Jitendra Majhee’s textbooks are piled on his table at the Orcha Middle School in south Chhattisgarh. His home, he says, is 70 km away at Lanka. It is one of the nondescript villages in Narayanpur district. The Class VIII student is staying in Bal Ashram , a government-run hostel for children.For the young boy, who wants to be a doctor, going home means at least a two-day walk negotiating a hilly terrain, wild animals and rivulets.But every Wednesday, he gets a chance to meet his friends and family. “My relatives regularly come to Orcha’s Wednesday bazaar. They start their journey on Monday morning and reach here by Tuesday afternoon. They sell the goods in the market, buy some stuff and begin their return journey on Thursday morning. They reach home by Friday afternoon,” says Majhee.This is Abujhmad — “Abujh” means what you can’t understand and “mad” means hill in the local dialect. Young Majhee has a textbook open in front of him, with a map of India. Ironically, Abujhmad is possibly the only piece of land in the country where there is no revenue map as yet; villagers have no title deeds (patta) to the land they live in or cultivate. The area is bigger than the state of Goa — about 4,000 sq km.The presence of civil administration in Abujhmad is bare minimum, and in most remote villages, non-existent. One doctor on a government contract visits the block headquarters Orcha, but he does it only on Wednesday, when the place wears a festive look because of the bazaar where villagers gather from far-flung areas.Inhabited by about 40,000 people, Abujhmad includes the entire Orcha block and most of Narayanpur district as well as parts of Dantewada and Bijapur districts of Chhattisgarh and Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. The majority of people belong to the Abujhmaria tribe.Naresh Korram, sarpanch of Orcha gram panchayat, says road and phone connectivity hold the key to the mainstreaming of the area. “Four buses ply on a 66-km stretch between Orcha and the district headquarters, Narayanpur. There’s no road to most of the interior villages beyond Orcha. Maoists continue to resist road-building and plying of buses; only in August last year, they burnt down a bus after asking the passengers to get down,” he says. Orcha gram panchayat includes villages such as Tondabeda, Battumpada and Fulmetta.Abujhmad, historically, remained an abandoned area since the time of the British who otherwise conducted revenue surveys in areas as far as the Lushai hills (now Mizoram) or Jammu and Kashmir’s Ladakh region.Even after Independence, most parts of Abujhmad were out of reach for outsiders, at times deliberately, to ensure that the tribes living in the area didn’t dilute their ethnicity and tradition by mixing up with outsiders. But Orcha village was reasonably developed and there were motorable roads between Narayanpur and Orcha in the 1980s.Things changed as Maoists entered the "unknown hill" in the 1990s and consolidated their stronghold in the early 2000s: they burnt over 50 schools, de -stroyed roads and set up what they called "Jantana Sarkar" in most of Abujhmad. If locals are to be believed, Maoists even today run schools with their own syllabus in at least two places: Murumwada and Boter (See map).This writer met 13-year-old Vira (name changed), who was trained by Maoists as a dancer before she was rescued by the police late last year. She was part of their Chetna Natya Mandli (CNM), a wing that propagates Maoist ideology through songs and dance. Belonging to Hitawada village in Abujhmad, she is now a Class V student in the Orcha Primary School. When asked whether she would like to return to the Maoists, she retorts, "Kabhi nahi (Never)," shock and anger in her eyes.And that's a pointer to the future. Vira and others, who have been exposed to the outside world, say a clear "No" to Maoist ideology. But such an exposure can be a widespread reality only if the area gets surveyed, land deeds are earmarked and all-weather roads lead to remotest villages and mobile connectivity spreads -- all of which are opposed tooth and nail by Maoists, either by using brute force or instigating villagers to protest.A revenue survey was conducted in Akabeda and a few other villages, for the first time, in April 2017 with the help of a team from IIT-Roorkee, but the process did not make headway because of lack of infrastructure and security concerns.Meanwhile, in recent months, Maoists have stepped up violence at Pokameta, 25 km south of the district headquarters and where a new development block is being proposed. IG of Bastar range, Vivekanand, told ET Magazine that the police set up a number of camps in Abujhmad in less than a year. "Once a camp gets stabilised and nearby area-domination is completed, developmental activities begin¡K. The so-called Jantana Sarkar is getting shrunk," he adds.If not the security forces, the aspiration of locals may possibly act as the ultimate weapon against the Maoist design of stonewalling developmental activities in Abujhmad. This writer met four women -- Neeldai, Kamli, Ratni and Sampatti -- who were complaining about the malfunctioning BSNL tower. In all of Abujhmad, mobile phone works only in Orcha. "Naya phone leke kya phaida agar ye chalta nahi (What's the point of buying a new phone if it does not work)?" asks Kamli. She may not realise it, but her phone could bring the world to the "Unknown Hill" and be ominous for Maoists in Abujhmad -- and beyond.Vira (name changed), 13, can’t recall when exactly she was picked up by Maoists from her village called Hitawada, located deep inside Abujhmad. “It was sometime during the monsoon last year.”In the Maoist camp, she was trained as a dancer. Her trainers at Chetna Natya Mandli (CNM), a wing of the Maoists that propagates their ideology through song and dance, made her undergo a tough daily schedule. She attended singing and dancing classes every morning and evening. And then, she had to move from one village to another with the CNM “commander”.When Maoist cadres address a gathering in a village, Vira and others sing and dance to entertain the villagers and spread Maoist ideology in a subtle way.After being rescued by a police team last year, Vira enrolled in a school in Orcha. In a 15-minute interaction with this writer, the softspoken Vira raised her voice only once. When asked whether she would like to go back to the Maoists, she retorted, “Kabhi nahi (Never),” shock and anger in her eyes.I am from Kudmel village, about 28 km west of Orcha. I have been in this school since 2012 and living in the ashram (hostel) here. My mother and elder sister live in the village. Connectivity to my village is a problem, particularly during the monsoon, as there’s no bridge over the Kudmel nala.I am from a place called Lanka, about 70 km from my school. It’s at the extreme end of Abujhmad. We have 10-12 students from Lanka here. All of us reside in the ashram. The only way to reach our village is on foot. My relatives come to Orcha for its Wednesday market. They start their journey on Monday morning and reach here Tuesday afternoon. They sell goods in the market, buy some stuff and begin their return journey on Thursday morning. They reach home Friday afternoon. I visit my home only during the summer vacation, when the school is closed.