Friday, 18 October 2013

The Storm Stoppers

The inside account of how a handful of men averted Phailin and reversed the tragic story of disaster management in India

Sandeep Unnithan Bhubaneswar, October 18, 2013 | UPDATED 21:16 IST

On the evening of October 8, a message from the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) electrified the state secretariat in Odisha.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik immediately convened a meeting of his key officials. A category 5 cyclone was storming in, IMD warned, and would batter Odisha with winds of over 200 kmph-less severe than western weather agencies' prediction of over 310 kmph winds and 50-foot high waves, but ominous enough to bring back grim memories of another October day in 1999.

Naveen Patnaik with cyclone-affected people in Berhampur.

That October 29, an unnamed cyclone had pulverised Odisha's coast, killed over 15,000 people, and caused such abject collapse of the state machinery that the central government had to fly 250 sweepers from Delhi just to clear the bodies. Indeed, then Union minister for steel and mines Patnaik had rued that "together with the state, the government too has been reduced to debris".

Now, Cyclone Phailin loomed. And Patnaik, now at the helm in Odisha, was determined to not let those words haunt him. As the meeting concluded, he passed a terse directive to his officials: "Every human life is precious. there should be zero casualties."

The Aftermath

Four evenings later, shortly after 9.30 p.m. on October 12, Cyclone Phailin made a terrifying ear-splitting landfall in Ganjam district. "It was like an unending express train screaming past our homes for six hours," recalls Rohit Nahak, 26, a farmer from Agastinuagaon village. Phailin (Thai for sapphire) felled trees like they were toothpicks, uprooted cell phone towers and electricity sub-stations, snapped high-tension power lines, toppled multi-wheel container trucks on the highway, ravaged more than 6,00,000 hectares of farmland, and destroyed over 2,00,000 houses. The floods that followed affected 13 of the state's 30 districts. In all, according to officials, the cyclone caused Odisha a loss of no less than Rs.2,000 crore. Rebuilding and re-electrifying Ganjam, the state's most populous district and rice bowl hit hardest by Phailin, will take years.

Yet, there was a silver lining: The death toll was as low as 21 when the storm abated early next morning. Not least because more than 9,73000 people, or the combined populations of Sikkim and Goa, had been evacuated to safety in just 36 hours before the cyclone crashed in. Absent this, the death toll could have been in the thousands, officials said. This effort seems all the more incredible when held up against the stupefying incompetence of the Uttarakhand government, which ignored warnings and then remained paralysed as floods washed away about 5,000 people in June 2013. The difference lay in Patnaik's directive. "We now had a clear objective to work towards," a senior bureaucrat said.

"Years of experience in evacuation and safety drills as well as community participation have helped us. Our district administration has been alert," Patnaik says in his office on October 14, reflecting on the evacuation. Earlier that day, he had flown over Ganjam in a helicopter and toured cyclone shelters, reassuring himself that the plan had worked.

The Exodus

The devastation in Chatrapur, Ganjam district.

It didn't seem it would work, barely a week earlier when the IMD forecast that the cyclone could hit anywhere along Odisha's 480 km-long coast. The state's first priority was to move nearly a million people populating the 5-km danger zone along the coast. At least 30 per cent homes here had thatched roofing and, hence, were extremely vulnerable. At the centre of this effort was Krishan Kumar, the collector of Ganjam, a coastal district 150 km south of capital Bhubaneswar that was predicted to be the worst-hit.

Kumar, a lanky, bespectacled doctor-turned-IAS officer is well regarded in the administration. As district collector of the backward Kandhamal, he had won plaudits for setting up fast-track courts to try the accused in the 2008 communal riots. Now, his toughest task was to convince people to evacuate. "It's really difficult to convince people to move when the skies are clear and there is bright sunshine," he says.

In Jagatsinghpur and other districts battered by the cyclone in 1999, people readily moved. In places like Gopalpur, they had to be coerced.

State government officials toured with megaphones to appeal to people to move out. Many refused because they feared their properties would be looted. Patnaik, a politician of impeccable personal integrity who will seek a fourth consecutive term as chief minister next year, weighed in with personal appeals on TV and radio. He also held two video conferences with collectors of all seven coastal districts. The government's persistence paid off. Village after village emptied out, and moved into nearly 10,000 structures, including 1,060 multipurpose cyclone shelters, inland.

The villagers carried with them only their cash, jewellery, school certificates and property records.

Forewarned and Forearmed
{mosimage}The state's Special Relief Commissioner, Pradipta Kumar Mahapatra, coordinated myriad agencies and officials from the emergency operations centre in Rajiv Bhavan behind the secretariat. Mahapatra was collector of Puri when the cyclone hit in 1999 and had borne the brunt of public opprobrium for the death of nearly 800 people in his district. "We had no information where the cyclone would strike," he says. He was helped by a steady stream of information flowing out of the central monitoring room in New Delhi's Mausam Bhavan.

In this IMD war room, giant screens pulsated with real-time satellite images of Phailin as a menacing red-and-orange swirl over the Bay of Bengal. Supercomputers crunched the numbers to predict its trajectory. India's top weatherman, IMD Director General L.S. Rathore had been closeted here since October 7, when Phailin began as a low pressure area. His team had correctly predicted that this would turn into a cyclonic storm and move towards north Andhra Pradesh and coastal Odisha; their final prediction at 11.30 a.m. on October 10 described Phailin as a 'very severe cylonic storm'.

Thanks to huge improvements in forecasting technology, advanced satellite sensors, high-speed wind recorder networks, data buoys, a Doppler weather radar network and coastal tide gauge network, Rathore's team also accurately predicted where Phailin would make landfall on October 12. This data was swiftly shared with the National Disaster Management Authority, and Odisha through IMD office in Bhubaneswar.

"Weather teaches you to be modest. We must not get excited if we are correct and must not get disheartened if we make a mistake," said Rathore.

{mosimage}Odisha was not only forewarned, but also forearmed. Since the 1999 tragedy, it has set up the Odisha State Disaster Mitigation Authority and a 10-battalion Orissa Disaster Rapid Action Force (ODRAF), which rehearse disaster preparedness every year. As Phailin approached, ODRAF teams, equipped with portable diesel generators and assisted by 1,125 National Disaster Response Force personnel flown in from Delhi, were positioned in all coastal districts. The state cancelled Dussehra and Durga Puja vacations and ordered all officials to report to work, suspended train services to coastal districts, and shut electricity supply. After the cyclone hit, relief teams swiftly cut through the fallen trees to open roads for relief supplies. So much so that even the armed forces, often the first responders to a crisis, were impressed. "There was really very little for us to do," said Lt. Gen Ramesh Rana, GOC, Madhya Bharat Area, who rushed in four of his columns from Jabalpur.

