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‘Northeast not homogenous but diverse grouping of communities’

‘Northeast not homogenous but diverse grouping of communities’

InsiderBy Vishnu Makhijani,

New Delhi : Some years ago, I was startled at a seminar titled “Seeking our collective peace: The northeast India diaspora looks into solutions for peace and development in the region”. Startled because to me, “diaspora” denoted a group of people voluntarily living outside their homeland.

Then I realised it could be a case of misconstrued semantics because, in the words of Professor Anuradha Chenoy, a former dean at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, “This meeting was just a start of a long journey, but the most important lesson learned today is that first the Northeast has to be linked together –politically, economically and culturally — before it can positively influence the peace process in the region.”

Cut to the present day agitation against the now-lapsed Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in seven of the eight northeastern states (Sikkim being the exception) and it would seem that the region is pretty much linked together even though there are differences, for instance, on the demand for a Greater Nagaland or the internal squabbles in Manipur, for instance.

Where then, does the faultline lie? It lies within.

“What is called the Northeast is not a homogenous entity. It is rather a diverse grouping of communities — this is mentioned time and again, and is correct, but how it works out on the ground has to be studied as well,” says author-journalist Ankush Saikia in the chapter titled “Man in the Middle” in “Insider Outsider – Belonging and Unbelonging in North-East India” (Amaryllis/pp 244/Rs 399), a compendium of works by 16 writers on various facets of existence within the region.

The creator of the Detective Arjun Arora series of books adopts a rather quaint manner of elaborating on this in the post 1972 scenario when Meghalaya was carved out of Assam and Shillong was no longer the parent state’s capital.

“While in Assam, I was an insider and while in Shillong, I was an outsider, but even there overlaps occurred, as I might be an outsider in certain contexts in Assam, and an insider in certain contexts in Shillong….I think the end result of this was that, again maybe unconsciously, I found it very difficult to chose sides,” Saikia writes.

And therein lies the rub — a rub that those of my ilk, born in the 1950s realise quite acutely of being neither here nor there.

It raises a fundamental question, as co-editor Preeti Gill, an independent literary agent, puts it in the introduction to the volume.

“Who is an Indian really? Why are we made to wear our nationality, our identity, on our sleeve? Why are we required to constantly prove ourselves as Indian nationalists, as patriotic citizens? Can we not just be human, people who live together as neighbours , very different, very distinct, but still inhabiting the same space in a peaceable, gracious way,” Gill asks.

“It is a reality that in this country, and especially in the hill states of the Northeast, there is no space to be just Indian. One remembers the lines by the Sufi poet Bulleh Shah, who wrote: ‘O Bulle, let’s go to that place/ Where people have not too much intelligence/For there, nobody will ask of our roots and look down upon us/And nor do we desire that they look up to us.’

“The challenge for people like us is to find that space. If at all it still exists,” Bakshi concludes.

(Vishnu Makhijani can be reached at vishnu.makhijani@ians.in)

—IANS

Railways struggle to extend lines in mountainous Northeast

Railways struggle to extend lines in mountainous Northeast

Indian RailwaysBy Sujit Chakraborty,

Agartala : Indian Railways, besides incurring additional costs, has had to confront unique challenges in laying tracks in the mountainous northeastern region due to its topography, soil and natural challenges, a top official has said.

According to Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS-NE Circle) Shailesh Kumar Pathak, the landscape, soil conditions and other natural challenges forced the railways to spend much more money and to confront diverse challenges in the northeastern region, comprising eight hilly states.

“Compared to the northeastern region, the spending and the challenges are much less in the mainland states,” Pathak told IANS after examining newly-laid railway tracks in Tripura.

The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR), one among the 17 railway zones in India, is responsible for extending the railway lines and maintaining train services in seven districts of West Bengal and five districts in north Bihar, besides the eight northeastern states, including Sikkim.

Pathak, a senior engineer of the Civil Aviation Ministry, said: “The NFR gets to work at optimum pace for only four to five months a year as the region records intense rain from March to end-October with the actual monsoon running from June to September. In the other states of India, the good working season is for at least eight months.”

