Mr Gill's strategy involves gathering reliable intelligence on the Maoists' hideouts, and hitting them hard "in a sudden and well-coordinated attack" so they can't "regroup and retaliate." The plan also entails evacuation of large numbers of people from forests.

This thoroughly ill-conceived operation will further brutalise Chhattisgarh's Adivasis and violate human rights without being particularly effective against the Naxalites.

The operation is a sequel to a "people's campaign" called Salwa Judum (peace hunt) launched last year by the government, which has all but triggered a civil war in parts of Chhattisgarh. Salwa Judum (SJ) targets the Naxalites for violent attacks. Its members comprise wealthy Adivasis, traders and contractors. SJ is the creation of Congressman Mahendra Karma, known as "the 60th member of BJP CM Raman Singh's cabinet."

A group called Independent Citizens' Initiative (ICI), comprising scholars, former civil servants and activists, recently inquired into SJ's activities. ICI's report makes disturbing reading. It shows that SJ is not a "people's spontaneous movement" against Naxalites. It's a government-sponsored organisation, with an armed wing of 3,200 Special Police Officers.

The Chhattisgarh government, says ICI, has "outsourced" law-and-order to this "unaccountable, undisciplined and amorphous group." SJ has been forcing tribals to take up arms against the Naxalites -- or be beaten up, illegally fined, or have their homes burnt down.

SPOs are meant to work under the authority of the state police. But in Chhattisgarhs, the police has ceded all power to the SJ's lumpens.

SJ's violent operations have turned the tribal belt into a virtual war-zone. Adivasis are forced to fight the Maoists. Scores of villages have been evacuated. Officially, 46,000 people have been forced into so-called relief camps. According to ICI, their number is 70,000.

ICI has found "evidence of killings, the burning of homes, and attacks on women, including gang-rape." There are arbitrary arrests and "several people seem to be missing. The press is tightly controlled and intimidated."

SJ is guilty of recruiting even minors as SPOs -- a breach of the Geneva Conventions and of several covenants on child rights.

An attempt is also under way to break up tribal communities into the equivalent of "Strategic Hamlets" which the U.S. created during the Vietnam war. This model isn't far-fetched as might appear.

Last fortnight, two U.S. Embassy officials met the Chhattisgarh chief secretary to offer assistance in fighting Naxalites. Although the government hasn't accepted the offer, it's following the same approach to insurgents that the U.S. favours.

Ostensibly, the UPA government advocates a "two-pronged" strategy: deal sternly with violence; but address the sources of discontent underlying it through development programmes.

In reality, the government has concentrated on "modernisation" of police forces, deployment of paramilitary troops, and use of lethal weaponry. Most of the Rs 2,475 crores committed to India's 55 worst Naxalite-affected districts has been earmarked for police-paramilitary operations. Very little has translated into development funding. According to ICI, relief camp conditions are "seriously inadequate."

The government is obsessed with one thing: force. This springs from a "thanedar mentality": coercion is the most effective way of dealing with social discontent.

This approach fails to understand that Naxalite activity has spread to some 160 of India's 600 districts because of agrarian distress, destruction of forests by the timber mafia, uprooting of Adivasis due to predatory mining, irrigation and metallurgical projects, and rapidly growing disparities.

It's no surprise that more than two-thirds of the 55 most severely Naxalite-affected districts lie in the tribal belt. In state after tribal state, the Adivasi economy has been squeezed -- millions of Adivasis have ceased being an agricultural people and lost the organic historical links with land, forests and water.

More generally, Naxalite activity has grown year after every single year because of India's jobless growth, which benefits only a tenth of the population. Naxalism's spread is extremely rapid in areas in which the state has withdrawn from public services and become predatory.

It's hard to defend the violent justice that many Naxalite groups readily hand out to their enemies. However, the problem cannot be resolved by coercion, especially Salwa Judum-style lawless use of force.

This cannot but further alienate Chhattisgarh's Adivasis. Each time an innocent tribal is brutalised and separated from his/her means of livelihood, a Naxalite sympathiser is created.

Mr Gill is a votary of coercion. A great myth about him is that he effectively, yet lawfully, crushed the Punjab insurgency. His methods were lawless: torturing suspected militants, harassing their families, deploying unnumbered jeeps, and killing hundreds of those merely suspected to have harboured Khalistanis.

The National Human Rights Commission has just authenticated the judicial finding that almost 2,000 people were cremated without identification in a single year in Punjab. Clearly, Mr Gill has a lot to answer for. In a more just society, he would be tried for crimes against humanity.

The Khalistani movement died not because of Gill's brutal methods, but because its militants antagonised the people.

By relying on the Mizo contingent trained in "counter-insurgency," and more generally, on brute force, Gill will visit even more violence than SJ on Chhattisgarh people. He must be stopped in his tracks. Salwa Judum must be disbanded. The Centre must radically revise its Naxalite strategy and open a dialogue with Maoist groups.

If the Singh government can hold repeated talks with Kashmiri and Naga separatists, there is no earthly reason why it cannot talk to non-secessionist groups which voice the people's grievances.

The Naxalites have a history of 39 years. They represent something in this society. It just won't do to try to crush them by force.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.