There was, however, a discernible slackening in providing post-relief aid to flood-hit villages. In Ganjam, villagers heckled officials for failing to provide cooked food. This prompted Congress to accuse Patnaik of failing to deal with the post-relief situation.

Patnaik, however, is unfazed. He has held meetings to explore the feasibility of a scheme to convert about 30 per cent thatched homes along the coast into permanent dwellings. His next big directive is in the offing.

- With Kaushik Deka

Follow the writer on Twitter@SandeepUnnithan

Friday, 11 October 2013

Terrorism: Jihad returns to the valley

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Terrorism: Jihad returns to the Valley

The home ministry estimates there are 42 terror camps with a strength of 2,500 militants. Of these terror camps, 25 are in Pakistan and 17 in PoK.

Sandeep Unnithan

Srinagar, October 11, 2013 | UPDATED 12:32 IST

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"Ammi," says a voice, "I am going to sacrifice myself. I need your blessings." Last month, when R&AW intercepted a call to a cellphone in Pakistan's Punjab province, security forces in Jammu and Kashmir went into a state of high alert. The yet-to-be-traced caller was clearly preparing for his final battle. The army knows he is lying in wait somewhere in the Valley, like a cruise missile waiting for target coordinates.

Already, highly motivated fidayeen, brainwashed into fighting unto the death, have struck thrice in Jammu and Kashmir this year. A September 26 twin attack on a police station in Kathua and an army camp in Samba killed 10 persons including the second-in-command of an armoured corps regiment. A June 24 assault on an army convoy killed eight soldiers. A March 13 attack in Bemina, Srinagar district, killed five CRPF troopers. The Valley has not seen fidayeen attacks for three years. Their sudden reappearance lends credence to the Pakistan army's deadly new game. The gambit, the beheading of an Indian soldier in January this year, has now picked up pace as the Valley's chinar trees start to turn a golden hue, signaling the onset of autumn.

The lynchpin of the Pakistan army's new Mission Kashmir strategy is the new jihadi. The new foot soldier is better trained and technologically savvy. The product of three months of training in 42 military-style bootcamps in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK), he is indoctrinated and ready to strike at targets across the LoC. He is armed, not just with satellite phones and AK-47s with under-barrel grenade launchers, but with gadgets far superior to the Indian Army soldiers who fight him. His tactics are more brazen. The three fidayeen who attacked a police station in Samba, about 40 km from Jammu, were disguised in military fatigues. They hijacked an autorickshaw to ride to an army camp and later walked in through an unguarded part of the camp and headed for the officers' quarters. With 20 magazines and over 300 rounds of spare ammunition, they were prepared to inflict mayhem. Reports suggest their original plan was to attack a school and they were carrying three-litre CamelBak water bottles and energy bars in what was intended to be a long haul.

By turning up the heat in Kashmir, the Pakistan army is trying to achieve three objectives, says a senior Indian Army official. "Unite their army by pointing to India as the main threat, motivate militants and derail peace talks being led by their civilian government." Kashmir, a state Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif described as 'Pakistan's jugular' soon after being sworn-in in June this year, is a familiar battleground. With a deadly empowered enemy, the fear across the Valley is as palpable as the gentle breeze rolling over the placid, shimmering Dal Lake. Anti-grenade nets have been drawn down over posts and security forces are out in full force after every suspicious radio intercept. On October 6, hundreds of CRPF boots hit the ground in the state's summer capital after agencies intercepted what they thought was yet another coded warning of a possible strike on Srinagar: "Today we will play Holi in Lal Chowk". The attack never came but Srinagar continues to remain on edge.

New Face of Terror

Army officials say there are 300 Jihadi militants waiting to cross the concertina wires in the country's most policed state before snowfall shuts the mountain passes. Close to half a million security forces are deployed in a state with a population of 12 million, fighting an externally backed insurgency for over two decades. They now face a smarter, more agile foe.

A startling new study prepared by the Combating Terrorism Centre at the US Military Academy, West Point, in April 2013, studied the biographies of over 900 fighters of the Lashkar-e-Toiba who had been killed in Jammu and Kashmir until 2007. It concluded that nearly 89 per cent of the let's fighters were from Pakistan's most populated province, Punjab, five per cent from Sindh and three per cent from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Even within Punjab, the study noted, recruits were most likely to come from districts like Gujranwala, Faislabad and Lahore 'that either bordered India or were quite close to it'.

The study noted that contrary to popular belief that the fighters were products of madrasas, 44 per cent of their fighters were matriculates, and on an average had a more secular education than most Pakistanis. The recruits are tech-savvy, have been known to operate Voice Over Internet Protocol (voip) phones which cannot be intercepted by intelligence agencies, use satellite phones that are a novelty in the Indian Army and are increasingly sporting military-style combat boots and vests. The new jihadi is able to blend into the urban environment, hide in plain sight, merge among civilians and carry out sneak attacks on security forces.

The cross-border attacks and the ceaseless infiltration bids prompted an exasperated President Pranab Mukherjee to snap on October 3. "Non-state actors are not coming from heaven," he told Euronews during a state visit to Brussels, "they are coming from territories under your (Pakistan's) control."

The Pakistan Army wants these jihadis in place this year for a specific goal: The disruption of 2014 Lok Sabha elections in Jammu and Kashmir and the state Assembly elections in November 2014. On September 23, over 100 kilometres north-west of Srinagar, the army began a massive cordon and search operation to hunt for about 30-40 infiltrators, in what is being seen as 2013's Kargil. The circumstances couldn't have been more similar. On September 28, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Manmohan Singh shook hands in New York. In 1999, the same Prime Minister welcomed Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Lahore. Three months later, India went to war to recapture territory taken over by the Pakistan army. Though the army claimed the end of operations in the Keran sector a fortnight later, it is clear that the externally-controlled wave of violence is only going to rise. Attacks on security forces and government officials are expected to peak during election time. "Pakistan is doing two things-putting pressure on its commanders inside the Valley to step up violence, and trying to push in replacements for its neutralised cadres," a senior police official says.