“The northeastern states and large parts of the Himalayan region are siltation- and landslide-prone areas. The Railways has to take extra precautions to deal with the natural adversities. A lesser working period makes the job tougher for railway engineers and others,” he added.

According to the official, the per-kilometre expenditure of laying single-line tracks in the northeastern region is Rs 9 to 12 crore while it is Rs 5 to 6 crore in the plains. Laying a double-line track in the northeast costs Rs 20 to 25 crores per kilometre against Rs 10 to 15 crore in the plains.

“Land acquisition, forest clearances, syndicate trouble and finding skilled workers are the other impediments in the northeastern and eastern region,” Pathak said.

He said that the NFR has been trying hard to extend the railway lines in three remaining capital cities of northeast India, excluding Meghalaya’s Shillong and Sikkim’s Gangtok, by 2020.

Assam’s main city of Guwahati, Tripura’s capital Agartala and Arunachal’s captal Itanagar already linked with the railway network.

“Due to land-related problems, the expansion of rail network in Meghalaya and Sikkim has turned into a non-starter. Work is on to extend the railway network in Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland,” the official explained.

The NFR is also laying new railway tracks at three places along India-Bangladesh border in Tripura and that would facilitate the carriage of passengers and goods from the northeastern states on the Bangladeshi railway network.

With southern Tripura’s Sabroom just 75 km from the Chittagong seaport in southern Bangladesh, the projects, together worth Rs 1,150 crore, are to be completed by March 2019.

The Indian and Bangladeshi railways are laying 15 km of tracks at a cost of Rs 963 crore between Agartala and Akhaura in Bangladesh to link the networks of the two neighbours.

The NFR has already laid a 75-km rail line up to southern Tripura’s Belonia aiming to link the Bangladeshi network on the other side of the border in Feni district.

Work is also on to lay a 39-km line from Sabroom to the border.

The NFR’s Chief Administrative Officer, A.K. Yadav, said that due to the large number of rivulets and small rivers, many small, medium and big bridges, besides many tunnels, have to be built in the northeastern region.

“India’s longest 11.55 km rail tunnel is now under construction as part of the 111-km Jiribam-Tupul-Imphal line that ends in the Manipur capital. This is longer than the the 11.2 km Pir Panjal tunnel on the Banihal-Qazigund line in Jammu and Kashmir,” Yadav told IANS.

(Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in)

—IANS

Why Northeast matters for India-Japan collaboration in Indo-Pacific

Why Northeast matters for India-Japan collaboration in Indo-Pacific

Narendra Modi and Shinzo AbeBy Aroonim Bhuyan,

New Delhi : With India’s northeastern region being a pivot area of New Delhi’s Act East Policy, its importance again came into focus during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s annual bilateral summit with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on October on 28-29.

With Modi describing Japan as the cornerstone of India’s Act East Policy and the two countries agreeing to work together in more concrete terms for the development of the Indo-Pacific region, the Northeast has emerged as a key link in this chain.

The Indo-Pacific region stretches from the east coast of Japan to the east coast of Africa and both India and Japan agree that the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) regional bloc has to play a central role for the peace and prosperity of the region.

According to an India-Japan Vision Statement issued following the Tokyo summit, both Modi and Abe “reiterated their unwavering commitment to working together towards a free and open Indo-Pacific.

“The two leaders also affirmed that Asean unity and centrality are at the heart of the Indo-Pacific concept, which is inclusive and open to all,” it stated.

Under the Act East Policy, the Northeast, which shares historical and traditional bonds with the Asean region, is seen as the springboard for India’s increasing engagements with Southeast Asia and for this New Delhi has roped in Tokyo in a big way.

Japan’s role in development work in the Northeast is also expected to boost connectivity between the member-states of the Bimstec sub-regional grouping.

The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bimstec), which came into existence in 1997, comprises seven countries lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Membership in the bloc allows India to engage more with the extended neighbourhood in Southeast Asia under New Delhi’s Neighbourhood First Policy via northeastern India.

