Durable Disorder:
Understanding the Politics of
Northeast India
by Sanjib Baruah
Oxford University Press, New
Delhi; 2005
Pp 265; INR 495;
ISBN 019 566981 9
In this collection of essays written over the last ten years, Sanjib Baruah offers one of the few closely argued critiques of what is popularly known as 'India's Northeast policy'. His first book, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (1999) had raised expectations from Baruah, and he does not disappoint here. Durable Disorder marks a distinct shift in the scholar's research pursuits. In his first book, Baruah calls for an effort towards "recreating conditions of civil politics", something that in turn would make reforms necessary in the state's institutional arrangements. Here, he addresses governmental policy and pays particular attention to New Delhi's 'look east' policy. He does this, though, without discounting the need to reorganise and reform the institutions of the state.
The task of weaving these essays that were written at different points in time into the framework of a coherently argued book would not have been easy. The long introduction provides the key to understanding the central argument that runs through the chapters. India's Northeast policy, through the recognition of exclusive ethnic homelands, creates "a regime of differentiated citizenship". According to Baruah, this policy provided the rationale for the creation of economically unviable state units, starting with Nagaland in 1963. The policy has never worked and is antithetical to the political economy of the region. The states of the Indian Northeast thrive largely on central grants-in-aid and fall under the 'Special Category' status which requires them to repay only 10 percent of the assistance received.
Baruah argues that the homelands regime marks a continuation of the early colonial policy of protecting the region's pre-capitalist social formations from the onslaught of global capitalism. Although the objective of this colonial policy was to keep the 'primitives' of the hills separate from the 'civilised' of the plains, it was also instrumental in obscuring the implicit transfer of land from the indigenous people to the immigrants. The book provides many examples of this, such as how the establishment of tea gardens encroached on tribal habitats and became the basis for many present-day disputes between the northeastern states. The transition from shifting cultivation to settled agriculture during colonial times and thereafter was accompanied by the commodification of land, something that not only created opportunities for the immigrants but gradually strengthened their hold on the political economy of the region.