Building Northeastern Futures, Looking East
By B.G. VERGHESE

The high turnout in the recent polls to Tripura and Nagaland suggests that people in the Northeast seek peace and orderly development and believe that there is a viable alternative to the gun. Not all in the region may agree; but a lot of others are, perhaps, redefining their sense of what constitutes self-determination. None will deny that alienation, neglect and errors of judgement, often real, sometimes imagined, have given cause for frustration, anger and militancy. However, change is in the air with the dawning realization that there is a significant opportunity cost of delay and that past lags and lapses can only be overcome by building the future.

Until independence, “Greater” Assam incorporated most of the Northeast, barring the princely states of Manipur and Tripura. This was among the most globalized parts of India and Assam ranked high in terms of relative develop-ment and income levels. The World War II rudely ended the political isolation of what were hitherto remote frontier regions while partition severed national and external connectivity by land and water. This created the large and rich but virtually landlocked geo-strategic area that makes up the Northeast.
A look at the map tells us why the region is called the Northeast. This is not an insult, nor a derogation of identity or status as sometimes believed but a logical and convenient geographical expression [of] for a collective entity. For purposes of planning, development and strategic thinking, the Northeast is more than the eight member states that now make up the North East Council. It necessarily encompasses all the territories lying beyond the Siliguri neck, including North Bengal and the Darjeeling-Gorkha Hills Area. This is where Southeast Asia begins, racially Mongoloid and an ethno-cultural and bio-geographical bridge to the lands and fast growing economies lying to the north and east. To ignore geography is to fail to understand history and the opportunities that beckon.

The entire critical infrastructure that links India to the Northeast – the railway, national highway, oil pipeline, multiple telecommunication conduits, and power transmission lines – run through the Siliguri neck, a narrow 22-km wide corridor sandwiched between Nepal and Bangladesh and in close proximity to Tibet/China and Bhutan. A breakdown, bandh or interruption anywhere along any part of this funnel has a critical impact on supplies, prices, security and the well being of millions. No unit in the Northeast can prudently disregard this geo-political reality. So while each state is free to shape its own development and progress, there is a certain compulsion for the component units to march together or suffer separately. This provides the inherent rationale for the NEC, which is not intended in any way to curtail or minimize local identities but rather to facilitate and maximize realisation of the potential and wellbeing of the constituent units.

Another truism that merits greater appreciation is that peace and development go hand in hand. Indeed, a recent World Bank study establishes a significant correlation between pockets of unemployment and poverty, and unrest and militancy. The end of isolation of the hitherto remote hills that ring the Brahmaputra and Barak Valleys has induced change from subsis-tence and barter to a monetized, market economy. This has both bewildered and confused many who believe in traditional organic modes of living, even as it has started a process of modernization and challenged imagination and aspirations. Traditional mores and institutions have been relegated or abandoned but what has replaced them has often been unsuitable or exclusive, thus creating new hierarchies and an emerging feudalism. No wonder the restless and discontented fall prey to adventurism and subversion. Development, even if equitable and sustainable, is admittedly no panacea for every social and political ill; but it can sometimes also trigger negative tendencies that can and must be corrected.

Although the Northeast enjoys the largest volume of subventions from the Centre, it remains a natural resource rich region inhabited by poor people. Its HDI indices rank among the lowest on the national scale, with Assam at the bottom of the heap. This is particularly disturbing. Assam by its size and location is the region’s prime anchor for stability and engine for growth or must otherwise be a drag. Today Assam, like the region as a whole, is deficient in essential food items leading it to imports from other parts of the country.

A study done by the National Institute for Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi, has estimated that if national growth rate is to be assumed at 9 per cent over the next two to three Plans, then the northeastern states will need to grow even faster at around 12 per cent per annum (maybe 13 per cent for Assam) if the region is to catch up with the rest of the country in terms of per capita income and basic social indices by 2020. This represents a huge challenge. If not met, disparities between the Northeast and the rest of the country will only widen. Closing the gap will not be easy but is doable and will require the Centre to underwrite correspondingly larger investments in the region, with basic needs and infrastructure taking priority.

