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.
Infrastructure of Injustice: State and Politics in Manipur and Northeast India by Raile Rocky Ziipao, London and New York: Routledge, 2020; pp 202, ₹995 (hardcover).
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.
Roads across Manipur are ephemeral, foregrounding the politics behind their development as well as their spatial and temporal nature. Drawing from fieldwork conducted in Manipur, this article analyses contemporaneous state practices of infrastructure and its sociopolitical processes, and offers evidence to understand their materialities, forms, and societal relations. The nexus between politicians, contractors, bureaucrats, insurgents and elites causes frequent suspension of road projects, setting a new form of contingent development practice in Manipur.
Protests against the mega dam projects in North East India highlight the issues related to land acquisition, compensation, resettlement as well as rehabilitation for displaced and project-affected people.
With increasing concerns about the degradation of forests threatening the existence of wildlife, conservation projects are seen as the need of the hour. However, conservation as a concept is often understood differently by the local community, the scientific community, and the state. A critical examination of the ongoing efforts for tiger conservation in Dibang Valley, Arunachal Pradesh, exposes the fault lines in the narrative of nature conservation as the state imposes its agenda through the establishment of sanctuaries and reserves, without considering the needs of the local Mishmi tribe and excluding their traditional conservation practices.
