Hunga Muchaki says little. When he speaks, he does so haltingly — unsure of the question asked of him, probably suspicious of the outsider who wants to know more about him. In his 28 years, most of it as a Maoist, rarely has anyone asked him what he wanted for himself, his wife, his daughters, about his dreams. So he listens, doesn’t talk for very long, and then says, “We want a borewell for irrigation, a pond, land rights and small roads. We want a doctor to visit us, otherwise we have to travel over 30 km to Basaguda.”As a Maoist commander, Muchaki had resisted government intervention; but now, five months after surrendering and opening a kirana store in his Kondapalli village, Muchaki is unapologetic as he demands from the State what he sees as rightfully his. Former Maoist commander Hunga Muchaki at his shop, which he set up with money he got as part of the state’s rehabilitation policy. (Express Photo)And then, he goes quiet, his attention returning to the reels on his smartphone.The phone came to Kondapalli, in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, in December last year, when a cellphone tower was erected on the edge of the village. The steel tower, which rises above the mud houses and small shops, was among the first few signs of change in a village that was until two years ago deep in the Maoist heartland, one of several villages in Chhattisgarh’s Red Corridor where the state had little say or presence.Kondapalli was part of the Maoists’ South Bastar division and served as a base for Battalion 1, the most dreaded unit of the armed People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army. Located 79 km from Bijapur, it was where roads wound deep into the dense jungles of sal, teak and bamboo, where government offices and the school building stood empty, and the buses never came. That changed in November 2024, when the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) announced that it was establishing a forward base in Kondapalli. Around the block in Kondapalli villageNow, 80 years after Independence, with Union Home Minister Amit Shah declaring the country Maoist-free, the State is back in Kondapalli, establishing itself through a string of visible markers of development — roads, panchayat bhawans, an anganwadi, an upper primary school and a road.Along the Red CorridorFormer Bijapur Superintendent of Police Jitendra Kumar says Kondapalli, a village of 600 people, lay in the Maoists’ South Bastar division, part of what they called the ‘Liberated Zone’. Every year, the Maoists would gather hundreds of villagers to a 64-foot-tall memorial in Komatpalli, part of the Kondapalli gram panchayat, to celebrate Martyrs’ Week.Story continues below this ad A village of 600 people, Kondapalli sits on the state’s border with Telangana. (Express Photo)The division, he says, was one of the strongest Maoist formations and among the last to fall. “They could gather the support of over 400-500 people in no time,” says SP Kumar, who is now posted in Kabirdham. “Kondapalli was important to the Maoists also because their supplies came from its local market.”That changed in November 2024, when the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) announced that it was establishing a forward base in Kondapalli. A series of encounters followed, after which the Maoists were pushed into Telangana, where they eventually laid down arms in March 2026.For the State, the entry into Kondapalli and nearby villages signalled the end of a decades-long insurgency that had claimed at least 4,741 lives in Bastar region alone since 2000.“The battalion (Battalion No. 1) used to camp in the jungle outside our village. They are gone now, but in their place, security forces camp,” says Manish Esam, husband of the sarpanch of Kondapalli panchayat.Story continues below this adIt’s an uneasy space to be in, so Hunga Muchaki prefers to largely stay quiet and cautious, glancing up from the reels he is watching only when a customer turns up at his kirana store, asking for a packet of biscuits. He says he watches action flicks and tribal songs, pointing to the YouTube and Instagram icons to indicate how he gets there. At Hunga Muchaki’s kirana storeA former commander of the Revolutionary People’s Committee, a grassroots governing body of the Maoists, Muchaki surrendered in March 2025 with 12 other villagers and set up the shop with the money he got as part of the state’s rehabilitation policy.Muchaki was a teenager when he joined the Bal Sangam, the Maoists’ children’s wing, and later, its cultural troupe, the Chetna Natya Manch, where he mostly sang about saving jal, jungle, zameen (the land and its resources).He didn’t have much of a choice, says his younger brother Lachu Muchaki, 22, a CRPF recruit. “Those days, at least one person from every village had to join the Naxals. So there was a lot of pressure on families to give up their sons or daughters. Once he joined them, the Naxals convinced