilian casualties? Is there a sensible strategy to deal with the Maoists?

First, the CRPF men were combatants, and hence legitimate targets in a conflict situation. But it's impossible to justify the scale of the attack—morally, politically or militarily. It wasn't a spontaneous defensive response to Green Hunt or to the horrendous iniquities heaped upon the tribals by the state. Wantonly killing such a large number of people violates the principles of military necessity and proportionality (of retaliation), which are central to all conflicts.

The Maoists, who claim to defend the underprivileged and stand for a just and equal society, bring no credit to themselves by acts of large-scale violence and brutality, including the reported beheading of two CRPF men. These will invite horrible retaliation against those very Adivasis they claim to defend. This is already happening through reported revenge killings by the CRPF in Mukram village. Nor will such attacks substantially weaken, leave alone destabilise, the state. They may at best demoralise the Green Hunt troops—temporarily.

Let's put it bluntly. Enough unemployed and poor Indians are willing to be recruited into the paramilitaries, who will be sent by their bosses into the field without adequate leadership, training or discipline. In Dantewada, they didn't even follow the Standard Operating Procedure of guarding their camp at night, and not taking the same route to return to it as they did while leaving it. Given the low level of general literacy, skills and basic proficiency among our paramilitary forces—probably only slightly better than the regular police—it's hard to believe that they will perform dramatically better in the short run or that their leadership will stop using them like cannon fodder.

That brings us to the state's culpability, which is grave. It has launched a civil war in the tribal belt in pursuit of the neoliberal policy of privatising its vast wealth in forests, minerals and land. Hundreds of Memoranda of Understanding have been signed with groups like Vedanta, Posco, Jindal and Tatas for mining leases which yield the public a royalty of a paltry Rs 27 per tonne of iron ore, which sells for Rs 4,000. To implement the MoUs, the state has displaced lakhs of vulnerable people and proceeded to destroy the environment, including rivers, mountains and forests.

These neoliberal policies are implemented through collusive arrangements which involve flagrant conflicts of interest. High state functionaries, including Mr Chidambaram, have been directors of some of the companies in question or legally represented them. Even Supreme Court judges have admitted to owning their shares, but haven't recused themselves from hearing cases against them.

A central component and precondition of neoliberalism is coercion—against people who resist their displacement and dispossession. This only aggravates the structural violence that the masses suffer in a social order that is based on servitude and economic bondage. A reflection of this state is acute deprivation, malnourishment and hunger, discussed in this Column recently.

To intensify the violence in the interests of capital, sustain rapacious exploitation, and muzzle the already marginalised Adivasis, the state must wage war against the people. Thus, whether Mr Chidambaram admits or not, war is built into the very logic of neoliberalism.

Nothing could be a greater crime in democracy than waging war against one's own citizens. To mask the crime, the state points to the Maoist “threat”—a cover, an excuse, for the real purpose of fulfilling its larger neoliberal agenda. That's what Green Hunt is all about. The state functionaries' culpability is only enhanced by their lack of respect for human life and use of poor paramilitary troops as sacrificial lambs.

Finally, the question of the right approach to dealing with the Maoists. The Maoists enjoy some popular support and credibility because the state has failed the people and tuned horrendously predatory. The state must be radically reformed through a massive human-centred development agenda, which creates entitlements to the basic necessities of life with human dignity, including food, safe drinking water, healthcare, education, and employment. This agenda was undermined for 60 years, which is why the Naxalite problem arose. To demand that the Maoists must be wiped out before development can be resumed is to put the cart before the horse.

This doesn't argue that the government should passively condone the Maoists' violence. It should treat their violent acts as crimes and bring them to book without conflating them with political-military offences like waging war. This means revitalising the police and the justice delivery system, and establishing the rule of law by breaking the bureaucracy-contractor-forester-miner nexus, while opening a dialogue with Maoists for a ceasefire and more. That alone will restore the people's confidence in the state and give them a sense of belonging. (IPA Service)