For many years, the distance between Neganar village in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar and the rest of India was measured not in kilometres but in the length of roads that could not be built and journeys to agricultural fields that could end in a landmine explosion; in the numbers of schools that could not function and mobile towers that were blown up.On Saturday, as Rashtriya Ekta Diwas is celebrated with the theme of “Naxal Mukt Bharat”, many of those who have lived through those years of Left-wing Extremism (LWE) are beginning to look beyond merely surviving.Among those who will be present at the celebrations – which began at the Statue of Unity at Ekta Nagar in Gujarat’s Narmada district on Friday – are Swapna Korsa, a 23-year-old sarpanch from Sukma, Chhattisgarh; Sitaram Hadmo, a village head in Bastar, also in Chhattisgarh; and Pramod Sahukar, a social worker and local reporter from Rayagada in Odisha.Swapna and Sitaram will deliver short speeches at the event in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.The arrival of several men and women with stories similar to theirs in Gujarat for the national celebration of unity offers a glimpse of what peace means to the people who waited years for it, and what they hope will follow. Maraiguda sarpanch Swapna Korsa is only 23, currently studying for a B.Sc.After childhood shaped by fear, young sarpanch looks ahead with hope“I will soon complete two years of my tenure as sarpanch,” Swapna, the sarpanch of Maraiguda in Konta tehsil, said. She said she was elected in mid-2025, rather by accident – she was the dummy candidate for her sister-in-law who was supposed to contest the election, but whose nomination was rejected after an objection.From even before she was born, it had been the practice for the sitting sarpanch to use the threat of Naxal violence to intimidate villagers before elections, Swapna said.Story continues below this ad“He would tell villagers that if they did not vote for him, the Maoists would come and get them. But last year, the residents of the six panchayats [of Maraiguda-1] decided they wanted a change,” she said.The significance of that decision was enormous, Swapna said – it demonstrated that villagers could at last make choices about their lives without fear.Sukma, which was carved out of the original Dantewada district in 2012, occupies the southernmost tip of Chhattisgarh. Maraiguda is in a thickly forested area, close to Chhattisgarh’s borders with Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, and only some kilometres away from the sites of several ambushes and killings by Maoists.Elders in her village and family have told Swapna about the Errabore massacre of July 2006, when hundreds of CPI(Maoist) cadres attacked a civilian camp to the north of Maraiguda and killed dozens – including “a one-year-old girl who was sleeping in her mother’s arms”.Story continues below this adSwapna herself was only a little older than that baby girl at the time, and the fear that the killings spread in her village shaped her childhood, she said.For years, the state barely reached Swapna’s village. “No government officers came, no benefits reached us. There were no roads, schools had no teachers, and the local market had not opened for three decades,” she said.Swapna managed to study in Maraiguda until Class 5, and then moved to Konta to finish Class 12 while staying in a hostel. She is now studying for a B.Sc.“We have now restarted the market in Maraiguda after 30 years. Street lights have come back. Everybody in the village wants peace and development,” she said. “The children who grow up in Maraiguda will hopefully have the opportunities that were denied to earlier generations. We too must have all those amenities that we see in other places.”Story continues below this ad The visitors from 126 former LWE districts were taken in batches on a tour of various cities in Gujarat so they could experience first-hand what development could achieve, according to state Tourism Secretary Kuldeep Arya.No more landmines underfoot, but the road ahead is long and difficultFor Sitaram Hadmo, the 39-year-old sarpanch of Neganar in Bastar’s Lohandiguda block, the threat to life and limb was part of life’s daily journeys – lurking on the paths villagers took every day to their fields.“The Maoists laid mines and explosives under the surface of the roads, and many villagers were blown up, left invalid, missing an arm or a leg. Several were killed in ambushes… Just stepping out of our homes meant putting our lives at risk,” Sitaram said.The only school in Neganar, a village of 1,700 residents, existed only in name, Sitaram said. “There were no teachers, and in the monsoon, parents kept their children away from the dilapidated building,” he said.For Sitaram, who joined the BJP in Chhattisgarh recently, the defeat of Naxalism has shown the possibility of a new, different future. But peace, he said, must translate into functioning schools and basic facilities that allow families to live without fear and children to study.Story continues below this ad“A tour of Gujarat has been planned for us,” he said. “I am looking forward to that, but as of now there is no comparison between Bastar and the developed states of the country.”Also Read | Tribal groups intensify protests against Manipur video, bandh at Bastar in ChhattisgarhCounting the costs: A realisation of all that was not achievedNaxalism retreated sooner in Odisha than in Chhattisgarh, but memories of LWE violence, and its impact on political life, communications, and the relationship between villagers and police is fresh in Pramod Sahukar’s memory.“Naxalism peaked in Rayagada around 2002. Several political leaders were killed, including our block chairman. There is peace now, and no incident has taken place in recent years,” Pramod, a social worker whose wife is a former member of the Zilla Parishad, said.Pramod recalled the days when Maoists would blow up mobile phone towers, cutting off communities from the outside world. “There were virtually no roads. Villagers were under constant threat. Those who were branded police informers were simply killed. I lost many close friends to Naxal violence… On one occasion, after a blast that killed a jawan, I picked up an injured jawan and took him to hospital on my bike,” he said.Story continues below this adRebuilding trust between police and villagers was critical to the defeat of Naxalism in his area, Pramod said. “There was a lot of distance between police and the villagers, there was no communication, no trust… The police outreach to villagers was among the factors that helped bring Naxalism to an end,” he said.Like Sitaram, Pramod too said visiting Gujarat had shown him a glimpse of all that his people had missed out on; visits to the textile park and Surat’s diamond industry had demonstrated what industrial development could offer.“It struck me that so many migrant workers from Odisha come to Gujarat to work because there are so few opportunities in Odisha. With so much labour available, it will be of great benefit if industries are set up in our state,” Pramod said.Swapna, Sitaram, and Pramod are among 5,000 people from 126 former LWE districts that the Union Home Ministry has brought to Kevadia for the celebrations. Earlier this year, the government declared the entire country free from active Maoist threats.Story continues below this ad“We received a list of guests from the MHA and we were asked to make arrangements for their accommodation and excursion in Gujarat… Some of the visitors travelled through Vadodara and Ahmedabad, others took direct trains to Ekta Nagar,” Gujarat Tourism Secretary Kuldeep Arya told The Indian Express.The visitors, wearing identity cards saying “The Gujarat Experience”, have been taken on tours of Vadnagar, Somnath, Rajkot, Vadodara, Surat, and the Amul factory in groups led by nodal officers from their states.The aim, Arya said, was “to give them exposure to the potential that development has for any place”.The visitors will have a prominent place at the Ekta Parade on October 31, at which the Prime Minister will address the nation, Arya said.