India is gearing up for Amrit Mahotsava, but notwithstanding celebratory fervour, many conflicts within remain unresolved. The dominant mood being self-laudatory, honest introspection is hardlythe flavourof the season. Even the United States of America, despite 245 years of independence, faces new set of challenges. So it would be appropriate for India to take objective reality check and formulate requisite conflict resolution templates.

Conflict resolution is conceptualised as combination of methods, structures and processes, involved in peaceful ending of conflict. The common strategies recommended are, firstly, in hard power domain, avoidance (back burner approach) and quelling. Secondly, in soft power realm, yielding, conciliation, co-operation and competitive coexistence. My recommendation is for smart power strategy entailing focused minimal application of hard power, combined with soft power. The foremost requirement is to craft a ‘win-win’ strategy, based on building longterm trust. Unfortunately, most often, parties to conflict, notably insurgent groups and governments (through interlocutors) try ‘smart aleck’ approach, derailing the entire process.

 

Nagaland remains the Gordian knot, defying solution; at present, insurgents are enjoying de facto powers with rampant extortion

India despite ‘Bharatvarsha’ and ‘Akhand-Bharat’ projections, suffered constraints of prolonged colonial ‘divide and rule’ regimes. It willbe appropriateto reiterate remarks of national security advisor, Ajit Doval, “India has always lost due to treachery and enemies within. ” The sheer range of diversities and lack of linguistic glue, generate fissiparous and centrifugal tendencies. According to accepted classification norms, India can at best be designated as ‘nation state’.

Hence, the first challenge after independence was to integrate 520-odd princely states. Despite considerable obduracy on the part of many dominions, all four elements of saam (negotiations), daam (induce-ments), dand (punching), bhed (intrigue) were utilised by relatively inexperienced rulers. While it has become fashionable to indulge in ruler bashing, aided by hindsight, Plebiscite in Junagarh, Operation Polo (Hyderabad-1948), merger of Puducherry and Goa ope- rations (1960), are shining examples of conflict resolution. It is also important to remember that efforts to projectonly SardarPatel need to be rationalised with the fact that Patel passed away in December 1950, within 40 months of independence.

Despite resistance of government, linguistic states had to be accepted, which nurture seeds of conflicts. The decades of ’60s and ’70s were dominated by external conflicts of 1962, 65 and 71. These conflicts and skilful leveraging by Shastri and Indira Gandhi with slogans like ‘Jai Jawan-Jai Kisan’ transformed them to people’s war. They played significant cementing role in our troubled journey of forging nation hood.

Two festering fault lines, left wing extremism (LWE) and Naga insurgency owe their origin to this period. LWE started in 1967 in Nax- albari and despite being quelled by the Army, kept simmering to manifest again in the ’90s. Proxy war, often understood to be synonymous with Kashmir and Khalistan, in fact was initiated with China and East Pakistan, providing sanctuary to Naga rebels inlate ’50s.

Notable silver linings are resolution of Mizo and Punjab insurgencies. The former was classic application of smart power of cooption by putting Laldenga in-charge. The same has been triedin lesscritical situations, like Gorkhaland and All Assam Students’ Union movements, where Subash Gheising and Prafulla Mohanta were mainstreamed. Ironically, all such leaders, whenplaced at helmhavefailed tofulfil aspirations, getting consigned to oblivion. Nagaland remains the Gordian knot, defying solution despite passing away of two (Khaplang and Isaac Swu), out of three musketeers, as Muivah continues to hold out. De-jure mainstreaming of National Socialist Council of Nagaland (IM) remains the key, currently insurgents are enjoying de facto powers with rampant extortion.

Punjab is the only example of hard power solution, albeit combined with support of society. It is also unique because unlike other problems, state police was empowered and Army remained in the background. It is a pity that despite massive expansion of Central Armed Police Forces and the state police, including specialised battalions and intelligence agencies, we remain hesitant to empower Khaki, heavily relying on Armed Forces.

The unfortunate reality is that everyone loves simmering insurgency. It ensures flow of funds (many nonaudited), rewards, allowances for forces and agencies, even insurgents are happy with extortion. Resolution can be expedited, if normalcy is incentivised.

It would be appropriate that across the state, application of Disturbed Area Act (DAA) is stopped. In each designated disturbed district, state government should yield control on posting of deputy commissioner, senior superintendent of police and other functionaries to joint consultative mechanism and special audit of funds by the Centre. Army should review its statistical (kills-based) citation award process infavour of normalcy parameters.

The role of society has been critical in Punjab, Mizoram and to certain extent in even Nagaland, where no rebel group can take up arms readily, as populace has literally got addicted to cease-fire regime since1997. It willbe prudent toavoidreplication of divisive strategies for narrowand immediate political gains. Trust and normative power of societies like Punjabis should be consolidated and harnessed.

Creation of states with splitting of Assam and even unmanageable number of autonomous councils has, to limited extent, satisfied aspirations of tribal satraps. However, permanent solution liesin economicdevelopment and skill building. North east, with collective tribal ownership, reserve forests and pressure on unexploited resources is witnessing frequent armed clashes. It is imperative that issues of inter-state borders are upfront and on priority, as “good fences make good borders”.

Functioning of ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) and NE Council need to be reviewed, with bottom-up planning and genuine autonomy. North-East Frontier Agency was managed by ministry of external affairs till the ’60s. We experimented with internal security division in ministry of home affairs (MHA) in the’80s. Is there a need to reorganise MHA to facilitate conflict resolution? We should also consider designating right kind of interlocutors, as over reliance on intelligence background is not working.

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Views expressed above are the author's own.

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