Too Early To Write Off The Maoist Challenge

The ideas of development and welfare need a relook to deal with Maoism,

- AJAY K. MEHRA

The Maoist movement, also known as Naxalism from the 1967 Naxalbari (West Bengal) outbreak, is in the news and limelight once again. On 26 April 2023, the Naxals threw a challenge to the Indian state by striking in their characteristic fashion in the Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh. They laid an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) on a road that was a usual route taken by the security forces on their Naxal trail.

The deadly blast from the three detonators used blew off the vehicle and 26 jawans and a civilian riding on it, scattering their bodies in a radius of 100 meters. This is the form of attack that the Maoists have been using since the 1980s.

Four days later in Gadchiroli (known to be a hub of Maoist activity) in Maharashtra, three Naxals were killed. On May 1, a senior Maoist operative was killed in Chhattisgarh. On May 2, the National Investigation Agency searched fourteen sites in Bihar and Jharkhand to bust Maoist revival plots in Jharkhand and Bihar. No wonder, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister commented that it has gone beyond being an ideological battle, it has become an anti-national activity.

The attack in Chhattisgarh, the encounter of a Naxal in Gadchiroli in Maharashtra and the search operation by the NIA in Bihar and Jharkhand underlined the fact that despite developmental activities that have deterred the Maoist expansion across the country, the movement has yet to be completely wiped out and has a presence in more than one state.

Yet, the Indian state has had success in the past decade to limit the area under their control by 77 per cent and the districts that have reported their violence came down from 96 to 46 in 2010-21. It is far less than one-third of the districts they controlled at the beginning of this millennium.