The North-Eastern Challenge

By Sanjoy Hazarika

In a region like the North-east, where few groups actually constitute a numerical majority, the State has been involved in unending and fatiguing efforts to deal with a cycle of demands and counter-demands

The recent attacks and killings in Assam, Manipur and Meghalaya by armed non-State groups represent a challenge and test for the Narendra Modi government and the need to understand the frustrating complexities of the North-eastern region.

Things are not being made easy after strident demands by the newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party MPs from Assam to rid the State of “Bangladeshis,” a phrase that many from the minority community say is aimed at targeting them, irrespective of nationality, and one that can swiftly turn into a security nightmare not just for governments in Delhi and Dispur, but also for ordinary people caught up in a storm. For a moment, the “Bangladeshi” issue has moved away from the headlines because of other events that have captured public attention.

A Superintendent of Police in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district was shot dead when his tiny unit was engaged in a fight with an armed group wanting a separate state for the Karbi community in the jungles of Assam’s eastern hills — the second major setback that the police in the State have suffered, an Additional Superintendent having fallen earlier to the bullets of an armed faction from the Bodo tribe.

Some 400 kilometres west of Karbi Anglong, blurred images emerge of a woman who was executed gangland style execution after she resisted rape by men from the “Garo National Liberation Army” in Meghalaya. The GNLA was launched five years back by a former police officer, who is now in police custody. But the group is still active, extorting funds, and carrying out strikes against security forces and civilians.

Rise of insurgent factions

The law and order situation in the Garo Hills, the home district of Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma, is such that a top official says that his men could not have moved to the village of the murdered woman at night as they got word of a possible attack on police convoys. They got the news when the woman’s family walked into a police station and told them what had happened. This is a poor reflection of police capacity, underscoring the need for better equipment as well as strong political leadership.

These issues underline both the ethnic and social complexity of the North-eastern region, home to over 200 ethnic communities, as well as how political mobilisation and armed violence have changed in these past years. While the principal militant factions have been sitting at the negotiating table with New Delhi or in “designated camps” for years, be it the Nagas, Assamese, Karbis, Bodos and Garos, they are being sharply challenged by smaller, more violent, breakaway factions.

Armed with new weapons which are easily available in the illegal small arms markets in the region, combined with new technology and better connectivity, these groups are demonstrating the seamless manner in which they can move across State borders.

The level of violence is especially stark when contrasted with the extraordinary beauty of the countryside across all States, although the towns and cities, as elsewhere, are turning into ugly urban sprawls. The Bodo-Muslim riots in 2012, which displaced nearly half a million people, and the incident earlier this year when over 30 men, women and children were butchered by armed men in the Bodo areas are examples of such violence. All the victims this time were Muslim and the resonance of public anger — of minority as well as non-Muslim, non-Bodo groups — was visible in the overwhelming victory of a non-Bodo candidate in a Lok Sabha constituency.

Amid this fabric, what is often forgotten is the chain of interconnected events and the contemporary political narrative: thus, in the Bodo Territorial Council areas, the first attacks on Muslim and other groups took place in the Bodo areas in 1993. Earlier, few such incidents were reported. There were tensions over land issues but these had not spiralled into the bloodshed that followed later.

There is another process that the Modi government will be aware of — that of manufactured consent. In a region like the North-east, where few groups actually constitute a numerical majority — one is not speaking on religious but ethnic grounds here — the State has been involved in unending and fatiguing efforts to deal with a cycle of demands, counter-demands, agitations and resolutions. This has dominated the political discourse in the region. Thus, almost every State experiencing conflict is witness to a non-violent process by a group demanding greater powers — such as for a community or group of communities, putting forth an overall set of political demands such as greater autonomy or a separate State. Yet, this runs almost in parallel with violent movements for, ironically, either similar demands or, going a step further, for “independence.”

This began with the Naga movement in the 1950s and spread to the Mizo Hills, Manipur, Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya, although in the latter, armed movements rose against their own State governments in the 1990s.

In almost every movement, “outsiders” have been targeted — whether it is those from another State, of a different linguistic or ethnic group or the so-called “Bangladeshis.” Yet, today, in almost every State, major armed organisations which have thrown challenges to Delhi over the past six decades have abandoned the gun and are either negotiating with the Centre or engaging in ceasefire. The most visible sign of this was the landslide victory of a former leader of the United Liberation Front of Assam from the Bodo areas. He crushed the official Bodo candidate in the Lok Sabha election and took his oath of allegiance to the Constitution in Parliament — the very Constitution against which he had taken up arms earlier.

Yet, agreements and semi-agreements have been the pattern in the region. These have a history of spawning breakaway groups which claim to be “anti-talks,” yet want to be at the table with the big boys; they hit hard at easy targets, showing the difficulties that police and other forces face in moving through difficult terrain. The smaller groups too want a share of the funds flowing into the region and the power that goes with it.

Political will is critical to dealing with this. Small States like Meghalaya have been adversely hit by the disinclination of both government and Opposition leaders in taking a tough line on the “boys” in the Garo Hills. Earlier Chief Ministers had demonstrated political courage, authorising crackdowns that forced Khasi and Garo groups to the negotiating table. It is also not a mere coincidence that the armed groups concentrate on the coal-rich areas of the Garo Hills where extraction is highly profitable and where prominent political figures are said to have business interests.

Thus, a pattern has emerged over the past decades — New Delhi, to use a BJP catchphrase, has always tried to appease the largest group agitating or fighting for a cause or one which is prepared to talk. It has not tried to resolve the core issue or issues which involve a broader and deeper dialogue with other groups, and with non-government and civil society figures, scholars and organisations. Without that kind of work, through mediators and counsellors, no agreement can work or last.

Perhaps Delhi thinks it is just a matter of being politically “realistic” — but such realism has backfired time and again. This was most evident during the standoff between Telangana and Andhra.

And the North-east, with its many divergent and parallel ethnic mobilisation processes, is a far more difficult place. This then is the problem with what one could call “manufactured comfortable consent” — such agreements rarely last,for they are designed for short-term gains such as placating a demand, winning an election, creating a new elite and giving the government some breathing space. Often, the agitators are not as representative as they claim to be.

Focus therefore is of the essence, and not haste.

No to rights abuse

The Centre should not be diverted by recent events and instead concentrate on speeding up the prolonged Naga negotiations (now on for nearly 18 years). The Delhi-Naga talks do not even have an official negotiator as former Nagaland Chief Secretary Raghaw Pandey quit before the election to join the BJP but did not get a nomination. Other negotiations also need to be pursued with vigour and vision.

The Modi government must send a clear and unambiguous message to its members and followers that they cannot take law into their hands over the issue of “Bangladeshis.” This could spread fear, tension, mistrust and worse in Assam. Due process must be followed — otherwise there is acute danger of violence, tragedy and abuse of human rights just because of a person’s religion. Isn’t the Pune murder of the young Muslim techie by Hindu thugs a warning and wake-up call? The media must play a sober role in this because definitions of “Bangladeshis” are often blurred and arbitrary.

We need to abide by the recent judgment in the Meghalaya High Court which, while stating the obvious, defined a Bangladeshi as someone who came to India after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. Many tend to look at much earlier cut off dates in their search for “illegal migrants.”

New Delhi needs to inform all State governments in the region — whichever the party — that the murder of innocents, of whichever ethnicity, religion or language group, and the abuse of rights by armed groups (or security forces) and local thugs is unacceptable. Such violations need to be met with a cabrated robust response aimed at showing results in a specific time frame.

(Sanjoy Hazarika is director of the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal.)

Railways Must Look East

By SN Mathur

In the highly competitive world economy of today, transport cost is a significant determinant of competitiveness, which makes an efficient surface transport network a concomitant for better economic integration. Somehow, the surface transport networks in several parts of Asia continue to be fragmented, and consequently their potential as instruments of economic growth at the regional level has not been fully realised.

The idea of linking the railway networks of Asia, to provide international connections—not only between the region’s countries but also with the Middle Eastern and European systems—was first expressed in the ’60s by initiating the Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) project. The objective was to shorten transit times between nations and regions and serve as a tool for their economic growth through expansion of international trade. Besides, because transporting goods by rail is faster than through the sea, rail connectivity was expected to reduce transport cost substantially. Rail can also carry a much higher volume of freight traffic than road.

