Northeast India

India's "troubled Northeast' has become a catch-all phrase for the region, and leads to the perception that the entire region is in a state of near-anarchy. The reality is otherwise; analysis shows that patterns of violence have been showing continuous decline in the region as a whole over the past few years and, more significantly, that the current violence is now substantially concentrated in the states of Manipur and Assam.

• M. Amarjeet Singh
• December 09, 2006
• IDSA Comments

The arrest of three United National Liberation Front (UNLF) leaders at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi on October 2, 2006 necessitates an evaluation of the external linkages of Meitei militant outfits. Apart from having close connections with their sister outfits in the north-eastern states, major Meitei outfits like the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the UNLF have been attempting to revamp themselves by tying up with foreign outfits and agencies directly or indirectly.

• T. Khurshchev Singh
• November 21, 2006
• IDSA Comments

On September 25 and 26, 2006, the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi, conducted a seminar on Peace and Development in the North East in Shillong, Meghalaya. This was done in collaboration with the North Eastern Council (NEC) and the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong. The two-day seminar provided a forum for scholars, media personalities, military personnel, bureaucrats and politicians from the region to express their views and thinking on the subject at hand.

• Namrata Goswami
• October 10, 2006
• IDSA Comments

The management of India's international border along its North Eastern States has remained a crucial and complex issue. In an age of increasing interdependence, threats from unconventional sources pose a greater challenge to the country's security. An unmanaged border accentuates such threats by providing easy points of ingress and egress. Travel along India's borders with Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan highlights the porous nature of these borders, which pass through difficult terrain of forest, rivers and mountains and make the task of guarding all the more challenging.

• Shanthie Mariet D’Souza
• July 18, 2006
• IDSA Comments

Travelling in Arunachal Pradesh without having to suffer from poorly developed roads is indeed inconceivable. Existing roads by themselves are of the primitive 'potholed' variety, which is made worse by frequent landslides in the rainy season. This state of affairs not only disconnects the state from the rest of India but also proves hazardous for the Indian security apparatus operating along the country's borders with China.

• Namrata Goswami
• June 13, 2006
• IDSA Comments

Introduction

• Anil Kamboj
• October 2004
• Strategic Analysis

Militant groups clashing among themselves for control over the public resources even at the cost of the rights of the local tribal or ethnic community they claim to be defending, is an important factor behind persistent inter-ethnic conflicts

• Praveen Kumar
• April 2004
• Strategic Analysis

Assam, one of the seven states of the northeastern region of India, has long remained one of the most volatile and sensitive regions in the country because of the problems of insurgency, ethnic conflict, pressure of migration, underdevelopment etc. Bodos, the largest plains tribe of Assam started an armed struggle for a separate state in the mid-1980s. This armed struggle led to ethnic cleansing of the non-Bodos along the north bank of the Brahmaputra.

• Manoj Kumar Nath
• October 2003
• Strategic Analysis

The scourge of terrorism has haunted Indian policy-makers since independence. Some of the states, particularly the bordering states, having different cultural and ethnic composition from the heartland, suffered from a real or perceived sense of neglect and misgovernance. Inimical powers exploited this aspect and sowed seeds of sedition and secession amongst some sections of society of these states-particularly the states of the North-East, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir-by providing them with arms training and financial support and instigated them to take up arms against the state machinery.

• N. S. Jamwal
• January 2003
• Strategic Analysis