Operational victories against Maoist insurgency must now translate into institutional stability and long-term political peace
“Their (Maoists’) Politburo and central structure have been almost completely dismantled. Our goal was a Naxal-free India by 31 March. The country will be informed once the entire process is formally completed, but I can say that we have become Naxal-free”, declared Home Minister Amit Shah in his address to Parliament on the state of the Maoist insurgency in India on 30 March 2026 — a day before the deadline he had announced in August 2024 for making the country Naxal-free. “As of today,” the Minister added, “barring one, the entire Maoist leadership has been eliminated.” Shah did not specify which leader he was referring to, but he was most likely alluding to Misir Besra, an influential operative active in the Jharkhand region and secretary of the Eastern Regional Bureau. Reportedly, Besra escaped a clash with security forces in the Saranda forest in January this year. His potential surrender could bring the Centre closer to fulfilling its commitment to eradicate Maoism completely — at least in its organisational form across forested areas.
This temporal marker provides a useful point to assess the Indian state’s efforts to combat an insurgency once described by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the “biggest threat to internal security” in India. The shrinking “Red Corridor,” the sharp fall in LWE violence, the neutralisation of key Maoist leaders, and rising surrenders indicate a shift in the balance of power in favour of the Indian state. Yet, beyond statistical success lies the challenge of converting operational gains into lasting peace. This article examines India’s counter-insurgency experience, arguing that it offers a democratic template for tackling ideological insurgencies while also identifying emerging challenges.
The CPI (Maoist) operationalised Mao’s doctrine of protracted people’s war, which in the Indian context meant establishing strongholds in forested peripheries, exploiting governance deficits to consolidate control, and ultimately seeking to encircle urban centres for a final assault. This strategy yielded significant gains in the 1990s and 2000s, reflected in the expansion of the “Red Corridor” and the emergence of “liberated zones,” where parallel administrative and judicial systems undermined state authority.
What is to the credit of the Indian state is that the response to these provocations largely remained within a democratic-constitutional framework. Governments refrained from suspending electoral politics or adopting extraordinary measures, instead focusing on strengthening institutional capacity and governance in LWE-affected regions. While states initially were the primary responders to the LWE challenge, the Union gradually assumed a stronger coordinating role. The creation of the MHA’s LWE Division in 2006 marked a turning point, improving intelligence collation and inter-agency coordination, and reframing LWE as a national security challenge rather than a fragmented law-and-order concern.
This shift culminated in the National Policy and Action Plan (2015), which articulated an integrated counter-insurgency strategy. Its ‘hard’ dimension focused on intelligence-led operations, expansion of forward bases, and disruption of Maoist leadership and logistics through the integration of technology. Its ‘soft’ dimension prioritised development and governance through targeted funding, infrastructure expansion, and welfare delivery mechanisms such as direct benefit transfers. Together, these measures combined coercive capacity with developmental outreach to reassert state legitimacy in affected regions.
Shah, in his address to Parliament, quantified the decline, which presents an encouraging picture in India’s fight against LWE. Shah noted that in the past three years alone, “706 Maoists were killed, 2,218 were arrested, and more than 4,800 cadres have surrendered”. Territorially, the Red Corridor has contracted substantially, with just two districts — Bijapur in Chhattisgarh and West Singbhum in Jharkhand — now notified by the government in its latest assessment. In 2005, the same number stood at around 200. Organisationally, the CPI-Maoist has suffered both fragmentation and attrition. The number of those who have surrendered over the decades has been the biggest blow to the movement. This decline is a consequence of the integration of kinetic operations with sustained developmental outreach in LWE-affected districts. Targeted financial measures such as Special Central Assistance funded critical infrastructure—including roads, telecom, schools, healthcare, banking, and livelihoods—while direct benefit transfers and improved monitoring undercut insurgent extortion and reinforced the state’s credibility as a welfare provider.
A key turning point has been large-scale surrenders, facilitated by structured rehabilitation schemes offering financial incentives, education, and livelihoods. Former cadres also contributed valuable intelligence on logistics and networks.
