GS Paper: GS3-24. Various Security Forces and Agencies and their Mandate.

The Maoist movement is on the ebb on the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha boundary, with its cadre and militia strength heavily depleted.

Who are the Maoists?

• Maoism is a form of communism developed by Mao Zedong.
• It is a doctrine to capture State power through a combination of armed insurgency, mass mobilization and strategic alliances.
• The Maoists also use propaganda and disinformation against State institutions as other components of their insurgency doctrine.

Maoists and Maoism in India

• The Communist Party of India (Maoist) is a Marxist–Leninist–Maoist banned communist political party and militant organization in India.
• It aims to overthrow the “semi-colonial and semi-feudal Indian state” through people’s war.

Confused between Maoists and Naxalities?

• Usually, people confuse themselves over Maoists and Naxalities and cannot exactly trace the difference between the two terminologies.
• Media seems to be confused with the terms and uses Maoists and Naxalities quite inter-changeably.
• This creates confusion in the readers’ minds over the actual meaning of individual terms.

The actual difference between the terms is as follows:

• The difference between Maoists struggle and the Naxalite movement is that both trace their origin to the Naxalbari uprising of 1967.
• But while the Naxalite movement thrives on the original spirit of Naxalbari; the Maoist struggle is an outcome of the 1967 uprising.
• Maoists work with an agenda and use weapons to achieve their aims.
• Naxalism focuses on mass organisations while the Maoism relies mainly on arms.

History and evolution

• Russian Revolution: Naxalism in India, like any other leftist movement around the globe draws its ideological basis from the Russian revolution.
• Overthrowing Tsarist Regime: Lenin successfully fought against the Czarist Rule through a combination of peasant movement and an armed struggle.
• Marxian ideology of class struggle: The prime intent was to bestow power in the hands of the exploited and marginalized and enforce societal control over governance and nation building.
• Neo-Marxism: After the success of the Lenin-led revolution in Russia, the intellectual class in many countries got inspired. Prominent amongst them were Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong.

Root cause of origin in India

• Corporate exploitation: Since Eastern India is rich in natural resources including forests, minerals and mines, tribal face exploitation and harassment from government and corporate bodies targeting to extract those resources.
• Tribal alienation: Tribal communities have been systematically alienated from their traditional rights over natural resources after independence.
• Livelihood losses: Tribal livelihood is at stake due to depletion of natural resource base.
• Forceful displacement: Forceful displacement from their homeland destroys their traditional governance system.
• Absence of governance: In such exploited areas, the absence of governance becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy since the delivery systems are extinguished through killings and intimidation.
• Foreign provocations: Many of LWE outfits are supported by external forces inimical to India and the Maoists consider such alliances as strategic assets.

Other factors:

1. Oppression and HR violations by Security Forces e.g. AFSPA
2. Violation of Constitutional Protections under PESA and FRA
3. Prevalence of Acute Poverty

Impact of LWE

• Romanticism without a cause: Some sections of the society, especially the younger generation, have romantic illusions about the Maoists, arising out of an incomplete understanding of their ideology of Class –Struggle.
• Extreme violence: Their doctrine glorifies violence as the primary means to overwhelm the existing socio-economic and political structures.
• Destruction of governance mechanism: LWEs aims at creating a vacuum at the grassroots level of the existing governance structures by killing lower-level government officials, police personnel of the local police stations and the people’s representatives of the PRIs.
• Radicalization of youths: After creating a political and governance vacuum, they coerce the local population to join the movement.
• Urban-Maoism: Many extremists have facilitated mass-mobilization in semi-urban and urban areas through ostensibly democratic means often led by well-educated intellectuals.

