Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the recent Chief Ministers conference on Internal Security made no bones about the fact that greater emphasis should be laid on intelligence gathering at the grass root level. This was repeated during the just concluded Congress Chief Minister’s conclave. The Prime Minister on both occasions did not mince any word when he asked the state governments to pay more attention to improving law and order situation and toning up the administration for this purpose. The Prime Minister’s address at the Chief Minister’s Conference on Internal Security was hardly pliable. While the PM may have assured that financial constraints will not be allowed to come in the way of improving the law and order administration, whether he also understands the reality of a political process currently underway with the Naga underground groups. Therefore as far as Nagaland is concerned, merely improving the infrastructure needed for the maintenance of peace is not enough.
At the outset, if the Government of India is as serious as is made out to be on improving law and order, the first step that it needs to do is to bring changes in the ceasefire ground rules as rightly mentioned by Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio in his own speech at the conference on September 5. Hopefully, the Prime Minister and his National Security Advisor sitting across the conference room would have understood what Rio was referring to—the complexity of the Naga political problem. Even if modernization of the State police force becomes a ready answer to quell factional fighting, a number of obstacles stand in its way. One problem is that the current disturbance arising out of a turf war between the factions is not a normal law and order situation, for which the State police force is not equipped to deal with. As rightly pointed out by Rio, there are certain grey areas regarding the degree of intervention to be done by the State agencies, in the matter of enforcement of the ceasefire ground rules. And since it is the Government of India which has arrived at the agreed ground rules, the onus now lies with New Delhi to introduce necessary changes and to ensure accountability of the parties for strict adherence to the ground rules.
Despite knowing the flawed nature of the ceasefire mechanism, the failure till now to bridge the fault lines on the part of New Delhi is simply unacceptable. On numerous occasions, public mandated groups from the State have raised this issue even with the Governor but no response is coming. This lackadaisical approach only smacks of insincerity. Suspicion on the minds of ordinary people against Delhi is growing by the day. With whatever good intention that the conference on internal security was organized by the Home Ministry, the Prime Minister must soon realize that unless tangible measures are taken to strictly enforce the ceasefire ground rules with both NSCN factions, the question of law and order becomes meaningless. It will therefore be more useful to have New Delhi treat the ceasefire with the importance that it deserves. Only then can there be some semblance of political order in what is otherwise a pandemonium.
