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2 weeks ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Meena Kandasamy |Vaishna Roy
The military crackdown in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, the heartland of Naxal insurgency, has significantly weakened the decades-old movement, yielding tangible and immediate gains for the Indian state.
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2 weeks ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Divya Gandhi |Vaishna Roy
Brigadier (retd) Basant K. Ponwar, a veteran of the 1971 Bangladesh war, has extensive experience in counter-insurgency operations across India. Having served in Nagaland, Punjab, Tripura, and the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, Ponwar has trained police personnel from 10 Maoist-insurgency-affected States, as well as members of the Border Security Force, Indo Tibetan Border Police, Sashastra Seema Bal, and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), in guerrilla warfare tactics since 2005.
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2 weeks ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Divya Gandhi |Vaishna Roy
In the late 1980s, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah, leader of the People’s War (PW), dispatched Maoist squads to Khammam, Karimnagar, Warangal, and Adilabad (in present-day Telangana). Driven by Mao Zedong’s belief that “power flows from the barrel of a gun”, the PW waged an armed struggle, extending operations across the Godavari to Gadchiroli in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh’s Bastar (then in Madhya Pradesh), aiming to establish guerrilla safe zones.
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2 weeks ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Divya Gandhi |Vaishna Roy
Bela Bhatia, a Bastar-based lawyer, researcher and writer, has been working for years on issues related to human rights abuses and state repression, particularly in conflict-torn areas. With a postgraduate degree in social work from Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences and a doctorate from the University of Cambridge, she blends academic rigour with on-the-ground advocacy.
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2 weeks ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Divya Gandhi |Vaishna Roy
In 2012, a CBI team, directed by the Supreme Court to investigate the March 2011 assault on Swami Agnivesh by Special Police Officers (SPOs) of the Chhattisgarh Police and Salwa Judum, came under an extraordinary attack from the State’s SPOs. The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) intervened to protect the CBI officers, who had locked themselves inside a guest house at Dornapal in Sukma district.
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2 weeks ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Divya Gandhi |Vaishna Roy
In a fervent appeal, 54 human rights and civil liberties organisations, joined by around 150 prominent activists, intellectuals, and members of civil society, have called on both the government and Maoist insurgents to declare an immediate ceasefire. Their demand comes in response to escalating violence that continues to devastate local Adivasi communities.
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2 weeks ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Divya Gandhi |Vaishna Roy
On March 31, a hail of bullets silenced Gummadivelli Renuka, alias Chaite, 55, an insurgent whose pen was as mighty as the rifle she carried in the dense forests of Bastar, Chhattisgarh. She was killed by the District Reserve Guard (DRG), a specialised police unit formed in 2008, to fight Maoist insurgents; and her death has raised some serious questions.
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1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Vaishna Roy
It was 2015, the year Punjab found itself in the throes of a devastating drug crisis. The issue, which had haunted the State’s consciousness for over a decade, had finally erupted into the forefront of public discourse. It triggered a political free-for-all, with critics launching relentless attacks on the Parkash Singh Badal–led Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) government.
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1 month ago | 
forrester.com | Martin Gill |Charles Betz |Ashutosh Sharma
Let’s start with some good news. According to Forrester’s Priorities Survey 2024, business and technology leaders tell us that the number one priority for their firm is to “Improve the experience of our ultimate customers”. The top three priorities for this year are:#1: Improve the experience of our ultimate customers#2: Meet measurable commercial growth targets#3: Reduce costsImprove CX is up from the third slot in 2023. That’s great, but it begs the question… how?
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1 month ago | 
forrester.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Ian Bruce |Cheryl McKinnon
NASSCOM recently hosted its flagship event, the Technology Leadership Forum (NTLF) 2025, with noticeably stronger attendance than in recent years. Returning to its familiar venue—the Grand Hyatt Mumbai—proved valuable. The compact setting made it ideal for high-impact interactions, enabling us to engage in over 50 client meetings across a wide range of topics shaping the IT and IT-enabled services industry.