Outcomes of perpetrating LWE

The Leftist organizations skilfully use state structures and legal processes to further the Maoist agenda and weaken the enforcement regime through:

1. Recruitment of ‘professional revolutionaries’
2. Raising funds for the insurgency
3. Creating urban shelters for underground cadres
4. Providing legal assistance to arrested cadres and
5. Mass- mobilization by agitating over issues of relevance/ convenience

Govt initiatives for LWE-affected areas

• Aspirational Districts: The MHA has been tasked with the monitoring of the Aspirational districts programme in 35 LWE affected districts.
• HRD measures: Building of schools under the Eklavya model.
• Road Connectivity Project for LWE affected areas (RRP-II): This aims for improving road connectivity in LWE affected States. Under this, 9279 km of roads and 392 bridges are sanctioned.
• Naxal Surrender Policy: It aims to wean away misguided youth and hardcore naxalites who have strayed into the fold of the naxal movement and cannot find a way back.
• National Policy Action Plan: To address Left Wing Extremism approved in 2015, has development as one of the most important component.

SAMADHAN doctrine: It encompasses the entire strategy of government from short-term policy to long-term policy formulated at different levels. SAMADHAN stands for-

• S- Smart Leadership
• A- Aggressive Strategy
• M- Motivation and Training
• A- Actionable Intelligence
• D- Dashboard Based KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and KRAs (Key Result Areas)
• H- Harnessing Technology
• A- Action plan for each Theatre
• N- No access to Financing

Way forward

• Indian counterinsurgency has to work with a dual objective of defeating the insurgents militarily and fully quell the insurgent impulses.
• This will need institutional overhauls.
• States must do more to synergize their efforts by launching coordinated operations, thereby denying Maoists any space for manoeuvrability.
• On parallel grounds, it is also important to segregate the population from the insurgents both operationally and ideologically.
• The conflict over the distribution of resources can be mended with economic development.

 

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In a major boost to India’s policy on the Rohingya, the MHA would shift Rohingya refugees to flats meant for EWS in Delhi.

Why in news?

• This is seen as a response to the fundamentalists who claims that the NRC, CAA are against any particular community.
• India respects & follows the UN Refugee Convention 1951 & provides refuge to all, regardless of their race, religion or creed.

Who are the Rohingyas?

• Rohingya, an ethnic group, mostly Muslim, hail from the Rakhine province of west Myanmar, and speak a Bengali dialect.
• They comprise one million out of the 53 million people that live in Myanmar, forming the world’s largest stateless population in a single country.
• Universally reviled by the country’s Buddhist majority, they have been oppressed by the government since the late 1970s when the government launched a campaign to identify ‘illegal immigrants’.
• Serious abuses were committed, forcing as many as 250,000 Rohingya refugees to flee to Bangladesh.
• The 1982 Citizenship Law in former Burma made the Rohingyas stateless people.
• They have often been called the most persecuted minority in the world.
• The 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims squeezed precariously into the northwest state of Rakhine, in mainly Buddhist Burma, bordering majority Muslim Bangladesh, are stateless and unwanted.

Why are they stateless?

• To qualify for citizenship, Rohingya applicants had to renounce their identity and accept being labelled as ‘Bengalis’ on all official documents.
• They also had to prove that they could trace the presence of their family in Rakhine back three generations.
• This is extremely difficult as many Rohingya lack documents or had lost them in 2012.

Why did the Crisis happen?

• Since World War II they have been treated increasingly by Burmese authorities as illegal, interloping Bengalis, facing apartheid-like conditions that deny them free movement or state education.
• The army “clearing operations” sparked the mass exodus of Rohingyas in both October 2016.
• In August 2017, were launched after insurgents known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacked several paramilitary check posts.
• Rohingya activists claim the insurgents are mainly young men who have been pushed to breaking point by relentless oppression.