Complementing this externally-controlled wave of violence is a dangerous new component-of locally recruited young persons, 'clean skins' preferably with no previous criminal records, who can conduct stealthy attacks in the Valley. Police estimate that around 50 young men, mostly in their early 20s, have been recruited by groups like let to begin a fresh cycle of violence.

Army officials have announced a full-fledged security review in J&K to include tactics, procedures and coordination. It will augment the current strategy of curtailing infiltration by guarding the 550-km long counter-infiltration fence it has built along the loc and hunting militants down. But it is, as one general says, working hard on 'perception management' with the locals. 'Cordon and search'-where the army surrounded entire villages and hunted house-to-house for hidden militants-are now discouraged. You can now drive from Srinagar to the Manasbal Lake 30 km away, in the middle of the night, without being stopped even once at a checkpost.

Security forces say they also know of a specific ploy by militants to exploit the deaths of innocent persons by reprising the 2010 wave of civil protests which led to the deaths of over 110 civilian protestors in police firing. An army colonel on counter-insurgency duty says he is under express instructions from his superiors not to fire at militants if they are among civilians. "I cannot even shoot at a known militant if he is unarmed," he says.

On October 4, the Indian Army shot and killed three heavily armed infiltrators in Gujjar Dur area of the rugged Keran sector in north-western Kashmir. The 15-km wide sector, with mountains as high as 10,000 feet, deep ravines, crevasses and scrubland offering excellent hideaways, is a favourite militant infiltration zone. Bodies of two of the slain militants were recovered. One militant, identified as Farid Malik, 37, from an identity card he carried, also bore a letter from Havildar Mohammad Yousuf Chaudhary of the 645 Mujahid Battalion asking a certain 'Munayat Sahab' to help him. The Indian Army says this letter facilitated his entry into India. "It is impossible for terrorists to do any activity along the loc without the knowledge of the Pakistan army," fumed Army Chief General Bikram Singh.

Return to Arms

Indian police and security forces say infiltrators are being pushed in because their numbers are dwindling inside the Valley. From a peak of over 2,000 active militants a decade ago, there are just 140 militants active in the Valley now. It's the smallest number since insurgency began in 1989. The remainder are being hunted down. "Militant groups know that if this present trend continues, they will be unable to restart militancy," says Ashok Prasad, Director General Police, Jammu and Kashmir.

The army says that between 30 and 40 militants attempted to enter the Keran sector near the abandoned Shala Bhata village on September 23. They were repulsed by the army. Embarrassingly, though, a two-week cordon and search failed to throw up any evidence of a dozen militants the army had claimed to have killed.

"Thinking that relations will get normalised in such a situation (of infiltration and ceasefire violations), is impossible," Chief Minister Omar Abdullah told the media in Srinagar on October 9. "Peace and development in Jammu and Kashmir are intrinsically linked with peace between India and Pakistan," explains Ali Mohammad Sagar, state rural development minister. "Violence directly affects the state, its people and its economy." Last year, 1.5 million tourists visited J&K, the highest since 1989. Kashmiris, however, say they are also troubled by apathy. "Delhi seems to think if there is peace in Kashmir, then it is all right to let the situation drift," says Noor Mohammed Baba, head of the department of political science, Kashmir University. "The security forces and the army have lost their credibility among the people, especially after the mishandling of the public agitations in 2010 where over a 100 protestors were killed," he says.

Faustian Bargain in Pakistan

The home ministry estimates there are 42 terror camps with a strength of 2,500 militants. Of these terror camps, 25 are in Pakistan and 17 in pok. "The entire infrastructure of terror-launch pads, guides, terrorist training camps-is intact on the other side," says Lt General Gurmeet Singh, GoC of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps. The government's current strategy, of peace talks with Pakistan has been fruitless. G. Parthasarathy, former Indian high commissioner to Islamabad, calls it 'lots of movement with no motion' and advocates raising the issue of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism aggressively. "We are on the defensive despite the fact that Pakistan faces a serious three-front challenge in Karachi, Balochistan and on its western borders," he says.

On September 28, even as the army combed the hillslopes of the Keran sector for intruders and two days after the 16 Cavalry in Samba counted its dead, Manmohan Singh addressed the UN General Assembly. In his 18-minute speech, Singh mentioned the words 'terrorist' and 'terrorism' 11 times as he emphasised that Pakistan should not use its territory for aiding and abetting terrorism directed against India. tant It was a request directed at his successor Nawaz Sharif, whose election brought fresh hope of change. That hope has been belied this far, government officials say.

The Pakistan army has gone back to its old doctrine of bleeding India. "The army senses India is not serious about a dialogue on Kashmir, that we are only going to use the time and space to consolidate politically and militarily," says a senior intelligence official. Ironically, ever since Sharif, took over as Pakistan prime minister in June, hostilities between the two countries have only escalated. This year saw 120 violations of the ceasefire, the highest since a 2003 ceasefire. Worse, the Indian establishment is now unsure of his commitment to reining non-state actors and worse, a covert deal with anti-India groups who operate out of Sharif's bastion in the Punjab province. In June this year, Indian officials got a rude shock when they discovered the Punjab government, whose chief minister is Sharif's brother Shahbaz, had allocated Rs 61 million for a knowledge centre in Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), a front of the banned let headed by 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Mohammed Saeed.

Pakistan's new Kashmir plan comes in the backdrop of the complete withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2014. A move that will reduce pressure on the Taliban and leave the Pakistan army stronger to instigate violence in Kashmir. Militant leaders like the Hizbul Mujahideen's Syed Salahuddin said the withdrawal would have a 'positive impact' on their war in Kashmir. An ominous forecast that Indian planners will have to factor in as they deal with the new jihad in Kashmir.

Follow the writer on Twitter @SandeepUnnithan

- To tweet about the story, use #newjihadi

Monday, 23 September 2013

Fear and foreboding in sugarcane country

Fear & Foreboding in Sugarcane Country

Fear & Foreboding in Sugarcane Country: A vicious clash between two communities in western Uttar Pradesh puts the state on edge as it threatens to spiral into a wider communal conflagration

Sandeep Unnithan Muzaffarnagar, September 13, 2013 | UPDATED 21:26 IST

Sumit Balyan, 30, sits in a crowded ward of Muzaffarnagar's general hospital, nursing a gunshot injury on his left ankle. The truck driver had just returned to his house in the city's Krishnapuri area on September 7 when an angry mob wielding swords and guns surged across the narrow road that divides homes of two communities. A bullet fired by the mob pierced his ankle. "They were shouting religious slogans," he recounts, still trembling in fear. "We fled to save our lives." Akram Malik, a wiry 23-year-old mason sitting a chair away from Balyan, a sword injury on his chest sutured by five stitches, tells a similar story of unsolicited horror. The resident of Haldi village, 50 km away, was on his way to attend a family wedding when a dozen stick-and sword-wielding youngsters stopped the tempo in which his six family members were travelling. His uncle, Karamdeen, 70, who sports a scraggy white beard and a skull cap, was riding in front. The group pulled them out, slashed them with swords and bludgeoned them. "I've lived among Jats for five years," he says tearfully, "I've built houses for them why would they do this to us?"

