Pointers towards Restructuring, Reform, Reconciliation and Resurgence

Sub-regional cooperation offers a good starting point. When SAARC was stymied by the Indo-Pakistan deadlock, the smaller partners suggested sub-regional cooperation. Thus was born the idea of the South Asian Development Quadrangle. This is essentially based on the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna natural resource region, embracing Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Eastern and North-Eastern India. This concept was long frowned upon by the Government of India but has now fortunately won its approval. The South Asian Development Quadrangle or SADQ may be a sub-region of SAARC but in terms of population is larger than the European Union, ASEAN or NAFTA. This is no disqualification. Nevertheless, it is as well to recognise that SADQ, a macro sub-region, comprises many mini and micro agro-climatic and socio-cultural regions with problems and opportunities of their own.

It would be useful to plan for such mini/micro sub-regions as well, some of them even extending beyond the confines of SADQ into Myanmar and Tibet in due course. A few such mini-regions spring to mind. A Meghalaya-Mymensigh-Sylhet sub-region suggests itself. Another grouping, the Meghna-Feni-Karnafuli (MFK) natural resource region, might comprise Mizoram, Tripura, Manipur and Cachar in India and the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the Chittagong, Noakhali, Comilla and Sylhet districts of Bangladesh, to which parts of the China Hill and Rakhine districts of Myanmar could be added later. A third obvious sub-region could be a Himalayan cluster including Sikkim, the DGCA and parts of Arunachal, Bhutan, Tibet and eastern Nepal.

The Meghna-Feni-Karnafuli (MFK) sub-region has many hill-plain-ocean and plantation-market-export complementarities that await exploitation, with Chittagong as an entrepot, as before Partition. This sub-region has strong ethno-cultural links and, if brought together, could offer attractive economies of scale that would translate its very substantial hydro/hydrocarbon energy potential and plantation and eco-tourism promise into major market opportunities. The North-East needs an outlet to the sea at Chittagong and/or Akyab/Sitwe in Myanmar. Likewise, if Bangladesh aspires to build a great deepwater port at Chittagong-a sore need for the upper Bay of Bengal littoral-this will be a non-starter or a puny effort without the hinterland, larger market, investment and infrastructure that the North-East and Eastern India would provide. The great inland waterways that inter-connect this region could also be revivified in conjunction with Bangladesh for inter-modal transport. The mutual benefit is obvious. In all these matters it is necessary to think and act concurrently, and not sequentially, in order to derive snyergy.

The idea of BCIM (Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar) regional cooperation is also worth pursuing as one among many formations that might ultimately interlock in a larger South Asian, South-East Asia and East Asian network. The Mekong-Ganga Cooperation Association and BIMST-EC (Bangladesh-India-Myanmar-Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation) are already there. The recent inauguration of flights from Guwahati to Bangkok from the Guwahati international airport is an augury of the future. The Moreh-Tamu-Kalewa highway leading on to Mandalay, built by the Border Roads Organisation as an Indian aided project, has opened another door. The proposed Guwahati international air cargo facility will mark yet another step towards establishing new cross-border links. This is, however, hastening far too slowly without any concerted planning about how the air cargo facility is to be used-for what , by whom. The related infrastructure and linkages remain indeterminate. Here is a supreme example of sequential planning.
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All these varied tasks cannot be done by governments or in the public sector alone. Private investment is essential, bringing with it capital, technology, manage-ment skills, flexibility and innovation. Turning down or delaying foreign investment on the ground that the North-East is a very sensitive region can no longer be unquestioningly accepted. There is certainly a strong case for fashioning policies that ensure that the region enjoys value-addition in terms of employment and income generation and is not merely used as a raw material base or transit zone. The days of large plan-tations in “gardens” or “estates” are over. There is neither the land nor social acceptance to permit this sort of development any further. However, the small-holder experiment has worked well either through cooperativisation or in partnership with large manufacturers. Small tea growers along the Arunachal foothills sell their produce to the big garden factories in the adjacent areas of Assam. Here is but one example.