The TAR envisages the creation of an integrated freight railway network across Europe and Asia. When the idea was conceived, the objective was to provide a continuous 14,000km rail link between Singapore and Istanbul, with possible onward links to Europe and Africa. Today, the network has about 81,000km of rail routes—the 12,600km Southeast Asia corridor, the 32,500km Northeast Asia corridor, the 13,200km Central Asia and Caucasus corridor and the 22,600km South Asia-Iran-Turkey corridor—and connects 28 countries.

In a major policy decision, the Indian Railways has agreed to participate in the TAR link between Europe and Southeast Asia. The project, being considered by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific under the Asian Land Infrastructure Development Project, will help identify and evaluate the development and operation of a network of routes between South Asia and Europe. The routes are supposed to run via Bangladesh, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. The growth of international trade, continued surge of containerised freight through the ports of Asia-Pacific and the recognition of greater regional integration are encouraging countries to seek efficient connectivity through transport networks. It provides the railways of the region an opportunity to upgrade their existing infrastructure with the aim of defining and operating international corridors.

With this in mind, the countries involved decided to define a framework within which they can discuss and plan the future expansion and operation of the Trans-Asian Railway Network. The Ministerial Conference on Transport held in Korea in 2006 adopted a Regional Action Programme for Transport Development in Asia and the Pacific. It aimed to promote an integrated approach to transport planning with a view to facilitating efficient logistics in the region. Accordingly, 18 member states signed the inter-governmental agreement on the Trans-Asian Railway Network that formalises the coordinated development of TAR. Other countries, including India, signed the agreement in the subsequent years. It envisages completion of the ambitious project by 2025.

The economies of south and Southeast Asia have been growing rapidly due to easing of trade barriers, increase in foreign direct investment and greater integration with the global economy. However, intra-regional trade and investment has been relatively limited because of various bottlenecks in trade infrastructure. Increased connectivity between the two sub-regions can help improve industrial efficiency and productivity, expanding the market size and ensuring long-term economic prosperity.

India has demonstrated its economic and technological capabilities for further integration with the regional and global economy. Myanmar being the only land bridge between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) nations and India, its importance as a regional logistics and trading hub cannot be overstated. Rail connectivity between India and Myanmar is completely absent. Indian Railways has, therefore, agreed to build a 350km route between India and Myanmar, which will require about `3,000 crore, part of which will be borne by Myanmar. In the first phase it will take up construction of 97km new rail connection between Jiribam and Tupul (Manipur) costing `728 crore. Later, this link will be extended to Moreh inside Myanmar territory. These links would eventually be integrated into the proposed Trans-Asian Railway Network.

With the construction of a rail corridor between India and Myanmar, India will be linked by rail to Southeast Asia, and eventually to China, its largest trading partner in Asia, registering about $ 60 billion worth of trade last year alone. The recent political reform process in Myanmar now makes possible rail and road connectivity between south and Southeast Asia that did not appear feasible a few years ago. The implementation of the ASEAN-India Free Trade Agreement has further facilitated intra-regional trade and investment liberalisation. It is particularly important in the context of India’s Look East policy which cannot be operationalised without the participation of the Northeast.

For various historical and political reasons, the Northeast has remained cut off from its economic and social ties with neighbouring Myanmar, Bangladesh and China, and has had to depend for almost all its supplies from mainland India only. The new rail connectivity, that shall be a part of the TAR network, will help transform the region’s economy, serving as a corridor for movement of raw material, semi-finished and finished products. It can also play a pivotal role in the development of commerce and cultural exchange with the Southeast Asian countries. Manipur can then become one of the key links not only between India and Myanmar but also between the whole of South Asia and Southeast Asia.

The new Indian government has realised the urgency of fast-tracking infrastructure development of the region by appointing a former Army chief to head the ministry of north east development. This will accelerate the progress of various projects incorporated in the North Eastern Region Vision Document 2020 aimed at promoting the flow of peoples and goods, expansion of communication networks, opening up of markets and generating employment.

The author is a former MD of Railway Finance Corporation.

E-mail: mathur.surendra@gmail.com

Why Was Myanmar’s President Not Invited to Modi’s Swearing-In Ceremony?

What this tells us about India’s policy toward Southeast Asia

By Akhilesh Pillalamarri

Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke new ground last Monday by inviting the leaders of “every nation on India’s periphery” to his swearing-in ceremony. These countries included all the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries as well as SAARC observer Mauritius. Even the Prime Minister in exile of Tibet was invited. Despite this impressive guest list, the leader of one of India’s neighbors, Myanmar, was not invited.

This fact is made all the more glaring because the omission of an invite seems to go against the new government’s desire to cultivate more substantial relations with its neighbors. India and Myanmar share a long 1,624-kilometer (1,009 mi) border. However, in all likelihood, the lack of an invite for Myanmar’s President Thein Sein was not a mistake or a deliberate omission, but simply something that was on nobody’s mind. Politicians and the media in both countries did not seem to expect that Myanmar would even be invited, as evidenced by the fact that the media in neither country made an issue out of Myanmar’s non-invite.

This is a function of how both countries view each other. Despite the fact that Myanmar is an observer in the SAARC, it does not have strong ties with South Asia and is more oriented towards Southeast Asia, where it is a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).  From the vantage point of New Delhi too, policy toward Myanmar is treated not through the lens of South Asian bonhomie but under the aegis of India’s Look East Policy. This lack of closeness may come as a surprise to some, but despite rhetoric about historical, cultural, and religious ties, Myanmar and India went different ways centuries ago with Myanmar drawing closer to Thailand and China. After the British conquest of Burma in the nineteenth century, what is today’s Myanmar was ruled as a province of British India but was separated and made an independent colony in 1937, largely at the demand of Burmese nationalists who did not identify with the nationalist Indian independence movement.

Relations with Southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, will undoubtedly be given more priority in the upcoming few months. The previous Congress government unfortunately neglected India’s relations with its Asian neighbors, its elite English-speaking and Western-educated leaders seemingly forgetting that India is in fact in Asia and not in the West — a psychological orientation reflected in external policy. The Indian nationalist narrative reflected in BJP thinking is, on the other hand, more oriented towards Asia. To begin with, India will seek greater connectivity with Southeast Asia and land routes must necessarily pass through Myanmar. India has recently called for a bus route from Imphal in Northeastern India to Mandalay in Myanmar. Potentially more important is Myanmar’s location between India and China. Prime Minister Modi is especially keen on improving India’s lukewarm relations with China, which had experienced glacial progress under the previous government. Congress may have deliberately misinformed the public of the nature of India’s past interactions with China in order to create a sense of martyrdom to cover up for its failures during the 1962 Sino-Indian War. In a recent conversation with Modi, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang warmly suggested the construction of a Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) economic corridor that would connect Kunming in China to India’s Northeast through Myanmar.

Such a connection to Myanmar, Southeast Asia, and China would be a boon to India’s much neglected Northeast region. Northeast India is significantly different from the rest of India in terms of languages, religion, culture, and even race and is in many ways more Southeast Asian than South Asian. Surrounded by Myanmar, China, and Bangladesh on almost all four sides and connected to the rest of India via only a narrow corridor, greater interconnectivity with international neighbors could bring this region much needed economic development and stem the dozens of insurgencies that have plagued the area for the past 60 years. That the Modi government means to improve the situation in Northeast India is clear by the appointment of a seasoned former general, Vijay Kumar (VK) Singh to the federal Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (MDONER). Singh is expected to infuse some much needed dynamism into the region.

The Modi government’s initial focus on its neighbors in South Asia is not at odds with improving relations with Southeast Asia. The Look East Policy was a cornerstone of the previous BJP government and in all likelihood will be given more importance under Modi, given his marked interest in pursuing stronger relations with his eastern neighbors. However, the Look East Policy makes more sense if it occurs in tandem with economic integration in South Asia, as it makes little sense for India to liberalize trade with Southeast Asian countries without pursuing a similar policy in its own backyard. This is why South Asia has been accorded the greater initial priority, especially since economic integration and bilateral trade in the region is currently miniscule.

Akhilesh Pillalamarri is an Editorial Assistant at The Diplomat.

India’s Low-Hanging Economic Fruit is in the East – the Northeast

By Col (Retd) Anil Athale

It is good that the verdict of the 2014 general elections is clear and not a fractured one like in 1996 or 1998. The new BJP Prime Minister will find an economy that is on the slide, unemployment on the rise, and security threats worsening due to the emergence of a new cold war, among other things. On top of it all are the heightened expectations of a young and restless population.


