THE LEADER ARTICLE: Reddy to Talk: Engage the Naxals from a Position of Strength

When the Andhra Pradesh government of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy announced it would talk to the Naxalites, it was trying to find a way out of a festering problem. Today, with the peace process in shreds, doomsayers who had predicted failure are gloating. It''s time to look back and survey what went wrong.
When Naxal leader Ramakrishna stepped out of the Nallamala forests in October 2004 for the first round of talks, he actually took a giant stride: into media glare, into a domain that expected wonders of him.He was Robin Hood in red. His entry into Hyderabad was at the head of a long convoy of vans emblazoned with the red Maoist flag with a bold picture of Charu Mazumdar printed on it. Hyderabad treated him as a hero. He sat in durbars, accepted petitions and was trailed by TV cameras wherever he went. And, at the end of it all, the Maoist brigade shook hands with policemen and cleared out.
That rosy picture faded because Hydera-bad''s strategists couldn''t resume the dialogue process quickly. Engagement was the way to preserve peace. Leaders, on both sides of the spectrum, would then have been accountable. Ramakrishna wouldn''t have been blowing hot from an undisclosed hideout. He''d be fielding queries from newsmen in front of the same TV cameras that had trailed him when he was here in October 2004. Police too would have thought twice before gunning for the Maoists. Today, things are spinning out of control.
However, in that long period between the talks and before the guns actually started booming again, the Maoists continued doing what they needed to do. One, they disregarded Reddy''s pleas to give up arms; two, they seized land in the name of redistributing these among the landless poor.
To add to the provocation, land seizure and redistribution took place in Kadapa, the chief minister''s home district. This left the Kadapa Tiger fuming and instructions were issued to policemen to remove the red flags that had been left behind by Maoist storm troopers.
Meanwhile, Hyderabad''s insistence on Naxalites giving up arms fell on deaf ears. Maoist leadership questioned the rationale of the government''s demand and said an unarmed Maoist was a dead Maoist. After all, they believed in class war and elimination of the class enemy.
As they freely entered villages, indoctrinated young men and women and drafted them into their swelling army, the state watched. It watched, for there was little it could do. In district after district, Maoists held meetings. But, importantly, not many of them had star speakers, yet they were well attended. Perhaps, in a bid to drive a point home that the CPI (Maoist) was on a long march to Delhi, speakers were brought in from Punjab and Varavara Rao and Co were arrested while trying to hold a meeting in the heart of the national capital.
In that sense, while Ramakrishna captured the attention of the urban intelligentsia by stepping out of his mysterious world, his men stormed villages without firing a bullet. The police, on the other hand, kept up its offensive. While officers went on a publicity blitz, organising job camps for the educated unemployed, the Maoists insisted policemen were actually recruiting informers. The rhetoric kept getting sharper. Rajasekhara Reddy railed: "They can''t make the state look redundant".
As temperatures in Hyderabad rose, there was still no sign of a second round. This was when the administration pitched its hard talk a few decibels higher, insisting there would be talks only when the Maoists fell in line and stopped arbitrary distribution of land. But it failed to step up land surveys and the reforms kept looking purposeless and painfully slow. There were sharp spikes on the government''s initiative graph, though. At one point, it even talked of distributing 1 lakh acres in a day on January 26. At this juncture, though, there still wasn''t sign of an intractable situation breaking. Police were still holding fire. Then came the end of the truce period, when the government — after a long cabinet meeting — went on to say that a ceasefire was never in place in the first place. It described the peace phase as a no-first-fire period, perhaps signalling what was coming.
While it told the police it was time to get cracking to ensure that law and order wasn''t compromised, it left the talks window slightly ajar saying negotiations would resume in some time. But when this time would come nobody was sure. Meantime, police movements had begun. The crack Greyhounds units had begun rolling out, special police units were moving deeper into the heartland, combing forests, chasing Maoist units and stopping "forced" collection of donations.
The fabric of peace had begun springing holes with reports of stray encounters coming in November and December. The war broke full scale in January. On Saturday, the symbolic death warrant of the peace process was signed when police gunned down three Maoists at Chintala village of Prakasam district. This was where Ramakrishna had emerged from the Nallamala forests. That day alone, police patrols shot dead six Maoists, apparently after they came under hostile fire. The peace monitoring committee appointed by the government still hopes that the talks track is open. It, in fact, insists the decision to call off negotiations should be a political one and the police have no say in it. Even then, the panel should have ensured a second round soon enough for the guns to remain confined to holsters.