Industrial Finance- Untapped Experience

practice, in 1978-79 too, troops were deployed in New Delhi in June 1978 following a strike by the electricity workers and in December 1978 in the whole of Uttar Pradesh during the strike by UP powermen. The Report also enumerates the many instances when the armed forces helped the civil authorities during natural calamities such as floods, cyclones, snow storms, etc; what is however more interesting than these detailed enumerations is that the Report is absolutely silent about the role of the Indian armed forces in what the Annual Reports in earlier years used to describe as 'maintenance of law and order' and 'counter-insurgency operations', particularly in the north-eastern region. It cannot be that such 'co-operation between civil authorities and the armed forces' has stopped, or that the armed have ceased to engage in 'counter- insurgency' operations in regions where the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (or similar legislation) is proclaimed to be in force. But there is not a word about this aspect of the acivities of the armed forces in the latest (or even in last year's) Report of the Defence Ministry.