Numbers in India’s Periphery: The Political Economy of Government Statistics by Ankush Agrawal and Vikas Kumar, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2020; pp 397, `945.
The article notes that the north-eastern states have taken many initiatives to implement and localise the Sustainable Development Goals. But achieving the targets require a multipronged approach, concerted and coordinated efforts, and focus on sectors where the region has inherent advantages. Unfortunately, the pandemic has cast some doubts on the feasibility of achieving the goals as per the original timelines.
In the Name of the Nation: India and Its Northeast by Sanjib Baruah, New Delhi: Navayana Publishing (by arrangement with Stanford Univ Press), 2021; pp xiii + 278, `599.
In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India by Jelle J P Wouters, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp xxiv + 331, ₹995.
Living with Oil & Coal: Resource Politics & Militarization in Northeast India by Dolly Kikon, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019; pp xiii + 189, price not indicated.
This article is a critical endeavour to situate the Naga homeland movement in the present context vis-à-vis the regional politics of the North East. It attempts to understand and (re)imagine the relevance of Naga homeland politics in the light of its expectations in the neo-liberal era. By revisiting and (re)defining the movement from the establishment of the Naga Club in 1918 to the Naga Peace Accord in 2015, it highlights the policies and procedures that have intensified existing issues and suggests that the nexus of politicians, bureaucrats, contractors and underground leaders operates by exploiting the Naga issue rather than solving it, while sustaining and reproducing systemic corruption.
Natwar Thakkar was one of the last Gandhians whose constructive work has made an invaluable contribution to peace-building, reconciliation and rural development in North East India.
The Naga tribal organisations’ opposition to reservations for women in urban local bodies had drawn condemnation from many quarters. But their hold on modern Naga society remains exceptional. Who are these Naga tribal bodies? And what makes them formidable in the Naga political arena? The social processes that contribute to the predominance of tribal bodies in Naga society, and the unresolved women reservation issue from the perspective of the civil society are examined.
Compared to the bulky literature on caste and democracy, we still know little about the form and functioning of democratic politics amongst tribes. This is a serious lacuna, one which, at the level of sociology, impedes the kind of careful comparison that has long proven fruitful to capture the inner logic and intricacies of social life. If caste is deemed central to any understanding of contemporary Indian politics, what about those states and constituencies in which tribes preponderate numerically?
Tribal villages are usually perceived to be the egalitarian counterparts to villages in India that are ruled by hierarchical caste structures. Taking the case of Ao Naga villages, clan rank and class are found to be important for understanding the changing structures of inequality. Today, these villages are deeply integrated into the larger milieus: politics, administration, education and the market economy. The social mechanisms responsible for inequality are now to a large degree centred outside the village, and living in a village has become almost identical with a lower social status. One result of this process is that instead of clan ranks, the access to outside resources forms the basis of social inequality within the village. Based on secondary sources as well as original fieldwork, an account of how this integration leads to class differentiations at the village level is presented.