Police stop a car in Nagla Mandaud village near Muzaffarnagar

It all began with a case of sexual harassment on August 27, which led to three murders in this district of lush sugarcane fields of western Uttar Pradesh, 125 km north-east of Delhi. Sachin, 24, a farmer, and Gaurav, 18, from Malikpur village, allegedly murdered Shahnawaz Qureishi, 26, of Kawal village, 35 km away from the district headquarters. The youngsters were lynched by villagers as they tried to flee. The incident would have gone down as another statistic in a district with a history of land disputes, crime and revenge killings. Instead, it caused Uttar Pradesh's worst incident of communal violence in nearly two decades.

Over the next few days, tempers rose as Jats agitated for the arrest of the perpetrators from Kawal village. Rumours were fuelled by an alleged MMS clip of the deaths of the two youngsters, Sachin and Gaurav; the video was later proved to be fake. There were stone pelting, stray incidents of arson across the district, intelligence alerts that warned of a powder keg, and then, an inscrutable sign: Children stopped going to schools. "It was like a gas balloon slowly building up," says one Muslim leader. On September 3, fresh violence broke out after an argument between a sweeper and a Muslim house owner assumed communal overtones, leading to arson and the death of one person.

On September 7, the balloon burst into an explosive communal conflagration. Nearly 100,000 people from Haryana and neighbouring districts congregated at Nagla Mandaud village, 20 km away from the city. The gathering was illegal because Section 144 was still in force, but both sides had ignored prohibitory orders for over a week and the state government did nothing. At this provocative 'mahapanchayat', Hukum Singh, BJP's leader in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, and Rajesh Tikait and Narendra Tikait of the Bhartiya Kisan Union delivered inflammatory speeches. The crowds returning from the mahapanchayat were fired upon, allegedly by Muslims. Hindus and Muslims fought pitched battles in villages, darting in and out of sugarcane fields and narrow village lanes to target each other.

The communal fire spread to the city. A state government which was a picture of proactive policing last month-it arrested nearly 2,000 people to disrupt the Vishva Hindu Parishad's (VHP) 'chaurasi kos parikrama'-did not even react. Houses burned, entire villages emptied out and villagers fled into police stations. A district known for a flourishing underground gun market-1,604 people were arrested in a drive against illegal weapons in 2008, third largest after Ghaziabad and Meerut-now unleashed its deadly arsenal. The official death toll has touched 40 in western Uttar Pradesh, 34 of them in Muzaffarnagar.

A new generation of youngsters who had only heard horror stories of communal violence after the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992, saw it first hand, before Army columns trundled in to restore some semblance of normalcy at midnight on September 7. By then, the district had become a test case of political ineptitude and police laxity. The police imposed Section 144 on the district soon after the August 27 incident but this was brazenly flouted by a series of khap panchayats. "The police watched idly as these panchayats were held from August 31. Thousands of villagers entered the district on tractor trolleys brandishing weapons, making a mockery of law and order," says Mirajuddin Salmani, 48, who runs a hairdressing saloon in Muzaffarnagar.

There are fears Muzaffarnagar's communal virus could spread. The 70 other districts of Uttar Pradesh, particularly neighbouring Meerut, Bijnor and Moradabad, are on tenterhooks. Holidays have been cancelled, the police are on alert and inventories of riot control gear rushed to these places.

Communal violence was nearly unheard of in Muzaffarnagar, a 4,000-sq-km district with Uttar Pradesh's highest agricultural GDP. Many Muslims are converts and have identical language and customs to their Jat neighbours. Jat leaders like Ajit Singh, whose Rashtriya Lok Dal has five MPs and 11 MLAs, count Muslim-Jat unity as their political power base. That unity has cracked, police and administrative officials say, and the state is in danger because of the politics of polarisation being played out ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections by both Samajwadi Party (SP) and BJP. SP is hypersensitive about its Muslim vote bank to the extent of punishing police officers who arrest Muslim youngsters, and bjp hopes to stage a comeback in Uttar Pradesh by riding on Hindu votes.

Police lodged an FIR against BJP MLA Sangeet Som for uploading a 2010 clip of two youngsters being lynched in Sialkot, Pakistan, on his Facebook page purportedly as Sachin and Gaurav's. A criminal charge was brought against Assembly leader Hukum Singh and Suresh Rana for provocative speeches at the mahapanchayat, charges the bjp leaders deny. But the damage has already been done. State government officials can now only rue the rapid turn of events. "We were so proactive when it came to the VHP yatra," a senior district official explains, "the chief secretary reviewed preparations, police local intelligence units knew the location of every mahant but when it came to Muzaffarnagar, they allowed it to fester until it was uncontrollable."

Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, who defended Akhilesh Yadav in July last year over the government's law and order record, has now tweeted that 'Mayawati's record was better'. Azam Khan, the SP's most influential Muslim leader, boycotted the party national executive meet in Agra to protest against his government's failure to stop the riots. Police officials say the state government's vote-bank politics is only going to worsen things. "When the government unofficially says members of one community cannot be arrested, it encourages vigilantism and signals the failure of law and order," a senior police official says. Worse, a sense of hurt and victimhood continues to simmer as the Army holds flag marches in Muzaffarnagar city. "Nobody's happy," says Tariq Qurashi, 58, president of the city Congress committee. "Both Hindus and Muslims feel hurt and victimised by what happened," he says. A sentiment that could have ominous overtones for the state's fragile communal fault lines.

Wednesday, 11 September 2013

Muzaffarnagar aftermath

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Muzaffarnagar aftermath: A locked house, a grieving family, police, paramilitary and army

Sandeep Unnithan Muzaffarnagar, September 11, 2013 | UPDATED 23:55 IST

Police at the entrance of Kawal village, Muzaffarnagar district. The village has seen heavy police presence since the August 27 triple murders. Photo: Vikram Sharma/India Today

Muzaffarnagar's orgy of communal violence began with three murders in the village of Kawal on August 27.

