Routledge Readings on Security and Governance in Northeastern India: Resource Conflicts, Militarisation and Development Challenges presents some of the finest essays on a region that stretches across the Northeastern Himalaya, eight Indian States and many tribal and non-tribal peoples.
With a lucid Introduction, this and its companion volume, Routledge Readings on Colonial to Contemporary Northeastern India offer a compelling look into the society, polity, contemporary security and developmental issues in northeast India. It covers several critical themes and unravels complexities fraught by the unique biogeography and socio-political history of the region. The fifteen chapters in this multidisciplinary volume, divided into three sections, examine land laws, conflict and resource management and local governance. It discusses the political interplay of ethnicities and resource appropriation in a modernizing, globalizing economy as well as instances of conflicts and violence in highly militarized spaces in the region. It offers an engaged and insightful look into the rural and urban human development contexts in the region from authors who have contributed significantly to the academic and/or policy discourse on the subject.
This book will serve as essential reading for students, scholars, policymakers, practitioners of South Asian studies, Northeast India studies, history, development studies, labour studies, sociology, public administration, environmental studies, law and human rights, regional literature, cultural studies, geography, and economics.
Table of Contents:
Introduction PART I. Resource Conflicts and Management 1. Land Laws, Development and Globalisation in Northeast India 2. Forest Conservation and Community Land Rights in Manipur 3. Hydro-dollar dreams: Emergent Local Politics of Large Dams and Small Communities 4. Local Institutions, Urban Water Governance and Future Challenges: A Case Study of Shillong PART II. Militarisation, Security and Governance 5. History of Militarisation of the Northeast: Search for a Radical Civil Response 6. Governance and Human Security Issues in the Northeast 7. Security and Development: Understanding the Relationship 8. Violence, Agrarian Change and the Politics of Autonomy in Assam 9. Frontier Towns in the Spatial Dynamics of Trade, Capital and Conflict PART III. Development Challenges 10. Building Northeastern Futures, Looking East 11. Look East Policy and the Continental Route 12. India-Myanmar Borderlands: Pressing Concerns in Public Health Hazards 13. Educational disparities in Northeast India 14. School and Society: Home, Community and the State 15. Of people and their stories: Writing in English from India's Northeast
About the Author :
Sumi Krishna is an independent scholar and widely published author on gender, environment, development and livelihoods, is former President of the Indian Association for Women’s Studies and is Series Editor of the Routledge ‘Transition in Northeastern India’ series.
Review :
‘This eclectic collection draws our attention away from merely viewing the north eastern region as being in perpetual conflict in need of military solution … [to] struggles to control resources such as land, and negotiating with the state on what constitutes ‘development’ and what this ‘development’ means for the different communities of the region. Critical interrogation of the Indian state’s changing policies for this region … reveal the complex intermeshing of internal and external causative factors that routine ‘development’ measures such as more investment in physical infrastructure and/or in human development alone will not be able to handle. The volume is a must read for scholars eager to unravel and comprehend the ‘black box’ character of the north eastern region’.
Padmini Swaminathan, former Director, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India
‘Sumi Krishna … has carefully selected some of the most important articles … [which] give a good understanding of some of the key issues concerning the politics and socio-cultural complexities of this diverse region known as Northeastern India. Putting these together is important because there are students, researchers, journalists and policy makers who need insightful, well researched materials of this kind.’
Apurba K. Baruah, President, Assam Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research, Guwahati; retired Professor of Political Science and former Dean, School of Social Sciences, North-Eastern Hill University, India.
‘The Readings are a rich addition to the scholarly studies in the fields of environment, society, economy, border and security issues and community relations in northeastern India. The sub- sections and selection of research articles seem to be meticulously done and reflect insightful exercise of the editor. The Readings would be an important documentation, useful to the general reader as well.’
Sutapa Sengupta, former Head, Department of Geography, St Mary's College, Shillong, and resource person, National Council for Educational Research and Training, India
