Iss Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao!!!

A chopper carrying Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Rajsekhara Reddy went missing while on its way to Chittoor from Hyderabad on Wednesday, September 2. Contact has not been established with the chopper since then. The area where the chopper was last seen is Nallamalla forest which is a very stronghold of Naxalites and also infested with Tigers (Real tigers not the Tamil Tigers) :)

The government has launched massive search and rescue operations. With every minute passing without any news of the chopper or its passengers, the rescue party is inflating with more sophisticated machinery being added. Till now it comprises of,

• 8 or more IAF, Army, Civilian choppers.
• Sukhoi 30 fighter jets with night vision capability (read thermal signature sensing).
• ISRO unmanned aerial vehicle which is low flying remote sensing plane to scan the area.
• 5000 CRPF and Army personnel for ground search.
• Elite GrayHound anti-naxalite commandos of AP Police.
• Choppers and other help from Indian Navy as needed.
• Image sensing from Indian Satellites Cartosat-I and II.
• AP govt had also sought help from US satellite real time imagery to scan the terrain but thankfully the central govt ruled it out.
• A local tribe called "Chenchu" which knows the forest is also approached for help.

Have you ever visited a local police station across any town or city in India and happen to see how the police react to a complaint of Missing Person? I doubt they even send ONE wireless message to alert other police stations. In fact they would ask you to register the complaint in some other police station siting jurisdiction limits issues.

If the government can mobilize such huge force and machinery to trace one Chief Minister at such a short notice, cant it deploy the same machinery to weed out and Naxalite stronghold from this very jungle and area? The state and central government, Army, Air Force and Navy all appear to be coordinating very efficiently and smoothly since yesterday morning. Can they not show same coordination, team spirit, promptness while dealing with Anti-Terrorist or Anti-Naxalite operations? Instead, we see an ugly blame after every terror attack with every agency washing its hands off saying that either they did not have "Inputs" or if they had then they "passed it on" arguing that its someone else's job to act on them.

Such a huge search operation is never carried out when a police party goes missing in pursuit of Naxalites. Who cares, they are just constables and Sub Inspectors. They are not VVIP, are they? The gruesome killings of Police personnel by naxalites in makes headline for a day and then disappears as suddenly as the Royal Chopper of the CM.

Now, I DO NOT mean that the government should not have launched these search missions, but then it should ensure that at least 1% of efforts be made to search for normal (Non-VVIP) missing persons rather than according rude treatment and shooing away the complainants?

It can also show same alacrity, coordinated and high profile effort to stamp out the naxalites and other terror outfit operations from this country. The anti-naxal action has been severly crippled for decades due to non-cooperation between police forces and govts of different affected states. The Central Home Ministry had categorically declined to press the Army into anti-naxal operations though the Home Ministers since last 10 years have acknowledged naxalism as the biggest internal security threat for the country.

Afterall, the core ideaology of naxalism is based on the principle that a select few in the society get all the wealth, status and previliges whilethe poor-n-needy majority does not get anything, isnt it?