Similar to the Chhattisgarh chapter, I use archival and interview data to do process tracing of the mechanisms for another crucial pathway case of Maoist insurgency in Andhra Pradesh. The Telangana districts of Andhra Pradesh that had Maoist insurgency were historically part of the princely state of Hyderabad where Nizam’s rule created lower levels of development and land inequality and despotic extraction, which then persisted into postcolonial times through path dependence. The Telangana peasant rebellion of 1946-49 provided rebel agency and organizational networks and was followed by the CPI-Marxist- Leninist movement in 1967-72, and culminated in the People’s War Group (PWG) Maoist insurgency in the 1980s. All these rebellions succeeded in the Telangana districts of the former princely state of Hyderabad, and not in the British direct ruled areas of Madras province that had higher levels of development and less land inequality. I also describe the history of evolution of the PWG Maoists in Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh and show how rebel agency exploited the structural conditions to create successful Maoist insurgency. Finally, I test the theory on an Assembly Constituency dataset to show that former princely state constituencies had positive correlation with Maoist control.

I use archival and fieldwork-based qualitative data to do process tracing of the causal mechanisms of the crucial pathway case of the Maoists in Chhattisgarh. The northern and southern parts of Chhattisgarh had colonial indirect rule through feudatory princely states, which created weak state capacity and despotic extraction of land revenue and natural resources through landlords and feudatory chiefs. This created tribal grievances that persisted in the postcolonial period in the 1950s-80s through path dependence of these mechanisms, which were mobilized by the People’s War Group (PWG) Maoists, leading to high levels of Maoist rebel control by the 1990s. In contrast the central districts of Raipur and Bilaspur had been under British direct rule and had relatively higher levels of development and less exploitation of forest and natural resources of tribals, and so the Maoists did not succeed there. I describe the history of the PWG Maoists and how they contributed to the welfare of the tribals and opposed natural/forest resource exploitation, which highlights the role of rebel agency. Finally, I develop a novel constituency-level dataset to test the theory and show that former princely state constituencies had more Maoist control.