Legacies of Maoist Insurgency in India on Land Tenure and Development

• In Event: The Legacies of Revolutionaries and Rebels

Abstract

What are the long-term effects of institutions that develop during insurgency and
conflict on state building, economic development and land reforms? In this paper, I propose to
study if the Maoist insurgency in the state of Andhra Pradesh resulted in land reforms and
development by the state. There is a long history of leftist rebellion in the state of Andhra
Pradesh, starting with the Telangana rebellion in 1940s and the APRCC led Marxist Leninist
rebellion in 1960s. The most recent and violent rebellion led by the People’s War Group (PWG)
started in the state of Andhra Pradesh in the 1980s and was crushed by the Congress government
around 2005 when many of the Maoist leaders and cadres migrated to the neighboring state of
Chhattisgarh where violence escalated, but led to the end of the decades old insurgency in
Andhra Pradesh. What was the effect of Maoist consolidation and control in the districts of
Telangana in Andhra Pradesh on levels of development and land inequality? We hypothesize that
those districts in Andhra Pradesh which were more exposed to Maoist control may have seen
more reforms in response and therefore have lower land inequality and better development post-
insurgency.

This paper makes use of a novel Assembly Constituency level dataset for the former unified state
of Andhra Pradesh to analyze if Maoist violence and rebel control in 1990s had any effects in
reducing land inequality and increasing welfare and development of lower castes and tribes in
this region of India. The reason for choosing the state of Andhra Pradesh in India is that it had
Maoist insurgency from 1980 but the conflict ended by 2007, while it continues in other states.
This allows us to study the effects of violent conflict on development and reforms, and draw
policy conclusions.

Author

• Shivaji Mukherjee, University of Toronto