Stand up to fight!

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s offer of talks with Maoists who abducted a policeman in West Midnapur district last Tuesday once again exposes our failure to deal with a hostage crisis. Just it had happened in the past, often with disastrous consequences, the first reaction of our governments both at the Centre and the state-level have been to bend backwards and get the hostages freed at any cost. There have been three major cases in the recent memory—Rubaiya Saeed’s abduction, hijack of IC-814 plane and abduction of three truckers in Iraq in 2004—and in all these cases the governments negotiated with the hostage takers. Ironically, every such capitulation followed by an uproar in the country after which the Centre solemnly declared its resolve to adopt a no-nonsense hostage policy the cornerstone of which would be ‘no negotiation’. But this has remained more as a statement of intent.
No lessons were learnt by the Rubaiya Saeed abduction case and some of the most dreaded international terrorists were released after the hijacking of IC-814 plane. The NDA regime seemed firm in putting in place the ‘no-negotiation’ policy but soon it was forgotten. When the UPA came to power in 2004, it did the same—first it went ahead and negotiated release of three truckers in Iraq and the then said India would henceforth follow US, China and Israel in adopting the policy of no-negotiations. The then National Security Advisor JN Dixit went to the extent of saying that it had the backing of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Dixit went on to say how Maulana Masood Azhar, who was released after the IC-814 hijack, was responsible for the death of 400 to 500 people thereafter!
Cut back to October 2009. Everything has been forgotten and the West Bengal government is now “waiting for a well-defined line of talks from the Maoist”. In turn, the Maoists have promptly sought release of detained ultras, declaring the abducted cop in their custody as a ‘prisoner of war’. Mind it, Maoist ultras have been declared terrorists and a massive operation is being launched against them by the Centre to reclaim the land from their clutches. If the West Bengal government is ready to buckle to free just one policeman, imagine what a big incentive it would be for the Maoists to attempt kidnapping a few more cops and if possible, some high-profile individuals. And what chance in the hell the state has in its battle against the Left-wing extremists! Your task, therefore, is cut out Mr Bhattacharjee: Don’t stoop to submit, rise to fight the menace!