Shahnawaz Qureishi, 25, a small-time cloth hawker from the village, was allegedly murdered by two youth -- Sachin, 24, and Gaurav, 18 -- for sexually harassing their sister.

Watch the slideshow of the village

The two youngsters, who lived in Malikpur barely two kilometres away, were lynched by Muslim villagers of Kawal.

The murders triggered off riots elsewhere in the district but the village of approximately 12,000 people has not known any disruption since August 27.

A peace committee, formed in the village a week ago, now meets every day; a small group of villagers walks behind a youngster dressed as Lord Hanuman, signals the start of Ramlila festivities.

The village, which is evenly divided among Hindus and Muslims, is calm. It is a calm enforced by personnel in khaki and olive green fatigues.

Hundreds of police personnel stand guard even as military flag marches that kick up dust clouds through the narrow village bylanes.

A Superintendent of Police from Ghaziabad sits in the control room that functions out of an abandoned house and engages the villagers in light banter over tea and biscuits.

Out of sight from the policemen, villagers whisper about anti-social elements in their midst who brutally murdered the boys.

Shahnawaz's family fled the village fearing retaliation around a week back. They haven't returned so far even to claim the Rs.10-lakh compensation being offered by the tehsildar.

The family home, a single-room brick dwelling in Hussainpura mohalla on the village outskirts, stands locked. Work has also stopped on the two-room concrete home the Qureishis were building for themselves on an adjacent plot. Shahnawaz was a small cloth trader who frequently plied his wares in Bangalore and Chennai.

Two kilometres down a narrow dirt path, the tiny village of Malikpur silently mourns its dead sons. The incessant cawing of crows at sundown is the only sound.

Bishan Singh, 45, a sugarcane farmer, lost his son Sachin and his sister's son Gaurav, a student of 12th standard. He now sits with other male members of his family on charpoys outside the family home, greeting visitors who drop by to offer condolences. Two policemen sit on chairs, AK-47s on their laps, fanning themselves in the enervating heat. There is only one happy face there. Sachin's son Gagan, 2, gurgles, laughs and darts around the charpoys.

"He keeps asking for his father," says Bishan Singh. "I don't know what to tell the boy."

Friday, 6 September 2013

Meet the man behind the ISI's Karachi Project: Major Abdur Rehman Hashim alias Pasha

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Meet the man behind the Karachi Project: Major Abdur Rehman Hashim alias Pasha

Sandeep Unnithan September 6, 2013 | UPDATED 14:36 IST

A most wanted list of terrorists routinely given to Pakistan by India's home ministry since the November 26, 2008 attacks has the dim, grainy image of a bearded, middle-aged man sporting close cropped hair. Major Abdur Rehman Hashim alias 'Pasha' is India's Most Wanted number 3 on the list after Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Saeed and Dawood Ibrahim for one very important reason. He heads the 'Karachi Project', a plan to carry out a series of bomb attacks using local Indian youngsters.

Yasin Bhatkal, 30, arrested by a joint IB-Bihar police team in Nepal's second largest city, Pokhra, on August 28, is part of this project. Now as Bhatkal spills the beans on this project, Indian investigators are revisiting Major Abdur Rehman.

Much of what they know of the shadowy former Pakistan army officer who retired from service in 2007, comes from David Coleman Headley, the 'American jehadi' who recced the targets in Mumbai for the LeT to carry out the November 26, 2008 terrorist strikes.

Also read: Yasin Bhatkal's war against India

In the summer of 2010, a relaxed and voluble David Coleman Headley, 53, recounted his fascinating journey down the rabbit hole of Pakistan's deep state, to Indian investigators who questioned him at a US federal prison in Chicago. The Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and its twin strategic assets, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the 'Karachi project', Headley revealed, were not only committed to waging a covert war of terrorist attacks within India, but were also linked with the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

There were several dramatis personae in the story Headley told NIA sleuths: the pot-bellied and evasive LeT supreme commander Hafiz Saeed and Al Qaeda's number three in Pakistan, the one-eyed fanatic Ilyas Kashmiri. But none were as close as Major Abdur Rehman Hashim. The Pakistan army officer, who was 35 years old when Headley met him at the LeT's Qudisiya mosque in Lahore in 2002, was a constant companion to the older Pakistani-American.

Round-faced and of medium height, Abdur Rehman's ISI-run 'Karachi Project', he told Headley, comprised entirely of militants of Indian origin. (the ISI stayed in the shadows to 'plausibly deny' involvement). These Indian youngsters had been trained as bomb-makers and then infiltrated to plant IEDs inside India. Abdur Rehman's Karachi Project was separate from the LeT's similar setup to attack India, also based out of Karachi.

Abdur Rehman's project also had a base in eastern Nepal which had a sizeable Muslim population to allow his operatives to easily blend in. From here, terrorists were easily infiltrated into India via the porous Indo-Nepal border in Bihar. Abdur Rehman frequently visited this base in eastern Nepal.

What drew Headley, then 42, close to Abdur Rehman?

Perhaps Headley, a high school dropout and the product of a broken home , a drug pusher and rejected by the LeT as being "too old to fight in Kashmir" aspired to be like the young officer. Major Abdur Rehman had graduated from Lahore's Government College and passed out of the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul. Like his father Major Abdul Ghani, Abdur Rehman served in the sixth battalion of the Baloch Regiment. His khaki fatigues, however, scarcely concealed the young officer's burning commitment to jehad. He was demoted to captain in 2002 while posted in a frontier town across Afghanistan. He claimed to have been demoted to the rank of captain for refusing to fight.

Delhi Police poster of wanted IM operatives, including the Bhatkals.

Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda fighters fleeing their mountain redoubt of Tora Bora in Eastern Afghanistan in December 2001, for save havens inside Pakistan. Unusual for a serving Pakistan army officer, Abdur Rehman was part of the LeT. When Headley trained to be an LeT footsoldier at the LeT's "daura-e-khas" (a special three-month course for militants) in Muzzafarabad, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, Headley discovered the retired major was there, training LeT fighters to become 'fedayeen' or suicide attackers.

Abdur Rehman later accompanied the LeT's Sajid Mir in 2005 to visit India as a cricket fan. His real mission, however, was to recce targets. Abdur Rehman was no freelance jihadi. He had an ISI handler, Colonel Shah, a serving military officer who kept in constant touch, an association that Rehman chafed at.