But the first challenge before the new PM is to restore the power and prestige of the office of the Prime Minister. The erosion in the authority of this office that took place over the last 10 years is unprecedented – something not seen even during the tenures of Deve Gowda and IK Gujral, who ran shaky minority governments.

This erosion happened because the PM chose to play second fiddle to the UPA chairperson. As any administrator knows, power comes from the ability to reward or punish. In the case of the outgoing government, the power of rewards was in the hands of Sonia Gandhi, who controlled even minor appointments in the central government and its offshoots.

These appointees owed their personal loyalties to the ‘family’ and not the PM. Is it any wonder that the PM was unable to implement almost any policy? In the days of monarchy, the sceptre represented the power of the king. Even in its democratic ‘avatar’, the speaker of Parliament sits in the shadow of a ‘mace’, or sceptre.

The outgoing government was guilty of letting the sceptre fall into the hands of an unconstitutional authority, thus destroying the cohesion of the executive.

Politics, by its very nature, abhors a vacuum. The power vacuum in UPA-2 was filled by the judiciary, the media and some NGOs. It is easy to blame the judiciary for usurping the policy-making functions of the executive, but it saw the crown lying in the dirt and used the mechanism of the PIL to pick it up. The media, especially 24-hour television, and foreign- funded NGOs, were not far behind. A new PM will have to first wrest back the power of decision-making from these arms of the state and none-state actors. The battle is going to be hard and dirty, so much so that the new PM may find that the just concluded election campaign was a picnic compared to what lies ahead! The problem is that the institutions that acquired this power (the judiciary or the media) got it without corresponding responsibility. So they will fight tooth-and-nail to retain their power.

But while the new government fights these battles and begins to implement much-needed changes and economic reforms, there are three doable, non-controversial policy decisions that can easily yield double-digit economic growth. An economic institute has estimated that each one point rise in GDP propels six million families out of poverty.

The three non-economic measures suggested here are capable of minimally raising GDP growth by one percentage point each! The trinity of measures are:

* Focus economic and foreign policy on the east. The west can wait.
* Re-orient defence policy and reorganise the vast defence machine.
* Prioritise ‘soft power’ export as a major foreign exchange earner and employment generator.

Sanjaya Baru’s book, The Accidental Prime Minister: The making and unmaking of Manmohan Singh, has one intriguing revelation. It says that the outgoing PM’s initiative on open trade with south-east Asia was stalled by Sonia Gandhi and her National Advisory Council (NAC). As someone who has been studying the north-east insurgencies for the last 25 years (including the last few years as the Chhattrapati Shivaji Fellow of the USI), one can say without contradiction that trade with Asean via the land borders of the north-east will save millions of taxpayer rupees by reducing subsidies, generating employment and ushering peace that in turn will reduce defence expenditure.

The first obvious step in this Look East policy is to look at our own North-East first. For instance, the Kaladan river project to connect Sittawe port in Myanmar with Mizoram has been in limbo for the last 30 years! The border connectivity at Moreh in Manipur is primitive with only headloads permitted to be carried across the border! Contrast this with the fanfare and attention given to our trade with Pakistan via the Wagah border or via Uri and Chiken Di Bagh in Kashmir. At the risk of sounding harsh, one can say that Indian foreign policy in the last decade was reduced to a Pakistan policy. Unfortunately for us, the fundamentals of the Pakistani ideology are such that any progress will be a mirage for a few generations.

The ground situation in the Indian North-East is extremely favourable for ending the insurgencies and unrest once and for all. There is a great yearning to join the Indian mainstream and progress economically. A bold initiative in the North-East and the opening up of trade with ASEAN can work wonders for the region as well as the national economy. India’s defence posture is one of the most inefficient and resource wasting postures in the world. Fundamentally, the defence apparatus is still stuck in the British model of ‘Garrison army and expeditionary force ‘. Defence planning, currently left to the armed forces, has become a collection of worst-case-scenarios and their aggregation.

Modernisation has come to mean junior officers in the War Establishment directorate leafing through glossy defence magazines and forwarding demands for the import of the latest weapon systems! The scenario is completed with DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) becoming a giant state within a state with import substitution passing for research and indigenisation of components masquerading as development. Illiterate durbaris in Delhi and many motivated Western commentators have expressed alarm at any hint of India’s review of its nuclear policy.

They forget that pre-emption, when an attack is imminent, is an integral part of any ‘no-first use’ policy. The new government can take its time in drawing up a comprehensive review of security policies. This should follow in three steps.

* Short-term (five years) and long term (20 years) comprehensive reviews of threats to India's security.
* Best mix of nuclear, conventional and sub-conventional forces to deal with them – both in terms of forces and equipment.
* Reform and renewal of the forces and production of weapons at most economical cost within the country.

Since the credibility of the threat of retaliation is a vital ingredient of deterrence (minimum or otherwise), the election of a strong-willed leader like Narendra Modi has already enhanced the credibility of our deterrence. It’s like adding 10 missiles to our arsenal. It is understood that military forces exist to achieve foreign policy goals (guns are the last argument of kings), including security.

In the Nehruvian era, he brilliantly turned it the other way round and used foreign policy to achieve strategic goals. But the 1962 debacle brought home the dangers of this approach. Such is the intellectual laziness of our foreign policy elite that any reference to building strength is ‘denounced’ routinely as an overly ‘muscular’ or provocative approach!

Should one then rather have anaemic policies? The ‘Ai mere watan ke logo’ lament on defeat needs to be banished to the dustbin of history. When next the army asks for new toys, the defence minister must ask some hard questions. Every time I have visited J&K (and that is several score times in the last few years) I am struck by the vast parks of vehicles and equipment parked in the open – and never used even once since 1971, or thousands of T-72 tanks, now being pensioned off and replaced by T-90s, that have never seen a shot fired.

A deep review of the existing defence posture is long overdue. It should be a ‘comprehensive’ exercise and not a truncated one like the Gen Rao committee (teeth-to-tail ratio), the Arun Singh expenditure committee or the Kargil review. These were truncated exercises and episodic and their recommendations were not implemented any way. A total revamp of security will not only yield savings worth 1 percent of GDP but also provide better security. Samuel Huntington (“The Clash of Civilisations”) had mentioned that India was the only country that seemed immune to American cultural power.

He mentioned that Bollywood outpaces Hollywood in the number of movies produced. The influence of Bollywood is all-pervasive in Asia. A fillip to dubbing, etc, will make it even more so. Giving industry status and making finance available will be of help. But even more importantly it is necessary to break the nexus between the underworld and the distribution of cultural products.

Buddhism is India’s greatest cultural export to the world. In the whole of South East Asia, there exists a vast reservoir of Indian cultural capital. To tap it and make India the favourite destination of the world’s Buddhists is not rocket science. If only the Bihar CM, instead of demanding a central package, had spruced up Bodh Gaya, he would be rolling in tourist dollars. All the three measures suggested are doable in the short term and will put India firmly on the path of economic recovery.

This would also silence the doubters about where Modi will find the resources for growth and jobs.

(The author is Coordinator of Inpad, a Pune-based thinktank)

No Show: Northeast women's Tryst With Politics

By Ninglun Hanghal

The seven states of northeast India present a truly contrasting picture when it comes to its women. On the one hand the region is home to all-powerful women's groups like the Meira Paibis of Manipur, the Naga Mothers Association and the Mizo Women's Federation, which have effectively tackled issues like alcoholism, gender rights and conflict. Moreover, women's participation in the life of the community is not just visible but is in fact one of the most distinctive features of the region. Yet, when it comes to their participation in mainstream politics, very few find a place in the government.

The Northeast collectively sends 24 members to the 545-member Lok Sabha, while the 250 member-strong Rajya Sabha has 13 members from the region. How many women figure in this list? At last count, one member from Meghalaya and two from Assam in the Lower House and one member each from Meghalaya, Tripura and Assam in the Upper House.

Their numbers in the state legislative assemblies are equally dismal, if not worse. Sample this: Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland have no women in the state assembly. Of the 60-member assembly in Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, the former has two female legislators, while the latter has three. Given the size of the state and the higher number of constituencies, Assam has 14 women MLAs among 126 elected representatives.

Clearly, women standing for elections and making their presence felt in the corridors of power, be it at the state or national levels, face tough resistance. So the question that arises is: what is it that is fuelling this regressive trend? "Blame it on deep-rooted patriarchy," says Tiplut Nongbri, Professor at the Centre for Study of Social System at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi. "Like elsewhere in India strong traditional practices in northeastern societies, too, hold women back from exploring their potential in new spheres," she observes.

