Tuesday, June 27 2006 10:29 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Maoist guerrillas will pose serious security challenges to India in the years to come, but these can be overcome with will, according to experts on the subject.

But speakers on the expanding tentacles of the Maoist extremist movement appeared to differ on ways to meet the threats posed by the rebels, with one advocating military action and yet another emphasizing ending the disaffection caused by poverty and backwardness.



Claiming that the Maoist threat was far more serious than what New Delhi admitted, Ajay Sahni, director of the Institute of Conflict Management, told a gathering here late Monday that India was witnessing a "slow but systematic build up" of the leftwing guerrillas a la Nepal.



"This is an enormously motivated movement, a phased strategy of realization (of the ultimate goal)," said Sahni, an expert on terrorism.



"What appears to be random violence is actually to a plan," he said.



Sahni said the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist), which was formed in 2004 following the merger of the People's War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MC), was steadily expanding into areas of administrative vacuum.



Sahni underlined that it was the Maoist movement that for the first time had thrown up a pan-India insurgency, unlike all other militant campaigns in India, and marshalled official statistics to accuse the government of underplaying the seriousness of the rebel menace.



"There are no so-called development solutions that can resolve the problem," he said, swimming against the tide of popular opinion. (Such statements) has become an alibi to do nothing and for pumping money into (Maoist) areas,"he said.

Such money, he said, was later siphoned off.

"There has to be a military solution, I would call it a police solution," he said.

H.J. Dora, a former director general of police of Andhra Pradesh, which lies at the core of India's four decades old Maoist movement, related how the law enforcing authorities managed to subdue the guerrillas in the sprawling state with painstaking efforts.

Andhra Pradesh has been enmeshed in Maoist insurgency ever since the movement erupted in West Bengal in May 1967 and has remained the biggest stronghold of Maoists, providing a fertile ground for PWG's steady expansion.

Dora said after a 1997 attack on an outlying police station in Khammam district that killed 16 policemen he spent three days in the area coming to grips with the problems of the hard-pressed constabulary.



"We then started taking counter-terrorism measures," he explained.



This included 24-hour surveillance of surrounding areas from the rooftops of police stations in remote areas, use of grenades by policemen, intensified training, map reading, provision of better weapons, use of night vision goggles and night navigation.



The Andhra Pradesh Police also upgraded the communication system and fine-tuned the anti-insurgency Grey Hounds unit.

"Within 18 months we were on top," he said.



Dora described the PWG as a 'highly secretive movement' that went to extreme lengths to protect its leaders. He said the state's surrender policy created rifts within the Maoists, and there were also rumblings among the guerrillas belonging to upper and lower castes.



"We can tackle (the Maoist problem) if we are serious," Dora commented with finality.

J.N. Roy, formerly of the Intelligence Bureau and now a consultant with the home ministry, said, "The heart of the crisis lies in the style and content of governance in the country."



He added that unlike the first phase of India's Maoist movement, which began as the Naxalite movement (named after the village in West Bengal where it began) in 1967 and ended with the death of founder-leader Charu Mazumdar in 1972, the second phase was 'grievances driven'. He, however, added that the Maoists would never succeed in taking power in India.



Ved Marwah, a former governor of Jharkhand and a former Delhi Police chief, accused 'big business groups - I don't want to name the' and 'even major political parties' of funding the Maoists.

"We are faced with a very serious problem," he said.