Central forces out to win hearts in Red zone

NEW DELHI: Keen to transform the locals' perception of central force personnel deployed in Naxal zones as impersonal, gun-toting figures, the Union home ministry has approved guidelines that will allow the forces to "connect" with the tribals by bringing them timely medical aid, vocational training, career counselling, farming tips and even sports and entertainment.

The revamped guidelines for the forces' civic action programme across nine Naxal-hit states - an initiative of home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde - have done away with project-based assistance and made it more people-oriented.

So, paramilitary forces manning the counter-Naxal grid - CRPF, BSF, ITBP and SSB - can now utilize the Rs 20 crore annual fund disbursed for civic action to organize medical camps with free medicines and laboratory tests, ferry pregnant women to the nearest health facility and distribute mosquito nets in malaria-endemic areas; impart vocational training, career counselling and coaching; offer farming aids for cooperative farming; promote handicrafts and cottage industries; develop sports facilities and make available sports items for children/youth; besides providing transistors and organizing film shows that promote patriotism and blast social evils.

The new guidelines seek to facilitate a symbiotic relationship between the forces and locals in Left wing extremism-hit zones. While the affected areas, where the local administration may not have reached, will benefit from the facilities offered by the forces, the paramilitary personnel on their part would win the trust of locals, thus weakening the Naxalites' ground support.

According to the guidelines recently communicated by the MHA to the DGs of CRPF, BSF, ITBP and SSB, the central forces can provide study material to school children, impart pre-recruitment training to educated tribal youth and also install hand-pumps, solar lamps and water-harvesting structures.

The Rs 20 crore fund, the lions' share of which would go to CRPF as it has 69,000 men deployed for anti-Naxal operations, can also be applied to improving the living conditions of the very poor. Forces may now fix the dilapidated houses of the very poor and provide them kitchen utensils, clothes and blankets under the civic action programme.