One of the major infrastructural build up lies in meeting the challenges and combating the frequent floods that has led to agricultural depression and food crises in Assam. If the state, practices a largely mono-crop, low risk subsistence agriculture it is because of the devastation caused by the annual floods. Inundation cannot be altogether avoided but can be mitigated and better managed. Embankments are no more a sufficient answer, with bed aggradation and continuing erosion occurring not merely on account of a shrinking jhum cycle but also because of a variety of development and construction activities.

To moderate floods, storages can be constructed in Arunachal Pradesh that can also generate electricity and augment low season flows to improve navigation. This solution, first mapped out by the Brahmaputra Board, has run up against opposition from Arunachal Pradesh, which fears submersion and displacement and would rather limit itself to run of the river projects. Such schemes are unobjectionable in themselves, but would entail sacrificing a significant amount of power and do little for flood moderation and navigation. Smaller dams could offer an intermediate solution but would preclude optimal energy generation and other benefits.

It has been argued by some that displacement by submersion in terms of persons per unit of benefit is likely to be relatively low in Arunachal in view of its very sparse population. But this becomes less tenable where tribal commu-nities are small, sometimes numbering just hundreds or a few thousand, and the ratio of displacement or loss of homeland to inundation is proportionately large. Such human and cultural costs, apart from ecological and livelihood losses, should certainly be sought to be minimized, if not avoided as far as possible. However, rational cost-benefit analyses and computer simulation models could suggest options, trade offs and appropriate compensatory mechanisms that leave everybody better off at the end of the day.

There is also greater public awareness and higher standards are being set within stronger legal frameworks. Further, concepts of resettlement and rehabilitation have vastly improved and are being more closely monitored. The terms of compensation have undergone qualitative and quantitative transformation with project-affected families being made stakeholders through equity ownership, annuities and participation in the future stream of benefits. This then could result in informed consent and better guaranteed outcomes.

A practical and mutually beneficial trade off between Arunachal and Assam and a fair deal for those displaced seems possible, given imaginative initiatives. The idea of tripartite Trusteeship Zones (TZs) can be initiated, in disputed areas between Assam and Arunachal with Central interventions, for the next 30-50 years and to utilize them for the development of essential infrastructure such as railheads, airstrips, communication hubs, warehouses, cold storages, entrepots, training centres, growth poles and other investments (such as cement plants, workshops). All these are necessary to build larger projects in the hills and to convert hydroelectricity into value-added products and jobs before “surplus” power is fed into the grid for consumption elsewhere. The availability of power, water supply, rail, road, air and even water connectivity, markets, banks, health and educational facilities, hotels and so forth and, above all, unencumbered flat lands in these TZs, render them well suited to being developed as Special Industrial Development Zones with SEZ-type incentives for an initial period of time to attract investment. The proposed 3000 MW Dibang multipurpose project in the Luhit region, whose foundation stone was just recently laid by the Prime Minister, could well spawn such a TZ.

Such an arrangement would be attractive to all sides. Arunachal would gain from a new land-for-land model of development, exchanging relatively narrow valleys that get submerged for flat lands in the plains that are ideally suited for large investments and employment generation. Displaced communities could be offered R&R housing-cum-training-cum-employment benefits in the TZ if so desired (apart from compensation) or in situ through area development of the upper catchment.

Hill areas are naturally disadvantaged because of their difficult terrain. This also compels sub-optimal land use patterns and unsustainable cultivation in the face of reducing jhum cycles and precludes more sustainable land use for horticulture, plantations and even cultural or eco-tourism in the absence of market access. Dams therefore serve a most valuable role in opening up remote regions for area development. Under new compacts that can be negotiated, communities facing submergence or displacement should be able to benefit from provision of basic services and other social and economic development deriving from investments made by duly constituted upper catchment area development authorities funded with resources earmarked for mandated catchment area development, reservoir fishery and tourism and new land use development.

