Northeast India

The declaration of the Disturbed Area provision is fundamentally at odds with the mutually accommodative integration endeavour of the Nagas with the Indian Union as envisioned in the 2015 framework agreement.

• Gautam Sen
• January 16, 2018
• IDSA Comments

While decades of counterinsurgency operations and peace processes have taken the sting out of the region’s major insurgencies, collaboration between groups continues to pose security challenges, particularly in the exploitable border areas adjacent to the upper Sagaing Region of Northwest Myanmar.

• Alex Waterman
• August 10, 2017
• IDSA Comments

Maximum autonomy may be accorded in ethnic, cultural and developmental realms to autonomous councils for all Naga areas in Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and even Assam, through suitable amendment to the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.

• Gautam Sen
• July 31, 2017
• IDSA Comments

Subject to a political consensus, there may still be some scope for a solution short of a full-fledged Gorkhaland state

• Gautam Sen
• June 29, 2017
• IDSA Comments

Naga leaders have alleged that Naga villages have been merged with non-Naga areas to form the new districts and that the Manipur Government did not consult all stake holders including the Hill Area Committees before taking the decision.

• Sushil Kumar Sharma
• March 15, 2017
• Issue Brief

Regulated borders with greater emphasis on developing people-to-people contact and cross-border trade initiatives are likely to yield greater security benefits as against a closed border.

• Pradeep Singh Chhonkar
• February 06, 2017
• IDSA Comments

Partly the result of a political and physical isolation compounded by decades of conflict in the region, Northeast India is often viewed through the prism of security studies, institutional performance or developmental governance. While important contributions in themselves, a state-centric focus often overlooks the complexity of the causes and dynamics. It ignores the consequences of regional societal forces’ articulation of identity, nationalism, separatism and sovereignty that can shape political boundaries in the region, thus overlooking the salience of subaltern narratives.

• Alex Waterman
• January 2017
• Strategic Analysis

While the Manipur government’s decision to create seven new districts has come in the wake of popular demands for improved administrative efficiency, there has been fierce opposition from Naga bodies which view it as an attempt to divide the Naga people

• Pradeep Singh Chhonkar
• December 23, 2016
• IDSA Comments

Inhabited by numerous tribes and sub-tribes with fierce clan loyalties, the north-east of India has been plagued by identity-inspired insurgencies since independence. The first of these insurgencies was that of the Naga National Council (NNC) in the mid-1950s. Subsequent decades saw the outbreak of other, similar, insurgencies among the Meiteis, Mizos, Assamese and Boroks.

• Pushpita Das
• September 2016
• Strategic Analysis

Differing perceptions among the various stakeholders has emerged because the contents of the framework agreement are not in the public domain.

• Pradeep Singh Chhonkar
• September 01, 2016
• IDSA Comments