Nongbri, who has done extensive work on gender, family and identity in the Northeast, cites the case of the Khasi society in Meghalaya to prove her point. She elaborates, "Earlier, women were not allowed to enter the customary 'durbars' in villages and this continues to this day. That women are being kept away from fighting elections is therefore not a surprise."

According to her, the socialisation process under patriarchy is so internalised that women can't seem to "find the courage to come out and stand for elections as it will be perceived as challenging the system and being disloyal to traditional practices".

But if women are being kept away from political participation on the pretext of social convention, how does this explain the pioneering work done by various women-led rights groups present in all the seven states? Shreema Ningombam, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Nambol College in Manipur, points out that the focus of women's organisations such as the Meira Paibis is mainly on issues like conflict and militarisation and their impact on the lives of the locals, including women. "Their energy and resources are all trained towards protesting against the consequences emanating from this situation, which affects their lives collectively," feels Ningombam.

There is validity to Ningombam's observations. If one takes a look at the trajectory of the Meira Paibis, they initially came together for the 'nisha bandh' (anti-alcoholism) movement, and then later evolved into a more political outfit that launched a consolidated fight against the continued enforcement of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). "This women group is very political," comments Ningombam, "and if you go deeper then it becomes fairly evident that their leaders do take a clear stand when it comes to self-determination."

Yet, argues Papori Bora, Professor, Centre for Women's Studies, JNU, what holds them from becoming overtly political is the fact that "in the context of nationalism, there is a general understanding that there is no reason for women to have a separate identity. This concept strengthens patriarchy and discourages women from joining politics". Adds Bora, "The attitude adopted is - why do women need to have a separate political agenda? In fact, for women too their identity as an Assamese or Naga or Mizo is more important; the fact that they are a minority in the legislature becomes secondary."

The good news, however, is that in the Northeast women are as much at the forefront of exercising their franchise as the men. And in the last few years some of them have stood for elections as well.

First, a look at the number of women who cast their votes at the state level: in the Mizoram state elections held in February 2014, more women (3,49,506) than men turned up at the polling booths. It was similar in Arunachal Pradesh in 2009. In Nagaland, where the total of female voters is pegged at 5,38,968, 91 per cent voted in the 2013 election.

In terms of leadership representation, two women candidates out of 188 stood for elections for the 60 seat Nagaland assembly in 2013. The number was a little higher in Tripura that saw 15 women out of 249 contesting the last Assembly election in early 2013. The same year Meghalaya had 25 women candidates out of 345 in the fray, while the 2009 election in Arunachal saw nine women contesting and two women emerging victorious.

"These are indeed positive developments," remarks Joy Pachuau, Associate Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies in JNU, "today, while many women are being elected to panchayat, at least a start has been made with women contesting assembly polls. It will take time though. Traditions make it difficult for women to take to public life. The stronghold of the Church as well as other religious bodies also has an impact."

The role that northeastern women play in the democratic process cannot be overlooked. In fact, it is their overwhelming participation at the local self government level that is strengthening the basic foundations of democracy in the region today. Moreover, they never shy away from fulfilling their duty as responsible voters. Yet, notably, their contribution is still limited to the lowest levels of power. While many scholars and experts are of the opinion that it is not the numbers that matter but the quality of involvement, it is also important to make sure that there is equal participation.

General Election 2014, however, may not see much of a change although major parties are talking about women's empowerment. For instance, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has included it in their election agenda, while recently BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi focused his Women's Day Chai pe Charcha discussion on this issue inviting northeast women to share their insights. But despite this, parties have failed to field women in adequate numbers. The Congress has fielded two female candidates in Assam and one in Tripura, the Trinamool Congress has one woman candidate from Manipur and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not given a ticket to any woman in the region. New entrant, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), had approached AFSPA activist Irom Sharmila to stand on its ticket from Manipur but she has turned them down. Change, going by these trends, is still a distant prospect.

Changing Colours of Racism

By Vikram Kapur

CELEBRATING DIVERSITY: The kind of racism that has recently been seen in Delhi is not about caste or colour. It is about looking different. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

The brutal attacks get all the headlines. But the impact of racism on ordinary lives is far more subtle and insidious

Chinky. Dhandewaali. (whore) Momo. These are the kind of slurs she hears every day in Delhi. Some days, a local goon would ask with a lascivious smile: “Rate kya hai?(What is the rate?)” When that happens, she simply looks away and hurries past. On reaching home at night, she thanks her lucky stars that she has got through another day with body and limb intact. Before going out the next morning, she mutters a prayer, apprehending what the city might have in store for her. Racial slurs, she has learnt to handle. When she first arrived there from her home in Manipur, they would reduce her to tears. But with time she has learnt to put up with them, as she has with the city’s heat and chaos. She realises that the big, bad city is capable of throwing far more than hateful words at her.

I contemplate her with a mixture of guilt and bemusement. She works as a barista in my neighbourhood Costa. Until the past month, she was like any other barista, greeting me with a ready smile the moment I walked in through the door, making cheerful small talk while taking my order, stopping by my table to ask if my coffee and pastry were fine as I was partaking of them. Since the brutal murder of Nido Tania, however, the smile looks strained and the cheerfulness has all but disappeared. Today, as the newspaper reports yet another case of a Manipuri girl being groped in Delhi, she looks pensive and withdrawn. It’s obvious that she can no longer summon even the semblance of a professional veneer to contain the churning inside.

Empathy

I want to tell her that I understand exactly how she feels. That what happened to Nido Tania brought back memories of a horrific night in Norwich in 2005 where I was beaten black and blue by racist goons. That for almost a week after that night, one side of my face was so swollen that it was practically impossible to chew. That there were times in that week where I was so scared that my face would never heal that I wished my assailants had killed me. That for months I avoided going out at night and when I did, I would freeze each time I heard someone behind me.

But I hesitate.

I have nothing to do with the racist attacks. Yet that cannot quell the embarrassment I feel because my race places me right in the middle of the racist mob. I am unsure of how anything I say might be taken. An attempt at sympathy could sound fake or trite. Condemnation may not go far enough. And who knows, if we ever had an honest conversation about race, I might end up becoming defensive about mine and make a bad situation worse. So I do nothing. When she answers ‘fine’ to my question of how she is doing, I merely smile and nod even though I know she is lying and accept my coffee and pastry with a terse ‘thank you’.

As I walk home later, it strikes me that this is exactly how my white friends would have felt in England in the days following my attack. As I would go round Norwich with a bandaged head and a bruised face, eyes would be averted. People would fall silent as I approached, like they did not know what to do with me. The exchange that ensued focussed on the inconsequential and was chock-full of the kind of silence that breaks out when people are not sure of what to do or say. And there was palpable relief all round when it was over.

Subtle discrimination

The brutal attacks get all the headlines. But the impact of racism on ordinary lives is far more subtle and insidious. Invariably, it redraws relations by placing people on the opposite sides of a divide. It instils feelings of fear and persecution among the people it targets, while creating guilt and embarrassment among many on the other side. Suddenly, the most effortless relationship becomes exhausting as a distance that is difficult to bridge opens up. There are issues that are off limits because they are too hot to touch, and the whole point of an interaction can devolve to avoiding anything unseemly. As a result, the distance between people widens. That is its inherent evil.

It is not as if we in India are new to racism. In the past, though, Indian racism was about caste and colour. Low-caste Hindus would accuse the upper castes of perpetuating a form of discrimination that amounted to racism. Then there was the gripe that dark-skinned Indians had with the nation’s fascination with light skin. The word black in most Indian languages was synonymous with ugly and it was understood that to be considered attractive you had to be fair.

Caste and colour divisions still exist in India. Just about every day an honour killing takes place, because a low-caste Hindu has dared to marry someone from an upper caste. The lust for light skin, too, is alive and well. A glance at the matrimonial pages of newspapers indicates just about every man or woman desires a light-skinned spouse. Skin-whitening creams and lotions fly off the shelves in bazaars and supermarkets, and most Bollywood movies feature actors light-skinned enough for India to resemble a South European country.

