Corporatised Conflict Management

 In the deadline of the Maoist elimination lies the seeds of future resistance

Sudeep Chakravarti

And so, to 31 March 2026. The often-repeated official deadline to rid India of the Maoist rebellion that in one form or another, as factions or as conglomerates, has existed continuously since 1967.

This claim is predicated on a string of spectacular gains this year, particularly the death in May of Nambala Keshava Rao, known by his nom de guerre, Basavaraju, in the Abujhmad forests of Chhattisgarh during an attack by security forces. Rao took over as general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), or CPI (Maoist), India’s largest leftwing rebel conglomerate, in 2018.

The Maoist enterprise has bled leaders and cadres by the hundreds this year. Arrests and surrenders across the primary Maoist operational areas of Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Jharkhand are collectively at over two thousand, among the highest in any year since the peak of the Maoist movement in 2004-2009. At that time nearly a third of India’s 600-odd districts were described as affected by leftwing extremism, or LWE in officialese.

Home ministry figures in December 2024 clocked 38 districts across nine states as ‘LWE affected.’ In October 2025, the ministry claimed it was down to 18 districts. Meanwhile, an overture for a truce and negotiations in September was rebuffed by India’s home minister, who set that deadline akin to a business plan for the end of this financial year.

As momentum gathers to write obituaries of the Maoists it is incumbent on our triumphalist impulses to gauge the rationale and trajectory of the movement. This is instructive. After all, among India’s many wars with itself over variously denying citizens governance, constitutional rights, dignity of identity and aspiration, a sense of equity in the nation, and effective delivery of the criminal justice system, the conflict with Maoist rebels—or Naxalites as the government and media have frequently mislabelled them—remained among the most vexing.

After the state reclaims areas from the Maoists, unless it delivers inclusive, reliable governance, rebellion—or at least resistance—will persist. Repeated protests by farmers in Punjab and Haryana, protests in Kashmir, and most recently protests in Ladakh, are typical. Anger stems from broken promises and savage vilification by government officials and state-led media, among other things.

And that is really the point. While one can bulldoze a way to absence of conflict, peace is earned through trust and credibility of governance. Until that happens, the vacuum will be filled—by Maoists, or someone else.

For all their brutality, extortionist economy, kangaroo courts, and accusations of being out of touch with the aspirations of a modernising country, the uncomplicated truth is that the Maoists—like several violent or non-violent movements across India—have for decades mirrored India’s own failures. Maoists did not ask to break away from India, but to change the way India functions.

My learned colleague in conflict mapping and conflict resolution, Ajay Sahni, has for long had an apt term fo