Why Is The CRPF So Slack: Who Is
Responsible?
Those who understand do not have the
power to decide, and those who decide don’t understand- mid-ranking career
CRPF officer quoted in Force Magazine, May 2010
When the nation sees video-feed on News TV channels,
of a stationary grey bus, on a flat bit of road in Pampore (J&K), leading
to a bend, and a little bridge; hears the sound of prolonged machine-gun fire
on the audio, it is natural for its consternation to rise. Why was the CRPF
being shot up like ‘sitting ducks’ yet again?
The CRPF bus, without armour, or bullet-proofing,
but with 28 CRPF personnel aboard, was attacked by just two LeT shooters with
AK-47s, perpetrating the massacre. Ironically, nobody aboard the bus had
weapons, even though the CRPF personnel were returning to base after a bout of
shooting practice!
The terrorists meanwhile, had enough time to change
magazines three times, and shoot at everyone aboard, leaving 8 dead, and the
rest injured to varying degrees.
Security forces in escort vehicles finally arrived,
and killed the two shooters standing alongside the bus, even as another two drove
off in the car they had arrived in. These latter are still at large, despite a
high alert manhunt ordered.
Questions are now being raised on the gaps in
security of a national highway in a sensitive area, where the incident took
place.
Meanwhile, another video being broadcast, shows
heavily armed terrorists, 40 in number, crossing over in a thickly wooded
border area of Kashmir in bright sunlight, passing with a nod and a smile at
the camera. This footage has been recovered by the Indian security forces, from
the belonging of another Pakistani terrorist, killed elsewhere.
The LeT terrorists in the Pampore attack, it is
speculated, are part of the self-same 40 crossovers. But, despite knowing this, the CRPF bus went
absolutely unprotected!
Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar, remarking on
Sunday’s massacre from Bhubaneswar, said this Pampore attack was : ‘an act of
frustration’, since 25 terrorists have been killed by Indian security forces in
the last month alone. He blithely blamed this latest debacle on the personnel
not following ‘standard operating procedure’, but without once wondering at the
state of discipline in the CRPF.
Current Home Minister Rajnath Singh, under whose
charge the CRPF comes, also does not miss an opportunity to make thunderous
declarations every time its personnel are murdered. But, on the ground, there
are no visible changes to prevent future attrition and enhance preparedness.
It is no wonder therefore, that a grinning Pakistani
Ambassador to India, Abdul Basit, blithely carried on with his Iftar Party as
the news of the Pampore massacre came in.
Our media too made more of Basit’s boorishness and
undiplomatic insolence than the shocking ineptitude of the CRPF leadership. In
the topsy-turvy world we live in, they even reported protests at J&K Chief
Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s condemnation of the attack as ‘unislamic’, especially
during the holy month of Ramzan.
Indeed the larger question, of the unprofessionalism
in the CRPF, is not being addressed by anyone in the political establishment as
yet.
Nothing appears therefore to have changed, at a
policy and implementation level, since 80 CRPF personnel were ambushed in
Dantewada, 76 of them killed outright, way back in May 2010.
After a period of ritualistic mea culpa, replete
with solemn obsequies, every time there is a fresh massacre, the establishment goes
back to its horrifying inertia.
The Indian government at centre and state levels,
and the leadership in the CRPF/BSF, has certainly not come any closer to
preventing the regular slaughter of our para-military forces.
In fact, all along the line, the attrition rate in
both these organisations has been significantly higher than the regular Army.
Their funding, equipping, training, morale, discipline, and living standards,
leaves much to be desired. The CRPF has witnessed a rush for the exits, via its
VRS programmes, at three times the rate of the Indian Army.
The operational leadership of the CRPF too, is not
provided by its own career officers, but by senior policemen, deputed for a
tour of duty by the IPS.
Whether such essentially administrative cadre
policemen understand the specialised needs of countering highly armed and
trained guerrilla warfare, is the moot question. Does the IPS have the training
and experience to comprehend and anticipate what is at stake in high risk areas
such as the Maoist infested jungles of central India, the tribal insurgent areas
in the mountainous North East, or the perennially Islamic terrorist ridden vale
of Kashmir?
Do the bureaucrats in the Home Ministry and the
political leadership that sits atop this unwieldy and ad hoc organisation,
realise the need for deep structural changes?
This jugaad style, and perpetual unreadiness,
is a problem that has plagued the CRPF throughout the earlier UPA
administration too, but without finding any succour.
Will the Modi administration, that professes a deep concern
about the well-being of our armed forces, do something to urgently improve
matters now?
For: The Quint
June 27th, 2016
(824 words)
Gautam Mukherjee
No comments:
Post a Comment