Troubled North East State – Problems & Solutions

What this session covered

This session, a moderated discussion between two invited analysts — a conflict-studies specialist and an anthropologist with long fieldwork experience in the region — examined the security situation in India's North East against the backdrop of the ethnic clashes then under way in Manipur. The host framed the region's significance as India's gateway to South East Asia, its exceptional tribal diversity, and the familiar catalogue of problems: inter-tribal rivalry, migration from neighbouring countries, boundary disputes and insurgency, noting that insurgent violence has declined steeply in recent years.

The first speaker argued that insurgency is no longer the primary concern: sustained security-force operations have reduced violence to residual levels and most armed groups are in some form of negotiation, with one faction based in Myanmar the principal holdout. The real problem, this speaker contended, is political — an opportunistic leadership that uses polarisation along ethnic and communal lines as its principal form of electoral mobilisation, leaving the underlying grievances behind the insurgencies unaddressed. Adding to the other speaker's observation about the region's narrow land corridor, he noted that Partition severed the region's natural economic and social linkages through what became East Pakistan and later Bangladesh; he also disputed the conventional underdevelopment explanation, pointing to the region's high literacy rates, and argued that development followed the defeat of insurgency rather than the reverse. External support for insurgent groups — historically from across the eastern border, with Chinese involvement suggested both in earlier decades and more recently — was characterised as exploiting domestic failures rather than causing them. The second speaker took a longer historical view, tracing the hardening of separate identities to colonial-era census classification and exclusionary administrative policies, compounded by the psychological distance created by the narrow Siliguri corridor. Drawing on years of fieldwork, she described the earlier normality of illegal taxation by multiple armed groups and the marked improvement in connectivity since, while offering an explicitly divergent view that the region has gained genuine centrality in national consciousness over the past decade.

On Manipur, the violence was discussed as rooted in demographic anxieties, settlement and disputes over land and status; one speaker explicitly characterised it as ethnic clashes and a law-and-order problem rather than terrorism or insurgency. One speaker regarded the community demand for Scheduled Tribe status as legitimate; the other held that the High Court's intervention on the question was legally improper while affirming the community's right to press the demand, and was sharply critical of state political leadership for polarising rhetoric. The discussion closed on the need for dialogue between centre, states and communities and attention to demographic change and border management; the host offered his own closing reading that, given the losses of property and life suffered, tensions in Manipur would take considerable time to subside.

Key points raised

• Insurgent violence in the North East has declined steeply; most armed groups are in negotiations, with one Myanmar-based faction the main holdout.
• One speaker argued the region's primary problem is now political — polarising electoral mobilisation and unaddressed grievances — rather than kinetic insurgency.
• The other speaker traced separate identities to colonial-era census classification and exclusionary policies and to the psychological distance of the narrow Siliguri corridor; the first speaker added that Partition severed the region's natural economic linkages.
• The Manipur violence was discussed as rooted in demographic anxieties and disputes over land and status; one speaker explicitly characterised it as ethnic clashes and a law-and-order matter, not terrorism or insurgency.
• External support for insurgent groups was described as exploiting domestic failures rather than creating the conflicts.
• The session closed with the expectation that tensions in Manipur would take a long time to subside.