Career bureaucrat Ashish Kundra, an IAS officer of the AGMUT cadre, has had three stints in the Northeast — two in Mizoram and one in between in Arunachal Pradesh. In A Resurgent Northeast: Narratives of Change, he maps the transition of the eight States over the course of his two-decade engagement with the region. Kundra’s belief (and hope) about the inexorable mainstreaming of the north-eastern frontier is premised on the rapid strides in communication and people-to-people movement across the Chicken’s Neck connecting the region with ‘mainland’ India. He bets on the peace dividend the waning of insurgency and separatist sentiments is expected to yield. There’s evidence already on view — the author details the sporting achievements of athletes on the national and international stage and profiles several entrepreneurial successes moored in the region’s unique topography, biodiversity and handicrafts. Kundra also puts immense faith in the government’s ‘Act East’ policy, reading into the changed terminology the momentum missing in its ’90s avatar of ‘Look East’.
Ashish Kundra | Photo Credit: special arrangement
The optimism, however, is belied by geopolitics and the overarching presence of China in the region. While the military imperative of moving men and material quickly to the borders is bound to accelerate infrastructure development, the frosty neighbourly ties in recent years — only last month, Beijing sought to rename 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh — precludes any soft borders in the foreseeable future.
Exploring options
Informal trade via the Karnaphully river on the Mizoram-Bangladesh border. | Photo Credit: special arrangement
Policy prescriptions that look within and around rather than eastward are perhaps more in the realm of the possible. For one, exploring transit options overland through Bangladesh and via waterways that could unlock the region’s economic potential. Reviving the erstwhile Indian Frontier Administrative Service, a dedicated civil service cadre for the Northeast, could bring officers with an enduring stake in the region as opposed to itinerants jockeying for their next central deputation. Reinventing the North Eastern Council, the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region in Delhi being “too distant to take the lead”, is much needed. Forging the Northeast into an integrated market with hubs in Guwahati, Agartala and Imphal would even out the development spread.
Bum La, the border post with China, from the Arunachal Pradesh side. | Photo Credit: special arrangement
The author shows deep empathy, be it while dwelling on the hurt felt by an older generation of Mizos over state excesses during the Rambuai (insurgency) period or while advocating the withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act since the Indian Army often becomes “the symbol of the nation and the target of ire of an anguished people”. He calls out ground-level local corruption sans bureaucratese or equivocation. Sample this candour: “Educated elites wove a narrative of economic exploitation by ‘outsiders’, while being equally complicit in perpetuating it.” Or “District councils merely served as a safety valve for thwarted political assumptions... Autonomy became a proxy for profligacy.”
A konyak morung at Kisama village, Nagaland. | Photo Credit: special arrangement
The administrator’s keen eye is also revealed when he punctures long-held assumptions about women being more empowered in the Northeast or talks of civil society overreach citing the example of the influential Young Mizo Association. Which is why it’s odd that he googled “terra incognita” Arunachal Pradesh out of curiosity upon receiving transfer orders from Daman in 2016. One would presumably be better placed with one stint in the region already on the CV.
A Resurgent Northeast envisions a region set for take-off. The Seven Sisters and One Brother are certainly more visible today, thanks to over 50 prime ministerial visits since 2014. That’s Look Northeast. The rest of the flight path is still up in the air.
A Resurgent Northeast: Narratives of Change; Ashish Kundra, HarperCollins, ₹399.
abdus.salam@thehindu.co.in
