Book Review: K.S. Subramanian,State,Policy and Conflicts in Northeast India

Conflict in northeast India has drawn the attention of academics and policy makers over the years. However, the research and writings have been carried out mainly by ‘neutral’ observers who are both outside the state system and not involved in the conflicts. This book is an exception. The author was a high official in the government, as the longest-serving Director of the Research and Policy Division in India’s Ministry of Home Affairs, and also the Director General of the State Institute of Public Administration and Rural Development (SIPARD), Tripura. The author has used his own expertise and experiences and also his access to resources under state jurisdictions to present and analyze the conflict and state processes in northeast India. The readers will, however, wonder whether the book really represents northeast India without a core chapter on Nagaland as it is the Naga insurgency which has presented the most consistent challenges to the Indian state forcing it (the state) to indulge in a series of attempts and innovations to find out a solution. The ‘Framework Agreement’, 2015, signed with National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak–Muivah) (NSCN [IM]), with all its limitations, presents a significant interface between the state and insurgency in the region. While the author has comprehensively portrayed the internal dynamics of the societies in the region, he sees state policies and its military apparatuses as more important for understanding the prime dynamics of the ongoing conflicts in the region. He analyzes the role of certain regulatory institutions of the Government of India (GoI), both military and developmental, and exposes the contradictions among them those in terms of their jurisdictions and operational modalities in the region. He has, in particular, examined the role of military and paramilitary forces with special focus on the Assam Rifles (AR) and the role of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) in sustaining discontent in the region. Indeed, he has referred to the atrocious role of the AR and AFSPA in almost all his critical comments, while trying to appreciate the agony of the region. The author has also argued convincingly that the policy apparatuses of the GoI concerning northeast India have been fragmented, exclusionary and insensitive, which in the long run have proved to be counterproductive for peace and development in the region.

Out of five chapters, apart from the Introduction, three core chapters of the book deal extensively with the conflict processes in Manipur and Tripura and the coercion unleashed by the AR, using AFSPA. In the case of Manipur it is explicitly a conflict around the coercion by the state apparatus, whereas in the case of Tripura the conflict is primarily around the issue of Bengali migration, which has reduced the tribal communities in Tripura into a minority in their own land. While in Manipur inter-ethnic conflicts are a significant conflict dimension, in the case of Tripura it is fragmentation within the tribals which has defined the strength and weaknesses of the resistance against the state. In Manipur, women’s movements have played a significant role in confronting the state, but not in Tripura. In terms of the coercion under AR and AFSPA, Manipur is the epicentre throughout northeast India; in the case of Tripura, its actuality is relatively low.

State coercion through military apparatuses has had two opposite reactions: one, coercion becoming a day-to-day experience, with people in the region adapting to it, or strongly resisting it through different forms. Irom Sharmila’s indefinite fast since 2000 against AFSPA is the symbol of resistance in the region. The emergence, consolidation and fragmentation of ethnic-tribal resistance, through both violent and non-violent means, are evident in all states of the region, and it has been the core political process in Tripura. The conflict between the Kukis and Nagas in Manipur is equally a substantive challenge.

The extraordinary presence of armed forces has caused serious harm to the local economies by creating undue pressure on the provision of essential commodities in the region. Attempts on the part of the GoI from time to time to bring in non-military solutions outlined in several high-power-commission reports have in the long run been rendered ineffective and the military approach has retained its priority. It has left the state governments in the region to ‘exist only under uneasy subjection to a hostile centralized controlling authority’ (p. 71). The unprecedented resistance against AFSPA on the eve of the murder of Thangjam Manorama in 2004 forced the Union Government to appoint the Justice Jeevan Reddy Commission. However, the government remained absolutely silent on the recommendations and kept it out of public purview. The operational expenditure involved in armed forces has been increased at the cost of other human development requirements of the region.

The book, therefore, will be an essential reading for understanding the region, its conflict dynamics and also state processes. However, there are remarkable shortcomings of the book. The most important is the lack of a coherent analytical framework and a theoretical insight on the Indian state, which would serve to shape the narratives or documentations of both the state and the conflict processes. There are unnecessary repetitions of issues and incidents. The sources of significant statistics and information are missing in many places. The author claims that the book adopts ‘the largely neglected case study method to examine the “ethnic” conflicts dynamics’ (p. 3) in the case of Manipur and Tripura. Here too, none of the cases taken for such exercises brings in any new insight, again for the reason that ‘case studies’ were indeed documentation of the ongoing processes. Two significant development initiatives undertaken by the GOI, that is, ‘Look East Policy’ and ‘NER Vision 2020’, which were mentioned in the Introduction, have only been mentioned here and there in the core chapters, but their outcomes and failures are not critically examined. Four Appendices will, however, be helpful for both common readers and researchers.