Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), more bluntly called drones, might soon be used in anti-Maoist operations in India, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs. Apparently, they are to be used solely as surveillance to assist forces on the ground conducting anti-Naxalite operations in a host of states – Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Maharashtra and West Bengal – in order to carry out 'precision' attacks. Officials emphasise that there are no plans yet to use the weapons capabilities. But for how long?
New Delhi is getting desperate, it would seem, if it is contemplating such measures. The contradictory public utterances recently emanating from the Home Ministry further reveal the lack of a cohesive strategy, even while identifying 'left-wing extremism' as the country's biggest security threat. In September, just days after launching Operation Green Hunt (planned as a combing operation to 'flush out' the armed rebels), Home Minister P Chidambaram hastened to dub the proposal a "media creation".
Such backpedalling was perhaps deemed critical in the face of criticism over an armed offensive by a government against its own citizens. Certainly numerous incidents of brutalities by the security forces, especially in Chhattisgarh, have already come to light, atrocities that have had the inevitable effect of increasing sympathy for the Maoists. It is now accepted that excesses by the state-supported vigilante force, the Salwa Judum, led to a spurt in Maoist recruitment. Likewise, amidst talk of sending the army into Maoist-controlled areas, Chidambaram's ostensible olive branch – offering to hold talks with the Maoist leadership – hardly seemed either sincere or pragmatic, given his condition of laying down arms or even of "abjuring violence". It was as late as November that Defence Minister A K Anthony ruled out using the army in anti-Naxalite operations, and the fact that matters progressed relatively far with this plan indicates a politico-military mindset in New Delhi with reference to the Maoists.
The lack of coherent tactics at the Centre is largely due to the fact that, in political circles, the Maoists continue to be seen as a law-and-order issue – a subject that falls under the purview of the state governments. Operation Green Hunt is thus an initiative by New Delhi to lend a hand to the state governments.