Dateline travels to India where it seems that not everyone is basking in its booming economic success.

The rural poor in central India feel left out of the financial windfall, and are increasingly turning their support to the anti-government Maoist rebels known as “Naxalites”.

Video Journalist Jonathon Matthews seeks out the rebels – and the government-backed vigilante group that opposes them – to ask whether the terrible cycle of violence that’s affecting two thirds of the Indian continent can possibly end.

The Naxalites wage war against the government by attacking police stations, murdering policemen and civilians, stealing weapons and blowing up railway lines.

In retaliation, the “Salwa Judum”, an anti-Maoist vigilante group that’s armed and supported by the Indian government, targets the rebels and those who support them, attacking and burning villages, brutally murdering scores of people and forcing at least 50,000 into squalid government camps.

Matthews ventures deep into the forests of central India to find the Salwa Judum, who insist that they are not doing anything wrong. Similarly, the Indian police insist that the Salwa Judum is entirely under their control.

In reality, the violence is pitting neighbour against neighbour, turning the conflict into a civil war. “I will fight them,” one woman who has joined the Salwa Jadum says of her friends who support the Naxalites. “I will have to kill them.”

On air: 23rd July 2008