Northeast

Politicians from mainland India, bogged down by their own mainstream and patronising narrative of what development or nationalism ought to mean, hardly ever get the ground situation right as far as the Northeast is concerned. All the more so with Assam, an anthropologist’s dream-come-true and a demagogue’s proverbial nightmare. This was amply evident from the cavalier way in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the election campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Kokrajhar on...

The accord between the Government of India and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) is definitely not an accord by any measure; what has been announced, if anything at all, is only a statement of intent. Most of the ongoing discourse has either bordered on "whataboutery" or been academic speculation. Neither is off the mark, and yet neither is fair. For, the history of Naga insurrection is a history of failed accords, one of repeated acts of treachery and skulduggery by the...

On January 10, 1929, a memorandum signed by 20 members of the Naga Club was submitted to the Indian Statutory Commission, also known as the Simon Commission, demanding exclusion of the Naga Hills from the Province of Assam. The underlying fear was that the Nagas would be lost in a sea of Indians if they came to be administered by the latter. John Hutton, an anthropologist who was the Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills, even suggested to the commission that a separate North-Eastern Frontier...

The Bharatiya Janata Party's notable performance in the elections to Assam's urban local bodies (ULBs) held earlier this month has been described as a "sweep" by some, as a "surge" by certain others. The truth, as is often the case when hyperbole is used to describe electoral performances, is the casualty here. For, the truth lies elsewhere. The BJP's accomplishment was good, quite impressive. But winning less than 50 per cent of the seats and just about half of the ULBs can hardly be described...

It's taken him more than 30 years to chronicle the experiences he underwent as a strapping, young IAS officer. It had anyway been a long haul for him from the beginning itself, quite literally at that — from getting his bags packed in home Kerala to travelling all the way to farflung, landlocked Manipur. The year was 1978, and insurgency was not yet so virulent in that Northeast state. C Balagopal had cleared the civil services exams, and had been drafted into the Manipur cadre. In the three...

In 1997, the largest and most powerful insurgent group of the Northeast signed a suspension of operations agreement with the Indian government. With the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) (NSCN-IM) agreeing to come to the negotiating table, many saw it as the beginning of the end for conflict in the region. They had reasons to believe so. For one, it was the NSCN(IM) which held sway over the many other smaller militant-secessionist groups of the region, which it had willy-nilly...

A major social media campaign is building up seeking justice for a Manipuri student who died under suspicious circumstances last week. While the police have described the death as the fall-out of a two-wheeler accident he had met with two days earlier, friends of the victim insist that the 19-year-old Manipuri succumbed to injuries he suffered on being severely assaulted by seniors at college the previous night. Richard Loitam, a second semester student of the Acharya NRV School of Architecture...

The state government in Manipur is forcefully evicting families living on Loktak. Since Tuesday, the state police has used brute force to chase alleged illegal settlers away from their homes, including burning nearly 200 huts. It is being alleged that the eviction is in fact a security operation, and not to preserve the environment under the controversial Loktak Lake (Protection) Act, 2006, as claimed. State government officials started burning down floating huts, khangpokshang, built over...

When Manas National Park was removed from the UNESCO World Heritage in Danger List in June this year, there was a lot to cheer about. The hard work put in by conservation groups has been recognised, but a bigger danger lies in the future — one that can virtually wash away the national park. Well, almost. If a recent study conducted by Partha J Das (Head, Water, Climate & Hazard Programme) and Bibhab K Talukdar (Secretary General) of Aaranyak is to be taken even with a pinch of salt, there's much...

The main threat to Kaziranga National Park in the next 25 years will come not from poachers or encroachers, but the 70 dams that are being built in the Eastern Himalayas of India’s Northeast. Experts who have just completed a study of the region fear that Kaziranga National Park and Manas National Park, both World Heritage Sites of natural importance, might be adversely affected by dam-building on the Brahmaputra and its tributaries. Partha J Das (Head, Water, Climate & Hazard Programme) and...