Hunga (Muchaki) that the government would steal his land and they would eventually have to leave the village. All he wanted was to save his land,” says Lachu, who left the village and completed his school while staying in a hostel in Usoor, Bijapur.Story continues below this adThe Maoists ruled with an iron hand — villagers say those leaving Kondapalli gram panchayat were questioned on their return.But residents claim that for many of them, even this came with a feeling of being seen. “There wasn’t much development, but there was a sense of security. They redistributed land and gained our trust. They helped us make our houses, though cutting trees was punishable. If anyone fell sick, villagers were asked to donate money for the treatment. They also made small roads and a pond. But then, the forest officials and patwari (the village records keeper), stopped coming. When the administration brought electric poles, they destroyed them and we had to depend on solar lamps. When those failed, we got used to staying in the dark,” says a villager who doesn’t want to be identified.The Maoists came down heavily on violators and those they suspected of being police informers. “Wrongdoers were publicly beaten up under a tree, and those who were suspected of being informers were killed. Those who learnt their lessons stayed back while others left the village,” he says. Police camps on the road to Kondapalli village“We were people caught in the middle,” says Lachu, talking of how his uncle Masa was killed by security forces on the suspicion that he was a Maoist.Suka Tamo, a villager, talks about the time in December 2022 when his 18-year-old daughter Somdi left home to take the cattle out to graze, but joined the Maoists instead. Last year, Tamo learnt that she was among the 30-odd Maoists killed in a security operation in Telangana’s Karregutta hills.Story continues below this ad“I had no idea why she joined the Maoists. But my sons stayed away,” he says.A bus comes to KondapalliAs a blue bus from Cherla in Telangana turns the corner on the main road and stops just outside the Kondapalli school, a group of villagers lurch forward. The bus is already full, a few sitting on the luggage rack on the roof. Since March 2025, when the bus service began under the state’s rural bus scheme, it has been making two trips a day, taking villagers both to Bijapur, 79 km to the north, and to Cherlam in neighbouring Telangana on the other side, where many of the young men work as daily-wage labourers. The bus service under the Mukhyamantri Gramin Bus Yojana takes villagers to Bijapur, and to Cherlam in neighbouring Telangana. (Express Photo)Venkat Swami Punem, the 53-year-old village head or mukhiya of Kondapalli, is glad the bus has returned before it could fade from his memory. “Back in the 1980s, I used to take a bus from our village to go to school in Awapalli, some 27 km away,” says Punem as he watches the bus groan and disappear in a cloud of dust on the unpaved road outside the village.Soon after the Maoists came from Telangana in 1985, the bus stopped, and an entire generation grew up without ever seeing one.Kondapalli, which sits on the border with Telangana, is closer to Cherla (46 km) in the neighbouring state than its own district headquarters of Bijapur.Story continues below this adThose days, says Punem, a circuitous 209-km, five-hour journey through Cherla was the only way to travel from Bijapur to Kondapalli. The road to KondapalliNow, a 90-minute car ride from Bijapur to the village doesn’t have to cross into Telangana, instead passing through two busy junctions, Awapalli and Basaguda, and reaching Tarrem on the Sukma-Bijapur border. For the next 18 km beyond Tarrem, Google Maps falters, still recommending the older, longer route through Telangana.The Defence Ministry’s Border Roads Organisation (BRO) began working on the Tarrem-Kondapalli road soon after November 2024, when security forces pushed back the Maoists in a series of encounters.The road, which snakes through jungles, is still a work in progress, with the occasional motorcycle or truck carrying construction material lumbering along.Story continues below this adThe road passes Kondapalli to eventually cross over into Telangana, a stretch where the BRO installed nine Bailey bridges over river streams and 43 precast culverts to ensure smooth connectivity during the rains. On Tarrem-Kondapalli road — still a work in progressBefore the road came up, says Punem, he and the others who worked in Telangana would walk for two days, carrying their food supplies, including 30 kg of rice. “Once we reached, we would stay there for 45 days and get work plucking chillies on farms. Now, we have a daily bus to get there,” he says.He doesn’t go to Telangana for work anymore. Both of his sons stayed outside the village to complete their technical diploma courses. “I talk to them on the phone,” he says, proudly displaying a smartphone that one of his sons gifted