However, the kind of racism that has recently been seen in Delhi with Northeasterners or, for that matter, Africans, is of the kind that was formerly associated with the West. Caste and colour have nothing to do with it. Africans and the bulk of the Northeasterners are not Hindus. Furthermore, in terms of skin colour, most Northeasterners tend to be fairer than the average Indian. The fact that they are being targeted, along with the Africans, is for one reason only. They look different. It is no accident that if you see an Indian woman with an African man in Delhi, more often than not, she is a Northeasterner, the kind of Indian made to feel foreign in her own country.

In the past, India was always at the forefront of the battle against racism. Both Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela took inspiration from India and Mahatma Gandhi. In the United Nations and other world forums, India spoke for suppressed people wherever they were in the world. As one of the first non-white nations to throw off the yoke of European colonialism, India was a beacon of hope for freedom fighters everywhere. Yet when it comes to accepting people from other races in our own society, we are showing that we are light years away from practising what we have preached.

Racism has been the scourge of the Western world for generations. It is sad to see it spreading its tentacles in India.

(Vikram Kapur is a writer and an associate professor at Shiv Nadar University.)

First look North-East, then Look East

By Prasenjit Chowdhury

New Delhi, Mar 3 : The BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi cautioning China against repeatedly staking claim to Arunachal Pradesh and exhorting it to give up its “expansionist attitude” must serve the purpose, beyond just warming the cockles of our nationalist hearts, of giving us a foretaste of what, if Modi becomes prime minister, could be India’s foreign policy vis-à-vis China.

But what became problematic was his proclamation in another rally in Silchar in south Assam, that Hindu migrants from Bangladesh must be accommodated in the country, while the others should be sent back.

In the first note, Modi is perfectly in accord with his ideological predecessor since as early as the 1950s, the Jana Sangh was worried about the growing influence of Peking (now Beijing) in Tibet.

In 1959 its working committee reacted to the Chinese incursions along the India-Tibet border by demanding from Jawaharlal Nehru’s government that the territories that had been occupied be ‘liberated’. When the first signs of the Chinese invasion appeared in May 1962 with the capture of two Indian frontier posts, the Jana Sangh called for massive reprisals and to cut off all diplomatic relations.

We are rightly irked over China making territorial claims on Arunachal Pradesh. Apart from last year’s adventurousness, it is on record how in 2010 China stridently staked its claim to the state, and hectored us over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit there and that of the Dalai Lama. Late last year, Modi took the UPA government to task for ‘failing’ to protect India’s borders with Pakistan and China in his first major speech since the BJP named him its PM candidate.

During his visit in 2011, Modi met the top government and CPC leadership in China and raised issues, among other things, related to the wrong depiction of certain areas of Arunachal Pradesh as parts of China and presence of China in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and the security implications thereof. Could we now expect a reversal of a logjam that started way back in 1963 when Pakistan ceded to China the Trans Karakoram Tract, comprising Shaksgam from Baltistan and Raskam from Gilgit, which is as good as forfeited to us?

It is curious to see how a nationalist government in India, should Modi become PM, meets the newly nationalist China, as the communist party having lost its hegemony over Chinese nationalist discourse, popular nationalists now command a large following and exert tremendous pressure on those who decide China’s foreign policy.

Therefore, if Modi wants to put paid to China’s putative occupation of the Aksai Chin region of Kashmir, claimed by India, and Beijing’s claims on India’s far-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, the moot question would be if he would favour ‘shelving’ the ‘difficult’ border issue and improving ties in other areas, as China currently does, at least till India’s defence modernisation programme is complete — perhaps by the middle of this century — or would go for computing the logistics of going hawkish.

Inadvertently, Modi trod on a number of intricate and delicate issues that relate to India’s intractable border issues with China and Bangladesh, to the issues of mass migration. As seen in the instance of 2012, Assam is a virtual communal powder keg riddled as it is by an unresolved illegal immigrants problem and a vicious fight over land and political power among indigenous tribes and multiple ethnic groups.

It should not be unknown to the BJP leadership that the demographic reality is too complex in the North-East and the root of Assam’s problems lies in the unauthorised influx from Bangladesh which has dramatically changed the ethnic landscape of various districts of Assam closer to the international border, starting with Dhubri, Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon, Barpeta and even Nalbari.

Apart from talking tough, neither the Congress nor BJP governments have adopted a viable policy to stop the tide of illegal immigration. This gives one the impression that electoral politics and its lust for minority votes have been allowed to come into play in the region. It is essentially a battle of attrition over jobs and control over land among many stakeholders.

India’s Look East policy has both parties’ fingerprints on it. Modi’s real test would therefore be, should he get a call, to take up a North-East policy with no room for sectarianism.

