Synopsis The uncritical hysteria of expectations and the almost delusional character of ‘analyses’ that dominates media reportage on ‘peace initiatives’ pushes the ground realities of internal conflicts into the far background. We thus have the repeated experience of a comprehensive failure on the part of the political establishment to accommodate the complex and destructive dynamic of fragmented and unimaginative state responses confronting the endless flexibility of constantly mutating terrorist organizations and their supporters. This volume is an effort to restore a certain measure of balance in the perspectives on various conflicts in India that are arbitrarily and repeatedly destabilized by apparently well-intentioned but ill-conceived policy initiatives.