Border Economy and the Production of Collective Subjects in India’s East and the North East

Breaking Away from the Debate

The scholarly debate on border economy in general, and border trade in particular, is clearly stuck up in either of the two poles with hardly anything common between them. On the one hand, there is the security argument. Reece Jones, in one of her recent papers on the present state of Indo-Bangladesh relations, sums up the official line in the following words:

In line with…modernism philosophy [of the nation-state with clearly marked out territorial spaces], the anomie outside India’s borders must be prevented from entering and that which is present in India must be eliminated and replaced with a righteous, orderly and compliant population. (Jones 2009, 302)

On the other hand, there is what in international relations theory is called the functionalist argument that views border trade ‘as a necessity’ (Hussain 2000, 141), both for those who live in remote areas for whom trading with immediate neighbours across the border makes better economic sense than with the distant towns and cities on their side, and for those who are alarmed at the growing rate of unofficial trade across these borders. While one must realise that unofficial trade is inevitable given the porous nature of our borders with the neighbouring countries, the best solution to the problem, they argue, is to legalise it. A report prepared by De (2011, 77–81ff.) from the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), for example, points out: ‘…the efforts must be made to ensure that not only is this trade recognised, so as to get it included in the formal statistics but [to work] for closer economic integration that India is seeking with its immediate neighbourhood, the ASEAN region’. All bottlenecks in this regard need to be sorted out.

This article seeks to break away from the debate oscillating, so far, between these two extremities and argues that the tug and pull between these two extreme forces calls many new and hitherto unknown configurations of border and border economy into existence as much as it contributes to the production of a number of new and hitherto unknown political subjects. While the role of the discursive practices and processes in the production of collective subjects is increasingly being realised in theoretical circles, much of what is written on the theme of border economy in India either turns a blind eye to these theoretical developments or simply does not have the cognitive tools to squarely address them. The article proposes to reflect on the implications that the otherwise unstoppable flow of human beings, goods and services has for the border. In the first part, I will examine how the State seeks to respond to it by way of disciplining the flow and keeping it under control through many such instrumentalities as border fencing, highly stringent border patrolling and most importantly, through border trade, etc. As the second stream of stories shows, border haat or trade is considered as an instrumentality through which these forces and processes are sought to be subjected to some form of an agreement between the nation-states, while at the same time making room for their people, goods and services to travel across borders on a regular basis without harming each other’s interests and security concerns. These interests and concerns that the States consider as dear to them contribute, in their turn, to the making of the nation as a collective subject.

Border trade, as already mentioned, is only one of the many instrumentalities through which people, goods and services travel across neighbouring nations with their apparently enclosed territories and therefore, cannot be understood without a reference to the broader dynamics of border economy per se. For instance, border trade is to be distinguished from cross-border trade or for that matter, international trade. As the Ministry of Development of North East Region (MDONER), Government of India, clarifies:

Border trade is different from trade through air, land or sea ports as trade through ports involves clearance through customs and has large volume. Border trade in contrast is ‘over-land trade’ by way of ‘exchange of commodities’ from a bi-laterally agreed list by people living along both sides of the international border. ⁸

The distinction between them hardly escapes our notice. One, it is necessary to differentiate trade across ‘international border points’ from other ‘local border points’, where only the residents in immediately neighbouring provinces/states can cross borders and trade freely. The volume of trade over international border crossings is always recorded and contributes to the total volume of intra-regional trade. On the contrary, though the local border points might carry noticeable trade volumes as well, they are unrecorded and their traffic is mainly limited to those immediate bordering districts and constituent states, and thus is of limited economic impact on the subregion as a whole.

Two, border trade is based—not so much on profit—but on the principle of subsistence. More often than not, direct exchange of goods through barter—as underlined in the third stream of stories—used to be encouraged so that no surplus could be accumulated in the process. As we have already noted, it continues uninterrupted—if not reinforced—as a matter of necessity. Trading with the nearest neighbour right across the border is meant for catering to the immediate needs of the bordering people on both sides and makes better economic sense than trading with the far-off towns and cities on the same side. Border trade is a means of emancipating the border areas from their geographical seclusion and remoteness.

