India/North East India: Issues, Dynamics and Emerging Realities

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The book is an outcome of the two days National Seminar conducted by RGURSF in collaboration with Arunachal institute of Tribal Studies, Rajiv Gandhi University in the year 2019. Of more than 70 papers presented during the seminar, 15 has been selected for publication in the present volume. The papers selected are centred around issues of India/North-Eastern states. The issues range from politics, education, commerce to development. Therefore, instead of a singular thematic perspective the book tries to bring forth different issues and it's experience in the Northeast. The book will be helpful to anyone interested in the Northeast and will also provide insight to policy planners on daily experiences of people in Northeast.

I am delighted to write the foreword for the 3rd edition of the series North East: Issues, Dynamics and Emerging Realities. The different editions of the series are an outcome of the Annual National Seminar organized by the Rajiv Gandhi Research Scholars' Forum (RGURSF), I have been fortunate enough to be associated with the conduct of such a seminar in the year 2019. The seminars by RGURSF have been a forum for people working in different fields in the Northeast to come together and interact, especially the younger scholars. Wide array of themes are included in the seminar for discussion which provides a holistic glimpse of Northeast and its diverse issues.

The northeast region comprising of 8 states, namely, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura constitutes around 8 per cent of the geographical area of the country. With only about 4 per cent of country's population, it is a mosaic of cultural diversities and economic disparities. Lately, the region has become a geographical and a social category. This category is assumed to be monolithic and homogenous. By using the term Northeast itself, we undermine the differences in 'lived experience' of the people in the region. Northeast, in fact is a fractured geography with disparate identities.

Not only cultural but difference in lived experiences has provided for complexities existing within the northeast. Historically, each state integrated with the larger Indian Nation state through different mechanisms. Many of such engagements with the Indian state rest in uneasy history. From the Crown Colony Plan to armed struggle for separate nationhood, Northeast has garnered the idea of being 'different' and 'difficult'. With differing historicity people have responded differently to governance- both politico administrative and developmental. Within such location the series attempts to bring forth the 'lived experience' in the Northeast and is an eye opener to look into people's perception of self and the region.

The series stimulates and explores new ideas and research practices in the northeast in relation to various topics, methods, theories and context. Therefore, it pulls together perspectives from different disciplines to analyse the experiences in the Northeast. It interrogates into people's worldview and the challenges of development and various agencies of development through micro studies. Such micro studies provide an in-depth understanding of the issues, complexities and ground realities.

**Contents and Sample Pages**