In 2006, Headley was despatched to Mumbai at the behest of the ISI and the LeT to recce targets in India's economic capital. Headley, who had by then changed his name from Daood Gilani to the American David Headley and got himself an American passport to escape suspicion. He made as many as five trips to recce targets, shuttling between Mumbai and Lahore, always made it a point to contact Abdur Rehman. The retired officer mediated in Headley's family dispute which arose after Headley took on a second wife, the Morrocco-born Faiza Outalha. Headley frequented Abdur Rehman's home in Lahore because he had broad band connectivity.

The retired Major was Janus-faced when he came to his priorities-on one trip Headley discovered he had gone to 'fight crusader forces in Afghanistan'. But the fight in Afghanistan, which drew Abdur Rehman closer to Ilyas Kashmiri's '313 Brigade', did not distract him from targeting India. He told Headley that the July 2006 Mumbai train bombings which killed over 200 Indian commuters were carried out by local Indian boys. He urged Headley to scout the National Defence College in Delhi, where senior military officers and bureaucrats underwent a year-long course, because 'they could kill more Indian military personnel than in all the wars against India.'

Soon after the Mumbai attacks, Headley and Abdur Rehman drifted apart from the LeT. Headley began working on Abdur Rehman's plan to attack the NDC in Delhi. In October 2009, Headley was arrested by the FBI at Chicago's O'Hare airport. He was to board a flight to Pakistan to meet Abdur Rehman and Ilyas Kashmiri. Abdur Rehman was also arrested by Pakistani authorities in October that year, but, later released. His war against India continues.

Monday, 26 August 2013

Navy's dubious safety record worrisome for national security

India

North

Indian Navy's dubious safety record worrisome for national security

Sandeep Unnithan New Delhi, August 26, 2013 | UPDATED 16:25 IST

INS Sindhurakshak sank in Mumbai after two blasts ripped through its hull on August 14.

In November 2011, the Indian Navy was particularly incensed with what a US naval lieutenant had posted on a blog. The unnamed lieutenant, who spent four days on destroyer INS Delhi in the Arabian Sea as part of an exchange programme, called the Indian crew "generally clueless", with "almost zero seamanship skills". This was one in a long, harsh critique of what he saw on the frontline warship. The blog was removed days after it was posted.
Did the blog touch a raw nerve? Just 10 months earlier, the naval frigate INS Vindhyagiri collided with a merchant tanker in Mumbai harbour sank. It was the fourth time a warship was completely written off in 23 years. Since 1990, the Indian Navy has lost one warship in peacetime every five years. Since 2004, it has lost one naval combatant every two years. Few global navies have such a dubious record. Five days after the August 14 explosion destroyed INS Sindhurakshak, killing 18 crew members, Defence Minister A.K. Antony told Rajya Sabha that "preliminary probe indicated the blast was due to possible ignition of armament". Armed with torpedoes and missiles, the submarine was fully fuelled and ready to sail for patrol early next morning.
Former southern naval chief Vice Admiral K.N. Sushil (retired) cautions it is too early to conclude it sank due to negligence. Evidence points to a blast in an oxygen-powered torpedo, he says. "The Navy must do a forensic examination to pinpoint the cause," he says.
What is worrying is that with each warship loss, key maritime capabilities are being lost. The Sindhurakshak had returned from Russia four months ago, and after a two-and-a-half year refit, was the Navy's most potent conventional submarine. The frigate INS Vindhyagiri was the only warship that could control spy drones far out at sea.
Peacetime losses of warships are not uncommon. Since the World War II, the US Navy has lost 16 warships in accidents. Russia's nuclear submarine Kursk sank in August 2000 after a faulty torpedo exploded during a training exercise. But in case of the smaller Indian Navy-it only has 30 frontline warships and 14 submarines-they point to a far disturbing trend, of human rather than technical error. The Prahar and Vindhyagiri collided with lumbering merchant vessels. The INS Agray was cut into half in 2004 when a crew member tossed a misfired anti-submarine rocket overboard. The spate of accidents comes at a time when the fleet is expanding in both size and complexity. Last year, it acquired INS Chakra, its first nuclear-powered attack submarine from Russia. It is set to induct its largest ship, the 44,000-tonne aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, from Russia this year. Former eastern naval commander Vice Admiral A.K. Singh (retired) slams the Government's apathy. "The Navy is operating vessels long past their service years of 25 and 30 years as the government doesn't sanction new ones in time," he says.
Ageing ships alone do not explain other accidents and collisions. Naval officials say there are a series of smaller mishaps that point to Standard Operating Procedures (sops) not being followed. The August 2009 collision of the missile corvette INS Kuthar with destroyer INS Ranvir in the Bay of Bengal was traced to a rudder failure, compounded by a flawed manoeuvre. In 2010, three crew men on destroyer INS Mumbai were instantly killed when an AK-630 Gatling gun went off as safety drills were not followed. The submarine INS Sindhughosh collided twice; once with a fishing boat in 2006 and once with a merchant vessel in 2007. "The Navy has put in place multiple, institutionalised methods and procedures towards enhancing safety," a naval spokesperson said, responding to a questionnaire. "Each type of unit has a Safety Class Authority that oversees safety aspects and guides safety related policy. On completion of major repairs, all units undergo a safety audit, prior joining respective formations."
"The problem is that we aren't empowering our young officers," admits a senior naval officer, echoing what the US navy blogger said. Experience levels have suffered as there is a mismatch between number of warships and officers. Each year, 60 captain-ranked officers vie for the command of 15-20 warships. "A decade ago, a captain got two 18-month long sea tenures, allowing him to build up experience; today he gets only one," says a naval officer.
"Adequate sea tenures are provided to all concerned," a naval spokesperson said.
In 2006, then defence minister Pranab Mukherjee pulled Navy brass up after a spate of accidents. Accidents have however continued despite 'safety stand down' procedures performed on all warships every quarter, and court-martials. The loss of the Sindhurakshak has now pushed them to unacceptable levels.

Friday, 19 July 2013

The sons of Karimnagar

Inside The Maoist Nursery

Majority of the Maoist leadership hail from a single district of Telangana, a legacy that haunts its demand for statehood

Sandeep Unnithan Karimnagar, July 19, 2013 | UPDATED 17:23 IST

On November 27, 2011, the body of slain Maoist Mallojula Koteshwara Rao alias Kishenji was brought back to his home in Pedapalli village in Andhra Pradesh's Karimnagar district. The Maoist number three, a ruthless tactician fluent in six languages, was killed after a firefight with CRPF men in West Bengal. Policemen in plainclothes filmed the crowds that gathered to spot Maoists in mufti. Kishenji was swiftly replaced in the Maoist politburo, the highest decision making body of CPI (Maoist), by his younger brother Venugopal, 51. His mother, Madhuramma, 76, wife of a deceased freedom fighter, says she may not live to see her son. "This is war," she says, "They kill the police... the police kill them."

