2020: How was it for North-East?

Nagaland (Representative image)

The pace of life is sluggish in India’s North-East and so also the changes that have taken place in the region over the past several decades.  However, two developments have made 2020 somewhat different for the region compared to previous years and are bound to have long-term implications.
The Sino-Indian rivalry at Galwan valley in the north seems to have had an effect on McMahon Line in the eastern sector. This was definitely expected.  There are reports of hectic Chinese activity across the border – reports of new villages which could also be the consequence of the scheme to settle nomadic tribes, growth of infrastructure with news plans for additional railway lines and rapid progress on the highway from Kunming in Yunnan all the way to Lhasa.

Beijing has also announced plans to construct a gigantic hydropower project on the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet.    The possibility of more such schemes coming up in the region cannot be ruled out given the enormous reservoir of freshwater in Tibet.  There are indications that the Indian government will expedite all the plans for dams in the Brahmaputra basin. Needless to say, the region is extremely fragile geologically and a biodiversity hotspot. Therefore, the policies that could permanently transform the region might have been sown on both sides of the border.

2020 will also go down in history as the year of COVID-19 – the miseries it unleashed, the race for the vaccine and the host of unanswered questions on the origin of the lethal virus.  The North-East has fared better than the rest of the country in terms of the casualties and the response of the governments.

Assam was the worst hit among all the states in the region owing to its central location and size of the population. But the government was able to garner the necessary resources for the battle against the disease which appear to be on a declining trend.

Then, amid these calamities were some false hopes engendered by the Centre’s unnecessary and premature euphoria over the Naga Accord and the return of the Bru refugees from Tripura to their original habitat in Mizoram.  Perhaps, the Centre never expected the NSCN(IM) leadership to be so stubborn with its demands of a separate flag and constitution for Nagaland.  Threats, rhetoric and some operations against the outfit not only failed to break the impasse but they fuelled a controversy over the role played by the governor who was the former interlocutor in the peace process.  In the process, deadlines have ceased to carry any meanings in the exercise that was initiated twenty-three years ago.

In the same vein, the jubilation over the agreement last January between the Centre, state government and Bru leaders to allow 32000 members of the community to settle in Tripura gave way to despair after violent protests erupted almost ten months later. The local Bengali and Mizo communities in Tripura alleged that rehabilitation to the Brus would result in demographic imbalance and pressure on the local resources which is similar to the argument of local communities across the region against migrants. A question mark hangs over the fate of the Bru refugees who still continue to remain in Tripura.

Similar to the previous years, the government is still groping in the dark over the issues that have plagued the region for a long time. Assam was devastated by flood again and the government’s response was a predictable replay of actions noticed earlier without any long term policies.  There were more photographs in the media this time around of river bank erosion at several places in the state. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) continues to spawn controversies although the government has not yet issued a notification to accept the document.

As the year drew to a close, local organisations issued threats of renewing the agitation against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act if the government were to implement the law in Assam which came close on the heels of statements by a senior BJP leader. Therefore, the New Year could begin with a fresh bout of unrest in Assam against the law if not in the other states in the region.  The silver lining was the continuation of the plummeting trend of insurgency related incidents in the region.   A major operation launched in Myanmar against the separatist groups in January has pushed them to a more vulnerable position.