You know immediately when you have reached Khejuri. The roads in the communist part of Nandigram, a remote rural area in India’s West Bengal state, are lined with crude bamboo flagpoles bearing the communist hammer and sickle. At the entrance to the area, paramilitary police check all visitors.

The region about 150km from Calcutta erupted last year into a mini-civil war after the state’s communist government tried to acquire land in Nandigram for a special economic zone being set up by Indonesia’s Salim group. The villagers in Khejuri wanted the zone, arguing it would bring jobs. But their neighbours elsewhere in Nandigram did not want to surrender their farms and started protesting against the project.