Conflict resolution stalemate
BEYOND COUNTER-INSURGENCY — Breaking the Impasse in Northeast India: Edited by Sanjib Baruah, Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs.825.
M. S. Prabhakara
Reviewing a volume of essays by different authors is never an easy task. The review necessarily lacks a focal point. Even a superficial discussion of all the essays is not possible. It will be best to concentrate on the introduction by the editor, whose choice of the subjects and contributors is usually influenced by her or his broader perspective on the theme of the collection, and then pick on one or two of the more interesting essays.
This book comprises 14 essays led by an essay length introduction by the editor, Sanjib Baruah; 12 out of the 15 contributors are academics from diverse disciplines. The essays present different perspectives on policies and programmes, and the contradictions and ambivalences inherent in such policies and programmes, of countering insurgency in Assam and its neighbourhood — very broadly Northeast India. Many who live in the region (including the editor of this volume in his earlier work) question this collective nomenclature, arguing that the term ignores the profound differences that mark the component units by imposing a collective identity that does not exist. Indeed, such is even more the case with insurgencies and rebellions like those in Nagaland, Manipur and Assam seeking the same stated objectives — sovereignty and independence.
Assumption
The assumption underlining many of the essays, and certainly Baruah’s essay, is that the official strategies adopted to counter insurgency in the region over the past half a century have only led to an impasse. Despite initiatives like the Look East Policy and the related measures like road and railway building projects that will eventually link the region to Myanmar and further eastward, and public relations exercises like the hugely popular Asian Car Rally, the situation on the ground remains as it was. Instead of the expected spurt in investments or dynamic trans-border transactions, the situation remains static, the impasse unbroken.
The problem is how to break this impasse. The problem itself is presented cogently and forcefully by Baruah as is the case with his other writings.
At the outset, he questions the two “structural factors” that have contributed to the persistent ferment according to both the official reading and “popular” imagination. These are: the “development fix” that relates the unrest to lack of economic development, “everyone’s favourite bogey”, and the weakness and failure of the “state”. While much is made of lack of economic development, Baruah argues that sufficient attention has not been paid to what he sees as the crucial “structural factor”, the failure of the state, though there is no suggestion that the region is now little more than a collection of “failed states”, the other, less openly exposed facet of official perceptions of the region.
Citing a 2006 World Bank report on utilisation of water resources in Northeast India that sees existing institutional arrangements as the “principal obstacle” in the way of utilisation of the region’s vast water resources for economic development, he extends this analysis to the larger failure of institutions of governance in the region.
Tensions
“India’s national security managers” present another problem. Baruah sees a tension between the vocabulary of the security managers central to which are phrases like “cross border terrorism”, “proxy wars” and “ethnic insurgencies” (the derisive capitals are the editor’s) and what he sees as the region’s “multi-layered conflicts”. “This vocabulary also underscores the tensions between the preference of national security mangers for the close monitoring of borders, and the openness of borders envisaged by a transnational economic space.” Citing a contributor, he argues that “such national security-centric discourse is heavily pro-state and insensitive to the vulnerabilities of the common man and dismissive of the frequent transgression of rights of its own citizens by the state.” Even well-meant open ended initiatives like the Look East Policy are hijacked by the military and security establishments.
Herein lies the rub. If one sees the very state as the enemy, fundamentally undemocratic and a passive adjunct to a security regime in its approach to the region, where is the way out, especially since, as the editor also admits, there is little chance of the “sovereignty struggles” ever succeeding? The author’s conclusion about breaking the impasse, the theme of the collection, is deeply pessimistic. “As long as a crudely developmentalist and national security-centric mindset continues to shape policy, the goal of achieving peace in Northeast India is likely to remain elusive.”
But then, the aim of the collection is to raise questions, disturb the official complacency. I found the three essays, under the section, “Nation and its Discontents”, especially rewarding to read, maybe because their treatment of the problem goes beyond and outside the usual insurgency/counterinsurgency discourse, as in the essay by Dolly Kikon that brilliantly locates the linkages, clothing and civilisation, the historical trajectory of the varied representations and imaginings, and the changes that have taken place in the accoutrements of war of the Naked Nagas and of their contemporary descendants, whether as a soldier of the Indian army or as a rebel.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Book Review
