The collapse of the CPI (Maoist) leadership, capped by the recent surrender of Politburo member Thippiri Tirupathi alias Devuji, is being read by many as the inevitable end of India’s longest-running communist insurgency. But while the armed movement may be in terminal decline, the political and governance questions it leaves behind are only beginning.The next phase will test whether the Indian state can turn a hard-won security victory into durable legitimacy, and whether far-left politics can still find space in a more connected, yet deeply unequal, India.Over the past decade, the Maoist movement has been squeezed simultaneously from the top and bottom. Heavy attrition of the Central Committee and Politburo—through killings, arrests and high-profile surrenders such as Basavaraju, Madvi Hidma, Sonu and now Devuji—has left the CPI (Maoist) with a depleted and fragmented command. At the same time, tactical innovations such as district-level reserve forces, better intelligence networks and the expanded use of local police auxiliaries have eroded the guerrillas’ traditional advantages in terrain and surprise.The groundwork was laid much earlier. In 2006, the government led by Manmohan Singh identified Maoist violence as India’s single biggest internal security threat. A comprehensive strategy was later developed by the Ministry of Home Affairs under P Chidambaram. This involved a massive infusion of central armed police forces into Maoist-affected districts, funds for training and modernising state police, and a phased “clear, hold and develop” approach. Security forces were tasked with entering Maoist bastions and pushing guerrillas out, building camps to hold territory, and enabling civil administration to follow with roads, schools and hospitals.Alongside this came a broader crackdown on suspected urban sympathisers. The Narendra Modi government has continued with the same policy with minor tweaks, but greater vigor.Over 15,000 km of roads have been built to take forces deep into forested interiors of central India, more than 9,000 mobile towers installed, and 656 police stations in Maoist areas fortified. Nearly 200 new security force camps have come up in core Maoist zones, particularly across Chhattisgarh and the Andhra–Odisha border region.The results are stark. Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-related incidents and resultant deaths have fallen by over four-fifths since 2010. The number of LWE-affected districts has shrunk from nearly 200 in the early 2000s to just 38 by the end of 2025. A February 2026 review by the Ministry of Home Affairs shows that only seven districts—five in Chhattisgarh, one in Jharkhand and one in Odisha—are now categorised as “LWE Affected”, with just three of them (Bijapur, Narayanpur and Sukma) marked “Most Affected”. Surrounding them is a ring of 31 “Legacy Thrust” districts, where violence has ebbed but state support is being maintained to consolidate gains.Story continues below this adFormer CRPF Director General K Durga Prasad, who helped craft Greyhounds’s counter-insurgency model, argues that Maoists were “never a match to the State”. “The movement started failing a long time ago. The Maoists have admitted this in their own documents. In 2024, the CPI (Maoist) leadership told cadres to either move to secure zones or surrender.”Emerging from the Naxalbari uprising of 1967, early Naxalite groups framed India as a “semi-feudal, semi-colonial” society in which only armed peasant war could deliver land and dignity. Over decades, they spread across what became known as the “Red Corridor”—from forests of Andhra and Telangana to tribal belts of Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha—by embedding themselves among landless peasants, Dalits and Adivasis for whom the formal state was distant, predatory or violently absent.Studies of LWE consistently flag structural drivers: skewed land relations and failed land reforms; bonded labour and caste-based oppression; displacement without rehabilitation due to dams, mines and industry; corruption and brutality in forest and police bureaucracies; and exclusion of Adivasi communities from decisions over land and forests. In many villages, Maoist squads offered rough, sometimes brutal, dispute resolution, enforced higher wages, and punished local strongmen, blending coercion with claims of justice where the formal system barely functioned.A former MHA official cautions against taking Maoist narratives of “unique” exploitation at face value, arguing that exploitation in places like Abujhmaad is often less severe than in urban informal labour markets. Yet even his account underlines that what mattered was not absolute deprivation but the visibility of the state. Maoists succeeded in isolated areas because they were often the only “state” people encountered.Story continues below this adWhat should the state do with the vacuum Maoists leave?As Maoist influence recedes, the danger is not a sudden return of a disciplined guerrilla army but the emergence of new forms of alienation or criminality in areas where insurgent structures once mediated power and resources. The MHA’s decision to designate 31 “Legacy Thrust” districts—from Gadchiroli and Balaghat to Koraput and Bhadradri Kothagudem—reflects recognition that declaring victory is not enough. These areas will continue to receive focused security and development support to prevent relapse.Prasad argues that “withdrawal of Naxals should not lead to undesirable elements filling the space”. Forces, he says, must remain for some time, even as the Centre and states accelerate development delivery. “Once civil administration begins delivering faster, Maoists will never be able to make a comeback.”He points to earlier examples of targeted governance: the old RIAD department in undivided Andhra Pradesh, which pushed roads, schools and hospitals into remote areas, and CRPF field hospitals in Chhattisgarh, which villagers used despite Maoist threats. These interventions, he argues, demonstrated that “when the State delivers, people respond”.Story continues below this adA former MHA bureaucrat involved in anti-Maoist policy suggests a phased transition rather than a sudden thinning of uniformed presence. As forces pull back, locals should be recruited into police and administration, new police stations opened, and everyday governance made visible. The goal is to replace camp-centred, largely external security footprints with rooted institutions—schools that function, health centres that stay open, grievance redress that works—staffed by people for whom these forests are home, not temporary postings.This will require a bureaucracy that is often seen as apathetic to become responsive. Prasad insists this hinges on political will. When union Home Minister Amit Shah announced a March 31 deadline for eliminating core Maoist influence, he says, the intent immediately percolated through the police and bureaucracy. The same clarity of purpose, he argues, is now needed to push governance and development in former LWE belts.Can Maoism—or violent far-left politics—rise again?A decade ago, as forces pressed into central India’s forests, Maoist networks were reported to have spread to districts in Kerala, Karnataka and the Western Ghats, with forays into urban pockets of Maharashtra. Alert state machinery blunted these efforts before they could gain traction.Despite rising inequality and joblessness, the former MHA bureaucrat believes the Maoist model is “dead for all practical purposes”. The classic strategy of sealing off isolated pockets, monopolising information and posing as the only effective “state” has been undercut by roads, phones and social media. “Flow of information has created aspirations. Far left ideology can only succeed if people are totally without aspiration,” he said.Story continues below this adPrasad offers an internal critique: movements die when ideology hollows out. As indoctrination weakened, lumpen elements infiltrated Maoist ranks, and the movement lost appeal among educated youth. “They haven’t been able to attract educated young men in decades,” he notes.On urban inequality, the former bureaucrat points to what he calls India’s “pacifist culture”. “Severe poverty has not translated into everyday urban insurgency,” he said.Prasad is more cautious on inequality. “If inequalities are too sharp and evident, far left ideology can find space even in the unlikeliest of places. Caution should be exercised that these inequities do not reach a point where it revives memories of feudalism that became the basis of Maoist uprising,” he said.The likelier future, sources said, is not a return of the “Red Corridor” but more diffuse, issue-based radicalism in urban and peri-urban spaces—around land acquisition, environmental justice, precarious work or automation—that borrows from far-left vocabularies without defaulting to the gun.Story continues below this adDigital media exposes potential recruits to multiple narratives and exits. That plurality makes it harder to convince them that violence is the only way out of misery—but it also means the legitimacy of the state, not just its coercive power, will now decide whether the space Maoism once occupied remains empty.