Approximately 300 Maoist rebels, called Naxalites, attacked an Indian police post at Rani Bodli in the central-western state of Chhattisgarh the night of March 15. Armed with guns, grenades and homemade firebombs, the attackers overwhelmed the 79-man post, leaving approximately 50 policemen dead and making off with weapons and ammunition. Eleven days before the Rani Bodli attack, Indian parliament member Sunil Mahato was assassinated in neighboring Jharkhand state -- an operation in which Maoists were allegedly involved.

The Naxalites have been increasing their militant activity over the last two years. They have attacked police stations before, but not in numbers like the Rani Bodli attack. They also have targeted Indian government officials, but almost exclusively on a local or state level. Thus, the Naxalites' recent activity signals a notable escalation that will get worse before it gets better.

The police post assault also comes on the heels of a March 14 incident in Nandigram -- 90 miles north of West Bengal state's capital of Kolkata -- in which police opened fire at protesters demonstrating at the site of a planned special economic zone (SEZ), killing at least four and wounding seven. Police said the protesters attacked officers with sickles as they tried to enter the area. Later, a crowd of approximately 2,000 people began a protest outside the hospital in Nandigram where the wounded were taken. Police dispersed the crowd with tear gas and batons. The proposed SEZ has inspired clashes since January, with at least seven people killed and more than 100 wounded -- not to mention the economic effect of most of the 230 proposals concerning SEZs in West Bengal being put on hold because of the friction. Because parts of West Bengal have a heavy Naxalite presence, the recent deaths and subsequent protest could be a catalyst for the Naxalites to launch reprisal attacks. The Naxalites have long capitalized on privatization, globalization, SEZs and Dalit (Untouchable) issues, so the Nandigram SEZ clearly falls into the rebels' area of interest.

The Naxalite insurgency is located primarily in eastern India in a "red corridor" comprising the states of Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Karnataka, Orissa and Chhattisgarh. To a lesser extent, Naxalites also are active in parts of other states such as West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Some estimates claim that Naxalite activity is spread across as much as 25 percent of India's territory. To date, the Naxalites have carried out attacks mainly in rural areas and have refrained from taking their fight directly to the capital of New Delhi or India's larger population centers. It appears that the Naxalites' recent escalation is the result of a change in policy from the existing leadership. The shift in the insurgency began with the unification of the Maoist Communist Center and the People's War Group -- the two main factions involved in the armed insurgency -- in September 2004. This changed the entire scope of the struggle from scattered localized cells to a more unified force operating in the "red corridor."

This policy shift was formalized at the Ninth Party Congress of one of the three Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) factions participating in the insurgency. The meeting was held in late February in a remote undisclosed location somewhere in Jharkhand and 100 senior leaders of the movement from 16 states attended. The leaders decided to shift to a wider-based insurgency, expanding the armed struggle from what was referred to as a "People's Guerrilla War Army" to a "People's Liberation Army." CPI-M General Secretary Muppala Lakshman Rao (aka Ganapathi) reportedly told the gathering, "No more hit-and-run. Now [the] time has come to spread in the towns and identify specific targets, hit them precisely and with impunity." This would include expanding Naxalites' operations into urban areas in the states where they are active. Like any insurgent movement, the Naxalites will likely begin this shift by carrying out low-intensity attacks in urban areas in the "red corridor" in order to gauge state governments' reactions.

Some of the "red corridor" states are less well equipped to handle an escalation in Naxalite activity. For example, Andhra Pradesh has had some success in dealing with the Naxalites. Jharkhand, on the other hand, is more impoverished and has fewer police officers. (The state's police force has a 29 percent vacancy rate, with a police-to-population ratio of 85:100,000.) These circumstances, combined with a lack of government capacity to project power in the rural areas -- Jharkhand is 30 percent jungle -- mean there is little to prevent the Naxalites from expanding their insurgency in Jharkhand.

For its part, New Delhi has two options for dealing with the Naxalites. The first is to send in the Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force. These forces, while more capable than local police and village militias in dealing with the Naxalites, do not represent the full extent of New Delhi's power.

The federal government could also call out the army, but this is the most distasteful option and would be considered as a last resort. The army has only been used twice to eradicate militia movements in India. In June 1984, the army was sent to Punjab to fight Sikh militants in Operation Blue Star, which included storming the Sikhs' sacred Golden Temple at Amritsar -- the motivation for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards to assassinate her. The other example is the much larger ongoing operation against separatists in Kashmir. New Delhi would be reluctant to engage in another ongoing counterinsurgency operation in the jungles of eastern India while engaged in the mountains of northern India.

Potential military consequences aside, there are two main arrestors to an all-out assault on the Naxalites by the Indian government. The first concerns the perception of the problem. At this point, New Delhi would prefer to allow the Naxalite problem to be handled at the state level, since making it a central-government issue would be an admission that the problem is out of control. The other arrestor is that the current government relies heavily on left-wing parties for its coalition. A massive campaign against the Maoists would put a strain on that arrangement.

The Naxalites also face arrestors preventing a total escalation. The most serious one is the idea that New Delhi will throw the whole weight of its military at the rebels if they seriously begin to affect the country's growing economy. The rebels are as reluctant to take on the Indian military in a protracted campaign as New Delhi is to wage one. The other arrestor is that the Maoist rebels do not have a monopoly on the Indian left. There are legitimate Indian communist political parties and leftist movements that are integrated into the political process. If the Naxalites are perceived as being responsible for a drawn-out, low-intensity war like the one in Sri Lanka, they stand to lose whatever popular support they have.

Consistent with their ideology and stated anti-globalization agenda, the Maoists could latch on to the anti-privatization sentiment in India. This could lead them to actively target and attack Western multinational corporations operating in India. This would particularly devastate the country's emerging high-tech sector, centered on hubs such as Bangalore, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata. New Delhi's reaction to attacks against this sector would be severe. If the rebels determine that the current scope of their escalation is not producing the desired results, they might decide to expand to these targets. Another significant shift such as this will take time for the Maoist leadership to decide on, and might not take place until the next Party Congress.