Prasenjit Chowdhury is a Kolkata-based commentator

Tipaimukh High Dam on the Barak River

Conflicting Land and People

Part – I

By R. K. Ranjan Singh

Emergence of Tipaimukh and its Conflicts

In an attempt to control frequent flooding in the natural floodplain areas of the lower Barak plain, several proposals for harnessing the Barak river have been raised within government and political circles since India’s pre-independence days. In 1954, the Assam government requested the Central Water Commission (CWC) and the planning commission of the union government to identify a suitable location where monsoon waters of the Barak could be impounded to form an artificial flooding zone (Brahmaputra Flood Control Board, 1984). Accordingly, the North Eastern Council (NEC) entrusted the investigation work to the CWC. The CWC submitted its report in 1984, which proposed the construction of the Tipaimukh High Dam (THD) at a cost of Rs.1,078crores (WAPCOS, 1989). However, the report was turned down due to the lack of a proper environmental impact assessment of the submergible areas. Again, in 1995, at the request of the NEC, the Brahmaputra Flood Control Board prepared the Detailed Project Report. There was no progress after this. Finally, in 1999, the Brahmaputra Flood Control Board handed over the project to the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Limited (NEEPCO). On January 18, 2003, the project received the all- important notification under section 29 of the Electricity Act.
Recently in July and August 2013, there were two separate attempts by the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), Government of India to accord Forest Clearance for the controversial project for forest impacts in Manipur and Mizoram side. In the consideration for forest clearance for the proposed Tipaimukh Multipurpose Hydroelectric project for forest impacts in Manipur side, the meeting of the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the Ministry on 11-12 July rejected the “Forest Clearance” for the proposed project.
In another sinister design to create more confusion among communities affected by the proposed Tipaimukh dam, another round of meeting is scheduled on 13-14 August 2013 by the MoEF to consider according forest clearance for impacts on Forest on Mizoram side. Interestingly, the Additional Chief Conservator of Forest for the Government of Mizoram has recommended diversion of 1551 hectares of forest land in Mizoram side and wrote to the MoEF on 16 January 2013 for necessary diversion. The area to be submerged in Mizoram side is rich in forest biodiversity and is also used for indigenous agricultural system by the Hmar people of Mizoram.
Main Features of the Tipaimukh High Dam
The project envisioned a 390 m long, 162 m high earthen-rock filled dam across the Barak, 500 m downstream after the confluence of the Tuivai tributary and the Barak on the Manipur-Mizoram border. The dam will be at an altitude of about 180 m above mean sea level, with a maximum reservoir level of 178 m. It was originally designed to contain flood waters in the lower Barak valley, but the component of hydropower generation was later incorporated into the project. It will have an installed capacity of 6X250 = 1500 MW, and a firm generation of only 412 MW. The dam will permanently submerge an area of 275.50 sq km (NEEPCO, 1998) and is feared to have negative impacts over an area of 9,126 sq km in the state of Manipur alone. A large number of indigenous communities, mostly belonging to the Zeliangrong and Hmar peoples, will be permanently displaced and deprived of their livelihoods.
History of Resistance
Since there was no comprehensive study that focused on biodiversity, environment, health, human rights, socio-economic and hydrological impacts of the proposed project and geo-tectonic problems, the communities from Manipur have resisted the THD for more than 15 years. The absence of meaningful consultation (that could lead to free, prior and informed consent) with the indigenous people contradicts the keystone of strategic priority developed by the World Commission on Dams, that no dam should be built without the demonstrable acceptance of the affected people, and without the free, prior, informed consent of indigenous peoples as also outlined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Now the struggle against THD is no longer confined to Manipur alone, but has also spread in the downstream areas including the lower Barak Valley and Bangladesh, where the immediate negative impacts of the dam are feared to be felt. The dam may also impact watersheds and ecosystems in north-western Burma. As learnt from the experience with other projects, dams have already created or exacerbated ethnic conflict. In the case of Tipaimukh as well, there are already divisions along ethnic lines that can have long-term implications for everyone. In an already fractured society such as the north-east, it is imperative that the state does not allow projects that widen the ethnic divide. In addition, conflict with other states and with Bangladesh due to the dam cannot be ruled out and will need to be addressed before deciding on the project. Further, there is no clarity about its scientific and technical feasibility, environmental impact assessment, rehabilitation policy and safety for downstream communities, which has created enough ground for a major conflict and raging controversy around the THD.
Conflicting Geological and Seismic Factors
The proposed THD site and its adjoining areas are predominantly composed of the Surma group of rocks characterised by folds and faults with a regional strike of  North-northeast- South-southwest (NNE-SSW) (Ibotombi, 2007). The entire locality has well-developed fractures and hidden faults called blind thrusts. These thrusts could be potential earthquake foci (Ibotombi, 2000). Also, the course of the Barak river opposite the Tuivairiver itself is controlled by the Barak-Makru Thrust. The entire drainage basin of the Barak is littered with fault lines that control the courses of the river and its tributaries. The proposed THD dam axis is located on the Taithu fault (24o 14N and93o 1.3 E approximately). Such faults are potentially active and may be the foci and/or epicentres for future earthquakes.
The plate kinematics of the region is very active (Ibotombi, 2007). Boundary interaction (seduction zone) between the Indian and Burmese plates makes the entire region highly seismically active. North-east India is one of the most earthquake prone areas in the world. Earthquake epicenters of magnitude 6M and above have been observed during the last 200 years (Verma and Kumar, 1994). Within a 100 km radius of Tipaimukh, two earthquakes of +7M magnitude have taken place in the last 150 years. The epicentre of the last one, in the year 1937, was at an aerial distance of about 75 km from the dam site in an east-northeast direction.
Conflicting Environmental Impacts
The project report (1984) states that as per the Botanical Survey of India, there is no threat to any endangered plant, and that they have not come across any rare endemic taxa or species of aquatic plants during their survey. The same report also states that as per the Zoological Survey of India, there are no endemic and endangered fauna in the area. The references relating to the flora and fauna in the proposed THD area do not seem to be based on factual and authentic field information and have been contested. The Barak basin, along with the rest of north-east India, is part of the sensitive Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot, identified on account of its gene pool of endemic plants, animal species, and microbes. The absence of important information about the biodiversity of the region in the project report apparently reflects a sense of deliberate negligence and lack of seriousness in carrying out the environmental impact assessment of both the upstream and the downstream areas. The Barak basin drains a region that the international scientific community has acknowledged for its bio-researches, and as such, is of immense significance for the country and, indeed, the planet. Today the world is seriously concerned about the impact of global climate change, and the percentage of emission of methane gases by the creation of artificial water reservoirs for big dam. It implies that dammed reservoirs are the largest single source of human-caused methane emission, contributing a quarter of these emissions. A total of 25,822 hectares of forest land of Manipur will be affected by the Tipaimukh dam which will lead to the felling of 7.8 million trees, and such action will seriously contribute to climate change, both locally and globally due to the destruction of the absorption capacity of Green House Gases and also due to emission by the proposed reversion of the dam. 
According to the Department of Forest, Government of Manipur, five species of hornbill are reported from the proposed THD area: the Great Indian hornbill, the Indian Pied or Lesser Pied Hornbill, the Wreathed Hornbill, the Brown-blacked hornbill and the Rufous-necked Hornbill. The prime hornbill habited area in the Tipaimukh region is located just above the sharp south-north ‘U’ turn in the Barak river (where the river bends sharply north from Tipaimukh in Churachandpur district to enter the Jiribam sub-division). The dam site is located exactly at this sharp bend.
The project report makes no mention of national parks or sanctuaries in the submergence zone, while there are, in fact, two very important wildlife sanctuaries i.e. Kailam and Bunning. Further, there are a number of wetlands unique in nature, as well as several waterfalls in the submergence zone. The Barak basin area is one of the most Important Bird Areas (IBA) in the Sino-Himalayan temperate forest, the Sino-Himalayan subtropical forest and the Indo-Chinese tropical moist forest. More than 200 endemic fish species have been recorded from the Barak drainage system. Over and above this, the wetland complex and its biodiversity catering to the continuation of the civilisation in the Sylhet district of Bangladesh should not be overlooked. Given these loopholes, it is obvious that these sensitive issues have generated a series of conflicts related to different aspects of the proposed THD.

Requiem for Nido

On the Lynching of a North-Eastern Indian Student in Delhi

By A K Biswas

Seventeen-year-old Nido Tania, a student from Arunachal, recently fell victim to hate crime in Delhi. The signifies what is fundamentally rotten in the public life of India as a nation. India’s feeble posturing for inclusive policy has remained starkly insufficient to make a dent on its exclusive society. The implications and ramifications of the tragdey befalling the teenager are far more frightening than meet the eye. The so-called mainland in general and the over-hyped Aryavart as the credle of Hindu culture and civilisation in particular is virtually a hell for the people of the margins. The Mephistophelean proclivity of the mainlanders towards the people from the margins has been broadcast through a series of barbaric incidents to prove a point that the latter are unwelcome either in their company or their proximity. And thus a climate of disintegration in the mainland through unbridled intolerance and insensitivity towards the less privileged has been built up that alarms few and those, who, under oaths, are charged with the sacred duty of upholding the sanctity of the Constitution and safeguar-ding the integrity of the nation, strangely  seem unconcerned. A rift with a huge potential to unleash fissiparous tendencies is distinctively in the offing.

In July-August 2012, attacks on people of the North-East in Bangalore and threat calls to students in Hyderabad forced workers and students from Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and even Goa to go back to the safety of their homes out of an intense sense of insecurity. The State of Karnataka alone had witnessed in two days the exodus of 16,000 North-Eastern Indians.1 This belied the preten-sion and contention of harmony and unity in diversity of India, underlying a deep-rooted malaise. Official figures are always conservative, if not deceptive and less than the actual, if these are not used for bolstering up the image, individual and/or institutional.

People hailing from Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam in quest of avenues for higher or better facilities of education or livelihood face hostilities from the mainlanders. In the 1990s, a North-Eastern girl student travelling by the Guwahati Rajdhani Express to Delhi was outraged in the Munger district of Bihar. A senior Indian Forest Service officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, a co-traveller, recounted the grim tragedy in writing to the Chief Secretary, Government of Bihar. Glaring incidents of such dimension are galore all over India. In August 2012, Diana Silva, a 22-year-old First-Year MBA student of Amity University and Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma’s niece, committed suicide in her hostel room at Gurgaon after an altercation with a teacher.2
Diana’s friends alleged that a teacher accused her of cheating during an examination and when she protested, the former tore up her answer-sheet. A shocked and humiliated Diana locked herself up in her room and hours later, after a forced entry, the authorities recovered her body. Such teachers are rarely held accountable for their despicable crimes despite complaints to the appropirate authorities. Dons in high temples of learning, who were in occasional media focus for crimes against underprivileged students, have walked free with full impunity.

Chuni Kotal, a Lodha tribal girl, doing M.Sc. (Anthropology) in West Bengal’s Vidysagar University, to cite one instance, was harassed, humiliated and hounded as a member of the criminal tribe in the campus for over three years by one of her teachers, Falguni Chakraborty. Her complaints to the Vice-Chancellor during the period went unheeded. The malefic teacher’s manipulation debarred her from taking the first semester examination. Deeply depressed and frustrated, she ultimately committed suicide on August 16, 1992. The West Bengal Police did not even invoke the provision of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989. Nonetheless retired Justice S.S. Gangopadhyaya, as head of an inquiry commission appointed by the reluctant State Government, gave a clean-chit to Chuni’s tormentor. The Commission observed:

“On a consideration of all the materials on record we are constrained to hold, therefore, that the allegations brought against Falguni Chakraborty by Chuni Kotal were not sustai-nable and further that Falguni Chakraborty never practised nor he had any reason to discriminate against Chuni simply because she was a Lodha. It may be that on occasions Falguni Chakraborty took Chuni to task for her let or non-attendance or for some such reasons. These were mere trivialities which occur as a matter of course between the teacher and the taught without any personal involvement from either side.
“These trivialities were blown big beyond all proportions to transform them into the items of the petition of complaint. On the findings arrived by us, we conclude that the behaviour meted out by Falguni Chakraborty was not as to cause intense mental pain to Chuni so as to break her heart and lead her ultimately to commit suicide.”3