Security Implications

• The Rohingya issue and its spill over impact on Myanmar`s western peripheral region and security implications figured in the discussions is not clear.
• In all probability, the import of the ferment caused by the Rohingya migration, efforts of radical Islamists to influence some of the Rohingya youth, and the Pakistan attempts to capitalise on the situation.
• Rising anger in the Muslim world about the plight of the Rohingya has compounded fears of home-grown militancy as well as support from international jihadists.
• Illegal movement of people, combined with human trafficking and cross-border migration, can weaken Myanmar’s relations with its neighbour Bangladesh and its ASEAN partners.

Where do the Rohingya live in Delhi?

• The Rohingya live in hutments in the densely populated Kalindi Kunj and Madanpur Khadar areas in Delhi which are contiguous with Uttar Pradesh.
• Officially, about 1,200 Rohingya have been identified as among the first batch to have arrived in Delhi in 2012.
• After they protested outside the UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) office in Delhi, they were provided with refugee cards.

Total Rohingyas in India

• In December 2017, the MHA informed Parliament that there are around 40,000 Rohingya in India, of which around 5,700 are in Jammu and also in Telangana, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Rajasthan.
• Of these, only 16,000 are said to be registered with the UN refugee agency.
• The MHA claimed that the exact number is not known as many of them enter the country.

How is the Delhi government involved?

• The Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), responsible for tracking foreigners and their visas, has been requesting space at a new location for the Rohingya from the Delhi government since 2021.
• The FRRO is under the administrative control of the MHA.

When did the Rohingya come to Delhi?

• A/c to MHA, they first came to Delhi in 2012.
• They were forced to leave Myanmar in large numbers after several waves of violence, which first began in 2012.
• The Myanmar army revived the attacks in 2017 and lakhs took shelter in Bangladesh.
• Around five lakh Rohingya fled to Saudi Arabia in 2012.

What is the process of deportation?

• According to the MHA, illegal immigrants are detected, detained and deported under provisions of the Passport Act, 1920 or the Foreigners Act, 1946.
• Once a ‘foreigner’ has been apprehended by the police for staying illegally, without any document, he or she is produced before the local court.
• The powers to identify and deport them have also been delegated to State governments and UTs.
• If the accused is found guilty, they can be imprisoned for three months to eight years.
• After completing their sentence, the court orders deportation.

Have any Rohingya been deported?

• Any foreign nationals who enter into India without valid travel documents are treated as illegal immigrants.
• In 2018, seven Rohingya were deported to Myanmar.
• It was the first time that Myanmar issued a certificate of identity to the seven Rohingya. They had been picked up in Assam in 2012.
• Many Rohingyas have expressed their desire to return to their country and gave an undertaking that they were returning out of their free will.

India’s stance on Rohingyas

• Amid fears of fresh exodus of Rohingya from Myanmar, the MHA in 2017 cautioned all the States about infiltration from Rakhine State of Myanmar into Indian Territory.
• It cited the burden on the limited resources of the country that aggravates the security challenges especially in the North-East.
• It also said the rise in terrorism in the last few decades is a cause for concern in most nations and that illegal migrants are more vulnerable to getting recruited by terrorist organisations.

What is India’s stand on refugees?

• India is NOT a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol.
• All foreign undocumented nationals are governed as per the provisions of:

1. The Foreigners Act, 1946
2. The Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939
3. The Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920 and
4. The Citizenship Act, 1955

Way forward: A humane approach is needed

• India must enact a National Asylum and Deportation Law. Since certain exoduses cannot be prevented due to international pressures.
• We need a proper framework to make sure that refugees can access basic public services, be able to legally seek jobs and livelihood opportunities for some source of income.
• The absence of such a framework will make the refugees vulnerable to exploitation, which is again detrimental to our own national security.
• Our judiciary has already shown the way forward on this: In 1996, the Supreme Court ruled that the state has to protect all human beings living in India, irrespective of nationality since they enjoy the rights guaranteed by Articles 14, 20, and 21 of the Constitution to all, not just Indian citizens.
• The enactment and enumeration of refugee rights will reduce our dependence on judge-centric approaches — or even worse, the whims of Home Ministry bureaucrats, police officers and politicians.