This article proposes to understand border trade by situating it within the larger framework of border economy and by viewing it as only one of its inseparable parts. An understanding of the broader dynamics of border economy helps us appreciate an entire range of institutions that exist between the two extremes of a fully securitised State and a fully integrated national economy (into world economy). The second part of this article seeks to concentrate on the complex functioning of these intermediate institutions. Border economy, by all accounts, functions in a way that not only obliterates the commonplace distinction between the official and the unofficial trade, but reinforces politics of ethnic identity by way of deploying it as a technology of governing the unofficial trade. Thus, there are considerable overlaps between border and cross-border trade on one hand, and unofficial border trade on the other—both being integral to border economy per se. Ethnic identification, as a technology of governing the domain of unofficial trade, contributes to the production of an ethnic subject. The second part of my article seeks to reflect on the connection between unofficial border trade and ethnicity.

Third, unofficial border trade is not to be considered as an indivisible whole. While it has perhaps integral connections with the official trade, we have to keep in mind that one who runs a syndicate of ‘smugglers’ and maintains an empire in Moreh (in Manipur) will have to be distinguished from one who barely maintains a family of six members by crossing the border on daily basis at the risk of being detected and killed at any moment, sells poultry in the nearby haat in the district of Rajshahi in Bangladesh or repairs umbrella on the streets of Kolkata. The third part of this article proposes to concentrate on the salience that labouring life, or the subaltern, has acquired in recent years as the unofficial trading actor to border economy. We are interested in understanding the emergence of the labouring life as an agent, the alliances and solidarities she builds around her and the moral community that gets produced and reproduced in the process. Unlike what the commentators would have us believe, border economy produces the community and it is not the community that produces border economy, thereby framing its terms. Such a community is perched precariously on what Deleuze and Guattari (2010, 45) would call ‘the de-territorialized space’ spanning between the official and the unofficial, between the licit and the illicit, between the bordered and the borderless, and constantly making room for crossings of interlopers, goods and services, of course at grave risk to their life and livelihood. The production of such moral community brings about what Balibar (2004, 22), albeit in the different context of Europe, calls ‘dialectical transformations’ in both the dominant discourses of national security and functional integration of our economy with the world economy in general, and ‘powerhouse’ economies of Southeast Asia in particular.

Border Trade and the Making of the Nation

The first Indo-Bangladesh trade agreement, namely, ‘Trade Agreement between the Government of India and the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh’, signed on 28 March 1972, provided for border trade amongst the people within the 16 km belt of the border between the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, on one hand, and Bangladesh, on the other. While border trade till 1980 was supposed to be conducted between States, the 1980 agreement removed the clause—‘on a state-to-state basis’—for trade between the two countries. It was, for the first time, that the provisions of the agreement were kept open for all the stakeholders, including private parties.

A survey on unofficial trade between north-eastern region and Bangladesh by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), conducted in 1995, estimated the volume at ₹ 1,165 crores annually—of which West Bengal accounted for as much as 96 per cent (₹ 1,121 crores), Assam 3 per cent (35.5 crores) and Tripura 1 per cent (8.1 crores). Unofficial trade, however, was believed to be 50 times higher than the official one in Tripura, and for Assam, it was double the volume of official exports (Chaudhari 1995). Similarly, a study conducted by the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) estimated that unofficial trade between Tripura and Bangladesh, with which the state has a border of about 839 km, exceeds ₹ 100 crores (IIFT 1995, 28).

