Troubled Periphery: The Crisis of India's North East(SAGE Studies on India's North East)

This book maps the evolution of India′s North East into a constituent region of the republic and analyses the perpetual crisis in the region since Independence. It highlights how land, language and leadership issues have been the seed of contention in the North East and how factors like ethnicity, ideology and religion have shaped the conflicts. It also throws light on the major insurgencies, internal displacements, protest movements and the regional drug and weapons trade in the region. It examines ′the crisis of development′ and the evolution of the polity before offering a policy framework to combat the crises. The book includes a large body of original data, documentation and field interviews with major players as well as stakeholders. It is an important reference resource for students of politics and international relations, especially for those involved in South Asian studies and conflict studies. It is also an informative read for decision-makers, bureaucrats dealing with the North East and those involved in counter-insurgency operations in the area.

Table of Contents:
Preface India′s Northeast: Frontier to Region Ethnicity, Ideology and Religion Land, Language and Leadership Insurgency, Ethnic Cleansing and Forced Migration The Foreign Hand Guns, Drugs and Contraband Elections, Pressure Groups and Civil Society The Crisis of Development The Road Ahead Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Subir Bhaumik is the East India Correspondent of the BBC World Service for the last 15 years. He has reported on North East India and the countries around it for three decades since his previous assignments with Press Trust of India, Ananda Bazar Patrika and Reuters News Agency. As a journalist he has broken some of the biggest stories in North East India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and the Himalayan countries of Nepal and Bhutan. He was Queen Elizabeth House Fellow in Oxford University (1989–90), during which he completed his first book Insurgent Crossfire (published by Lancers in 1996). He has been a Fellow at Frankfurt University and done projects with prestigious institutions like the East-West Center, Washington. He has presented nearly 40 papers in seminars at home and abroad and written more than 25 articles for volumes edited by leading scholars (some published by SAGE India) like Partha Chatterjee, Ranabir Sammadar, Robert Wirshing, Sanjib Baruah, Samir Das and Jaideep Saikia. He is also a popular TV anchor, a corporate risk analyst and a media trainer. He is the Working President of the Guwahati-based North East Policy Alternatives and a Founder-member of the independent think tank, the Calcutta Research Group.

Review :
A book that tells you the truth about the North-East of India—from first-hand experience—written as it is by a journalist who has spent entire career covering the region for various national and international media…. Drawing from an entire gamut of sources mostly primary, unpublished documents and interviews with insurgents, security personnel and activists, Troubled Periphery tells the story as it is. Because it does not confined to academic jargon and theoretical paradigms alone, but amalgamates deep academic scholarship of the region with a first-person immediacy, it will no doubt find a larger audience among people willing to know and learn about the North-East…. The book is also a treasure trove of original documentation, which goes a long way in demystifying the rebel strategies and the politics of counter-insurgency operations. With his new book, Troubled Periphery, Bhaumik explores the troubled terrains of the northeast in a way very few authors have. The book is a rather well-argued attempt at explaining the crisis faced by the region and India’s policy on it… The narrative is peppered with interviews of actors, rebel leaders, military and administrative officials, political leaders and even NGO activists. This informative work by well known Indian journalist and researcher, Subir Bhaumik, gives us a detailed ‘close-up’ of the identity politics of India’s North-East and probes in-depth the plethora of political and socio-economic issues riddling the region. This book maps the reality of the region but goes beyond mere history to analyse why the region has been in perpetual crisis since Independence. It highlights how land, language and leadership issues have been talking points in the northeast and how factors like ethnicity, ideology and religion have shaped conflicts.… Troubled Periphery has briskly captured top bestseller slots in the non-fiction category in several bookstores across the country. A welcome attempt … [The book] provides us access to first-hand insights, interviews with key players, study of records and explanation of the background to the festering wounds there. A vital contribution to India’s nation-building effort, it unravels the tangled web of forces, events and ideas that are shaping the response of the north-east to its history…. Bhaumik analysis is painstaking and lucid. A holistic approach built on well-constructed arguments to explain the ethnic crises of India’s North East...the book brings out many important insights from the state to politics, ethnicity to development and socio-political movements to state intervention in the region.