All of these would provide opportunity for those who would prefer not to go to TZs. Additional funding could come from normal development and poverty alleviation budgets marshalled to implement area development programmes. There is no reason why poverty alleviation schemes, R&R and realization of the Millennium Development Goals, all of which are mandated, should be seen as separate or parallel projects. The bottleneck is not resources but imagination and management and technical capability, which, in the case of horticulture and plantations, could come from public-private-community partnerships with corporate collaboration. As it is, host states are now entitled to receive an enhanced quantum of 13 per cent free power from hydro projects a small part of which could surely be earmarked for area development programmes. Since utilization of this power in scattered hamlets in the neighbourhood may not be cost-effective on account of long and difficult transmission leads and line losses, it would be more appropriate to apportion a small part of the commuted value of “free power” to develop local, stand-alone mini, micro and non-conventional systems of energy generation of which solar, water turbines and bio-fuels could be some. This could light and heat hamlets and power small gadgets and motors for local industry and processing units.

The new plantation/horticulture economy would be a far cry from the old tea estates or gardens but would compromise smallholders, organized in cooperatives or community enterprises and/or linked to corporates that could provide the necessary technical guidance, inputs and undertake all subsequent grading, processing, branding and marketing operations on a profit sharing basis. As it is, smallholder tea growers in Arunachal are selling leaf to neighbouring tea factories across the border in Assam to mutual benefit. In a competitive, globalising world, economies of scale matter.

Trusteeship Zones could also be set up linked to the proposed Tipaimukh project, to benefit Mizoram, Manipur and Assam, and to the Bairabi, Turial and Tuvai projects in Mizoram. Meghalaya and Assam could work out similar project-related TZs (in disputed border strips) linked to water resources and mineral (coal, limestone, uranium) development. There are objections to many of these projects but they are not incapable of resolution given transparency and a clear understanding.

The TZ concept could give a tremendous fillip to investment and industrialization in Assam not merely for local consumption but for export to the rest of the country and beyond. Small and medium industry would gain impetus from market buoyancy induced by a surge in agriculture. This apart, Assam could gain from market development and consolidation in a variety of ways. The military and para- military formations, including the Border Roads Organization and even the police in the Northeast, together with their families, possibly number a million or more persons. These are up-market consumers for a variety of stores and supplies – canned foods and juices, boots, OG and other uniform material, belts, badges, haversacks, water bottles, webbing, mosquito nets, parachute cloth, bandages, sleeping bags, blankets, a range of everyday medicines – which largely or almost entirely come from outside, assisted by transport subsidies. Why should not many of these items be manufactured locally? This would entail negotiating contracts with the Defence authorities with fixed delivery schedules and quality assurance, following trial production runs.
These production and trading arrangements will automatically generate the need for developing connectivity in a big way. There is a already rea-sonably good civil air service in the region. However, few know or recall that the Northeast enjoyed far superior air connectivity in the 1950s than today as a number of private carriers operated Dakotas from wartime airstrips as no-frill air taxi services ferrying civil and military personnel and stores. These carriers provided an elaborate and extensive air supply service to maintain the civil and security establishments and the local population throughout the hill region through free drops and para-drops in designated DZ areas, supplemented by landings at high-altitude air strips. This role was subsequently taken over by the IAF, which conducts a considerable air supply mission even to this day.

It would make a great deal of sense to repatriate much or entire air supply mission to private carriers who should be permitted to fly small passenger-cum-cargo aircraft. The military contract would provide them with a guaranteed base load that would take care of overheads and render regional air-taxi operations viable. The paucity and unreliability of air connectivity to and within the Northeast at present represents a failure of national civil aviation policy, retarding development and integration in a vulnerable and strategic part of the country.

