Reds buckling under host of problems

VISAKHAPATNAM: Any struggle, more so an armed one, hinges upon four important tenets - improving the popular support base, sufficient supply and replenishment of arms and ammunition, strong ideology and enhancing the intellectual base.
The Maoists in the Andhra-Odisha Border (AOB) region appear to be falling short on all the four fronts. Their popular support base is waning for two major reasons: One, they themselves are responsible for losing ground amidst their popular base that mainly comprises tribals in the border areas and secondly, the government is moving closer to their support base.
When does a tribal or for that matter any person join an extremist movement? It happens only when atrocities are committed on them by the government or its agents. This has minimized over the years and the feeling of revenge against the state or its exploiters, which had been the main plank for recruitment into the Maoist cadre, is dwindling. Adding to this factor, the Maoists themselves are involved in atrocities against tribals like forcibly taking away their food and cattle or forcing them to join their movement. It is no more voluntary and that indicates their ebbing popularity, said a senior police officer.
On the arms front too they are badly hit. The flow of arms and ammunition has been checked, thanks to heavy combing operation and detection of arms dumps. “It is not that they do not have arms. They have looted sufficient quantity of arms from the Nayagarh police station raid and the Dantewada attack on the CRPF battalion but their stock is depleting and the flow has reduced,” said commissioner of police B Shivadhar Reddy.
When it comes to ideology and intellectualism, both the factors too have been hit badly. “In the last 10 years, they (Maoist) have not been able to recruit one graduate into their cadre. Intellectual leaders were their strength. The movement was accepted by a certain class of educated people and that was one reason for their moderate success earlier in Telangana, Srikakulam and Bengal. The intellectuals are now either dead or languishing in jails and the show cannot be run by uneducated tribals. Their ideology is strong but does not hold water in the present context, where development is the mantra,” said Reddy, who was also the former DIG of APSIB.
The central command has weakened with arrest of Kobad Gandhi and the death of Azad (Cherikuri Rajkumar) and Kishenji (Mallojula Koteswara Rao) and with the student community, including in sensitive places such Warangal and Karimnagar, showing no interest, the movement seems to be suffering big time. “They have to manage with a few senior qualified persons and the uneducated tribals who have no knowledge of ideology. Even their arms manufacturing has been hit with the arrest of Tech Madhu (Thota Kumaraswamy) and with many top leaders falling sick, their activity is slowly being confined to certain pockets in Chhattisgarh and Odisha,” said the superintendent of police G Srinivas.