Reinvention in Gadchiroli and Bastar

Red Reckoning

Part 2

Our five-part series examines the rise and decline of India’s Maoist insurgency, once described as the country’s “greatest internal security threat” and the uneasy transition from conflict to control in its last strongholds.

The dense, teak-filled forests of Gadchiroli have long been synonymous with the ‘Red Corridor’ - a landscape defined by minefields, ideological rigidity and the persistent hum of an insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives. For decades, the story from this remote corner of Maharashtra was one of attrition.

Today, a quieter shift is under way. In a striking turn from guerrilla warfare to grassroots enterprise, a group of surrendered Naxals - mostly women - have traded INSAS rifles for industrial mixers. Under the brand name ‘Clean 101,’ they now manufacture floor cleaners, marking a small but telling milestone in the state’s effort to reintegrate former insurgents into India’s social and economic fabric.

The transition from a Maoist dalam to a self-help group (SHG) is nothing less than a reconstitution of identity. The initiative, spearheaded by Gadchiroli’s superintendent of police, Ankit Goyal, led to the formation of the Navjeevan Utpadak Sangh. For its 11 founding members (ten women and one man) the journey began with their exit from the jungle and a structured induction into the Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Rural Industrialisation in Wardha. There, they were trained in chemical formulation, packaging and quality control.

Economic Independence

The name ‘Navjeevan’ (new life) is apt. For many of these women, life within the movement was marked less by revolutionary equality than by constrained agency. In stepping into entrepreneurship, they are acquiring something the insurgency never offered: economic independence and a legitimate stake in the local economy.

Breaking into a market dominated by large fast-moving consumer goods firms is no small task. Yet the group has found its opening by focusing on institutional demand and aggressive pricing. Their phenyl, local officials say, meets professional standards while being significantly cheaper than established brands. Early signs are promising. The Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth in Akola has already placed a bulk order, suggesting that the product can withstand scrutiny beyond its symbolic value.

For now, the police serve as an unlikely incubator by providing ‘hand-holding’ support in marketing and logistics, and leveraging government networks to ensure that distribution bottlenecks do not stifle the fledgling enterprise. But the ambition is to move from dependence to viability.

The experiment reflects a broader recalibration in how the state approaches insurgency. Tactical operations such as the encounter that neutralised senior Maoist leader Milind Teltumbde remain necessary. But the more durable victory lies in making the mainstream more attractive than the revolution.

This logic underpins a multi-pronged strategy. Beyond small-scale manufacturing, authorities are identifying local economic niches where surrendered cadres can be absorbed. Farmers from Naxal-affected tehsils such as Ettapalli and Dhanora are being exposed to modern agricultural techniques through guided visits to universities and innovation centres in an attempt to blunt the appeal of Maoist propaganda rooted in agrarian distress.

Dual Approach

At the same time, the state has refined its dual approach. Elite C-60 commandos continue to conduct combat operations, while softer initiatives such as the ‘Police Dadalora Khidki’ grievance-redressal scheme aim to build trust. It is an iron fist in a velvet glove strategy, and has yielded a steady rise in surrenders.

The psychological impact may be its most potent dimension. For a woman who once lived in the shadows of Abujhmad, seeing her product on a store shelf is a quiet but profound affirmation of citizenship. It replaces an anti-state identity with a pro-society one.

Equally important, such individuals become living advertisements for surrender. When active cadres learn that former comrades are now business owners who are supported rather than persecuted by the State, the ideological foundations of the movement begin to erode.

Sustaining enterprises like Navjeevan Utpadak Sangh will require navigating supply chains, price fluctuations and competition for retail space once official support recedes. Yet the premise is compelling: insurgency can be countered not only with force, but with opportunity. If Gadchiroli offers one template, Bastar provides another.In the forests of Bastar and the rugged terrain of Gariaband, a different kind of transformation is visible, one measured not in output but in experience. During Diwali in 2025, surrendered Naxalites celebrated the festival openly, some for the first time in years.

At the Kanker superintendent’s office, the air filled with incense and chants as former insurgents gathered for Lakshmi Puja. Among them was Sonu Hemla, a former area committee secretary. Years in the jungle had reduced life to movement, secrecy and survival; festivals were absent, family ties tenuous. “I regret wasting my life on the wrong path,” he said. “Jungle life offered no joy, only weapons and fear. Now we want to celebrate every festival with society.”

His story is not unique. Across the region, surrendered cadres, many of them once mid-level commanders, have begun to reclaim fragments of ordinary life. Police officials, far from acting solely as enforcers, have taken on the role of facilitators: organising celebrations, providing clothing, and creating spaces for social reintegration.

In Gariaband, the symbolism was even more striking. Women once associated with armed squads, some carrying bounties of Rs. 8 lakh, shopped in local markets for their first ‘free Diwali.’ They selected sarees and kurtas, haggled over prices and lit diyas under a programme aptly named ‘Azadi ki Roshni.’ For individuals who had spent years enforcing Maoist writ through violence, such acts of normalcy marked a decisive break. Public participation in everyday life is rapidly challenging Maoist narratives that portray the state as oppressive. It is also offering a visible alternative where former outlaws are not merely tolerated but absorbed in the social mainstream.

The numbers suggest that transformation here has begun apace. Chhattisgarh alone recorded over a thousand surrenders in 2025, with a notable rise in women laying down arms. The state’s surrender-and-rehabilitation policy which offers financial incentives, housing and skill training, has amplified this trend, even as security operations have thinned insurgent ranks.

Yet the deeper significance lies in what surrendered cadres reveal. Their accounts often describe a movement sustained less by ideology than by coercion: forced recruitment, internal discipline and the erosion of personal autonomy. As these stories circulate, they weaken the insurgency’s moral claim.

Transformational Change

Development has reinforced this shift. Roads, schools and mobile connectivity are steadily penetrating areas once beyond the state’s reach. And as access improves, the conditions that sustained Maoism like economic isolation and administrative absence are beginning to recede.

Challenges remain in form of residual cadres, who may resort to sporadic violence as they are increasingly cornered.

Moreover, the long-term success of rehabilitation depends on sustained investment - both financial and political. Still, the trajectory is clear. The state’s emerging strategy of combining coercion with opportunity is clearly producing significant results.

For women like Jansi or Maina, the transformation is deeply personal. Maoism’s rhetoric of equality often masked a harsher reality, in which women bore disproportionate burdens.

Reintegration into the mainstream has offered them agency in form of self-help groups, small businesses and participation in local governance. At a broader level, the implications are economic as well as political. A pacified ‘Red Corridor’ can open the door to massive investment in minerals, agriculture and tourism – areas long constrained by insecurity.

Today, throughout the ‘Red Corridor,’ the insurgent is being replaced not just by the soldier, but by the citizen; not just by the state’s presence, but by its services. Nothing better captures this shift in microcosm than ‘Clean 101.’ It is, at one level, a brand of floor cleaner.

At another, it is a metaphor for the slow cleansing of an ideology that once thrived on isolation and fear.

In Bastar’s forests and Gadchiroli’s markets, the once dreaded Naxalite insurgency is gradually dissolving into something more consequential and positive.

From rifles to mixers, from jungle shadows to festival lights, the arc is unmistakable.

The Indian state is no longer merely confronting Maoism but even more vitally,

consigning it to the ash-heap of history.

(The author is a political consultant and an international relations expert. Views personal.)