India's War In The Woods

The 78-kilometer road between Sukma and Konta is nearly deserted. Scores of villages, once bustling with tribal life, are now vacant. Across the rough orange and green terrain of the nearby forests, hundreds of other villages similarly have been abandoned. Tens of thousands of tribal people are simply gone.

This is not war-torn Afghanistan or Sudan. This is central India, where super sleek call centers and software factories have brought millions of poor into the modern middle class.

But the country's drive to become a first world power has left many of its most vulnerable behind and frozen economic development across swaths of this vast country. At its most extreme and most dangerous — in remote forested areas — a four-decade-long rebellion has erupted into violent intimidation, exploitation of the young and dozens of murders.