The law and order situation in Punjab remains bad, indeed, alarming. While the extremists continue to kill, burn and loot at will, the police are unable to gather the necessary intelligence, follow their movements, anticipate their criminal activities and apprehend them. All this must cause grave concern to all patriotic Indians and generate pressure on the government that it live up to its minimum obligation of protecting the lives and properties of law-abiding citizens. But it does not follow either that those in opposition recommend a course of action that is likely to prove disastrous, or that the government panic and adopt such a course. Yet the first has already taken place; leaders of the national democratic alliance comprising the Bharatiya Janata party and the Lok Dal have demanded that the army be inducted into Punjab. Fortunately the second is not likely to follow. Mrs. Gandhi is not the kind of leader who either panics in the face of heavy odds, or who can miss the possible consequences of the proposal or who is likely to look for a dangerous short-cut in Punjab. Even so the state governor’s reported meeting with General Dayal is bound to provoke the speculation that the government too might be thinking in those terms. It is necessary to put an end to this kind of speculation. The earlier the better.
It is difficult to believe that the NDA leaders have thought through the implications of their proposal. The main problem in Punjab, as everyone knows, is the inadequacy or failure of intelligence. This is die function of the police. They have fallen on their job and they alone can handle it, if anyone can. Even if it is considered legitimate to question their capacity or willingness to do so, it is more than obvious that the army cannot fill this vital gap in Punjab’s internal security arrangements. The police, of course, need to be supported. The demands on them have grown and will continue to grow, and they are too thinly spread to be able to cope effectively with sudden outbursts of mob violence as in Jalandhar, Chandigarh, Amritsar and other towns in recent weeks. The central reserve police force is intended precisely to meet such a contingency. So a number of CRPF units have been assigned to the State. Since these are not considered adequate, the authorities have withdrawn the BSF units from their normal border duties and assigned them to Punjab. There is nothing the army can do in the state which the CRPF and the BSF cannot do equally well, indeed better. For these paramilitary forces are trained to operate in relatively smaller units than the army and that is what internal security duties call for. The army is a weapon of last resort; the government must never use it as if it was nothing more than a better equipped police force. In the case of Punjab, it is not even a weapon of last resort; it must not be used at all.