Left Wing Extremist in India – Origin and Spread l NISSMAT Podcast I Experts Insight

What this session covered

This session took the form of a conversation between the host and a single guest, a retired Army officer who, after leaving service, worked as security adviser at a public-sector mining and refinery complex in Odisha — a facility that had itself been the target of a large, carefully planned Maoist attack in 2009. The host opened by tracing the origins of Left Wing Extremism to the 1967 Naxalbari peasant uprising in West Bengal and the formation of a Marxist-Leninist party to spearhead the movement, before inviting the guest to set out its causes and geographical spread across the so-called red corridor.

The guest located the roots of the movement's later phase in tribal discontent: displacement by mining and development projects, restrictions on forest-based livelihoods, entrenched poverty in mineral-rich but undiversified district economies, caste and feudal stratification, and the near-absence of roads, health care, schooling and connectivity in affected villages. He argued that the Armed Forces had rightly stayed out of what was an internal insurrection, and credited state police and central paramilitary forces — reinforced over time by border-guarding and specialist units and by improved intelligence — with a steep contraction of the movement, which the discussion put at 96 affected districts in 2010 falling to 38 in 2024, across nine states. The host added recollections of the movement's crude early phase in West Bengal in the 1970s, and both speakers noted that attacks in Chhattisgarh in early 2025 showed the threat persists even as violence declines.

On the way forward, the guest defended the government's declared timeline for ending Naxalism as a useful spur, provided it did not license extra-judicial excess, while the host, acknowledging the case for a time limit, questioned how the extremists might read such a warning and at what cost in lives. Both took the view that armed action can only contain an insurgency and that lasting resolution depends on governance: inclusive development that respects tribal culture, credible surrender and rehabilitation schemes, alternative ideological narratives, better coordination across interstate boundaries and among heterogeneous forces, and states accepting their constitutional responsibility for law and order rather than treating the problem as the centre's alone.

Key points raised

• The session traced Left Wing Extremism from the 1967 Naxalbari uprising in West Bengal through a later resurgence centred on tribal regions of central and eastern India.
• Both speakers located the root causes in poverty, tribal displacement by mining and development projects, forest-livelihood restrictions and weak infrastructure, rather than ideology alone.
• The discussion credited state police and central paramilitary forces, not the Army, with containing the movement, citing a fall from 96 affected districts in 2010 to 38 in 2024.
• Attacks in Chhattisgarh in early 2025 were discussed as evidence that the threat persists despite the overall decline in violence.
• The speakers took different positions on the government's declared deadline for eliminating Naxalism: the guest saw a timeline as a useful spur, while the host questioned how it might be read and the lives it could cost.
• Both concluded that force can only contain an insurgency; lasting resolution requires governance, inclusive development, rehabilitation of surrendered cadres and better interstate coordination.