Railway development is moving forward with further BG conversion, line extensions and the construction of some key bridges. A large road development programme is under way, especially to connect neglected border regions as in Arunachal, where a major east-west corridor is proposed, and to bring more state capitals nearer railheads if not on the railway map. New airports have been commissioned and several derelict airstrips are being revived and upgraded to cater to a regional air service. The waterways too are being improved and extended and these are likely to develop faster were multi-modal transportation systems and roll on-roll-off containerized truck services to be encouraged.

The proposed 1500 MW capacity Tipaimukh project would be the creation of extensive new waterways reaching deep into remote parts of Manipur and Mizoram and could stimulate employment and income generation through industrialization with the assured energy it provides. The Bairabi project could do the same for Mizoram. The stimulus such projects can give the economy by opening up vast neglected regions, given attractive R&R and compensation packages as proposed, has not been adequately appreciated.

There are also imaginative ways to promote peace and reconciliation and ecological restoration. The 15 MW Gomti power project in Tripura was built over 30 years ago when the State badly needed electricity and had no other source. The Gomti dam, however, displaced 45,000 tribal families from about 45,000 acres of farmland in the prosperous Dumbar bowl. The towns (read Bengalis) benefited from the power whereas the tribals were resettled in the surrounding hills and resumed jhumming, which they had given up, aggrava-ting erosion and siltation of the reservoir. This sparked tribal-Bengali tensions that gave rise to insurgency while shrinkage of the reservoir over time steadily reduced generation capacity to around no more than 7 MW of firm power. Meanwhile the State developed alternative energy resources from local gas finds and has recently started work on a further 750 MW gas-fired thermal station that will make Gomti power redundant. The Gomti project has by now been fully amortised and were the dam to be decommissioned and the reservoir drained, energy supplies would not be affected whereas the originally displaced tribal families would be enabled to return to settled cultivation in the now highly fertile reservoir bed and the eroded hills restored to forest. Such a measure would bolster Tripura’s farm economy, assist reconciliation between the uprooted tribals and the Bengali population and strike a powerful blow for peace and development whose repercussions would be felt throughout the Northeast.
Many other innovations and initiatives come to mind. The “rat-hole” mining to win coal from narrow seams burrowed into shallow outcrops, practiced in parts of Meghalaya is hazardous, wasteful, ecologically harmful and exploi-tative. Since the land is privately or communally owned these mines were not nationalized and are operated locally outside the ambit of any regulatory framework. A powerful mafia controls the trade and much of the coal is smuggled into Bangladesh or sent down to Guwahati. It should surely be possible to request the NE Coalfields Ltd, a PSU, or any other consultant to survey the reserves and formulate a scientific work plan with proper conservation and safety measures that the owners could then be helped to manage. Everybody could gain.
Anxieties over progressive degradation of the Loktak Lake and its unique eco-system can be similarly addressed jointly by the Loktak Hydel Project and local communities.

The Northeast cannot be isolated from its external neighbourhood and hence the relevance of Looking “East” at Bangladesh, Myanmar, Tibet/China, Bhutan and eastern Nepal. For long after Independence some of the region’s external boundaries were virtually closed for a variety of reasons. Since then, political relations, once strained, have improved and the climate is favourable for resumed and expanded contacts and exchanges. In the absence of a border policy, large frontier tracts were left undeveloped as wilderness areas in the misguided belief that this would constitute a protective security barrier against inimical forces from the other side. This bizarre assumption has at last been discarded though old mindsets remain and fears are still expressed about dangers from subversive elements, drug peddlers, arms merchants, smugglers and other undesirables. This too is slowly changing.

Instead of feeling peripheral and looking inwards, the Northeast could acquire an important new centrality looking outwards. It could and should be the gateway and land bridge not only to its immediate external neighbourhood but also to Inner Asia and Southeast Asia that lie beyond. This is the logic of ideas like BIMSTEC, the Mekong-Ganga Association, the Bangladesh-(Southwest) China-(Northeast) India-Myanmar (BCIM) Forum or so-called Kunming Initiative. These entities are unexceptionable but are each of them huge in extent and population.

