Every evening, after dinner, Adivasi students in a government hostel in Bastar sit cross-legged on the floor as their names are called out. Some remain quiet; others whisper, laugh, or simply wait for the ritual to end. For many, this routine has become ordinary, even as it marks a decisive break from village life. It is in such spaces – often absent from official accounts – that Bastar’s present is being remade. In recent months, Bastar has increasingly been described through the language of closure. Officials speak of an ‘endgame’ against Naxalism, pointing to surrenders, expanding security camps, and the extension of roads, schools, and administrative reach into forested interiors. The message is clear: a long phase of insurgency is nearing its conclusion.

But this story misses another transformation unfolding alongside it. It continues to treat Bastar primarily as a security problem nearing resolution, while overlooking how a generation of Adivasi youth are encountering state institutions through schooling, hostels, and aspirations for government employment. Bastar is changing not only because insurgency is said to be declining, but because young people are coming of age through new arrangements with the state.

To understand Bastar today, the question is not merely whether Naxalism is ending. It is also what kinds of lives are taking shape alongside this claim.

Life Between Village and City

During 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2022–23, I spent time with Adivasi youth in an urban centre in Bastar who had moved from surrounding villages to attend government schools while living in state-run hostels. Most were first-generation school-goers. Their concerns were not centred on insurgency, but on movement – between village and city, family and institution, familiarity and change.

For many students, schooling was not only about acquiring qualifications. It also required learning how to live away from home, share space with strangers, follow institutional routines, and navigate an unfamiliar urban environment. Hostels followed a collective rhythm: evening meals, attendance soon after, and study hours where students worked together or drifted into conversation. Days unfolded through shared routines that gradually became ordinary.

Students spoke about these experiences in ways that revealed both attachment and adjustment. “I like the hostel because I get more time to study here,” Ishika, a class 11 student, told me. Then she paused before adding, “But I miss my alone time… there is always someone around.” The hostel offered opportunities that were difficult to access in many villages, yet it also required learning how to live in constant proximity to others. What emerged was not simply accommodation attached to schooling, but a new social world organised through friendship, routine, discipline, and negotiation.

Public discussions often imagine educational mobility as movement towards a destination. The experiences of students suggested something more complicated. Schooling did not take them from one place to another. It drew them into relationships with multiple places at once.

This became especially visible in conversations about village and city life. As Sudeep explained, “I don’t enjoy living in the city. Not many people come out here to play, as they do in the village. It’s mostly about going to work and returning to your place. In the village, we can wander from one hamlet to another.” His reflections were not only about geography. They pointed to different forms of sociality. In the village, movement unfolded through friendships, kinship networks, and shared spaces. In the city, daily life became organised through schedules, institutions, and educational responsibilities.

Yet educational mobility rarely involved a straightforward movement away from one world and into another. Ruchika recalled missing the games, picnics, and everyday interactions she enjoyed in her village. At the same time, when she returned home during the holidays, she found herself eager to come back to the city. “There is little to do at home,” she explained. “In the city, we go to school, and time flows in the hostel.”

Neither place was experienced as complete in itself. The village remained a site of familiarity, relationships, and memory. The city opened possibilities that many students had come to value. Rather than replacing one world with another, education drew young people into the work of living between them. This in-between condition was not temporary. It became part of how many students understood themselves. They moved forward while remaining connected to the places they had come from. Education, in this sense, was not a departure from village life but an ongoing negotiation between different worlds, obligations, and expectations.

Aspirations and the State

These experiences also shaped how students imagined the future. Contrary to assumptions that young people necessarily sought lives beyond the state, many looked directly towards it. They wanted to become teachers, join the police, or secure other government jobs. Government employment appeared not just as one option among many, but as one of the few forms of stability they could realistically imagine.

“I want to do something for my parents. They helped me get an education,” Ayush, a class 10 student, said. His aspirations were tied not only to personal achievement but also to relationships of care and responsibility. Similar sentiments emerged repeatedly in conversations with students. Educational success was imagined through obligations to parents, siblings, and households that had invested significant resources in schooling.

The current moment in Bastar is frequently interpreted through rising surrenders and the weakening of Maoist influence, taken as evidence of successful “mainstreaming.” However, this framing overlooks how young people are already moving through state institutions – schools, hostels, examinations, and the promise of government employment – not as one pathway among many, but as one of the few available to them. Families continue investing heavily in education even when routes into secure employment remain uncertain. Hope and uncertainty become closely intertwined. But focusing only on uncertainty risks missing something equally important. Young people are not waiting for futures to arrive. They are actively learning how to inhabit institutions, relationships, and expectations that previous generations in their families often did not encounter.

Beyond the ‘Endgame’

To describe Bastar’s present solely through the language of an ‘endgame’ is to misread what is unfolding. It centres attention on the possible disappearance of insurgency while sidelining the quieter processes through which young people are building lives under changing conditions.

Each evening, attendance continues in the hostel. Names are called out, students respond, conversations drift across the room, and another day comes to a close. These routines may appear mundane when viewed from the outside. Yet they reveal a dimension of contemporary Bastar that discussions of insurgency and security rarely attend to. Some students miss the freedom of wandering through their villages, moving between hamlets and spending evenings with friends. Others, like Ruchika, find themselves returning from holidays eager to come back to the city because, as she put it, “In the city, we go to school, and time flows.” Many carry aspirations that are tied as much to family responsibilities as to personal ambitions. As they move between village and city, they learn to navigate worlds that do not always fit neatly together.

Long before any definitive “endgame” can be declared, these young people are already living through Bastar’s transformation. Their lives unfold through classrooms, hostel routines, friendships, examinations, and journeys home. What is emerging is not merely a story about the decline of insurgency, but the making of a generation whose lives are increasingly shaped by the work of living between multiple social worlds. Bastar’s future is being forged not only through security operations or development projects, but also through these everyday movements between places, relationships, and aspirations.

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Sahib Singh Tulsi recently completed his PhD in Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. His research focuses on Adivasi youth, education, mobility, and institutional life in central India through long-term ethnographic fieldwork.