The Indo-Myanmar Border Trade Agreement of 1994 may be regarded as yet another milestone in the history of border trade in the North East. The Agreement aimed at breaking the region free from geographical isolation imposed on it by the Partition of 1947 and consequent reorganisation of international border. While border trade between India and Myanmar (formerly Burma) was operationalised on 12 April 1996, through the Moreh border (Manipur), the second designated border trade point at Champhai (Mizoram) is yet to be operationalised. The Agreement envisages that the border trade will take place through customs posts at Moreh in Manipur and Zowkhathar in Mizoram, corresponding to Tamu and Rhi in Myanmar. As many as 40 items are permitted for the border trade between India and Myanmar now, with 5 per cent duty. India’s exports to Myanmar include primarily the finished products like machinery and instruments, along with drugs, pharmaceuticals and agriculture-based products. On the other hand, Myanmar exports wood products, pulses, fruits, nuts and spices. Provisions have been made for the buyers (of both India and Myanmar) to take delivery of the marketed goods in freely convertible currencies. To facilitate limited movement of hill tribes residing along the Indo-Myanmar border, the Governments of India and Myanmar have permitted entry of such persons residing within 16 km of the international border with only permits, but without visa, with certain terms and conditions. Local nationals on both sides can stay in the other country for three days within 16 km on either side.

Border trade between India and Myanmar has not progressed further since the opening of the Moreh Land Customs Station (LCS). India and Myanmar agreed to allow border trade in 22 commodities as per the 1994 Agreement, which was expanded to 40 items in 2008, but this seems to have lost its relevance, particularly since the unofficial trade has proliferated (RIS 2011, 63). In 1995, IIFT estimated the annual volume of unofficial trade that takes place at Moreh at around ₹ 2,200 crores, followed by Champhai (₹ 500 crores), and Lungwa contributes around ₹ 100 crores. If this figure is to be believed, then the extent of unofficial trade stands more than 44 times compared to official trade (IIFT 1995, 36).

A greater part of the trade, therefore, is unregulated and unofficial, but it serves as an important source of livelihood for the people living along the borders. The traders often use small amounts of capital and deal in low volumes, and usually low-value products, for sale in the local market within the border zone. In all the border zones, the number of such small/petty traders is large, although the total volume of goods and services that they account for is relatively a small fraction of total trade (20–30 per cent). Very few formal mechanisms or rules affect this flow, which is either approved by law or tolerated de facto. Most of the customs officials reportedly turn a blind eye to these transactions. Usually, small payments have reportedly to be made at the border as bribery to officials. Besides, third-country goods are the predominant form of informal trade from Myanmar to India (Singh n.d., 15).

Following the visit of China’s Premier, Li Peng, in December 1991, border trade with Tibet in China has been conducted through Lipulekh Pass in Uttarakhand (formerly Uttaranchal) and Shipkila Pass in Himachal Pradesh. The prime minister of India and the premier of the State Council of China, at their summit meeting in June 2003, decided to reopen border trade through Nathu La in Sikkim. The Nathu La Pass is located 54 km from Gangtok, Sikkim’s capital. This is considered to be the shortest trade route to Lhasa (in Tibet), which is 525 km from the Nathu La Pass. The Tibetan town of Yatung is 52 km from Nathu La. The route connects Phari, Guru, Gyantse, Karos, Chusiu and Lhasa on the Chinese side of the trading points. As a result of the meeting, border trade between India and China linking north-eastern India and south-western China and vice versa, through Nathu La Pass in Sikkim, commenced from 6 July 2006. Import and export of locally produced commodities by people living along both sides of Sino-Indian border, as per prevailing customary practices, is allowed. As per the agreement, the two sides have designated Tsomgo (Changgu) in Sikkim and Renqinggang in Tibet as the venue for the border trade market (haat). The two sides agree to use Nathu La Pass as the transit point for persons, transport vehicles and commodities engaged in border trade. Each side is entitled to establish check points at appropriate locations to monitor and manage their movement through the Nathu La Pass. Compared to other border trade agreements signed by the Government of India with its neighbouring countries, this agreement is potentially of much larger scope in terms of the coverage of regions and goods and services because of the greater accessibility to and more developed physical and institutional infrastructure in and around the trading points, particularly on the Chinese side. Further, this trade route was a very active means of economic exchange before it was closed in the mid-1960s (Singh 2010, 312). De and Bhattacharyay, however, are not very optimistic about the trade potential of Nathu La. As they argue:

The Nathu La border crossing is unlikely ever to constitute a major trade route between China and India. The distances to other countries are too great, and the regular winter closures and frequent temporary closure at other times rule out the Nathu La border as a major cross-border trade route between China and India. This border crossing would be very suitable for local trade and tourism. The big opportunities for the Northeast India also lie in developing trade routes from Arunachal Pradesh/Assam/Manipur to Myanmar and Yunnan Province in China. (De and Bhattacharyay 2005, 27)

Besides facilitating flow of goods and services, the whole idea of formalising border trade is to introduce some sense of discipline and order to trade and commerce that have historically been taking place in the region so that the transactions across the border do not pose any threat to our nation and a sense of national identity slowly develops in these far-off areas.

Un/official Trade and the Production of Ethnic Subject

The value of unofficial border trade transacted through Moreh—a town standing at the border of India and Myanmar and forming the key artery of the proposed Trans-Asian Super Highway—is estimated at about ₹ 2,000 crores a year (Shukla 1997, 83–84), although according to another estimate cited earlier, it stands at ₹ 2,200 crores per annum. Four major ethnic groups, namely, Kukis, Nagas, Meiteis and Tamils control unofficial border trade at Moreh. A large number of Muslims are also engaged in this trade. There is growing competition amongst these communities for acquiring control over this booming unofficial border trade. This has led to a series of violent and internecine conflicts between the Nagas and the Kukis in 1993; between the Tamils and the Kukis in 1995; and between the Hmars and the Meiteis in Moreh at different points of time in the recent past.

As the communities and their militias fight for exercising control over the unofficial yet booming border trade, border economy imposes on each actor the obligation of playing the ethnic card vis-à-vis others. One’s ethnic identity becomes important in gaining or retaining control or even for protecting one from others. The template of border economy—particularly the unofficial border trade—is thus marked by identity politics of the most violent form. Here, I will cite an instance. Noor-Jehan, Secretary and Mehr-an of the Minority Women’s Development Society in Moreh, tells Chitra Ahanthem how she feels the necessity of identifying with her community as a means of self-protection:

Our organization was established in the year 2004 for we felt that as a minority group/community in this place, our issues were getting lost. Also, the sense of ownership is never there unless you have your own group. So we got together. Having your own group means that there is a rallying point for responding to the issues that we face. Belonging to a small minority group is not easy: we end up as the last persons to be taken into account. We felt that coming together as a group would be the only way to stand up for ourselves. Now, anytime there is a social issue or a matter of unrest, we are called upon to take part in deliberations and give our viewpoint. Earlier, we were never represented. (quoted in Ahanthem 2010, 24)

Identity and identification may acquire a ‘use value’ and become a technology of governance. Thus, to cite an example from an altogether different context, Debosmita Sanyal and Shaukat Iqbal named their only daughter ‘Ananyacheta’ (literally a woman who has a mind unique to her own), significantly without a surname. Theirs was an intercommunity marriage and they deliberately decided that the name of their daughter should not carry any ‘religious association’: ‘Surnames carry religious association. So we preferred not to append a surname to her name.’ As the child grew up and reached the school-going age, they found it difficult to get her admitted into any school because she does not have a surname. Even authorities of a school asked them how her body would be disposed off after her death (Sanyal and Iqbal 2013, 14). In other words, this example shows tellingly that one has to have a ‘religious association’ in order to obtain admission into a school, much in the same way as the Unique Identification Number—again a mark of identification—is a must for having access to subsidised cooking gas cylinders and other welfare benefits.

Insofar as fear of violence stands behind every unofficially organised act of trade and it erupts in its real form whenever the terms and conditions of any community are violated, as they have been with alarming regularity since the early 1990s, Moreh—as Nag (2010, 8) points out—is marked by ‘the virtual absence, in terms of action, of the institutions of law and order’. State loses its monopoly and is seen as only one of the many actors with competing claims over the instruments of violence. Ethnic identity with control over the instruments of violence determines one’s access to the otherwise lucrative unofficial trade.

