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“The pin of my rice machine has broken down. Even the machine given to stitch together leaves and make bowls stopped working after three months. People are poor here, yet I would earn 20-30 rupees per person. I am requesting the ministers to repair these so that I can earn something,” Sukhi Koram from Irakbhatti village told CNN-News18.
Her neighbour Maria chimes in, “The machine had made our lives easier. Now we are back to hand pounding the rice, the kodo and kutki (millets). It takes a lot of time. The machine helped women in all villages here.”
At first glance, the request might seem ordinary, the kind you would hear from villagers anywhere in India. Except that Irakbhatti is in Abujmad. Sukhi has lived all her life seeing pamphlets, messages,
and posters decrying the state and central government. The only government she and fellow villagers knew was the Jantana Sarkar of CPI (Maoist). All governance issues were taken to Maoist courts and decided.
But today, expectations from the government in Raipur and Delhi are growing. This change symbolises the Naxal ideology losing its pull among its core supporters, the residents of Bastar.
Surrendered Naxal Sunita acknowledges the change. “Paristhiti ab sashastra sangharsh ki nahi hai (Things are not the same as before. Our commander said armed struggle will not succeed now),” she tells CNN-News18 at the Livelihood College in Narayanpur. Sunita was one of the 250 Naxals who had surrendered with their commander Rupesh soon after the party’s spokesperson Malujalo Venugopal Rao alias Sonu gave up arms and called his comrades to do the same.
About 200 kilometres away, Barse Sanna echoes the same thought. Brother of PLGA Battalion 1 commander Barse Deva, Sanna was a comrade-in-arms of one of the most dreaded Naxals, Hidma. He surrendered in 2025 and still has concerns about his jal, jungle, zameen but is willing to give the government a chance. “Aspatal bana rahe hain ye acha hai. Par dekhna padega ki ye humare jal, jungle, zameen ko kaise surakshit rakhte hain,” he says. The state government has just sanctioned an 89-bed hospital at Deva and Hidma’s village Puvarthi.
When CNN-News18 reached Puvarthi, Barse Deva’s mother was queuing up at the freshly painted anganwadi to get her photo clicked for SIR. Deva’s sister works at the anganwadi. The family hopes the police will allow Barse Deva to return home. He surrendered before the Telangana Police in the first week of January. “Let him come back home. He will till the land here and lead a peaceful life,” Deva’s mother said.
Barse Deva and Hidma were not just from the same village but also friends, comrades who had planned numerous killings of forces and politicians together. Hidma’s death and Deva’s surrender mean the end of PLGA Battalion 1, the wing of CPI (Maoist) that had created the entire zone from Chintawagu to Talperu rivers, from Sukma to Bijapur, as a liberated zone.
Today, however, a Gurukul operates in the CRPF camp set up at Puvarthi. Parents brought an infant to the medical facility inside the camp. “Earlier, we had no access to medicines or doctors. We just braved whatever happened at home. This time my wife insisted that we take my daughter to the camp since her fever was just not going down,” the father (who didn’t want to be identified) told CNN-News18.
While security camps have played a huge role in reclaiming the forest of Bastar, the popular support for such initiatives is also unmistakable. Paparao is one of the remaining Naxal commanders who is still at large. Estimates suggest about 150 armed cadre might still be holding sway in south Bastar under Paparao. But the ground for shelter is shrinking fast.
Not far from Puvarthi is the Silgair camp. The proposal for the camp had seen seven-month-long sit-in protests from locals. A CRPF jawan was also abducted when tensions were high in the area. Today, from Silgair to Puvarthi, the winds of change are blowing. The challenge for the government machinery is ensuring that the confidence of the people is not shaken and no chance is given to CPI (Maoist) to regroup.