This will also help keep in check China’s growing influence in the region through Chinese President Xi Jinping’s pet Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project.

India has not joined the BRI on the grounds that it has put participating nations in debt traps and also does not respect the territorial integrity of other countries.

Last year, India and Japan established the Act East Forum to serve as a driving force for cooperation between the two countries in the Northeast and the second meeting of the Forum was held on October 8 in which key infrastructure projects, including road development, in the region were identified.

“The two Prime Ministers welcomed the progress made for the development of India’s northeastern region through the India-Japan Act East Forum by identifying and implementing projects for enhancing connectivity, sustainable forest and ecological management, disaster risk reduction and people-to-people exchanges,” the Vision Statement said.

At an interaction organised by the New Delhi-based think tank Brookings India ahead of Modi’s visit to Japan, Japanese Ambassador Kenji Hiramatsu referred to a statement by Modi that Japan is the only country with which India will partner on the connectivity agenda.

Hiramatsu said that India and Japan can not only contribute to some infrastructure project in the Pacific, his country is also keen to support development work in the northeastern part of India.

He said that the Act East Forum was set up to discuss how Japan and India can collaborate together in many areas, including infrastructure, people-to-people exchange and disaster management in the Northeast.

He also mentioned some of the key infrastructure projects in the region identified during the second meeting of the Act East Forum.

These include National Highway 40 between and Shillong and Dawki, National Highway 51 between Tura and Dalu — both in Meghalaya — and National Highway 54 between Aizawl and Tuipang in Mizoram.

The possibility of a corridor linking Gelephu, the border area between Assam and Bhutan, and Dalu, the border town between Bangladesh and Meghalaya, in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is also being explored.

This will include the Dhubri-Phulbari bridge project, which will be the longest river bridge in India when completed, as the third phase of the Northeast Road Network Connectivity Improvement Project.

Development of main district roads (MDRs) and other district roads (ODRs), which will have positive socio-economic effect, is also being considered.

“We are very happy to have connectivity projects together in the Northeast to eventually connect with neighbouring countries like Myanmar or Bangladesh,” Hiramatsu said at the interaction.

Disaster management is another area of cooperation India and Japan are discussing and Hiramatsu said that his country has a lot of experience to share with the Northeast, a region that is prone to floods and earthquakes.

The October 8 Act East Forum meeting decided to expedite Japan’s contribution to resilient infrastructures in the Northeast and through capacity development project on highways in the mountainous regions.

Both sides are also discussing knowledge sharing on the issue through a Japan-India workshop on disaster risk reduction.

Following the October 29 summit in Tokyo, India and Japan also exchanged notes on seven yen loan agreements for key infrastructure projects in India, including two in the Northeast — renovation and modernisation of the Umiam-Umtru Stage-III hydroelectric power station in Meghalaya, and sustainable catchment forest management in Tripura.

Biodiversity conservation and forest management projects in Nagaland and Sikkim are also under consideration.

People-to-people ties also form a key aspect in Japan’s engagement with northeastern India and for this it has been decided to promote Japanese language education in the Northeast.

Gauhati University and Cotton University in Assam, English and Foreign Languages University in Meghalaya, and the National Institute of Technology in Nagaland have expressed interest in this.

(Aroonim Bhuyan can be contacted at aroonim.b@ians.in)

—IANS

Meghalaya CM thanks Modi for replicating state’s health insurance scheme

Meghalaya CM thanks Modi for replicating state’s health insurance scheme

Mukul Sangma and Narendra ModiShillong : Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma on Thursday thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for replicating the Megha Health Insurance Scheme, one of the flagship programme launched by the state’s Congress government, on the national level.

In his Budget 2018-19 speech on Thursday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced a flagship National Health Protection Scheme under which Rs 5 lakh cover will be provided per year to 10 crore poor and vulnerable families in the country.

“The Central government in fact invited the State government to present this exemplary health initiative to other states. I must thank him (Prime Minister) for replicating the scheme,” Sangma told IANS over phone.