Madhuramma, the mother of Maoist leaders Kishenji and Venugopal. Photo: Vikram Sharma/India Today

A majority of the Maoist senior leadership, which steers this war against India from the jungles of Chhattisgarh, hails from Andhra Pradesh's Telangana region. Six of the Maoists' most important leaders including their chief, Muppalla Lakshmana Rao alias Ganapathy, 63, come from a quaint knot of towns and villages of Karimnagar district, 160 km north of Hyderabad.

"They are not like the dreamy Naxalite intellectuals of yore such as Charu Mazumdar," says an Andhra police officer. "These Maoist leaders back ideology with hardcore military skills." Their war, which has claimed over 8,000 lives since 2003, took a savage turn this year. In January, Maoists planted an explosive inside the body of a CRPF trooper they had killed in Jharkand and, in a first for any Indian insurgency, shot down an IAF helicopter on January 18 in Chhattisgarh; on May 25, Maoists massacred 28 people in one swoop, wiping out practically the entire Opposition Congress party in Chhattisgarh-Nand Kumar Patel, V.C. Shukla and Mahendra Karma. Katakam Sudershan, 58, the mastermind, a senior member of the Maoists' Central Military Commission (CMC) is from Belampalli village in Nizamabad that borders Karimnagar.

A 2010 Andhra Pradesh police handbook of 408 wanted Maoists credits Karimnagar with 60 important Maoists, second only to Warangal with 80. Both these districts are part of what will eventually be India's 29th state, Telangana. In a July 12 power point presentation before the Congress core committee in Delhi, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy said that statehood for Telangana would aggravate communalism and Naxalism. Newly created Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, he warned, were in the grip of Naxalism.

Sons Of Karimnagar

Karimnagar with a population of 3.9 million, is sandwiched by the Godavari river in the north, Chhattisgarh's Bastar to the east, Nizamabad to the west and Warangal to the south. It is Andhra Pradesh's hottest district-10 people died after temperatures touched 49 degree Celcius this summer. Geography and climate alone does not answer why the district named after a Nizam scion, turned into an extremist hotbed.

On the morning of June 1 this year, the residents of Beerpur, a village of 3,651 people in northern Karimnagar, were roused by the town crier. Beating a tinny drum, a ritual unchanged since Mughal times, he announced that the government was seizing the lands of top Maoist leaders. He was accompanied by the village tehsildar and an officer from the National Investigation Agency (NIA). Beerpur is the birthplace of Maoist leader Ganapathy. The NIA is pursuing a 2010 arms recovery case in West Bengal where senior leaders including Ganapathy and Tirupati are co-accused. They confiscated 1.3 acres owned by Balamuri Narayan Rao, another Maoist leader and Ganapathy acolyte. Ganapathy, they discovered, owned no land. The effort was a token one, but it is the first time a central agency had acted against a leadership that flits between the grey areas of a Centre and state problem.

Land has always been the root cause. Ganapathy was the son of a farmer from the landowning Velama upper caste, the very class he eventually turned against. A BSc graduate from Karimnagar's srr college in 1970, he taught at a district school for three years. Karimnagar was a district with a history of near-continuous armed struggle. CPI's armed revolt, also called the Telangana Rebellion, began in 1945 and ended in 1951. It was aimed at the Nizam, but the feudal tyranny of the landlords called the 'Doralu' continued even after the Nizam's rule ended. "There was no development, agriculture was rain-fed and feudal oppression rampant," explains Karimnagar MP Ponnam Prabhakar. The Doralu exercised untrammelled power over their unlimited land holdings, a power that frequently extended over the wives of their tenant farmers. It was a condition ripe for uprising.

"He was shy, reserved... a teetotaler with no vices," recalls Ganapathy's cousin Rajeshwar Rao, 75, a contractor who lives in the village as he sits by the roadside, fanning himself with a towel in the damp monsoon heat. "All three brothers were communists," he says, "always immersed in viplava sahityam (revolutionary literature)."

The foundations of the Karimnagar caucus were set in the Radical Students Union (RSU), a Marxist students' body where all the Maoist leaders met. Ganapathy and other graduates from the districts of Telangana gravitated towards RSU. They were joined by other ideologues like Cherukuri Rajkumar alias 'Azad', a gold medallist from the regional engineering college in Warangal (killed by Andhra police in 2010) and Kishenji.

Ganapathy was arrested for violence and arson during the nationwide Emergency in 1977. He jumped bail and went underground in 1979. He and the others joined Kondapalli Seetharamaih's People's War Group (PWG) the following year. They were the children of Mao Zedong, adherents of his Red Book. They were convinced power flowed from the barrel of the gun and, like the Chairman, dreamt of wresting it in three steps: From remote jungle strongholds, to villages and finally the battle for the urban centres.

As the Maoists rose up the ranks, they abandoned families, adopted single guerrilla nom de guerres, left behind wives, children, families and memories: Wavy-haired portraits from the 1980s on walls and musty plastic albums. "I last met my brother in prison in 1980," says Tippiri Gangadhar, 40, a former toddy tapper who now works as a real estate agent. Tirupathi, who like Kishenji and Ganapathy went to Karimnagar's srr degree college, now heads the Maoists' central technical commission. He led the March 2007 attack on a state police camp in Ranibodli, Chhattisgarh, that killed 55 policemen. "He (Tirupathi) told me he had no family. The movement was his only family," says Gangadhar.

The Deadly Landmine

It was in Ganapathy's Beerpur village that the Naxals first used their weapon of mass destruction: The landmine. In 1989, PWG targeted what they thought was a police jeep. The blast blew the jeep to smithereens and showered body parts of the 17 occupants on nearby trees. It was a wedding party carrying members of Ganapathy's extended family. The Maoists issued an abject apology, but their war against the state continued.

By 1992, Ganapathy had ousted his mentor Seetharamaiah, taken control of PWG and driven most landlords out of rural Telangana. "The Naxals ended the 'Dora kaala' (reign of Doras)," says Sande Ravi, 36, a cotton farmer in Gudem village. "We worship him as God," he says pointing at a photo of his brother Sande Rajamouli with an AK-47, the Maoists' badge of high office. Rajamouli, aka Comrade Prasad, 43, was the youngest leader on the Maoists' central committee when he was killed by Andhra Pradesh Police in a 2007 encounter.