There is huge scope for smallholder cultivation of plantation crops and in horticulture, herbiculture and floriculture with technical inputs, planting material, processing and marketing support being provided by large units. Smallholder lands can be invested as equity, with the state or community-as a third partner in joint ventures, if so desired. The same can be said about sericulture and weaving. Various incentives have been announced and appropriate counter-guarantees can be offered. Local entrepreneurs and industries need to be encouraged to cater to the North-East’s Defence market for fresh and processed foods, boots, blankets, uniform material, parachutes, medical supplies and so forth.

Land ownership patterns are often cited as inhibiting land acquisition for infrastructural and industrial requirements. Meghalaya has developed the concept of “tribal interest” as a supervening doctrine. With the steady shortening of the jhum cycle for a variety of reasons, many areas have suffered ecological regression. Nagaland’s Environmental Plan for Economic Development (NEPED) is an imaginative example of upgrading jhum cultivation through the protection and promotion of bio-diversity to restore the kind of sustainable agro-forestry practice it once was.

Very large areas of jhum fallow can be reclaimed for plantations and horticulture with appropriate cadastral surveys and improved land use planning. These can be made available for tripartite joint ventures on the lines described, with smallholders organised around larger corporate or cooperative mother units. The National Dairy Development Board can play a pioneering role here on the basis of the Amul pattern, which is applicable not only to dairying but to other areas of agricultural endeavour as well. The small rubber and tea growers of Tripura and fruit growers in Mizoram are among those waiting for this to happen.

Large infrastructure such as railheads, utilities, cold storages, warehouses, industrial areas, export processing zones and educational and medical facilities, and the townships that inevitably develop around them, require substantial tracts of flat lands. So will installations associated with the large water regulation and hydro-electric storages planned in the North-East such as the Kameng project and Dihang and Subansiri cascades in Arunachal, the Tipaimukh dam in Manipur and other schemes in Meghalaya and Mizoram. These could transform the region and make it an energy powerhouse that attracts collateral investment and infrastructure. These water resource projects will also carry a requirement for the resettlement and rehabilitation of persons displaced by them.

One possible solution lies in creating “trusteeship areas” along foothills tracts around the Brahmaputra and Barak Valleys that are in dispute between Assam and the hill States carved out of it. Could these be placed under Central trusteeship for, say, 30 to 50 years and be used for the development of the kinds of infrastructure and investments described? Displaced persons, including the Chakmas settled in Arunachal, could be relocated here in new off-farm jobs that can be created. Formulas for revenue sharing between the concerned States can be worked out. Assam might feel it is getting a poor deal as it will be “sharing” what it regards as its rightful territory with everybody else. Not so. Assam is greatly in need of water regulation to moderate floods, improve its agricultural calendar, prevent erosion of Majuli and other char lands, and to get the plentiful and cheap electricity that would propel its industrialisation and counter educated-unemployment.
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Peace is needed for Development and Development for Peace. There is no given sequence; both go hand in hand. Both ends of the equation must be worked on simultaneously.
I have, however, thus far addressed problems of Development. What of Peace? There is considerable evidence that the people in the North-East are tired of violence, extortion and the disruption of daily life. They want both Peace and Development. The current ceasefire and the ensuing dialogue between the Government of India and the Iasac Swu-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-IM) holds out promise. There is clear evidence of a strong vested interest in peace among all sections of Naga peoples. The Naga Reconciliation Movement is seeking to end internecine strife and unite all Naga tribes and factions in the search for an honourable and just settlement. The Naga peoples’ claim is that they were never part of India and are therefore neither separatists nor secessionists. They too regained their freedom with the departure of the British and, moreover, marked this with their own declaration of independence. Yet, in all the discussions and in the documents recently produced by them, the word “sovereignty” is not used. The emphasis is on the “acknowledgement of Naga history”.

With the official NSCN-IM-Government talks now moving from modalities and monitoring to substantive issues, the question arises as to how the circle can be squared with honour to all and in keeping with current realities. One way out would be for the united Naga factions to renounce sovereignty even while recalling their past as a free people and then to reaffirm their accession to the Union of their own volition. Simultaneously, the Government of India could acknowledge the Nagas’ sense of their history. It could then explain its inability to reverse history and undo any part of the Union, which consists of a vast plurality of free and equal peoples living together as fraternal partners in a sovereign, democratic Republic.