Try this

Q. In the absence of a uniform and comprehensive law to deal with asylum seekers, we lack a clear vision or policy on refugee management. In the context of this, examine the need for law to deal with asylum seeker and suggest the various aspects the law should cover. 

 

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As the long-range, live-fire drills began with China’s Eastern Theatre Command firing several ballistic missiles, Taiwan said that it was “preparing for war without seeking war”. What is Taiwan’s strategy to fight back in case China attempts to occupy it by force?

What is a Military Doctrine?

• Military doctrine is the expression of how military forces contribute to campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements.
• It is a guide to action, rather than being hard and fast rules. Doctrine provides a common frame of reference across the military.

Why do need such a doctrine?

• It helps standardize operations, facilitating readiness by establishing common ways of accomplishing military tasks.
• It decides what you buy, produce, or prioritize, all of which flows from deciding your best fighting foot.

What is the ‘Porcupine Doctrine’?

• This doctrine was proposed in 2008 by US Naval War College research professor William S Murray.
• It is a strategy of asymmetric warfare focused on fortifying a weak state’s defences to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses rather than taking on its strengths.
• It is about building defences that would ensure that Taiwan could be attacked and damaged but not defeated, at least without unacceptably high costs and risks.

How does this work?

It identifies three defensive layers in the porcupine approach.

1. The outer layer is about intelligence and reconnaissance to ensure defence forces are fully prepared. Behind this come plans for guerrilla warfare at sea with aerial support from sophisticated aircraft provided by the US.
2. The innermost layer relies on the geography and demography of the island.
3. While the outer surveillance layer would work to prevent a surprise attack, the second one would make it difficult for China to land its troops on the island in the face of a guerrilla campaign at sea using “agile, missile-armed small ships, supported by helicopters and missile launchers”.

Another tactic: Asymmetric systems of defence

• Asymmetric systems are ones that are small, numerous, smart, stealthy, mobile and hard to be detected and countered and associated with innovative tactics and employments.
• These asymmetric capabilities will be aimed at striking the operational centre of gravity and key nodes of the enemy.
• The geographic advantages of the Taiwan Strait shall be tapped to shape favourable conditions to disrupt the operational tempo of the enemy, frustrate its attempts and moves of invasion.
• Taiwan underlined its shift to an asymmetric approach by adopting the Overall Defence Concept (ODC) in 2018.

Do you know?

Indian armed forces follow the Cold Start Doctrine that involves joint operations between India’s three services and integrated battle groups for offensive operations. A key component is the preparation of India’s forces to be able to quickly mobilize and take offensive actions without crossing the enemy’s nuclear-use threshold.

Need for such a strategy

• China enjoys overwhelming military superiority over Taiwan.
• Over the past decade, Beijing has developed far more accurate and precise weapon systems to target Taiwan.
• China has been more vocal about its intention to “reunite” the island with the mainland, by force or coercion if needed.
• The PLA has already achieved the capabilities needed to conduct an air and naval blockade, cyberattacks, and missile strikes against Taiwan.
• PLA leaders now likely assess they have, or will soon have, the initial capability needed to conduct a high-risk invasion of Taiwan (following Russia’s path).

How easy will it be for China?

• Missile strikes, cyberattacks, air and naval blockade aside, undertaking a full-scale invasion across the Taiwan Strait, with attendant risks of anti-ship and anti-air attacks, could present challenges for China.
• The PLA is estimated to have air and naval resources to carry out an initial landing of 25,000 or more troops, which could increase if it deploys civilian ships to meet its military objectives.
• However, it will have to first select and secure a suitable beachhead from among the handful that is available.
• Also, with small and agile weapons systems, Taiwan can turn its coastline into a kill zone that would deny China a walkover.
• Beijing would have to rely on cyberattacks, missile strikes on Taiwan’s air bases and runways, and a blockade to choke it into surrendering.

 

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