Resolving India's Maoist Challenge: Looking Beyond Security and Development

The Maoist or Naxalite insurgency began in the late 1960s as a peasant struggle. It represented the revolutionary stream of Indian Marxism which did not believe in a parliamentary democracy, and argued for armed struggle instead, to bring about systemic changes. One of the major factors that explains the footprint of this anachronistic doctrine is the near absence of state agencies and services across India’s vast tribal hinterland, and not any irresistible appeal of the ideology.

A ‘strate...