Terror can stalk innocent people anywhere ? on Mumbai?s trains and in government-run ?safe camps? in Chhattisgarh?s Maoist bases. The rebel offensive in Dantewada is a grim reminder that extremist politics can be as deadly a face of terror as any other. Like the Mumbai blasts, the Maoist mayhem raises questions about the state?s policy on tackling political terror. If even the ?safe camps? can be turned into killing fields, there must be something seriously wrong with the government?s strategy. Questions had been raised earlier about the wisdom of huddling people in such camps, supposedly to protect them from the Maoists? guns. Monday?s killings show how unsafe actually these camps are. Worse, they show that the people in these camps can be sitting ducks for the rebels. That the victims had little protection from the state?s forces makes the tragedy even more grim. The government, which had forced them to live in the camps, had an obligation to provide them with adequate security. No wonder that large parts of Chhattisgarh remain the happy hunting grounds of the Maoists. It is not merely a question of logistics; the state government does not seem to have the political will to seriously join the battle against the Maoists.

True, the spread of the Maoist rebellion has made it difficult for a state government to tackle it. Similar rebel attacks in Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh suggest that Maoists from different states join hands to mount these offensives. New Delhi routinely involves different state governments in devising ways to meet the challenge. If these attempts have not achieved much, the reason is to be found in the conflicting political approaches to the Maoist threat. Successive governments at the Centre have vacillated between administrative and political approaches to it. The worst example of this is in Andhra Pradesh, where peace initiatives with the Maoists have alternated with repressive measures. Also, New Delhi has not done enough to create a political consensus on the issue. This has resulted in the left denouncing the state-managed salwa judum or the people?s resistance campaign against the Maoists. Instead of tackling Maoism, this particular strategy has become a major bone of contention. This, surely, is no way to fight a problem that has its roots in socio-economic inequities and other failures of the state.