Noting that Megha Health Insurance Scheme is one of the transformations in the state’s health sector, he said: “There is no programme as inclusive as ours. Our scheme did not confined only to BPL (Below Poverty Line) families, but we extended it to everybody….”

“Not just this health scheme, we have one of the best Intensive Care Units in government Ganesh Das hospital and Tura hospital. We have made it slow but steady progress in health care sector. And the most important is that we have been able to take care of the expenditure for the medical treatment,” he added.

On Modi’s allegation about the state’s “poor” health sector, Sangma said that “it was unfortunate for the Prime Minister… obviously because he did not do his homework properly”.

The Chief Minister also exuded confidence that his party will retain power in Meghalaya, while saying the results of the Rajasthan bypolls where the party wrested two parliamentary and one assembly seat from the ruling BJP an indication “people’s actual anger and frustration” against the BJP and a sign that Congress will return to power in the 2019 general elections.

—IANS

For BJP, winning elections key to Northeast peace and development

For BJP, winning elections key to Northeast peace and development

BJP, women, Northeast womenBy Sreeradha Datta,

India’s Northeast has drawn attention for security-related concerns for most of the past seven decades and remained peripheral to the rest of India’s development pattern.

The reasons were many, stemming from generic problems within the region, and also because of the security prism through which mainland India viewed the eight northeastern states — Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura — which share long borders with Bangladesh, Myanmar, China and Bhutan.

The challenge of the geography, perpetuated by the stereotyped politico-strategic narrative, allowed the insular status of the region to continue. Isolated and inaccessible, with limited transport and communication facilities, the per capita index and overall development fell below the national average. Despite that, the northeastern states — known generically as the Northeast — have recorded better human development index indicators in matters of electricity and toilet coverage, literacy, sanitation and gender rights than several mainland states.

It was in the early 1990s that the “Look East” policy of the Indian government introduced for the first time the perspective of development and growth for the Northeast.

Unfortunately, while the erstwhile “Look East” policy opened up significant bilateral cooperation with Southeast Asia and the ASEAN regional group, the Northeast did not feature much in this initiative beyond the rhetoric. It was only with the coining of the “Act East” policy by Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government that the perspective about this region has undergone some change. The government has positioned the Northeast as the gateway to Southeast Asia and beyond and, through multi-pronged efforts of a sustained engagement, developing physical connectivity and encouraging greater investment flows, has given rise to a distinct upbeat view about the region.

There are several reasons for this: First, the security establishment in India had long dominated the policy perspective for this region and there was no political will to change the course.

Several developments in the neighbourhood finally led to the recognition of the hollowness of the policy of keeping the region insulated — and infrastructurally deficient — to safeguard it and the rest of the country from deeper incursions by an aggressive China. There is now appreciation of the fact that while the India-China border dispute is not going to be resolved soon, physical connectivity and upgradation of defence infrastructure in the border regions is a vital component for India’s preparedness against any aggression.

India, continuing to struggle with the spectre of the threat emanating from China, belatedly understood the criticality of improving its border zones and commissioned a large number of highways and other infrastructure development plans in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur. Construction of the four-lane highway between Dimapur and Kohima — travelling on it earlier constituted a driving nightmare — is a case in point.

The Modi government is keen to implement its political intent in the northeast. Having formed governments in Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hopes to consolidate its hold over the other five states. Winning coming assembly elections in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura, scheduled around April 2018, is considered critical in implementing some of its national and foreign policy promises.

Ensuring the Nagaland peace talks and moving towards a comprehensive agreement seem critical to the BJP’s plan for the region. It seems an opportune moment to co-opt Naga factions that remain outside the peace talks. With the general election in India scheduled for 2019, the conclusion of the decades-long peace talks with the Naga insurgents groups is bound to yield rich dividends for the government and the region itself.

(The author is a strategic analyst with expertise on India’s eastern neighbours and Northeast. The views expressed are personal. The article is in special arrangement with South Asia Monitor)

—IANS