A few years ago the Government of India (GoI) had named three interlocutors, including eminent journalist Dilip Padgaonkar, to hold talks with all shades of opinion including the separatists in Jammu and Kashmir as part of efforts to bring peace in the State. Besides Mr. Padgaonkar, Information Commissioner M.M. Ansari and noted academician Radha Kumar were the other two named by the then Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram. However given past failures, including appointing interlocutors for the Naga peace talks, such initiatives from New Delhi faced severe criticism from both the political establishment in mainland India and also the stakeholders in Jammu & Kashmir. Ever since the sudden decision of RS Pandey to quit his role as interlocutor in the Naga talks, the GoI has been searching for a replacement or in other words to find another interlocutor.
The establishment in Delhi needs to do a rethink on appointing such interlocutors, almost on a daily basis especially to deal with the conflict situation in the northeast region. Firstly the selection of persons to play such a role is not satisfying at all. Why is there no wider consultation with people while making such appointments? While in most cases earlier it was retired bureaucrats, the concern now is that Delhi is looking to appoint former intelligence officers or people from the military establishment. If such appointments are made, it is going to be a step backwards and will seriously question the credibility of Delhi to resolve the Naga issue. The main concern with Delhi's culture of appointing interlocutors as of today is that they have lacked the political mandate that is required to engage with the concerned group/s in a more fruitful manner. There was some hope when Union Minister Oscar Fernandes was the GoI's pointsman for the Naga talks.
Pandey too understood the Naga situation well, being a former IAS officer belonging to the Nagaland cadre.
The term interlocutor and the penchant with which the Government of India seems to be engaging such people to talk to ‘separatists' or civil society is something of a new phenomenon although there has been no successful outcome so far of using interlocutor or emissary to resolve a particular problem. Starting with the Naga peace process, appointing interlocutors has become a noteworthy exercise of the Home Ministry to tide over a crisis. In the last over 16 years of the ceasefire and talks with the NSCN, Delhi has employed upto three interlocutor-Swaraj Kaushal, K Padmanabhaiah and RS Pandey. For sometime, during the first UPA government, a Group of Minister headed by senior Congress leader Oscar Fernandez was given charge of the parleys with the Naga group. However this was discontinued for whatever reasons. Later after exhausting the services of Mr Padmanabhaiah, New Delhi argued that it wanted to get into direct talks with the Naga group and therefore a former Nagaland Chief Secretary RS Pandey was roped in, although nothing much has changed. Obviously the Home Ministry has become very adept in dilly-dallying.
The appointment, of whoever the new interlocutor for the Naga peace talks will be, is only going to add to the long list of people being employed for talks with the Northeast and Kashmir groups. All such exercise undertaken so far appears to be more of a study group rather than a real effort to take the political initiative. The disappointment is therefore justified. However, if the GoI is at all serious about resolving the Naga issue, then it should appoint someone who can take the 16 year long peace talk to its logical conclusion. Rather than addressing substantive political issues, such exercises are seen as cosmetic, time consuming and pointless. The real bottomline is whoever is the interlocutor should enable and not disable the peace process.
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