Act East Policy and Northeast India

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With a PhD from JNU, academician Sreeradha Datta has been director, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata and held fellowships with IDSA. Among other institutions. She has written six books and monographs on Bangladesh, South East Asia, Myanmar and the Northeast and over 130 articles in journals, edited volumes, newspapers and academic websites. She serves on the academic boards of several universities and think tanks and is a regular participant in Track II dialogues with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and China. She currently heads the Neighbourhood Studies centre of the Vivekananda International Foundation, New Delhi.

The Northeast region has been a continuum in my research interests. I went back to it with greater expanse and depth thanks to the opportunity provided by Maulana Azad Centre for Northeast Studies during the 2011-2017 period. This work sits in the cusp of my interest in domestic politics and its interplay with the foreign policies that India hopes to further through its Northeast region. Apart from the Azad Centre, Universities and Institutes in the region offered me new insights into the region. I am grateful to many of the Vice Chancellors and also to the Asian Confluence in particular for such opportunities.

While Maulana Azad Institute of Asian Studies (MAKAIAS) gave me the opportunity to travel and absorb the region at close quarters (and of course a whole lot more in terms of knowledge and experience), the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) provided the atmosphere where I could go back to my writing and reading that did not involve green sheets of papers and government circulars. The two worlds are a contrast at best. And also, a perfect blend that any researcher would value.

Assam. Meghalaya and Tripura were the three states to record the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the Northeastern region, although significantly lower than the Indian average. Anxiety in the region has been high. Health services here are not exactly exemplary and they remain largely dependent on Central Government funds. The way ahead seems fraught with problems. Effective management from the early days kept the virus from spreading, but overcrowded urban pockets will have to tread with trepidation until there is some certainty about the virus, its medication and vaccine.

Although too early to predict the mutating nature of the virus, the region hopefully will be able to tide over the crisis by the onset of 2022 but will have felt the impact in many ways, adversely affecting daily lives and livelihood patterns. While the impact will be nationwide, the Northeastern region will feel the ill effects more intensely. Apart from the direct health and medical factors, the economic impact of the nationwide lockdown is bound to be significant and long lasting.

For most part of the past seven decades, India's eight Northeastern states, known collectively as the Northeast (NE), have drawn attention of the Central Government only for security-related concerns, remaining peripheral to the development pattern that the rest of India embarked upon. Indeed, until the advent of the British, Northeast did not exist as a concept. The geo- political contour of a 'North East Frontier' first emerged by the turn of the last century, during the eastward sweep of the British leading to the subjugation of the territories between Bengal and Burma (now Myanmar).

The construction of a region called the Northeast is a post-1947 development. The Partition of India aggravated its geo-political isolation as the region is linked with the rest of the country by a narrow land corridor, nicknamed 'Chicken's Neck', and is surrounded by international borders. Earlier, various tribal regions had closer ties with the adjoining areas of Bengal and Burma than with each other but Partition almost physically separated the Northeast from the Indian heartland. This, and the Chinese takeover of Tibet, replaced the earlier soft territorial frontier.