The Moral Community of Labouring Life

That the economic gains of border trade are only limited is now being increasingly realised by almost everyone working on the subject. According to an estimate, barring India’s trade with Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, and to a lesser extent that between China and Myanmar, around 85 per cent of the merchandise trade of this region does not fall under the category of border trade or cross-border trade, but passes through sea. In fact, trade by itself may reduce Manipur (or Moreh) to a transit point between Asia and the rest of India, without catalysing agricultural and industrial growth. As Das and Thomas (2005, 31) observe: ‘Although the instrumental value of NER–Myanmar trade in terms of generation of economic growth is negligible at present, the intrinsic value of cross-border trade is, no doubt, immense as it eases out life of the people living in the border areas’.

This often leads one to plead for reviving the old, pre-Partition kinship and social ties that were torn asunder—thanks to the Partition (1947) and consequent reorganisation of international borders. In a paper based on dense ethnographic documentation, Sanjeeb Kakoty (2008) points to the ethnic ties and cultural continuities that seem to have survived the demarcation of India–Bangladesh border in East Khasi Hills in the wake of the Partition. He also records, in detail, continuing social and economic practices that appear to militate against the nationalist project of bringing the territory under State control and nationalisation of space. While social ties and practices of this nature do not show signs of disappearance, at least in the short run, the argument that we need to revive them on the ground that they predate the Partition often sounds impractical and ahistorical. The reality of the post-Partition State cannot easily be wished away.

I would rather argue that new configurations of community have been taking place centring on these labouring lives. The community does not negotiate with the borders, but the very practice of negotiating with the borders contributes to the construction of the community—moral community, if one could designate it in such a way. Today, moral economy of border trade does not revolve around old community ties, but around ‘labouring life’—a life that, to say the least, has only a complex relation to border and border trade, a relation that is too complex to be comprehended by either of the two dominant discourses of national security and functional integration. Let me cite an example from my own ethnographic work. ⁹

It was an exceptionally humid and sultry afternoon of May as we hit the tip of Akheriganj on the Indian side of the banks of the Padma separating her from Bangladesh. We saw a barge slowly floating towards us and a middle-aged man with his bicycle stationed on the platform was the first to get down from it as the barge approached the ghat. I came to know subsequently that he was Sohrab Ali, and I eventually struck a conversation with him as the crowd on the barge got down without making any noise and thinned out quietly and the lone BSF patrol faded away. The entire area looked deserted and Ali confided that he was returning from the nearby bazaar across the border where he sells egg and earns his livelihood. He was the only earner in a family of six members and price of egg varied on both sides of the border and Ali eked out a living by taking advantage of differential pricing—thanks to the border that separates the two nation-states. How would Ali live, I wonder, if there was no border? For, border gives him the comparative price advantage and offers livelihood opportunities to him and his family of six souls. On the other hand, how else would he live, if he did not violate the border on an everyday basis? He can avail himself of the comparative advantage only when he crosses the border as he does it daily and of course, at grave risk to his life.

I remember Sohrab Ali telling me that people like him who live on the border are like husk isolated from the paddy. Like husk, they are of no use to the nation. The paddy have for long deserted the husk in their journey for greener pasture—to Nashipur, Bhagabangola, Lalgola, Kolkata and even Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune, the new face of globalised India—where they work as zari workers, goldsmiths, construction labourers, etc. Those who are left here do not have even the means of migrating to these areas. We spoke for far too long and I became thirsty. He said that he could offer me water of the Padma that he and his family were forced to drink as the entire groundwater in the area was contaminated by arsenic—caused perhaps by the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides—thanks to the Green Revolution in West Bengal initiated in a large way by the former Left Front government. Sohrab had no hesitation in admitting that people like him prefer to go to the government hospital in Rajshahi than to the one in Murshidabad when they feel that they are in need of medical attention. The hospital in Bangladesh offered better medical facilities at a cheaper price. Earlier, he used to own land large enough to feed his family. But as the river swings and shifts down its course, his land, by then, had become a part of the Bangladeshi territory. Even then, he continued to cultivate the land, but could not reap the harvest as, one day, he discovered that ‘the goons of Bangladesh’ had looted his harvest at night.

