Analyse the significance of India’s Look East Policy in the light of concerns of the indigenous peoples of North-east India. (2018, 10 Marks)
The Look East Policy offered a long-neglected North-East a new role: a gateway to Southeast Asia rather than a militarised frontier. Sanjib Baruah (Postfrontier Blues, 2007) argued the region would gain only if Delhi stopped governing it as a frontier. The policy’s significance must therefore be weighed against what the region’s indigenous peoples fear from openness.
Significance for the region
- Connectivity: the Moreh–Tamu–Kalewa road, the India–Myanmar–Thailand Trilateral Highway, Asian Highway links, the Kaladan project, proposed rail links, a mooted Myanmar–Bangladesh–India gas pipeline and optical-fibre links promise to end isolation.
- Inclusive growth: trade, tourism and investment could narrow the gap with the rest of India and deepen people-to-people contact inward and eastward. A lagging border region is the state’s most exposed flank.
- External partners: Japan’s road and forestry projects under the Act East Forum (2017).
- Security cooperation with Myanmar against insurgents, smuggling and cross-border crime.
Concerns of indigenous peoples
- Land: much land is under community tenure protected by the Sixth Schedule and Articles 371A (Nagaland) and 371G (Mizoram); corridor-led acquisition threatens collective title.
- Demography: the Inner Line Permit, extended to Manipur in December 2019, is defended because open routes read as migration by other means.
- Ecology and displacement: the proposed 11,000 MW Siang Upper Multipurpose Project faces resistance from the Adi community over submergence and consent under the Forest Rights Act, 2006.
- Divided kin: ending the Free Movement Regime (February 2024) and fencing the 1,643 km Myanmar border cut across Naga, Mizo and Kuki-Chin kinship; Mizoram and Nagaland object.
- Conflict: Manipur’s violence from May 2023 led to President’s Rule, lifted only on 4 February 2026; corridors also carry arms and narcotics.
Analysis
The concerns are about who governs change, not development as such. Thongkholal Haokip (India’s Look East Policy and the Northeast, 2015) argues the policy addresses geography rather than livelihoods. The record bears this out: highways and the Sairang rail line (2025) are built, but Kaladan is stalled at Paletwa, held by the Arakan Army since January 2024, and border trade is marginal. The tension is internal too: kin-based objections to fencing coexist with demographic fears of open borders, so consultation, not imposition, is the only workable method.
Conclusion
The policy matters to the North-East only if the region becomes its participant rather than its route. Consent under the Sixth Schedule and the Forest Rights Act, local value addition and internal connectivity first would turn indigenous concern into ownership.