Markets of Protection

Abstract

This article explores the continuities between the local state and the ‘terrorist’ extreme left-wing armed guerrilla Naxalite movement, the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), in Jharkhand, Eastern India. The article shows how the MCC gained grassroots support by having greater control over a ‘market of protection’, and not through a shared ideology. This protection is a ‘doubleedged commodity’ – it is protection to access the informal economy of the state but also protection from the possibilities of the protector’s activities. In selling protection, the MCC competes in a market previously controlled by the state. The MCC increases its control over the market as an idea of its immense power – as well as fear of the organization, emerging from both its visible and invisible qualities, including its propensity for violence – is created among its targets. Unveiling this market of protection demonstrates the contested boundaries between the state and the ‘terrorist’ in rural Jharkhand.