Meghalaya, the resource frontier

Unruly Hills: Nature and Nation in India's Northeast
by Bengt G Karlsson Social Sciences Press and Orient BlackSwan, 2011

It is with a sense of déjà vu that one reviews academic books on the Indian Northeast these days. Publishers, authors, editors and contributors to compendiums are always under pressure to find policy-oriented solutions to problems that embarrass incipient superpowers; oftentimes, this leads to lazy research and even worse suggestions. Thankfully, Unruly Hills does not purport to speak to a policymaking elite, leave alone offer tedious prescriptions for a region that has long been posited as the weak link in India's self-anointed road to regional superpower status. Instead, the book is a refreshing analysis of social change and a highly competent account of the layered underpinnings of contemporary political events in Meghalaya. In Meghalaya, constitutional provisions are supposed to protect the resources of indigenous people, but as the author argues, it is a frontier and 'an unruly place, not yet fully governed or incorporated into the expanding nation-state structures … [(frightening)] but also a place of hope.'

'Northeast India' is an unwieldy category that confounds most people, in an era when the attention span is all too brief. To some international journalists stationed in New Delhi, it could mean a wide swath of land that covers the seven states plus Sikkim, northern West Bengal, even Bihar and parts of Uttar Pradesh. To a specialised group of policymakers in India, the term refers to the eight states (including Sikkim) that are administered by a specialised cadre of administrative services, departments and ministries. For many homeowners in New Delhi, 'Northeast' is both place and person (sometimes synonymous with Nepal), as it denotes any individual with the epicanthic fold of the eye and who is willing to pay high rents for squalid, slum-like housing. For security analysts, 'Northeast India' is a laboratory for testing the limits of democratic institutions, by continuing to maintain military control as a dubious state-of-exception, within a country celebrated for its periodic elections and multi-party democracy.