In what ways can India maintain unity and territorial integrity while fostering economic prosperity in the face of regional challenges?

UPA era PM late Dr. Manmohan Singh said in 2009 that India’s biggest internal threat comes from left extremism or the naxalite movement. They were ruthless killers who prevent people benefiting from the welfare schemes of state administration and government. They prevent road construction, medical and education services in the areas they hold. They brutally kill villagers and fellow comrades who want to surrender the jungle guerrilla war fight tactics and join mainstream development and progress route. Thousands of security personals including state police, CRPF employees were killed over the last 25 years.

The naxalite movement started in Bengal in 1967 and spread like wildfire across the eastern and central-eastern region of the country mainly because of lack of economic development, employment opportunity and lack of reach of state administration upto the last man in the remote villages. As a result, all these eastern and central-eastern states suffered economic stagnation, lawless violence and other human rights violation. Bengal became one of the most progressive state in early 1960s to extremely low per capita GDP state by 2010. Other eastern states also performed poorly at national level parameters.

Congress governments miserably failed to tackle this naxalite menace because they were supported by the communists like CPI and CPIM. In 2010, leftist andolan-jivi Arundhati Roy spent two weeks among the Maoists in the forests of Dantewada. There was no trace of the Indian government there and the entire area was under Maoist rule. Their guns were the law, their jungles were their empire. And returning from this terror, she wrote essays and books. She made a shameful attempt to portray these murderous Maoists as messiahs of the poor fighting an ideological battle imported from China. This was the same period when the media and some urban naxal intellectuals were busy glorifying the bloody violence of the Maoists as revolutionary.

Just nine days later, on 6th April 2010, the Maoists massacred 75 CRPF soldiers. They were soldiers who were performing their duty, who neither remembered home nor family, but simply went forward to protect the country. This raises a question – was Arundhati Roy was a police informer who gave locations of CRPF men? Something similar question was raised against another well-known left-Islamist celebrity journalist Barkha Dutt of NDTV who took satellite phone to Kargil war and his interview with frontline troops helped enemy to know exact position of Bofors guns and frontline troop locations.

After the Dantewada massacre, the so-called intellectuals sitting in Delhi continued to justify their deaths. Some called it a ‘rebellion of the poor’, others called it a ‘people's war’. But the truth was that it was a bloody massacre—against our own soldiers. Incidentally, both Barkha Dutt and Arundhati Roy have links with leftist media NDTV. Arundhati Roy is a close relative of Prannoy ‘James’ Roy, the founder of NDTV.

The country's Home Minister P. Chidambaram on 14 April 2010, appealed to the Maoists for a 72-hour ceasefire. In reality, it wasn't an appeal, it was a plea. As if the Maoists, not the government, were the real power. As if the jungle terrorists, who rule with guns, were the real rulers of India, not the elected government. It was a humiliating scene—when the government in Delhi stood bowed before the Maoists. On 17 April 2010, the Maoists rejected this offer, sending a clear message that they did not believe in dialogue or democracy. Their goal was only one: violence, terror, and the seizure of power by any means. By that time, nearly one-third of the country was under the control of the Maoists. There was no Constitution, no democracy, no courts, no police. Only the AK-47 was the law there.

These were the dark days when the UPA government was on its knees. Soldiers were dying, while the government was solely preoccupied with vote bank politics and narrative management. Naxalites were glorified in the name of human rights and civil liberties, while CRPF and police personnel were bleeding daily. This was the era when, sitting in air-conditioned libraries in Delhi and Mumbai, some people were selling the murderous terrorists of the jungle as romantic revolutionaries.

Since BJP came to power in 2014, Arundhati Roy is not visiting Maoist strongholds and prefer to live in Europe

The only solution to the naxalite menace is to strengthen the hands of BJP ruled central government especially the home minister Amit Shah who is ruthlessly destroying the naxalite ecosystem. Amit Shah has repeatedly said that this government will completely eliminate Maoist naxalite violence by 2026 end. It seems the government will achieve this target. Amit Shah has only one message to the naxalites – surrender or die like at rat. Now large number of Maoists are surrendering regularly.

The current government is bringing roads and other development project in the naxalite areas. A private player (JSW) is building a big steel plant at Gadchiroli, the worst Maoist affected district of Maharashtra, with a projected capacity of 25 million tonnes per annum (MTPA). It will be the largest steel plant in India upon completion, with an investment of ₹1 lakh crore. The need of the hour is a BJP government in Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Andhra for the next 15 years. BJP is succeeding where congress/UPA failed and this is good for Indian economy.