None of them has really taken off because of official dithering to some extent but largely on account of the singular failure to put trade facilitation measures in place. In their absence, bureaucratic hurdles enhance transaction costs and compel resort to corrupt practices or smuggling, which entail loss of revenue and the growth of mafia syndicates. This has been the sad story of Moreh, which has become a gateway for licensed smuggling and has lost out to its Myanmarese counterpart, Tamu. India built a first class highway from Kalewa on the Chindwin at a ferry crossing to Mandalay in 2000 in order to promote trade with Myanmar and through it with Southeast Asia and China. But there was absolutely no follow through. This has been the story on the main Indo-Bangladesh trade corridor at Benapole-Petrapole and along the Indo-Nepal border. There is even today no motor vehicles agreement that permits through movement of trucks across the Myanmar or Bangladesh border. This necessitates transshipment, delays, losses, pilferage and higher overheads. Additionally, in many parts of the Northeast, the underground and criminal gangs impose levies and taxes.
Trade facilitation is therefore of paramount importance if the Look East Policy (LEP) is to translate into trade, investments and prosperity. Perhaps the best way to begin would be to take up smaller and more manageable trans-border growth triangles or two-country growth poles. Thus, Tripura and Mizoram could pair off with Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts and Cox’s Bazar or even add on the adjacent Chin Hills and Rakhine coast of Mynamar to constitute a growth triangle. Similar arrangements could be made elsewhere to resolve the last-mile problem of connectivity, by building a bridge, immigration and customs post, telephone line, bank, and whatever else it takes to facilitate movement and exchange. Once these bridgeheads are consolida-ted with the necessary infrastructure in place, further expansion will be more easily possible, embracing larger territorial units and a wider range of goods and services.

The Guwahati international airport and air cargo terminal was completed quite some years ago but has been languishing for lack of coordinated action to forge the necessary linkages and loops. This is utterly absurd and shows a total lack of forethought. The Kaladan corridor now proposed as an inter-modal road-cum-waterway link from Southern Mizoram to Sitwe port along the Kaladan river could meet the same fate without forward planning and the execution of linked developments.

Implementation of the LEP should not make the Northeast a mere transit route but a destination and a point of origin and destination for merchandise and services. For this to happen, the Northeast must generate the investments, manufactures and services of the kind discussed earlier, starting with connectivity. Such a policy also implies a commitment to expanding regional cooperation and not merely paying lip service to that ideal. Relations with Bangladesh are probably most critical as the Northeast needs transit to end its isolation from the Indian heartland and must cooperate with it for optimal development of its vast water resources. Bhutan, being landlocked, is dependant on close cooperation with the Northeast and West Bengal. The reopening of the Nathu La trade route holds out interesting possibilities even if the Stilwell Road takes time to be meaningfully restored. Cooperation with China is also important for receiving adequate and timely river discharge readings for harnessing the Brahmaputra and mitigating floods and debris-dam outbursts, especially in the context of climate change.
A number of scare stories have appeared about possible Chinese diversion of the Brahmaputra northwards to the Gobi desert and the Beijing region, with devastating consequences for the lower trans-Himalaya riparians. This is highly exaggerated and bears little relationship to the hydrology, topography and consequent pumping involved in such flights of fancy. The first point to be noted is that the Brahmaputra is only formed around Sadiya and that any diversion structure the Chinese might build would be on the Tsang-po, which becomes the Siang or Dihang after it enters Arunachal. The massive 2500 metre drop in the Brahmaputra U-bend has an estimated potential of 48,000 to 54,000 MW according to a Japanese map study. The notion that this energy could take care of the pumping load to send the waters north 2000 km north is fallacious as all that energy would be utilized just to pump the water back up to the head of the drop. Some water may legitimately be used in Tibet or diverted, but nothing enough to “dry up” the river. In any event, about 70 per cent of the flow of the “Brahmaputra” system as a whole originates south of the Himalaya.
It would perhaps be more purposeful for India to propose to China that the two countries consider a collaborative study to harness the potential of the U-bend as a joint or regional venture with international support as a contribution towards combating climate change through generation of clean hydro-power.