Shakila—who earned her living by serving as a porter of contraband goods in Moreh—lost her husband twice: first, when her husband was taken into custody by the Myanmarese officials for carrying contraband items as a porter to their territory and was imprisoned for 16 years; and second, when he came back and died an untimely death after nine months of his release, perhaps due to torture during his long incarceration. Asked what the border means to her, Shakila told Chitra Ahanthem:

It (the gate) has come to mean many different things: my source of livelihood, a force that took away my husband and a barrier that comes in the way of a better life. You know, I have a childhood friend who moved away from Moreh to Churachandpur district after her marriage. She does not have to worry about where her next meal is coming from: when we do meet about once a year on her trips to her family here, I see the difference between us in the way we dress, in the way we look and the way we cope with life. Compared to her, I am like a small bird that flutters half-heartedly in the vast sky looking for crumbs on the ground, unsure whether I can get that crumb. (Ahanthem 2010, 28)

The relation of border to the borderless world is, to say the least, complex. Empirical studies conducted by us from time to time, albeit on a much smaller scale, tend to suggest that the border control regime also puts in place a border violation regime, and I emphasise on the systematic and regime character of border violations, and there is reason to believe that the two are complementary to each other. For, a border violation regime cannot exist without a border control regime already in place and perhaps vice versa. Once the borders get drawn and the migration of ‘unwanted’ cheap and unskilled labour (like the rickshaw and handcart pullers, construction workers, domestic help and umbrella repairers) grows apace in response to the rising demand for it in India, the immigrants—‘rejected’ in their own countries—are in a desperate need for crossing the borders and a good deal of migration assumes a network character. The immigrants get in touch with the middlemen (popularly known as dalals) who have a network with the border guards and make them cross the borders. Once they cross the border, they go into hiding for a few weeks in the bordering villages where they stay against payment of rent, and then melt into the crowd at an opportune moment and settle in those areas where the neighbours from their own villages already live in numbers. There are middlemen and party bosses for helping them obtain ration cards and requisite official papers by way of bribing the corrupt officials and thereby become citizens and voters. Everyone benefits from migration: the migrants who have to cross the borders to earn their livelihood; their employers who employ them at comparatively lower wages than what they have to pay to the natives and the locals; the politicians who thrive on the immigrant vote banks; the villagers of the neighbouring villages who serve as middlemen and rent their houses and thereby make money from them; and the security forces who open the ‘line’ against easy money for the free passage of people and goods. Quite ironically, borders serve as the means of earning livelihood and everyone has a stake in having the borders drawn. The presence of a border control regime is necessary in order that immigration comes as a means of livelihood and easy money to everyone involved in the process. Border violation regime requires a border control regime for its operation; border’s paralegal career makes its legality a fiction but only a necessary fiction.

Concluding Observations

People like Sohrab Ali and Shakila live life dangerously by constantly negotiating with borders—now here, then there—and inhabit what Deleuze and Guattari (2010, 45) would call ‘a de-territorialized space’. In a world otherwise cut into surgically precise nation-states with hardly any space left for the nomads like Sohrab and Shakila, who have no anchorage in any nation, ‘it is the earth that de-territorializes itself, in a way that provides them with a territory’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2010, 45) to move about, to sustain themselves and their labouring bodies and to live life, albeit dangerously.

While border economy includes all of them—border, cross-border, international and unofficial trade or many more—rampant ‘smuggling’ and threat to national security cannot be an argument for excluding Sohrabs and Shakilas from its ambit and letting them starve. As Balibar (2004, 22) reminds us:

History can be used either to ‘essentialize’ the conflicting narratives, enclosing them within ‘cultural borderlines’, or to subject ‘subaltern’ narratives to the ‘dominant’ ones (and simply to silence them), or it can be used to set up a dialectical transformation of the regime of discourses.

Border trade perhaps is the answer—only if we realise that there is a larger moral economy of border trade, the gains of which far outweigh its meagre economic returns. Does not the moral economy of border trade force us to revisit both the dominant discourses of national security and functional integration and see how they mutate and ‘dialectically transform’ under present conditions?