India, Oct. 25 -- Five months to go, since the Home Minister Amit Shah, commonly known among hardcore BJP loyalists in Delhi as Modi's Chanakya, promised the nation that by March 2026 India would be completely free from Maoist terror. It was not an offhand remark but a calibrated assertion - one that echoed through the ranks of India's paramilitary forces and state police units spread across the dense jungles of Bastar, Bijapur, and Sukma. The claim has since been repeated with ritualistic certainty in official briefings, as if the eradication of a sixty-year-old insurgency could be reduced to a deadline. Meanwhile, last week brought a remarkable spectacle in Maharashtra: over two hundred Maoists, many with heavy bounties on their heads, su...