Our ideas, Wittgenstein remarked, are our sectacles. They are the windows through which we see the world. The mould into which we cast our conceptions defines our experiences and the reactions they elicit in us, and this is as true for our responses to political violence and terrorism as it is for our subjective reaction to reality. Terrorism, in the preponderance of specialised literature, has been conceived, alternately, as an amoral and utterly inhuman insurrection against all order and civilisation itself, or as a desperate, sometimes noble, struggle against oppression and injustice. The response to terrorism, consequently, is ordinarily and neatly divided into two broad categories – the military and the developmental. A brief look at each of these perspectives is illuminating.

Those who subscribe to the first viewpoint insist that terrorism is essentially a law and order problem, and that the state must apply all necessary force to suppress its manifestations and to ‘restore normalcy’. The record of success of military operations in extinguishing terrorist movements in India, however, has been poor. It is not within the scope of this paper to examine this record in any great detail.

The second viewpoint asserts that, unless the ‘root causes’ of poverty, inequality, exploitation and injustice are addressed, no resolution is possible. Consequently, all use of force is counter-productive and represents ‘state repression’ or even ‘state terrorism’. What is required is massive developmental investment that will eliminate the sources of popular discontent and return the ‘noble revolutionaries’ to the ambit of democracy and of lawful political activity. This assertion is, by and large, an article of faith, and in the profusion of literature reflecting this perspective, there is little evidence of a case study that would suggest that this strategy has actually been successfully implemented in any part of the world.

Moreover, no empirical studies demonstrating any causal linkages between specific and consistent parameters of underdevelopment, exploitation or injustice, on the one hand, and the emergence and persistence specifically of terrorism on the other, are available. Nevertheless, this perspective finds its justification in the much larger body of literature that links deprivation, inequalities and perceived oppression with violence, and simply infers that the ‘solution’ must lie in the elimination of these ‘root causes’. This point of view has wide support, not only among the well intentioned, but also among an influential section of corrupt bureaucrats and politicians who have been the primary beneficiaries of the massive developmental and relief expenditure provided to terrorism affected States in India.

Among the critical elements that planners fail to accommodate in their plans and projections, thus, is the unique character, and the sheer volume and complexity of the underground economy of terrorism, and its ability to subvert all governmental interventions for the economic development of affected regions, or for the restoration of civil governance. This is not to suggest that they are unaware of the existence of this vast and illegal sector – indeed, activities in this sector are frequently and operationally targeted by enforcement agencies – but rather that, since it has not been sufficiently quantified and studied, it cannot be accurately factored into their calculations. There are, moreover, fundamental conceptual biases, including the "widespread impression that individual behaviours in those areas cannot really be understood using the economic model of rational choice. Hence, the conclusion that individual behaviours in illegal activities – not being rational in the economic sense, are to be left to a sociological analysis of pathologies and deviations."MORE.