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 for it: ‘Privileging violence.’ My go-to phrase is ‘mall-stupor.’ We suggested—suggest—the same thing. In an increasingly tone-deaf country, unless people ratchet up their protest to demand what they should in any case be receiving through positive governance, they receive little or nothing.

Maoists twigged on to this decades ago. It began with escalating leftwing protests and violence in the 1940s and 1950s to great violence in the 1960s. With its roots in the Tebhaga movement, this upwelling for fair income for farmers in the Naxalbari region on northern Bengal—the root of ‘Naxalism’, ‘Naxal’ and ‘Naxali’—spread elsewhere, with demands to reduce caste dominance in undivided Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, reduce inequities in Punjab, and so on. In the 1980s and 1990s it morphed to include justice for tribal folk and ‘forest dwellers.’ After CPI (Maoist) was formed in 2004, LWE increasingly embraced positions against mining- and project-led displacement.

Live and learn. If exploitation continues, and land grabs, crony capitalism, or failed rehabilitation of both displaced folks and former rebels, we are only sowing the seeds of dissent.

 HAUL OF THE DAY CRPF with arms cache after counter Maoist operation near Jharkhand

Or it could be like Kashmir where, we were told, terrorism and troubles would end with demonetisation in November 2016; and again, in 2019, after the revocation of Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution. Because beyond triumphalism there must be active policy to replace a hammer-fist with governance, rights, and sense of equity; and to move from the economy of conflict to the economy of peace.

These must be the true objectives beyond tricky deadlines of winning wars against our own people—which is deeply perverse in any case—or we sow the seeds of the next conflict. A continuous conflict.

Also tricky: Immaculate misconceptions of claiming sole credit for victories.

The latest iteration of grinding down the Maoist rebellion is a two decade-old project. In 2006 the United Progressive Alliance government created the Naxal Management Division in the ministry of home affairs—later the LWE Division. It was an operational hub for coordinating anti-Maoist efforts across states, which had until then acted independently. For example, Andhra Pradesh’s elite Greyhounds largely operated in isolation, as did forces in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Odisha, and so on. Cross-border rebel movement was difficult to counter due to jurisdictional limits.

From 2006 to 2008, the ministry began encouraging more joint operations. In 2008, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) launched its specialised units of CoBRA or Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, first deployed in Chhattisgarh. More states developed their own specialised forces and extensions. In Chhattisgarh, the controversial Salwa Judum militia emerged—recruiting tribal youth, often by coercion, to fight against fellow tribals seen as Maoist sympathisers. It divided communities. Maoists had in any case begun recruiting from these same tribal populations—or victims of displacement and caste and general oppression.

States began to take a broader approach—recruiting and training district police, often from the same marginalised communities, weaning them away from Maoist influence. The Centre and states launched military-style operations, intelligence-sharing and actionable intelligence that began to be acted upon, more infrastructure—and, occasionally, better governance.

As initiatives like the Right to Information Act and Integrated Development Plans in conflict areas took shape, governance improved in some of these neglected areas—bringing primary healthcare, education, the criminal justice system, and legal aid.

Action plans for each theatre had its genesis in UPA, when as minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh oversaw two ‘models,’ the Saranda and Sarju action plans in Jharkhand to follow a hub-and-spoke approach to provide basic utilities, healthcare, education and communication, following ultra-local operational successes of reclaiming territory from Maoists. This has remained a go-to plan.

As services began to reach some communities after Maoist zones were ‘sanitised’, the appeal of rebellion diminished. Governance, when finally delivered, did what ideology no longer could.

From 2010 or so, the Indian Air Force and Army Aviation began to provide logistical support. Aerial surveillance and satellite imagery became more common. While the current government has expanded these tools, the operational blueprint evolved with the creation of the Naxal Division. Increasingly, the Maoists faced the full might of the Indian state—superior resources, firepower, and institutional reach.

Alongside military pressure, surrender and rehabilitation schemes across affected states have also offered Maoists, including leaders, a way out: short jail terms or cooling-off periods, followed by reskilling and reintegration into civic and political life. It has been a sustained, multi-layered strategy—military, political, and social—that has brought us to this moment.

The National Democratic Alliance government wholly adopted the approach of its predecessors and then began to appropriate the vocabulary. In May 2017, Rajnath Singh, who was home minister at the time, announced an acronym: SAMADHAN, or solution. It came in the wake of a Maoist attack in Sukma in southern Chhattisgarh, where 25 CRPF troopers were killed by rebels that April.

SAMADHAN, as we learned, was a contraction of ‘Smart leadership, Aggressive strategy, Motivation and training, Actionable intelligence, Dashboard-based KPIs’—key performance indicators—‘and KRAs’—key result areas—‘Harnessing technology, Action plan for each theatre and No access to financing.’

This corporate approach had some fuzzy logic, as I wrote at the time. While training, technology, actionable intelligence and squeezing financial channels were clear enough, what exactly would KPIs and KRAs include? These many Maoist heads per trooper? Fixed collateral damage per company of troopers—one rape and two torture episodes per 10 arrests? Each patrol must walk not less than 15km a day in hostile areas, of which three kilometres must be at a trot? Would each district at war need to provide 50 surrendered rebels every quarter?

It was as if a complicated internal war of enormous social, economic and political significance was distilled to a performance appraisal drawn up by an automaton in human resources.

And here we are: A projected end to the Maoist rebellion by the end of the 2025-26 financial year—the operative calendar of government machinery that revolves around the calendar of planning budgets.

But here’s the thing. Especially over the past decade we have observed the weaponising of law and the weaponising of labels—the disinformation-led trope of ‘Urban Naxal’ is only one such—to silence dissent and discredit even basic demands for better governance. Citizens asking for roads or equity or justice are painted as enemies of the state. Those targeted are increasingly citizens offering feedback, sometimes dissent, most often just a suggestion.

This is the twilight zone where rebellion lives.

(The writer works in the policy-and-practice space in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region. Alongside various other geographies of conflict and conflict resolution, he is also a longtime observer of Maoist rebellions in South Asia)