6 June 2014

WILL INDIA’S NORTHEASTERN CONFLICTS FINALLY MOVE TOWARDS SETTLEMENT? – ANALYSIS

By Subir Bhaumik

Before the 2014 polling, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had predicted “unusually good results” for his party in the northeast. Usually considered a Congress bastion, with some challenge from regional parties, the northeast has been a region where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had failed to make much of a dent despite their full-throated support to the campaign against illegal immigration that strikes a sympathetic chord with the indigenous populace in the region. But Modi was right in saying it would be different this time.

The BJP won seven of the 14 parliament seats in Assam and one of the two seats in neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh. With their allies winning a seat each in Nagaland and Meghalaya, the tables have been turned well and true. The Congress could hold out only in Manipur and Mizoram and the Communists in Tripura, especially because of strong local leaders.

Modi has already emphasized the importance of India’s ‘Look East’ policy to develop close relations with China and Southeast Asian countries, which he sees as crucial for the country’s economic turnaround. He has also prioritized development of border infrastructure, both for defence and trade-transport connectivity with the immediate neighbourhood.

No wonder, he has put a former army chief, General V.K. Singh, in charge of the ministry for northeast, called Development of North Eastern Region (DONER). The idea is to give a huge push to the development of transport connectivity and infrastructure for trade and defence (both are equally important). Singh’s knowledge of the region as a former Eastern Army commander and of defence issues makes him the right man who can turn the ‘Look East’ into ‘Push East’ for India.

India’s eastward thrust is qualitatively different from Germany’s pre-War Drang Nach Osten (Push East), with emphasis on trade and economy rather than on military conquest for population transfers. But Modi is not wrong to reckon the need for military zeal to take this forward.

Closer economic integration with China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) would mean the rise of a huge economic block accounting for almost half of the world’s population – something many see as the future hotspot of global economy. But for India, this would also require resolution of the festering border dispute with China and playing an important role in fostering peace between China and ASEAN nations with all the tensions rising in the South China Sea. Military conflicts can derail this process of economic integration.

For close to two decades, India has tried to place its own long troubled northeast at the heart of its ‘Look East’ policy, assuming that would end the region’s isolation and help it develop through trade and investment from the neighbourhood. The tortoise pace of the initiative cannot make someone like Modi happy.

The new prime minister has done well to keep out a ‘local minister’ for DONER, because ministers hailing from a northeastern state may just resort to some tokenism to keep their local constituents happy and also stand accused by other states in the region for being partial their own states. V.K. Singh would surely go about executing Modi’s ‘Look East’ vision and India’s strategic interests in northeast – not limit himself to stunts to please local power-brokers.

But Look East through northeast can only be meaningful if Delhi can resolve – or at least firmly contain – the myriad conflicts that have bedeviled the region for 60 years. How can one foresee a successful Kolkata-Kunming highway through the northeast – let alone a Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar (BCIM) economic corridor that Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has proposed along the highway – if areas along it are perpetually riddled with local conflicts.

Modi has two interesting former bureaucrats who joined the BJP just a year ago and who were closely connected with handling negotiations with the leaders of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) and the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). R.K. Singh, as former home secretary, and R.S. Pandey, United Progressive Alliance’s former interlocutor for the Naga talks, are both in the BJP.

The Delhi grapevine has it that Modi has tasked Singh, now a BJP MP from Bihar, and Pandey to pick up the threads of the negotiations with NSCN and ULFA’s pro-talk faction and work for a decisive and immediate breakthrough. No wonder, Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, a BJP ally and a strong advocate of a Naga political settlement, has moved to Delhi, having won Nagaland’s Lok Sabha seat, leaving his confidante to take charge as chief minister.

The buzz is that Pandey would try hard to get his supra-Naga state formula (which allows for some cultural integration of Naga areas of other northeastern states with Nagaland) to come to a settlement with the NSCN. One can expect some hectic final rounds of negotiations, but if Modi is able to find a solution to end India’s oldest ethnic rebellion involving the Naga tribes, he would have surely made a great start.

Getting the pro-talk ULFA to accept a settlement that promises to prevent illegal migration from Bangladesh and preserve the unity and interests of the indigenous populace would also be a feather in his cap.

Congress-run state governments in Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh are expected to fiercely resist any kind of integration (cultural or otherwise) of their own Naga areas with Nagaland, but Modi can always say this was an UPA initiative and he has only carried it forward. And he can trust his party units in Assam and Arunachal, if not in Manipur, to sell this idea, especially after their strong 2014 poll performance.

Without a political resolution to these conflicts, India’s Look East through northeast can never take off.

(Subir Bhaumik, a veteran journalist, is author of “Troubled Periphery: Crisis of India’s Northeast. He can be contacted at southasiamonitor1@gmail.com)

This article appeared at South Asia Monitor.

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