Red retreat

JUST how commandos killed Kishenji, a leading Maoist, is disputed. Long on the run, hunted by 1,000 special-forces troops and police through the leafy “jangalmahal” of West Bengal, he was, say officials, struck by a hail of shots to his chest in a dramatic shoot-out. Yet his sympathisers, and others who worry about police brutality, note a wound from a bullet fired at close range into his head. They fear he was arrested and executed, and the fight faked.

Either way, his death on November 24th counts as a success for those battling the country's grisliest insurgency. Kishenji was the nom de guerre of Koteswara Rao, the military leader and number three in the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)—also known as Naxalites, for the village where the group was founded. Active along a forested “red corridor” of central and eastern India, the revolutionary movement has some 20,000 active members, many more supporters and a strong party structure. Last year it killed 1,180 people, more than all other insurgent and terrorist groups in India combined.

One Maoist's death will not bring peace. But counter-insurgency efforts are beginning to tell. Two other high-profile leaders have been killed, and many more arrested, in the past 18 months. Ajai Sahni of the Institute for Conflict Management, a Delhi think-tank, notes that of a 16-strong Politburo in 2007 only seven are still alive and at large. “The Maoists have taken a bit of a beating,” he concludes.

The Naxalites do indeed appear to be retreating, after a rapid expansion in the early 2000s. Three years ago they were active in 223 districts, a third of all India. In November a home affairs minister said that had fallen to 182 districts, and in many that merely signified “early mobilisation”. Other officials in July pinpointed only 83 districts as badly affected (see map).

Perhaps most important, the leftists are shooting, blowing up and bludgeoning fewer people. A group in Jharkhand admitted last week sending a mob that killed a Catholic nun saying she had meddled too much in the affairs of tribal people. Political attacks are once again taking place in West Bengal, but less often than before. So far this year, across India, they have killed 564 people, roughly half the grisly tally of recent years.

The decrease can be explained by several recent changes. The Naxalites overextended themselves, and have pulled back. Police are co-operating better across state borders and have improved their intelligence-gathering. They have also wound down their classic counter-insurgency effort to clear, hold, develop and dominate Maoist territory, which had led to poorly trained policemen being ambushed, and sometimes massacred, in remote areas. Now the police offer fewer targets.

Another big change has come in West Bengal, where a new government struck a ceasefire that lasted several months. Maoist killings there fell from more than 425 last year to just 54 so far in 2011. Usually the leftists use such pauses to rearm and prepare a new round of attacks. When the ceasefire broke in mid-November, the police were better prepared (though officials are braced for violent retaliation, strikes and protests over Kishenji's death).

Nothing suggests the Naxalites are near outright defeat. Successes (and failures) are often local. In Bihar violence fell when the government started speaking up for the lowest caste. In Andhra Pradesh well-trained guerrilla-combat forces hounded the leftists out of the state. By contrast in Chhattisgarh an attempt to use vigilantes and intimidate Naxalite sympathisers proved disastrous.

Since Maoist leaders can usually find somewhere new to hide, and the party can replace dead leaders with other cadres, it will hang on. More important, the leftists' arguments still resonate widely: many poor Indians, notably the tribal people in forests, face harder lives than ever, caught between exploitative miners and corrupt officials and within an economy that mostly rewards city dwellers.

In large tracts of India the writ of the government does not run, so leftists set up schools, extort taxes and impose their own rough form of justice in “people's courts”. As a result Maoists often serve as the only source of authority.

The state is not providing basic health care or roads and “there is no dignity for tribals,” concludes Jairam Ramesh, the cabinet minister responsible for rural affairs. Indian society has always treated tribals disgracefully, he says, and after decades of neglect and insensitivity, “we have produced a situation where Maoists fill the vacuum.” Mr Ramesh argues that as long as the country fails to “assimilate” 70m tribal people, the police or army can only hope to keep down the gangsters, ideologues or opportunists among the Maoists. Turning all that around will be a “20 to 25 year struggle”. Kishenji may be dead. The Naxalites are not.