Political process blamed for conflict escalation

Hyderabad, Jan 27 (UNI) Brig(rtd) G B Reddy today said society and the political processes were primarily responsible for sowing the seeds for violent eruptions.

Delivering the 11th K S Vyas Memorial lecture on ''current, strategic challenges to internal security at the AP Police Academy here, he felt that ''unstoppable societal changes and fast-changing political equations are primarily responsible for sowing seeds for variety of violent eruptions''.

''The widening gap between the rich and the poor is primarily responsible for this and it is not easy to reinduce the temper of tolerence in our society. This is the biggest challenge tormenting law and order machinery on a daily basis'', he observed.

Unless police forces were intellectually well-equipped to deal with such wide range of complex situations mushrooming around them, relative peace may remain a mirage. The focus of intended shift from brawn power of colonial era to brain power in knowledge society was a vital imperative, he underlined.

The retired army office, who tackled insurgency in the North-east, felt that the fall out of such tectonic shifts had plunged the great Indian society into turmoil from time to time and will do so even in times to come.

Various security challenges facing the country included demographic transition fueling identity crises, poverty or widening gap between teh rich and the poor, ever-increasing corruption, leadership decay, lack of professionalism in all fields, crises of national values, regional chauvinism and supratribalism, religious whirlpool, big vs small states, caste conundrum, mafia gangs, money laundering and AIDS, a police release said.

UNI