Between National Security and Ethno-nationalism

Abstract

Although scholarly interest in Northeast India is growing there is still relatively little discussion of the high levels of poverty in the region and the failures of development. When mentioned they are viewed instrumentally as causes and/or symptoms of ongoing insurgency and counter-insurgency. However this does not fully explain how a region that receives an extraordinarily large amount of development funding from the Indian Government, has its own development ministry, has some of India’s highest human development indicators, and has an array of institutional layers assuring autonomy and decentralisation has poverty levels well above the Indian national average. Using the state of Meghalaya, this article examines the factors underpinning the development agenda in the region and the political space for contesting this agenda. The argument presented is three-fold; the regional development agenda is underpinned by national security imperatives which characterise relations between the various levels of governance ensuring minimal deviation, contestation of the development agenda is limited by national security from above and ethno-nationalism from below narrowing the political space for negotiating development alternatives, and this situation is the result of material and ideational factors embedding development in the politics of state-formation and ethnic identity.