So, the victim of the harrassment was herself responsible for her suicide! When the judge becomes a defender of the criminal, who can punish him? And why on earth should the tormentors of the underprivileged be at all afraid of the law-enforcing authorities? With inbuilt insularity in position, the aggressors of the dignity of the Dalits or tribals have nothing to fear.
The question is not limited to the unfortunate Lodha girl, who was the first-generation learner. The majority of lawyers and advocates, even judges presiding over law courts where victims of atrocities seek justice, have to contend with such men luxuriantly endowed with filial loyalty. Miscarriage of justice in their cases is unfailingly a foregone conclusion. This is why the Dalits and tribals as a whole entertain an overpwoering perspective that they would not get justice if and when the accused belong to the supremacist club as that of their judges.
Since decades North-Eastern Indians have been subjected to persecution and atrocities by the Indian mainlanders because of their different lifestyle, looks, features, cultural traits etc. One cannot readily remember a case involving them in which salutary and exemplary punishment has been awarded to the criminals. The National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, in a report on reservation in the higher judiciary, bemoaned: “Unfortunately the composition of the higher judiciary shows that judges continue to be drawn mostly from the very section of the society which is infected with the age-old social prejudice. In most cases, social inhibition and class interest of such judges do not permit them full play of their intellectual honesty and integrity in their decisions.”4
Profligacy with intellectual honesty or professional ethics never tormented any of them. The acquittal of 26 Ranvir Sena men, convicted for the massacre of 61 Dalits in Laxmanpur Bathe, Bihar, by a Bench of the Patna High Court last year, underlined the same age-old inhibition and prejudice. One of the judges of the Bench is said to belong to the same stock that furnished the recruits of the private militia. Lack of intellectual integrity and honesty failed the judge to recuse himself from the Bench. Besides, why did the government advocates, appearing for the victims of a massacre, not without strong vested interest, fail to agitate the issue of conflict of interest with such a judge sitting on the Bench to hear and acquit the convicts?
Hasn’t Delhi Forfeited its Right to
remain the Nation’s Capital?
The barbarous lynching of Nido has come as the proverbial last straw provoking the North-Eatern Indian students and activists to launch a peaceful and sustained agitation in Delhi against the racial discrimination they routinely face and suffer. Repeated instances of discrimi-nation and intolerance in Delhi alongside other parts of India must be viewed in a broader perspective. A question must be asked: Hasn’t Delhi forfeited its claim to remain the national Capital where Indians irrespective of religion, race, caste, place of birth—Arunachal to Gujarat and Ladakh to Kanyakumari—are unwelcome?
Insecurity coupled with racial discrimination disqualifies it to be the nation’s Capital open to polyglot, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural con-course of the countrymen. Delhi has actually become a haven for the fascist forces, like the barbarian Ku Klux Klan, over whom the writ of the authorities does not run. The political masters and executive authorities have not confronted them with all the might of the state when their victims belong to margins of the society. Their incompetence to put down the dark forces with an iron hand might unobtru-sively engulf the North-Easterners into a centrifugal torrent which ultimately can be a movement for secession from India. The Chinese in the neighbourhood do not lack fanciful designs to make matters worse for India.
Has Caste made the Crucial 
Difference in Attitude?
Following the gangrape and subsequent murder of a paramedical girl student in a school bus in Delhi on December 16, 2012 thousands of women, who were pejoratively described as highly dented and painted5 alongside students, and the common man from all walks of life thronged the streets of Delhi and elsewhere demanding justice. In the Capital they fought with the police, gheraoed Parliament, marched right upto the Rashtrapati Bhavan, had instantaneous audience with the Prime Minister on demand, abused
the Union Home Minister and Delhi Chief Minister, and almost uprooted the Delhi Police Commissioner. It was hailed as the power of the people. At subzero temperature at 3.30 am December 29, 2012, the Prime Minister and the UPA-II chairperson were at the international airport to receive the dead body and pay homage to the departed soul of the gangrape victim brought from Singapore. These were touching gestures of sympathy of the agitationists as well as the authorities. We were reassured of a new era.
Many have noted with sadness the absence as also failure of those agitationists to join in sympathy and solidarity for the North-Eaterners under attacks. [Some students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University did come, however, in the end to express their solidarity with the North-Easterners.] Why have they failed to turn up in their crisis and where have they gone? We know the answer. The caste of the Delhi rape victim made the crucial difference. This is xenophobia. It is immaterial whether the authorities and/or the countrymen of the privileged class agree or not. To the dented and painted agitationists, the caste of the rape victim was the trigger. The deprived, discriminated and marginalised know well why they have no support from the privileged.
Footnotes
1. The Times of India, August 18, 2012, news item captioned “Fresh attacks in Bangalore keep NE exodus going”. The State Home Minister quoted this statistics to the media.
2. CNN-IBN, April 25, 2012.
3. Suman Chattopadhyay, Ananda Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, June 6, 1995.
4. http://ncsc.nic.in/files/Reservatio...
5. “Those who are coming in the name of students in the rallies, sundori, sundori mahila (beautiful women), highly dented and painted,” Abhijit Mukherjee, an MP from the Jangipur seat that the President of India had vacated before his election, told a vernacular news channel.
The author is a former Vice-Chancellor, B.R. Ambedkar University, Muzaffarpur, Bihar. He can be contacted at biswasatulk@gmail.com

India After Nido

By Pratap Bhanu Mehta

 

The self-proclaimed image of a tolerant society has often sidelined questions about racism in India.

Summary

His death reminds us of the transitions the Indian project still needs to make.

Nido Taniam’s death was deep tragedy. But there is some consolation that political attention to this incident is ensuring that it does not become a mere statistic. Yet in India, a single violent incident bears the weight of complex histories and tangled sociologies. It has highlighted the casual but consequential racism prevalent in our cities.

It has reopened the delicate question of the place of the Northeast in India’s imagination. It has also reminded us of the subtle transitions the idea of India still needs to make for the Indian project to be complete.

The first transition it needs to make is the move from territoriality to people. The idea of India is tied to an emphasis on territoriality. While this is inevitable in any modern nation state, the monumental privileging of territoriality has often led to making concrete peoples invisible.

The Northeast has often been imagined in Delhi in largely territorial terms; even the name suggests that. Defending territory trumps almost everything else: human rights, economic freedom. But in a strange way, discourse in the Northeast also has been besotted with territoriality. The claim that ethnicity and territoriality be aligned has also wreaked havoc in the region. It is a formula that has also produced more violence, displacement and antagonism in the region.

The principle fight of the Indian state with the Northeast, on one hand, and among the peoples of the Northeast, on the other, has been about who controls what territory, not about how to define proper ethical relationships with others. In a way, the Indian state and the Northeast have shared each other’s pathologies. It is time to move from the question of territory to what it will take for us to treat each other as free and equal human beings.

The second transition is the move from diversity to respecting freedom. Indian toleration was often based on segmentation and hierarchy. Each community could have its place, so long as it remained in its place. But the mobility produced by economic changes, the desire to expand the boundaries of freedom, the jostling in same spaces, sometimes even competition for the same jobs, needs a different kind of toleration.

This toleration is not about respecting each other’s identities at some distance. In a way, it is not even about knowing the histories and identities of others, though that might help. It is about quite the opposite. It is about making identity more of an irrelevant fact in the background, not an axis on which we organise what rights people have and what places they can inhabit. It is about recognising the limits to which we can, as individuals, exercise sovereignty over others; how one wears one’s hair is nobody’s business. This is a challenge for migrants in India everywhere.

The third transition is from self-proclaimed innocence to an overt confronting of racism. The self-proclaimed image of a tolerant society has often sidelined deep questions about racism in India. Racism is a complex subject. But it haunts our conception of nationalism, where we often cannot decide whether the Northeast is radically different or the same, based on race. It haunts our relations with the outside world, as we see with Africans. The moral education required is not more facts about this or that culture. It is about the idea that racism of any kind is not acceptable.

It is about not letting common decency be immobilised by abstractions of identity. This is a much harder thing to achieve. In fact, much of the diversity discourse in India is quite compatible with racism, because it is premised on essentialism: each culture is like this or that. Even positive assessments of different groups partake of the same fallacy: the individual is always a sign of the group, nothing more nothing less. We need to inculcate toleration based on freedom rather than identity, individual equality rather than group difference. Even well-meaning calls for overcoming racism obscure this fact.

