Easier to draft, tough to execute Green Hunt
Vijay Deo Jha
Ranchi

Pix by Mukesh Bhatt

Police have started a high-voltage PR offensive against Naxalites claiming to wipe out them: it is a prologue to Operation Green Hunt in Jharkhand.

Red rebels reciprocated it with same intensity in form of posters and pamphlets and some time on the web space like one in ajadhind.wordpress.com.

"As Prime Minister stated few months ago that the poverty will be rooted out from the country, we understand that there is an urgent need to eliminate the poor people and operation green hunt is a romantic idea to achieve it."

Those who have fine scripted police pamphlets know that it is easier to draft Operation Green Hunt but it is equally tough to execute it on the ground.

"I am quite optimistic about the success rate of the operation. No doubt para-military forces have been arriving to man strategic posts and many will arrive in the coming days, but, there are several steep degree of difficulties that worries the establishment. " a senior police official said.

For instance Jharkhand can afford only 98 policemen per 100,000 population as under UN norm for minimum police strength against 222 in security-sensitive zone. Though, the former Jharkhand Police DGP VD Ram hesitantly claimed man-police ratio was around 140 when he had demitted the office a month back. Others do not believe it. Reason: the state police force is running in deficiency of around 11000 vacant posts under different cadres which needed to be filled up on an urgent basis.

The state government on Friday last announced to expedite the recruitment. "But that will take another one and half years to turn them into the functioning boot on the grounds," he expressed his reservation.

For instance, there are only one policeman per five square kilometers. And in case of Saranda forest, a liberated Maoist zone, that ratio stands no where: only one policeman per 12 square kilometers.

For instance, the strategists have initially worked out to draft nearly 20 jawans for the frontline and most of them are not familiar with the terrain and people they have been asked to dominate.

For instance, the state government never thought to train the cops in the jungle warfare and the Maoist guerrilla will never engage police and para-military forces on the plain when the real fight will break. Lessons needed to be taken from Chhattisgarh where the Naga Police force despite having expertise in jungle warfare was forced to retreat to its base after three years of operation.
A senior official of the Union Home Ministry tried to assuage the fear by saying: "all the five battalions of the CRPF dispatched to Jharkhand for the operation purposes are specially trained in the jungle warfare."

For instance, if Jharkhand government ever opened a jungle warfare institute in Netarhat on the line of Chhattisgarh based Kanker institute, the Jharkhand government left it in lurch just after its opening. The institute was specially opened to train the cops in jungle warfare to combat Maoist menace.

For instance, nearly 1200 cops received training from that institute but that was not upto the mark. Where these cops have gone, surely not on the strategic fronts. The state police have no answer to that.

For instance, the institute is running without a head. "I do not know who has been posted there after I left for a new assignment in Dumka," senior IPS officer Natrajan who once headed the institute said. Prashant Singh headed the institute for a couple of months after Natrajan. The institute is running without a head now.

For instance, the security forces will be forced to act in wilderness since the state intelligence agencies have not trained itself in real-time intelligence and the human information network is in a shambles.

Only the last year the central government undertook satellite mapping of the jungle of Jharkhand but the thick jungle bases defied that.
Executing Operation Green Hunt is not an easy undertaking, though.