Conflict And Peace In India S Northeast

The media have a special relationship with conflict situations, external or internal which has been an integral part of the history of a country as well as the world. Northeast India has been beset with insurgencies for more than half-a-century. The Nagas rebelled in the early 1950s and since then insurgency in some form or the other has spread to all the states of the northeast, popularly known as seven sisters. While insurgency in the northeast India is taking a toll of the law and order, peace, stability, progress and foreign relations; it is also causing irreparable harm to the press, the developments and the decision making process in administration. So, should it be the media’s mission to promote peace, democracy and growth in this region? This edited volume contains ten essays written by prominent media persons with first-hand experience of reporting on conflicts in northeast India. It provides the broad range of factors including the manner in which media operates and their relationship to the various ethnic conflicts in the region. This book is perhaps the first of its kind which explored many possibilities how to restore peace and public’s confidence in the region by engaging media as facilitator in the process.

This book discusses the history of unrest and conflict in Northeast India from 1947 to the present day. A perceptive study on public policy and its delivery in the region, the volume highlights that a crisis of governance, security and development has emerged in the Northeast because of the way various government institutions and agencies have been functioning in the area. It uses case studies to illumine conflict dynamics in the two erstwhile princely states of Manipur and Tripura, along with in-depth discussions on Assam and Nagaland. Drawing upon major policy documents, on-the-ground experience and rare insight, the book examines centre–state relations, the armed forces, special acts, human rights and larger policy-level questions confronting the region. It also underlines the key role of the northeastern states in India’s ‘Look East’ policy. Cogent and authentic, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of security studies, peace and conflict studies, area studies, Indian politics and history, particularly those concerned with Northeast India.

Contributed articles presented at the National Seminar on Peace Process in North East India orgnaised by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, North Eastern Regional Centre, Shillong at the North Eastern Hill University on 20th and 21st Oct. 2005

In recent decades, the states in the northeast of India have been home to a number of protracted violent conflicts. And while the role of women's movements in responding to conflict and violence tend to be marginalized both by the media and by scholarship, they have played a crucial role in attempts to strengthen civil society and bring peace to the region. This collection offers a close look at the successes and failures of those efforts, adding important insight into ongoing debates on gender and political change in societies affected by conflict. At the same time, the book takes a fresh, critical look at universalist feminist and interventionist biases that have tended to see peace processes as windows of opportunity for women's empowerment while ignoring the complexity of gender relations during conflict.

The media have a special relationship with conflict situations, external or internal which has been an integral part of the history of a country as well as the world. Northeast India has been beset with insurgencies for more than half-a-century. The Nagas rebelled in the early 1950s and since then insurgency in some form or the other has spread to all the states of the northeast, popularly known as seven sisters. While insurgency in the northeast India is taking a toll of the law and order, peace, stability, progress and foreign relations; it is also causing irreparable harm to the press, the developments and the decision making process in administration. So, should it be the media s mission to promote peace, democracy and growth in this region? This edited volume contains ten essays written by prominent media persons with first-hand experience of reporting on conflicts in northeast India. It provides the broad range of factors including the manner in which media operates and their relationship to the various ethnic conflicts in the region. This book is perhaps the first of its kind which explored many possibilities how to restore peace and public s confidence in the region by engaging media as facilitator in the process."

Diverging from reductionist studies of Northeast India and its multifarious conflicts, this book presents an exclusive and intricate, empirical and theoretical study of Assam as a conflict zone. It traces the genesis and evolution of the ethnic and nationalistic politics in the state, and explores how this gave birth to nativist and militant movements. It further discusses how the State’s responses seem to have exacerbated rather than mitigated the conflict situation. The author proposes ethnic reconciliation as an effective way out of the current chaos, and finds the key in examining the relations between three communities (Axamiyā, Bodo and Koch) from Bodoland, the most violent region of Assam. She stresses upon the need to redefine ‘Axamiyā’, an issue of much discord in Assam’s ethnic politics since the modern-day formulation of the Axamiyā nation. The book will prove essential to scholars and students of peace and conflict studies, sociology, political science, and history, as also to policy-makers and those interested in Northeast India.