Northeast India: Beyond the Stereotypes
By H.Khogen Singh
Sanjib Baruah, Durable Disorder:
Understanding the Politics of North-Eastern India.(New
Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 265, 2004, Rs
495.
Books on Northeast
India, like those on Kashmir, come out by the dozen
these days. The authors generally belong to two categories.
In the first are former bureaucrats, policemen and
generals. Most of them do not belong to the region
but have served there for long. In the second are
academics, mostly from the region. The divide in the
prescriptions for the ethnic insurgency in the region
is clear to any discernible observer. For the former,
economic development, employment generation and a
corruption-free administration are the mantras for
tackling the insurgencies. For the second group, the
solution lies in going beyond the development paradigm.
But now a well-known
author and thinker from the Northeast has come up
with suggestions that go beyond the stereotypes. His
views are influenced to a large extent by what is
happening globally. Baruah points out that in official
publications and much of the academic writing in India,
the problems of the North-east are often explained
by underdevelopment and poor integration into the
pan-Indian mainstream. Consequently, the measures
that are put forth to tackle the region's numerous
insurgencies are broadly two: economic development
and nation building. Baruah calls for 'imagining a
different future' for the Northeast by arguing that
a 'continued faith in the failed narratives of national
development and nation building can be quite dangerous
in the present global conjuncture.'
The author says that
a lesson could be learnt from the European Union's
Committee of the Regions that was set up under the
Maastrich Treaty of 1993. The Treaty allows 'regional
identities' in the EU to pursue a transnational politics
of recognition that has been able to compensate for
their marginalization within nation-states. These
regional identities in the EU, according to Baruah,
are not unlike the ethnic assertions in Northeast
that are behind the various insurgencies in the region.
Baruah says it is
necessary to know the region's history for a better
understanding of its contemporary problems. But unfortunately,
'the bureaucrats, politicians and military officers
who make northeast policy are either oblivious of
the historical issues that insurgencies raise, or
consider them too trivial to merit substantive engagement.'
The book will be
a disappointment for the uninitiated as it is not
a historical account of the region, particularly its
post-independence troubled time. Its analytical and
insightful arguments make it a must-read for researchers
and those in the government who shape northeast policy.
It is certainly among the best books on the Northeast
to come out in recent years.
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