WE HEAR very little, if anything, about the long-running civil war between Maoist Naxalite guerillas and the forces of central government in the central Indian region of Bastar.

There, the indigenous population has been battling against corruption and central government indifference to their situation for decades and this book is a visual injunction to pay attention.

Indian photographer Poulomi Basu, a women’s rights and transmedia activist and journalist, has been working on Centralia for nine years in an ever-deeper journey into a labyrinthine conflict over land, resources and identity.

The region is home to vast mineral deposits of iron ore, bauxite and coal, but it is also home to one of India’s indigenous tribal populations.

Caught between the state and the Maoist guerillas, they are fighting for their very survival as their land and environment are eroded through the brutal extraction of minerals.

Basu says that in the work she is looking to expose the violence that accompanies the bipolar development narratives present within contemporary India, “between those who endorse the project of corporate industrialisation and those who oppose it.

“I have seen first hand the devastating effects of this terrible violence on native communities and how, as is the case throughout the world, violence has become the de facto language of politics.”

She is looking to find a new way to communicate the reality of modern warfare, where the front line is blurred and the conflict’s many actors all occupy opaque roles.

Sadly, there is very little text in the book to give us a deeper grasp of the reality behind the images, though a conclusion by Ivan Sigal, executive director of Global Voices, does go some way in helping us to contextualise the images.

The book is an inadequate, albeit laudable, response to this unreported war and falls between a coffee table art book and urgent appeal to our solidarity.

Yet the images hardly do justice to the struggle.

Published by Dewi Lewis, £35.