A key turning point has been large-scale surrenders, facilitated by structured rehabilitation schemes offering financial incentives, education, and livelihoods. Former cadres also contributed valuable intelligence on logistics and networks. Combined with leadership decapitation through targeted operations, these measures have significantly weakened the insurgency’s organisational capacity. The resulting gains underpin official confidence in its decline, achieved within India’s democratic-constitutional framework.
A Democratic Template against Protracted People’s War
The Indian experience thus offers an emerging template for democracies confronting ideologically inspired armed insurgencies. First, it validates a core proposition in contemporary counter-insurgency thought: that coercive superiority must be paired with a credible governance and development presence if the state is to durably reclaim contested spaces. Second, it highlights the strategic utility of institutionalised exit options such as amnesties, rehabilitation packages, and pathways to reintegrate into society, in fracturing militant unity and reframing the conflict as one in which defection is rational and dignified rather than a shameful capitulation. Surrendering cadres are not simply removed from the battlefield; they become a major source of intelligence, a fact acknowledged by the Home Minister in his address.
The formal architecture of Indian democracy, including free and fair elections, a diverse media, a robust judiciary, and strong Union-federal dynamics, remained in place, even if localised abuses may have occurred. The democratic polity thus has not prevented but has been central in addressing a long-standing Maoist insurgency.
And third, in contrast to more authoritarian victories such as Peru’s dismantling of Sendero Luminoso under Alberto Fujimori or Sri Lanka’s defeat of the LTTE, India’s approach suggests that insurgencies can be tackled without suspension of democratic electoral politics or emergency or military rule. The formal architecture of Indian democracy, including free and fair elections, a diverse media, a robust judiciary, and strong Union-federal dynamics, remained in place, even if localised abuses may have occurred. The democratic polity thus has not prevented but has been central in addressing a long-standing Maoist insurgency.
Even as strategic success in forested areas presents an encouraging scenario, the question of whether the decline in forests has shifted the movement to a more complex phase, in which the lines between insurgency, radical politics, and legitimate dissent are increasingly difficult to define, needs to be addressed as well. Maoist strategic literature and evolving patterns of mobilisation indicate a shift towards urban fronts, civil-society penetration, and discursive battles over dispossession and state violence.
The CPI (Maoist) increasingly accepts that an exclusive focus on tribal, forested regions is not in tune with India’s evolving socio-economic and geographical realities. The rural–urban dialectic necessitates a stronger urban focus, leading Maoists to prioritise work in cities through revolutionary united fronts and sustained ideological engagement within civil society and public discourse, efforts that could indirectly reinforce the armed movement over time. Although the dismantling of their armed structure makes a full-scale revival unlikely in the short term, the consequences of ideological and strategic investment by the Maoists in urban spaces cannot be ignored.
Expanding legal frameworks and state powers are often debated as necessary tools to counter covert facilitation of violence below the threshold of armed action, but the central challenge remains maintaining a clear distinction—targeting clandestine support for violence while safeguarding legitimate democratic contestation.
Politics apart, the fact that there is a conscious and strategic reorientation by the Maoists is attested in their own party documents. Analytically, this marks a shift in the Maoists’ approach, in which the project becomes less about the immediate seizure of power than about contesting the very edifice of Indian democracy to lend legitimacy to armed struggle.
The Maoist shift toward urban spaces and civil society foregrounds an established dilemma in democratic security governance: how to strike a balance in designing national security legislation that is robust enough to address emerging forms of conflict without disturbing the moral and legal distinction between dissent and insurgency. Expanding legal frameworks and state powers are often debated as necessary tools to counter covert facilitation of violence below the threshold of armed action, but the central challenge remains maintaining a clear distinction—targeting clandestine support for violence while safeguarding legitimate democratic contestation.
While the Maoist insurgency appears territorially and operationally exhausted, its residual ideological networks may still exploit emerging spaces of conflict. The task ahead for the Indian state is twofold: to consolidate its gains in former conflict zones through rights-respecting governance, and to address the urban dimension of Maoism without undermining civil liberties, particularly the balance between security and freedom of expression.
Akshay Ranade is Director, Dr Shripati Shashtri Research Institute of Social Science.
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Akshay Ranade is Director, Dr Shripati Shashtri Research Institute of Social Science. His core research areas include India's foreign and security policy making, internal security ...
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