Nitin Pai has an important op-ed in Mail Today covering how membership can be claimed (or ascribed) through action rather than declaration. To be a Naxal, you don’t have to be a Naxal, which makes the threat much more viable.
He also describes how:
- Ideology is irrelevant: “The fact both Communism and Socialism failed doesn’t matter to the Naxalite leadership, ideologues and sympathisers: people in remote, backward districts of India don’t know 20th century history.”
- Hollowing out the state instead of offering an existential threat. “So while the Naxalites consolidated into a nation-wide movement a few years ago, the central government continues to claim that this is essentially a matter for the states, and it would only play a co-ordinating role.”
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- Fighting on the cheap. “In the absence of a coherent national antiinsurgency strategy states were left to their own devices.”
- Open-source counterinsurgency. “Setting up Salwa Judum, an extraconstitutional counter-insurgency militia, was a big mistake. So is the draconian law which suspends the freedom of the press.”