The fourth transition is from states of exceptionalism to normalisation. The fact of the matter is that much of the Northeast is still under siege. So long as the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act remains in place in its current form, so long as security-based arguments close off developmental possibilities, the Northeast will remain a troubled zone. It could be legitimately asked: what is the connection between the political problem of the area known as the Northeast, and the racial problem of attacks on Northeasterners? The short answer is that both are a form of distancing from the language of Indian citizenship. It is true that horrendous violence goes unpunished in large parts of India.

That we are still debating 1984 testifies to that. But how can the language of citizenship gain primacy, both in Delhi and in the Northeast, when the normative values of citizenship have no purchase in the way the state behaves in the region? In fact, every intervention of the Indian state, including the creation of separate ministries and development councils based on ill-conceived ideas of a territorial identity, is a reminder of just how exceptionally the area is treated. Except that this exceptionalism is a form of marginalisation.

It is taking a Supreme Court intervention to investigate the disappearance of hundreds of young people in the region. The AFSPA may give legal protection to the army to operate. But it is also a daily reminder that people of the region are not allowed to lay claim to the legal protections of citizenship. The AFSPA morally denudes citizenship because it presumes people are guilty rather than innocent. And racism towards the Northeast partakes of the same assumption: guilt just by being. Internal politics in the area will also have to change.

The final transition is from a regime governed by the contingent waves of sympathy to governance by institutions. It should not take a propitious political conjuncture every time to achieve justice. The good thing is that in this case there are few of the “ifs and buts” that normally disable the quest for justice. In India, there is often a danger that history and sociology will be used to immobilise normal institutional roles. Delhi Police is, rightly, under a scanner.

But it is also currently a political football, being kicked around in the politics of blame. How to reform institutions in ways where the politics of assigning blame is not mistaken for the politics of genuine reform will be a challenge. Our hearts are full, our heads need to be clear as well.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi, and a contributing editor for ‘The Indian Express’

"You bloody chinky" - We Hear This Everyday

By Binalakshmi Nepram

Binalakshmi Nepram is a writer and activist.

Binalakshmi Nepram is a writer and activist. She is the founder of Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network (MWGSN). 

She met with Rahul Gandhi yesterday and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today to demand justice for Nido Taniam, the 20-year-old who died after he was beaten up by a group of men at a South Delhi market. 

This is Binalakshmi's blog (as told to ndtv.com).

Nido was a victim of racial profiling. A lot of young boys and girls are victims - everyday. I'm a victim myself. Just now, I was waiting for an auto-rickshaw and 6-7 empty autos went by without stopping for me. There are many, many cases but they are not reported. We are called 'Nepali dhanda karne wale, you bloody chinki'. Has a person from Kashmir or Chennai ever been beaten to death in Delhi? Delhi, unfortunately is the worst. So many kids come here from the North East for higher education and this is the kind of discrimination they have to face every day.

We met yesterday (Monday) with Mr Rahul Gandhi.  He was very upset and assured us that there would be a committee like the Justice Verma Committee that was constituted after the Delhi gang-rape to look into Nido's case. He also admitted that this was a case of racial discrimination. Mr Kejriwal joined us in our protests at Jantar Mantar today.

When we met Mr Kejriwal yesterday, we advised him to form a special committee - on the lines of the Justice Mehra committee - only for Delhi and the National Capital Region. He liked the idea.  The Delhi government has to ensure this happens and look at different cases of racial discrimination.

60% of the North Eastern kids who leave their hometowns are in Delhi. The Delhi Education Minister should ensure that the culture, tradition of the North East is a part of the curriculum of Delhi schools so that there is no prejudice...so we are not looked at as aliens.

A helpline which was launched some years ago to receive calls for help from North Eastern students doesn't work at all. It is manned by the Delhi Police and the Delhi police itself is biased. Most of the policemen are from Haryana - they are extremely racist. It would help if the Delhi Police recruited some people from the North East.

The government must focus on the formation of an anti-racial, anti-discrimination law. We don't have anything of the sort at the moment.  And we need a special fast-track court to try these hate crimes.

In Delhi, we face violence, sexual assault.  There is verbal abuse and taunting.  It is rampant, it happens at every moment.

There is a fear psychosis in the minds of many young people who study or work in Delhi. We tell them only cowards indulge in this kind of racial discrimination. Delhi doesn't belong to a single community. We have requested the Ministry of Home Affairs to tighten security.

This is my message to youngsters from North Eastern states living in Delhi. This city is as much as yours as it is of other citizens. Only cowards do these kind of racial attacks. Please do not be scared or intimidated. Cases are being solved. Delhi belongs to everyone.

India Gets On The Highway to Growth in Southeast Asia

By Nayanima Basu

With the implementation of the India-Asean comprehensive economic partnership, the target for two-way trade has been set at $100 billion by 2015

As India readies to sign the free trade agreement on services and investment with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), taking bilateral trade relations to the next level of a comprehensive economic partnership agreement, the focus is on the laying out of a massive road connectivity plan to tie the region together to boost economic objectives.

To start with, India has proposed extending the trilateral highway project connecting India, Myanmar and Thailand to neighbouring Cambodia and Vietnam. The idea is to set up special economic zones along this highway and provide seamless connectivity through these countries by 2016, by when the projects are expected to become operational. Right now, work is on to repair and strengthen 71 bridges that link this stretch.

To ensure greater success of this highway project, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh proposed an Asean-India Transit Transport Agreement (AITTA) at the India-Asean Summit in Brunei Darussalam last month. Once the agreement comes into force -likely by 2015- vehicles from association countries will be able to cross international borders without much documentation.

Total bilateral trade between Asean and India reached $75.6 billion in 2012, surpassing the target of $70 billion. Now, with the implementation of the India-Asean comprehensive economic partnership, the target for two-way trade has been set at $100 billion by 2015, for which an integrated transport network would be the key.

At present, the market is fragmented and the patchy road network is a stumbling block for free flow of goods and services. This, along with administrative and technical barriers, increases costs and leads to transportation delays, says a study by New Delhi-based think tank Research and Information System for Developing Countries on Asean-India connectivity.

While road links are being developed, the proposed AITTA will make crossing the border easier. "AITTA will allow vehicles to move seamlessly across international borders or regional and international trade transportation purposes. AITTA should be in position before the trilateral highway is operationalised in 2016. Potentially, it can be a game changer which will allow us to reap the full benefit of India-Asean free trade agreement, regional comprehensive economic partnership and enhanced connectivity," says Ashok Kantha, secretary (East), ministry of external affairs.

The master plan on Asean road connectivity was adopted at the India-Asean Summit in 2010. The benefits from the highways, which are scheduled to be completed by 2016, are manifold. They would improve connectivity, bring India closer to Asean, reduce trade costs, help exploit the country's comparative advantage in certain products, expand markets, as well as reduce poverty and improve the quality of life for the people in the region. A smooth road network would also provide substantial benefits to other countries, particularly to landlocked and island nations by giving them low-cost access to a wider market outside, the report said.

India already has a goods agreement in place. It came into force in August 2011 and provides tariff-free access to a range of products, including textiles, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, engineering goods, processed food and auto parts. The likely addition of services and investments to this list of free-trade items in the not too distant future would open up new opportunities for Indian IT and healthcare professionals, designers and researchers.

In addition, India is also contemplating expansion of rail network into Myanmar. The rail head terminates at Jiribam in Manipur. A project to connect Jiribam to the capital Imphal is under way and is slated to be completed by 2017, while proposals on connecting Moreh (Imphal) to Tamu-Kalay (Myanmar) is being considered by the external affairs ministry.

At the same time, work is also on for developing soft infrastructure such as trade facilitation centres and telecommunication, necessary for any economy to function and thrive. Boosting maritime connectivity is on the agenda as well. India has proposed the establishment of a Maritime Transport Working Group between India, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam to examine the feasibility of shorter shipping routes. This idea was initially mooted by Thailand which wants a more direct sea transport route to India via the Dawei port in Myanmar, which is a deep sea port. Right now ships have to be routed via Singapore to reach India.

"It is important that we identify economic activities that can be pegged to these corridors, which could attract private sectors from both Asean and India, including from India's Northeast," says a foreign ministry official.

Another project that India has shown interest in is the Mekong-India Economic Corridor (an offshoot of the trilateral highway) to link Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam with India. The corridor- which might be funded by Asian Development Bank -will extend from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to Dawei in Myanmar via Bangkok (Thailand) and Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and then on to Chennai in India.