Chhattisgarh DGP Vishwa Ranjan

Vishwa Ranjan is a poet and a pragmatist, a palpably split persona who can sing the eloquent song of injustices done to tribals and, in the next breath, bluntly set out the imperatives of crushing the Maoist surge.

His is a finely articulated position on reasons and requirements — he can understand, he says, why the Maoists have been able to make a base for themselves in Bastar and expand, but isn’t willing to accept their strategy of redressing wrongs.

“The Indian Constitution is my God, how can I, how can any Indian citizen, tolerate people who want to burn it and overthrow democracy?” he asks. “One of the key philosophical contradictions of the Maoists is that they want all the democratic freedoms to say and do what they want, and yet their essential politics are undemocratic, totalitarian. There is no way such forces can be allowed to prosper.”

An old Bastar hand — he began his police career in the wilderness — Vishwa Ranjan came out of more than two decades in the backrooms of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to take up a frontline job; colleagues will tell you it’s with a sense of “belonging to Bastar and a career-end challenge” that he has returned.

As chief executive officer of Green Hunt, the policing tasks of Vishwa Ranjan are unenviable enough; the man has also taken upon himself the onerous mission of intellectually outflanking the Maoists, using his literary bent — and his knowledge of the culture and history of both tribals and the Maoists — to wage a single-handed and prolific media offensive to engage civil society advocates of Maoist strategy.

The Chhattisgarh police boss may well be one of the best known bylines in the state media.

“People forget that the police can’t achieve it all, it is important to argue and debate because this is also a quarrel about ideas,” he says.

Excerpts from an interview:

Q: What are the chief obstacles to Green Hunt?

A: None, specifically, although it is a difficult undertaking, a battle that must be fought on many fronts from civil society to politics to operations on the ground. We have been gearing up, we must fight this battle and prevail.

Q: Several questions have been raised and allegations made that this drive is aimed at vacating the jungles for exploitation by corporate interests.

A: Bogus. People don’t understand there is a military force occupying these areas which challenges the very notion of India, the Constitution and democracy. Anyone who has cared to read the Maoist programme and doctrine must know they pose a fundamental political and military threat. No state can brook such a challenge.

And where is tribal land being handed away to corporate interests? We are governed by a complex set of laws and regulations. These allegations are being made very loosely by some who claim to represent civil society, they are illiterate about our laws and ways. Environment clearance itself is a huge hurdle to cross, especially in the Bastar jungle area. Is it really someone’s case that we are going to shave off one of our best and biggest forest properties for corporate houses? Is it really someone’s case that we should just turned a blind eye to an organised and armed threat?

Q: But there are serious issues of neglecting tribals, robbing them of the right to land and forest. There must be reasons why Maoists have been able to create a base among them.

A: Nobody is denying there is a huge development deficit that needs correction. That is being done. It is our intention to take development into those areas and the impetus for that is coming from the very top, from the Prime Minister and the Union home minister. But development also requires us to vacate these areas of Maoist control. Tribal support for the Maoists is not a black-and-white thing, they may have some support but most of it comes from fear, they have guns, the tribals don’t. What are they to do but serve their interests?

Q: But many tribals have also been inspired enough to join the Maoists and die for them.

A: Well, there is a very organised indoctrination programme they have. They catch kids very young and start teaching and training them, a lot of that is done by force and coercion. Give the tribals a free choice and let us see how many of them say they want to die fighting in the jungles. These are romantic myths popularised by elements of so-called civil society that have not even set foot in Maoist strongholds and have no experience or sense of the ground. It is precisely such notions that I keep fighting off in my articles and presentations.

Salva Judum was similarly tarnished by civil society. Few bother to note that much before the Judum, there was already a spontaneous tribal upsurge against Maoist excesses, it was called the Jan Jagaran Abhiyan and it was totally the outcome of tribal anger. You should see the kind of atrocities Maoists have committed on them, and they continue to.

They are merciless criminals at the end of the day, with some sort of ideological façade, intelligent people should see through them.

Q: But the government too uses tribal boys, trains them as SPOs, and sends them into the frontline of battle.

A: Ask them, most of them are hugely motivated to train and become SPOs because they have been victims of Maoist excess. These are very driven boys, we are probably only channelling their anger in a proper way. We are very proud of their record in the force, they are great fighters, they know the ground, they are what keep us going in battle. The SPO scheme is a big success story in the annals of the anti-Maoist fight.

Q: There are fears that the security offensive will entail substantive collateral damage, innocents getting killed either for being Maoist sympathisers or just in the cross-fire.

A: It’s our job to minimise that, and we do have a plan. Why does everybody assume we are just going to go guns blindly blazing into the jungle and kill everything in sight. We have lists, we have identified people, we know a little bit about who stands where and the protection of innocent people is key to our success. What we have in mind is nothing Rambo-like as you might be imagining.

This has to be a slow, painstaking operation, I personally call it a strategy of creeping reoccupation, go in, clear an area, hold it and develop it, then move on.

Q: You think you will have such long-term commitment and support from the paramilitary forces?

A: That’s what we have been promised, they are here for the long haul. Listen, if we cannot make a sustained campaign of this, making development absolutely central, we are bound to fail. This whole effort is going to come to naught if we cannot provide visible development almost hand in hand with the security operations. I am very clear on that. Lack of development is at the heart of this crisis, development is what will essentially end it, and the Indian state has the intention and the power to achieve that.

Concluded