Religion

SOUTH BASTAR — Two years ago, Comrade Sunil used his given name and spent half the day at school, the remainder working the red fields of his ancestral village.

This all changed one night when he found his home torched and his brother dead outside, allegedly shot by state-sponsored civilian militia on the pretext of being a Maoist sympathiser.

Click on the image to view more photographs of the Naxalites, police and militia, and the tribal villagers in the region.

The bus ride from Hyderabad to Dantewada, the main town of Chhattisgarh's southern Bastar region, took about 16 hours. As the suburbs fell away, the smooth pavement on the road disappeared as well, but the lush beauty of the countryside that seemed to intensify with each mile made up for it.

When I awoke to a pale morning, I had the sensation of hurtling deeper into vortex of green.

RAIPUR, India -- To reverse military setbacks in key backcountry areas, India's Maoist insurgents have adopted a new strategy that favors coordinated mass attacks over hit-and-run guerilla warfare, and they have stepped up their recruitment efforts on the Internet.

After a lifetime of spouting anti-govern ment vitriol, Varavara Rao has an easy smile. But when the silver-haired revolutionary poet greeted me at his Hyderabad apartment, his eyes burned like those of a man with plenty more in his tank.

Hyderabad goes by the nickname “Cyberabad” for its thriving info-tech sector. Along with Bangalore, the two cities comprise the heart of India’s software empire thanks to high levels of education, job growth, and investment.

HYDERABAD, India - An aggressive push by Indian state security forces over the past two years has blunted the Maoist insurgency in the state of Andhra Pradesh, a long-time guerrilla hotbed, but many have regrouped in remote parts of neighboring states where police remain ill-equipped to combat a surge in violence.

The Naxals are getting more lethal. So the Asian Center for Human Rights (ACHR), a Delhi-based think tank, concludes in its latest report. According to their estimate, at least 384 people were killed in the Naxalite conflict from January to September of this year.

Muzaffarpur, India -- Looking out over gray waters that have inundated the rice paddies that are his livelihood, Bhavat Nagar swore no flood he could recall came close to the latest monsoon deluge that washed away most of his village and a neighbor's child.

"This is the worst it has been," he said, shaking his head. "We always lose a little, but now we have lost everything. I don't know what to do."

It seems mother nature has no remorse. As water levels were finally beginning to recede, another round of flash floods has undercut millions across eastern India and Bangladesh who had taken first steps in the long recovery.

In its annual 'State of the States' survey, India Today magazine – the South Asian equivalent to Time, right down to its red window cover – put Bihar at the bottom among large states in eight categories ranging from economic output to electricity consumption. This hardly comes as a surprise as Bihar has earned an 'F' each year since rankings were first published five years ago.

Jason Motlagh, for the Pulitzer Center
India

Flood victims I spoke with in some of the outerlying hamlets in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district kept complaining about the thieving "mukhias," elected local big men responsible for doling out government aid. Given their reputation I thought it might be hard to pin one down for an interview, until he found me.