State of flux
Vijay Mohan

Lost Opportunities:50 Years of Insurgency in the North-East and India’s Response
by Brig (Dr) S.P. Sinha
Lancer Publishers andDistributors.
 Pages 357. Rs 695

India’s strategically vital North-East, comprising seven states with distinct ethnic and cultural identities, has remained on the boil for over half a century. The North-East is vital to India’s security as 99 per cent of its external boundaries represent the international border and much of it is porous. Yet the powers that be have failed to satisfy the aspirations of the people of the North-East and have not met success in their efforts to find a permanent solution to the problems that beset the region.

It is against this background that Brig (Dr) S.P. Sinha, soldier-turned-academician, traverses the turbulent contemporary history of the North-East to list out the issues that have fuelled the fire, the perceptions of the people concerned, the efforts to contain the insurgencies and finally, to find out what went wrong when and where.

The book is an attempt to present the North-East in its totality. Towards this end, the book has extensive information about the history, demography, geography, culture, economy and politics of that region. There are separate chapters to cover issues concerning each state.

The North-East, the author argues, is at its most vulnerable at the moment. Neighbours whose domestic politics adversely affect the region surround it.

Over the years, insurgencies have developed external linkages, which have only complicated matters. Here the role of China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar and the support rendered by them to insurgent groups is discussed. The author focuses on the religious dimension, narcotics and arms trafficking and ethnic and linguistic factors.

This book takes a critical look at the many insurgencies in this strategic region and reviews their genesis, motivations and characteristics. The background of each insurgency is varied and these are different from unrest in Jammu and Kashmir and that which had prevailed in Punjab. The author strives to find answers to why these continue to persist despite intervention by the state and the civil society.

The book is divided into five parts. The first part deals with the geo-strategic significance, ethnicity and demography. Part two reviews the state of insurgencies in the seven states of the region. Part three analyses the factors that fuel insurgencies, including the role of foreign agencies, while the next part deals with counter-insurgency operations by the security forces and the political and administrative response by the central and state governments. The concluding part is a "crystal ball", suggesting ways to move forward.

With a foreword by Lt Gen S.K. Sinha (retd), governor of Jammu and Kashmir who also had a tenure as governor of Assam from 1997 to 2003, the book is the revised and updated version of the doctoral dissertation that the author wrote on ‘Insurgencies in North-East India’ for his doctoral degree from the Department of Defence Studies, Deen Dayal Upadhyay University, Gorakhpur. The government’s response is critically examined and the development of counter-insurgency strategies — from finding a military solution to winning the hearts and minds of the populace — is traced.

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