Opinion | From Red Corridor To Red Carpet: How India Transformed Its Naxal-Affected Hinterland

The real measure of victory over an insurgency is not simply how many guns have fallen silent. It is whether people who once had no alternative can now imagine a different future.

In the last few days, images from Chhattisgarh have taken social media by storm, capturing something that statistics rarely can. At a National Handloom Day event in Raipur, former women Maoists from the Bastar region—women who had once carried weapons through the forests of Chhattisgarh—walked a fashion ramp wearing traditional handloom attire. They were greeted not with suspicion or fear, but with applause.

The images went viral, and rightly so. They offered a striking visual metaphor for the transformation of India’s hinterland—from the so-called “Red Corridor" to the red carpet.

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On 31 March 2026, India reached a milestone that would have seemed extraordinarily difficult to imagine a decade ago: the government declared the country Naxal-free, marking the culmination of nearly six decades of Maoist violence. The geographical footprint of LWE had contracted dramatically—from 126 affected districts in 2014 to just 11 by late 2025, with the number of most affected districts falling to zero by March 2026. Meanwhile, annual Naxal-related incidents declined from 870 in 2014 to 234 in 2025.

But the significance of this transformation cannot be captured by these numbers alone.

I had the opportunity to visit Bastar and Dantewada in July 2024, including some CRPF camps, where I interacted with surrendered cadres who had subsequently been incorporated into the security establishment. Seeing former insurgents working alongside the forces they had once fought offered a striking glimpse of the transformation already underway. It brought........

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