Ganapathy's four-room dwelling in Beerpur is a small roofless ruin overgrown with shrubbery. His family abandoned it for the anonymity of Hyderabad. A cellphone tower looms nearby and in the adjoining fields, the music system on a green and yellow John Deere tractor belts out Telugu film songs.

A technicolour statue of 'Telangana amma', holding a bushel of corn and a tray of rice, stands in the village centre. She was introduced a decade ago by Telangana parties as a rival to a similar looking 'Telugu talli' (Mother Telugu) of united Andhra. It looks directly at a 15-ft red column erected by the Maoists, topped with a hammer and sickle, and festooned with names of their fighters who fell to police bullets. The state government erected a rival white pillar topped by a dove with the names of civilians killed by left-wing guerrillas even as it worries an independent Telangana will, once again, turn into a Maoist sanctuary.

The State Strikes Back

A Maoist memorial(right) in Ganapathy's village Beerpur faces a statue of Telanganaamma. Photo: Vikram Sharma/India Today

Sentries stand on guard towers behind self-loading rifles in Karimnagar's fortress-like district police headquarters. Inside, lithe Andhra police commandos sit in jeans, denim shirts and running shoes. The loaded AK-47s on their lap and a gaze that sweeps the scene tells you the Maoist threat hasn't entirely gone. Vishwanath Ravinder, Karimnagar's superintendent of police, sits on a glass- topped table before two crossed flags, one of which reads 'who dares wins'. He explains how the state beat back the Maoist challenge. "A three-pronged strategy of building road infrastructure, curbing armed squads and rehabilitating surrendered Naxals," he says. The Maoists wilted under the 'Andhra model'.

Huge investments in district policing and a formidable intelligence network allowed elite anti-Naxal Greyhounds to conduct precise intelligence-led operations. The Maoists, too, began targeting the police leadership, killing K.S. Vyas, the IPS officer who founded the Greyhounds in 1993, and attacked then Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu in a landmine ambush in September 2003. But by that year, the tide had already begun turning. The Karimnagar leadership carried their ideology and military skills into Dandakaranya's forests-a 92,000 square km stretch that covers Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. In the words of Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, Andhra Pradesh had, unwittingly, exported its Naxals to another state.

The Telugu Officer Class

The younger brother and parents of slain Maoist leader Prasad in Jolapalli village. Photo: Vikram Sharma/India Today

"Vanakka evananna migilaara? (Anyone left?)" a voice in Telugu shouts in a 2007 shaky Maoist battle-cam video, trophy footage of their raid on a police post on Murkinar in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district where Maoist fighters boarded a state transport bus and stormed the post, light machine guns blazing. Eleven police personnel were killed in the attack, a voiceover in the tribal Gondi dialect tells you. However, tactical instructions in Telugu, shouted back and forth, tell you who is calling the shots: An elite Andhra officer corps that controls an army of 10,000 tribal guerrillas that hopes to overthrow the Indian government by 2050.

In his new sanctuary in the impenetrable Dandakaranya forests in September 2004, Ganapathy did what no guerrilla group had done in post-independent India. He unified PWG with another, equally menacing left-wing extremist group, Bihar's Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), to form CPI (Maoist). By 2005, this formidable force was formally anointed as the 'greatest internal security threat' by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Ganapathy heads a red empire spanning approximately 83 districts across nine states. The unification brought the Maoists closer to the eastern states but a bulk of the strategising is still done by the Karimnagar caucus. Ganapathy runs the Maoist empire with his Karimnagar acolytes. Venugopal runs the Maoist bastion, 'Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee' (DKSZC), Malla Raji Reddy controls the sensitive Chhattisgarh- Odisha Border State Committee; Kadari Satyanarayana Reddy from Gopalraopalli is the secretary of DKSZC and Pulluri Prasad Rao heads the North Telangana Zonal committee. Police hope the leadership will surrender or be betrayed by friends and family. Each of them have bounties of Rs.44 lakh. So far, only one central committee leader, Lanka Papi Reddy, surrendered, five years ago.

Narasimha Beats Ganapathy

When home ministry officials look at the Maoist problem, they see an ageing, 'dyeing' leadership. A majority of the senior leadership including Ganapathy use hair dye. A greying guerrilla, even one carrying an ak-47, evidently cannot command obedience. The hair dye cannot conceal a greying ideology. "Maoists are having a hard time getting new recruits," a senior home ministry official says. "This is why over 60 per cent of their fighting cadres are now women. The second-rung leaders don't have the ideological commitment of Ganapathy and his aides," he says, predicting a descent into thuggery.

The final victor, they say, will be Karimnagar's most famous son: Former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. Born into a feudal family in Vangara village, Rao represented the Manthani election segment in the state Assembly thrice until 1973. To the Maoists, Rao was their deadliest enemy, the wealthy landlord-capitalist who had captured power. A police post guarded the Rao family lands in Vangara village which were tilled under police protection.

Tippiri Gangadhar.

Rao's political legacy has been systematically erased by the Congress party. He has no statues in his home district nor state government schemes named after him. But clearly, Rao has had the last laugh. The district town luxuriates in the legacy of his economic reforms. The newly-opened multiplex plays dubbed Telugu versions of World War Z and Man of Steel in the week of their Hollywood release. A new black-topped state highway rushes trucks and buses, the engines of commerce, into the district. China is one of the biggest buyers of granite quarried from the district.

Maoism had died in the birthplace of its founders. Today, only a single armed squad is believed to be active in the district's Mahadeopur region bordering Gadchiroli. The last Maoist-related violent incident was the shooting of a Congress activist in May last year. Arun Kumar, Karimnagar's additional collector, reels out statistics of state government welfare programmes to explain why extremism will not take root again. "There has been considerable redistribution of wealth over the past few decades," he says. "We have managed to tackle the root cause of resentment." Educated youth are now absorbed in the call centres, shopping malls and techno-parks of Hyderabad and other district capitals.

The Prathima Residency hotel advertises itself as the largest pillarless banquet hall in Karimnagar, with a seating capacity of 2,000 people. But nothing prepares you for the sight in the banquet hall of the town's three-star Hotel Swetha: Chinese granite traders gorging on idlis and vadas. Deng Xiaoping's children in the midst of a culinary revolution.