Development of the 3000 MW Chindwin cascade, starting with the Tamanthi project, east of Phek, Nagaland, is something India and Myanmar have been discussing. Should this fructify, surplus power from Tamanthi is proposed to be transmitted to Nagaland, thus laying the groundwork for what could become a larger SAARC-ASEAN grid into which U-Bend power could also feed.
The Northeast will require bold thinking about utilising what are largely community land rights for rapid development. Arunachal has announced a bold initiative in this regard. Cadastral surveys need to be extended and expedited and measures taken to prevent the commodification of community lands through a process of appropriation (akin to the English enclosure system) and benami alienation to outsiders, including Bangladeshis and Nepalese. Abandoned jhum lands could be diverted to horticulture and plantations to both ecological and economic advantage, unless imaginative agro-forestry programmes like Nagaland’s NEPED are pursued. Land banks could be built up and whole communities made stakeholders in future development. Meghalaya had some years ago sought to develop the concept of “tribal interest” as an adaptive alternative to the notion of “public purpose.”

Another and possibly more tricky issue could be labour. The Northeast has depended on outside labour for development as witnessed by the pattern of recruitment to the Border Roads Organisation and other large enterprises. At another level, certain skills are in short supply and will require to be procured from outside until these are sufficiently developed within the region. The in-migration of labour over the years, whether foreign or India, has inflamed local sentiments on grounds of its demographic, cultural and political impact. The answer is not to keep out migrant labour but to manage its political and social fallout differently.

Thus, for the rest, workers from the Indian heartland, could be electorally registered in one or two large “general” non-territorial constituencies irres-pective of where they live. Thus, they would not be disenfranchised but would equally not influence voting critically in a large number of constituencies as is the case at present, especially with regard to tea garden labour. Non-territorial constituencies are constitutionally recognized as in the graduates’ constituency that forms part of the electoral college for upper chambers in the states.

Finally, one needs to think of revamping administrative structures, adapting traditional institutions where possible. The successful commu-nalization programme in Nagaland offers a good example. A simpler, single-line administration with dedicated officers oriented to the field rather than the secretariat is required on the model of the hastily abandoned Indian Frontier Administrative Service cadre that was somewhat hastily abolished around 1970.

The North East Council (NEC) needs overhaul in terms of its charter and powers. This is hopefully under way. An empowered North East Water Resources Authority under the NEC would be a sound replacement for the moribund Brahamputra Board.

There is no reason why Northeast tribal residents should not begin paying income tax, the proceeds of which could for a while be earmarked for development purposes in their own states.
It is also time for the system of Inner Line permits and Restricted Area Permits to be withdrawn. They have served their purpose. A process of national citizenship certification together with the compulsory registration of births, marriages and deaths within a defined time horizon would be far more purposeful.

When the NEC was first constituted, the Security Adviser for the region (the Inspector General of the Assam Rifles) was made integral to the scheme. Over the years, this official has virtually got detached from the NEC and reports directly to the Home Ministry. This is unobjectionable but there is good reason to have this officer report concurrently to the Chairman of the NEC and be his security adviser. Peace and Security are two sides of the same coin and must go hand in hand. Even the rehabilitation and reorientation of surrendered militants requires civil collaboration in terms of retraining, counselling and employment if these elements are not to lapse back into militancy or crime. The MEA and Commerce Ministry should be represented in the NEC and officials of the latter in those Union Ministries.

Much else can be said about developing tourism, improving education, encouraging IT with broadband connectivity, developing sport and music, in which the Northeast has tremendous potential, and so on. But all these are well known and well understood. The region and the individual states have to get their act together. Ultimately it is they who must take responsibility.
While lamenting those things that may not have gone well in the Northeast, the region can boast of many success stories of orderly change. The stage appears now to be reasonably well set for a major thrust forward. Things are changing and there is ground for cautious optimism. Development and opening up to its neighbours could provide impetus for the next stage.