When Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared aboard INS Vikrant that India was “on the verge of eradicating Naxal-Maoist terror," it was far more than a policy statement; it was a historic reckoning. His words carried the weight of six decades of blood, ideology, and governance failures that once split India’s heartland into two worlds: one governed by the Constitution, the other by the gun.

The proclamation marked not merely a statistical victory but a civilisational milestone, the near conclusion of one of independent India’s longest internal wars.

What began in 1967 in the small village of Naxalbari as a Maoist-inspired peasant revolt against landlords and state authority gradually metastasised into a full-fledged insurgency. For decades, it engulfed the tribal belts of central and eastern India across West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and parts of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, forming what came to be known as the “Red Corridor." At its zenith, it covered 223 districts and posed what former PM Manmohan Singh once termed India’s “gravest internal security threat."

Behind the insurgency lay deep fault lines: historical neglect of tribal regions, exploitation by forest contractors and moneylenders, and a state apparatus that was either absent or oppressive. The Naxalites exploited this vacuum, projecting themselves as the vanguard of the voiceless, but soon devolved into a ruthless network of extortion, coercion, and anti-development terror.

For years, India oscillated between reactive policing and sporadic development schemes, never an integrated strategy. That changed decisively in 2015, when the Modi government adopted the National Policy and Action Plan to Address Left-Wing Extremism (LWE).

Unlike its predecessors, this policy rejected piecemeal responses. It recognised that Naxalism was not merely a security problem, it was a governance deficit problem. The approach, therefore, combined coercive strength with constructive statecraft, blending counter-insurgency doctrines with development and democratic inclusion. It was, in essence, the operationalisation of what Modi often calls “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas."

The framework rested on five pillars, each addressing a........

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