Northeast

The Northeast, environmentally speaking, is singular in a number of ways. The richness of biodiversity is high, and the percentage of endemism - at 33 per cent - is quite high as well. The region, on the whole, merits high priority for conservation. This may not sound good enough in what would merit the region to have its own forest policy, but there is more to it here than meets the eye. The forests and the biodiversity are the life support systems for local communities here much more than...

It is fine to talk of development. It would be, perhaps, be better to talk of some preconditions – transport and communications, for instance. Those living in “mainland India”, cut off by the Chicken Neck Corridor as it were would have the faintest idea about connectivity in the Northeast, is all about. Some four years back, the Shukla Commission had mentioned, “Few realise that the Indian Air Force even today operates what must be the largest civil air supply mission anywhere in the world apart...

The frantic air-dashes by Union home ministry officials to Assam is telling. The possibility of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence fishing in the troubled demographic waters of the state is not a mere bogey any more. What was an impending threat only a few years back is now a reality. What was a pernicious pathogen till yesterday, has today infected the host and spread to such an extent that its debilitating effects are already beginning to show. The days of crying wolf for politicians are...

The tragedy of the Naga political movement has been the annihilation of Nagas by Nagas themselves. The Nagas have remained cleaved along various schools of thought. Between radicals and moderates (from the killing of Theyieu Sakhrie to that of Kaito Sema) among the insurrectionists themselves. Also between those underground and those overground (from the killing of Imkongliba Ao to that of the Kevichusa brothers). And somewhere complicating all these delicate equations and rendering all...

He was barely in his thirties, when this strapping young man trekked all the way to China braving dense jungles, treacherous passes and hostile forces all around. More than 30 years later, the magic still works. The twinkle in his eyes unmistakable, the general secretary of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN), Thuingaleng Muivah, retains a charm and sharp intellect that makes him the leader of the most potent and dreaded insurgent organisation in the Northeast. Back again in Nagalim...

Had he not become the leader of the dreaded insurrectionist organisation, he would probably have been serving in a mission. The last time that negotiations were held between the Indian government and Naga guerrillas in the late Sixties, playing a key role was a suave young man in his mid-30s. Another 30 summers later, the same man is set to play a bigger role in the current negotiations. Meet the soft-spoken, deeply-religious chairman of the underground National Socialist Council of Nagaland...

For all that might be said to the contrary, the fact is security forces have more often than not failed to come clean as far as counter-insurgency operations in the Northeast are concerned. It is therefore not without reason the "success" of the much-hyped Operation Golden Bird has to be taken with a pinch of salt. In what has been described as the biggest anti-insurgency operation in the Northeast since the Army's deployment there in the 1950s, security forces claimed to have killed a motley...

With the stage set for the February 15 Assembly polls in the Northeast, a surfeit of names crop up that extend from the ordinary to the bizarre. There are namesakes and names for names' sake. Adolf Hitler, for once, is not a member of the German National Socialist Party. He is not a protagonist of Nazism either for anybody to be alarmed of but just the Congress(I) nominee for the Rangsakona (ST) seat in Meghalaya. Adolf Hitler R Marak is his full name. The Great Dictator of the Third Reich is...