Among the security problems that dogged the latest general election, none was perhaps as widespread as that posed by the so-called Naxal menace. The Naxalite movement under various garbs and names today straddles nine states running north to south through parts of Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. There were several clashes, abductions, landmine blasts, casualties and infractions, not all of them necessarily reported by the media. It is amazing that there has been a longstanding conspiracy of silence virtually across the political spectrum with regard to a deep-rooted problem that simply will not go away. Mindless Naxalite violence is truly reprehensible. But state repression without tackling the causative factors has only spawned a vicious cycle of violence and reprisals that has spread regionally.