The State Finally Decided to Both Fight and Deliver. The Maoists Had No Answer to That

 

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Security Conversations with  Prof. Rajiv Nayan

Professor, Nelson Mandela center for Peace and Conflict Resolution, JMI, New Delhi

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"The State Finally Decided to Both Fight and Deliver. The Maoists Had No Answer to That."

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Q1. Bharat declared itself Naxal-free on 30 March 2026. Is that declaration sound, or is it premature?

It is sound in the sense that the movement no longer functions as a coherent force. Armed cadres have fallen drastically.. The Central Committee and Politburo are largely neutralised. The financial networks are choked. When a movement cannot recruit, cannot coordinate, and cannot project force, it has ceased to be an insurgency in any meaningful operational sense. But calling this a victory is not premature. It would be dishonest not to.

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Q2. The insurgency lasted nearly six decades. Where did successive governments fundamentally go wrong?

They could not decide what the problem actually was. If it was a law and order problem, you deploy police. If it was a development problem, you build roads. Previous governments treated it as both, which meant they did neither well. More damagingly, some political formations had electoral stakes in keeping the conflict alive at a low simmer. Every ceasefire, every peace dialogue, every moratorium on operations gave the Maoists exactly what they needed: time to regroup. The movement survived not because it was strong. It survived because the state was ambivalent. That ambivalence ended after 2014.

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Q3. What specifically made the SAMADHAN doctrine succeed where earlier approaches failed?

Three things. First, it was non-negotiable in its premise: there would be no dialogue with armed groups. Surrender and rehabilitation, yes. Talks with weapons in hand, never. That clarity prevented the cycles of tactical ceasefire that had protected Maoist leadership for years. Second, it was inter-state in its architecture. The movement had always exploited the gaps between Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Telangana. Coordinated operations denied those escape routes. Third, and this is critical, security operations and infrastructure ran simultaneously. Roads, towers, banks, and schools followed the camps in. The movement's narrative collapsed when tribals could see the state delivering, not just arriving with guns.

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Q4. What is the risk from residual elements and urban Maoism now that the jungle war is effectively over?

It is a real risk, and should not be underestimated or overlooked. Urban Naxals operate through legal and quasi-legal channels: sympathetic academic spaces, certain civil society networks, and media platforms that provide ideological cover. These structures were not dismantled by Operation Kagar, which had been designed to clear the jungle, not the campus. The next phase of the counter-ideological effort must address this deliberately. Bharat needs to be as precise in identifying and confronting Maoist intellectual infrastructure as it was in dismantling the armed cadre. One without the other leaves the ideological roots intact.

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Q5. What must now happen in these former conflict zones to make the peace irreversible?

The security dividend must be converted into a development dividend, and that conversion cannot wait. The risk is a governance vacuum. If civilian administration does not occupy the space left by withdrawing security forces with visible delivery, of land rights, of Gram Sabha authority under The Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 , of livelihood programmes, of justice, then the alienation that fed the insurgency does not disappear. It finds new expressions. The Forest Rights Act must be implemented honestly. Tribal sovereignty must be respected, not just stated. Bharat won the military campaign. The civilisational campaign is just beginning.