him.The light’s backWhile the Maoists ruled, all signs of the State had ceased to exist. Voting stopped, government offices were broken, and officials stopped coming.Story continues below this ad“The village voted for the first time last year, in the local body polls. When the Maoists were around, we were told not to make any demands from the government,” says Manish Esam, a 41-year-old villager. Villagers take the bus to Kondapalli from TarremLast July, Kondapalli got electricity from the grid; the cellphone tower came up next. Other changes followed: villagers were told to turn up at the police camp where they were enrolled under Aadhaar, and given birth certificates and bank accounts.An anganwadi and a residential school are also under construction in the village. “Over the next two years, the village will get a cricket ground, a health centre, a cement road and government scheme benefits,” says Bijapur District Collector Vishwadeep.Then, on June 2, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai visited Kondapalli, a first for the village.A new, blue schoolBut nothing symbolises the village’s transition, and hope, better than the government school.Sometime in the 2000s, the Maoists had burnt down the only school in the village and the adjoining hostel to dissuade security forces from using it as their shelter. And then, just like that, an entire generation of youngsters in Kondapalli were left staring at a blank slate.Muchaki was among those who dropped out that year. But now, he sees hope. His two daughters study in the new school building that came up in the summer of 2025. Muchaki’s daughters now study in the village school. (Express Photo)The school stands by the main road, painted in a bright, happy blue. Days ahead of Independence Day, tricolours flutter in the open compound where children queue up for the morning assembly.Mangal Ram Veko, 42, one of the seven all-male teaching staff, says, “After the school was burnt down, children studied in a shanty in the same compound. Then, in 2020, we got an asbestos shade made there. Now, a proper building has been made for primary and middle school students. We also have blackboards and benches and students are able to focus better. We have 158 students, and the numbers are increasing.” The under-construction Anganwadi at the Kondapalli village. (Express Photo)Veko, who calls himself “the first graduate in Kondapalli”, says he could complete his education only because he left during the Salwa Judum days to study in a hostel in Basaguda and then moved to Dantewada for college. The Salwa Judum, a civilian counter-insurgency force set up in 2005, was declared illegal by the Supreme Court in 2011.The Kondapalli school has classes from 1 to 8, beyond which students have to travel 33 km to Basaguda or Pamed, 23 km away.As Veko talks, 14-year-old Mantu Tamo looks on in admiration. Tamo, whose uncle is a surrendered Maoist, now has an ambition: he wants to be a teacher, just like Veko. “They teach well,” he says.‘There is so much to do’Geeta Esam, 25, remembers growing up scared of the knock on the family door — the Maoists would turn up, and they had no option but to give them rice, salt and chillies. Geeta hated it that she had to do this for her father’s assaulters. “In 2006, during the Salwa Judum days, they beat up my father for hours. I still do not know why,” says the 25-year-old who works as a cook in the village school.Geeta says she never went to school — there was enough to do at home, and three younger siblings to take care of. While one of her brothers died in a road accident on his way home from college, another works as a farmer after completing his Class 12, while her sister works as a teacher in Pamed. Geeta, 25, works as a cook in the village school. (Express Photo)Life has always been tough in these parts, more so if you are a woman. “We had women dying in labour or on the way to hospital because there were no medical facilities nearby. There was no road either. We carried women on cots. Even to get rice, we had to travel to Awapalli, which used to be a day’s journey,” she says.Last year, her mother opened a bank account and now gets Rs 1,000 from the government under the state’s Mahatari Vandana Yojana for women. There’s much more the government needs to do, she says. “We need a health facility, a school for higher studies and a self-help group for women so we can do poultry work, farming and other livelihood activities.” The Public Distribution System centre decorated in Tricolours. (Express Photo)But what changed her life was her phone, a Redmi model that she bought for Rs 10,000 after the Maoists left. “They used to seize phones and ask villagers not to use them. Now, I use it freely. I call my mother at home while I am at work,” she says. “I like watching Telugu movies, news, cooking videos, sewing and stitching tutorials. I plan to learn some skills online and earn some money. There is so much to do,” she says.