Introduction

This chapter introduces the central empirical puzzle and the primary theoretical insight of the book. In course of several rounds of interviews, current and former Maoist rebels in North and South India shared that they were not able to quit the insurgent organization even if they wanted to. This was because they feared that they could be killed post-retirement, unarmed and defenseless, by either their former enemies or by their former comrades, while the Indian state would lose nothing for failing to protect them. This creates a problem of credible commitment in the process of surrender of rebels, which, this book shows, is resolved locally by informal exit networks, more proficiently in the South of India than in the North. This chapter also introduces the district-level data on surrender of Maoists and other testimonies from the conflict zone to illustrate the vast regional variation in retirement of Maoist rebels in North and South India.

Conclusion

This chapter examines the scope, conditions, and applicability of the theory of rebel retirement through informal exit networks beyond India. It considers the scholarly implications of this book on areas of conflict and peace studies, as well as for democratic consolidation in developing countries. It also examines how the North-South variation in India can suggest some actionable policy instruments to bring militant disengagement, particularly in cases where a ceasefire between the state and rebels has not produced complete demobilization of rebel groups. Policymakers concerned with weaning rebels away from extremism might therefore find these conclusions useful.

The Gray Zone of State-Insurgency Interface

This chapter emphasizes how the various steps in the process of disengagement from extremism are linked fundamentally to the nature of linkages between insurgency and society, thereby bringing civil society into the study of insurgency in a theoretically coherent way. In places where structural violence is pervasive and spectacular episodes of violence are also recurrent, this chapter shows how, from the perspective of local population, the conceptual lines between war and peace, legit and illicit, state and insurgency, lawful and lawless, crimes and political acts, police action and rebel resistance become blurred. Surrounded by violent specialists belonging to two warring sides, civilians in conflict zones learn to inhabit one foot in insurgency and one foot in the state, creating a sprawling gray zone of state-insurgency overlap. It is in these gray zones where grassroots civic associations nurture the first traces of informal exit networks, more successfully in the South than in the North.

Rebel Retirement in the North through Discordant Exit Networks

This chapter shows how weak grassroots organizations in the gray zone of state-insurgency interface led to scrawny informal exit networks in the North, discouraging rebel retirement and restricting their reintegration. The differences with the South stem from the secret and semi-secret ties that northern rebels build with state agents like police, politicians, and bureaucracy on the one hand and various nonstate agents like mafias and businesses on the other hand. These ties, alongside distinctive caste/class dynamics and land relations in the North, induces dominance of perverse criminality and spews intense militancy in the North, which vitiates the gray zone of state-insurgency interface.

Inside the Insurgency

This chapter presents the entangled historical narrative of the Maoist insurgency in India, its ideological origin, military strategy, organizational characteristics, recruitment mechanisms, and ties to the local communities, with particular emphasis on North-South variation in the dependent and independent variables that concern the book. It analyses the distinct social terrains on which rebels operated in the North and the South, despite being part of the same insurgent organization, united by one ideology and highly centralized command. This chapter also shows how pre-existing local conditions shape patterns and outcomes of insurgent mobilization, leading to robust informal exit networks in the South and scrawny ones in the North.

Rebel Retirement in the South through Harmonic Exit Networks

This chapter shows how grassroots civic associations that grew in the gray zone of state-insurgency interface in the South became sites of incubation of informal exit networks, which facilitate safe passage of Maoists from insurgency to democracy in Telangana. Based on the rebels’ account of the protracted process of retirement, this chapter also highlights, both empirically and theoretically, the various actors and processes in rebel retirement, including the operation of the two mechanisms of trust and side payment that help resolve the problem of credible commitment locally. This chapter shows that the militant mass mobilization by the Maoists in the South created conditions for vibrant associational life in the gray zones of the South, which allowed various actors and processes of rebel retirement to function and proliferate.