Ranabir Samaddar & Snehashish Mitra Following up on India’s Look East policy introduced in the early 1990s by the Indian government, the new Indian government after being elected in the general elections of 2014 announced Act East policy almost simultaneously with the US declaration of its policy of pivot of Asia. The Look East policy evolved into a tool for greater economic engagement with its eastern neighbours, and forging strategic partnerships and security cooperation with countries of Southeast Asia and Far East, such as Vietnam and Japan. In short the Look East and Act East policies have had military, political, and economic components. Given its location Northeast India therefore assumes the role of bridging the space between mainland India and other Southeast Asian nations. In recent years there has been an emphasis on developing the infrastructure of the region through widening roads, expanding air connectivity, extending railway networks, opening new trade routes, and facilitating border trade and transit points. Such activities have serious implications on the use and extraction of resources of the region, along with occasioning changes in the composition of the labour market and mobility. Improved bilateral ties and connectivity are definitely the high octaves of melody for the policy practitioners sitting in New Delhi, but unless the terms of the policies are reconciled by the communities in Northeast India, the agendas stare at a cul-de-sac; that has been the exact case with Look East policy which has till now been tentative rather than rooted in long term strategy. While better access to market is linearly equated to peace, prosperity and development, sections of the society are apprehensive over further connectivity and labour mobility, which has been expressed by agitations against railway expansions in Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. As the resources of the region are being increasingly chased by capital, the resistances to the same are also scripted accordingly. Changpang in Nagaland has shown the futility of oil extraction by ONGC, while Dominsiat in Meghalaya has resisted uranium extraction in order to avoid the unfortunate fate of Jadugoda in Jharkhand wherein the latter has been subjected to ecological and health hazard in the post-uranium mining period. The recent allocation of oil fields in Assam brings up the important question of ownership which has the element of contested sovereignty within itself. However there are also voices which are in support of the same, comprising of the government officials, elected representatives, tribal elites and at times sections of the insurgent groups. This dichotomy is unsurprising in the post-neoliberal economy where resources are increasingly looked at as commodity and thereby widening the class differences within the communities. The participation of the northeastern state governments or institutions in the Look East Policy is nearly absent. Surprisingly there is barely any mention of the tourism sector which has a huge potential in picturesque Northeast India. The psychological disconnect of the policy makers with the region also comes up when the village of Mawlynglong in Meghalaya, Asia’s cleanest village is conspicuously absent from the much promoted ‘Swach Bharat Abhijaan’. The biggest impediment for any policy to bear fruit in the region is the non reconciliation of issues involving identities and citizenships. Communities like the Bengali Muslims, Hindu Bengali ‘Doubtful’ voters, Chakmas, Adivasis, Brus etc have been facing antagonistic reactions from the local hierarchical power systems with the prime argument ‘who came first’ and varied notions of indigenousness. The terms of existence for these communities collectively points towards the issues of rights and justice, which has been repeatedly abused in Northeast India, not only by the Indian state but also by one ethnic group against another. Can it be claimed that if these questions are not addressed, infusion of more capital will only enhance the inequality in the region? Inequality not only in wealth, but also in the opportunities that one gets to avail. While sex markets involving local women have emerged in recent times near infrastructural sites , the inability to participate in ‘developmental’ activities , has created groups of male youths affiliated to political organizations, student bodies and undergrounds, who indulge in active rent collection from different stages of the projects, especially from the tertiary sector. This inability to participate also adds to the factors of outmigration from the region The Delhi centric peripheral approach towards Northeast India has so far failed to ensure a sustainable regime in the region for the last 7 decades, pinning hopes on Look East policy only seems to elongate that failure. Rather than bridging the gaps between the ‘mainland’ and the Northeast in the post-colonial period, it’s more likely that ‘Look East’ would enhance the schisms in the neo-liberal period. Ranabir Samaddar is a Distinguished Chair in Migration and Forced Migration Studies, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG). Snehashish Mitra is a Researcher and Associate of the Distinguished Chair, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG).
