From Our Correspondent
Calcutta, July 5
Troops have been deployed in the Birbhum district of West Bengal to check the rising tide of violence by the Maoist extremists known as Naxalites. This is the first important step taken to bring the law and order situation under control since the administration of the state became the direct responsibility of the central Government in Delhi with the imposition of the President’s rule last Tuesday.

Several murders are reported every day. Though it is not always easy to determine who is killing whom, the Naxalites are evidently expanding their campaign of individual terrorism. Police reports also suggest that many ordinary criminals have joined the Naxalite ranks.

Violence has obviously had a powerful appeal to many impressionable young men embittered by the increasing social and economic strains, and the cult of violence is being adopted by workers of other parties as well as the Naxalites. But while toughs belonging to other parties commit assault or murder in reprisal or because of personal or inter-party feuds, the Naxatites regard individual terrorism as part of their political campaign against “class enemies”, though some of the enemies annihilated have been poorly paid teachers or clerks.

It is no longer possible to dismiss this trend as the result of desperation among a group of misguided or alienated youth. The problem is clearly bigger than what it has hitherto seemed to the administration and to Naxalites’ political opponents, including the powerful Marxist Communist Party. In the Birbhum district alone more than 50 people are officially known to have been killed during the past six months.

No less disturbing is the snatching of firearms from their licensed owners and sometimes from policemen. The police believe that while some of these guns have passed into the hands of ordinary criminals, the Naxalites are making a sustained effort to build up arsenals for an “armed struggle”. The situation has steadily deteriorated and now seems so desperate that many people look upon Army intervention as the only hope. Yet those who have studied the matter in depth doubt the effectiveness of the Army against individual terrorists.

They say the Army can put down large-scale, organized violence but will find it difficult to cope with hit-and-run tactics. Hunting down terrorists in a narrow alley in congested Calcutta, for example, is essentially a police job.