WHAT AILS THE NORTH EAST?
Rupa Chinai’s latest book highlights the great need to preserve the region’s fragile ecology
loan system called kuruk which charges interest rates of up to 10 percent per month. Those who cannot repay have to forfeit their livestock, property and land, and are forced to leave the village.
And then there is growing encroachment from state projects and haphazard resource extractions. Preserving the region’s fragile ecology is now a pressing challenge. Chinai’s survey indicates that states like Nagaland, where land is generally owned by the community, have a better chance of collectively resisting the onslaught. Places like Lad Rymbai in Meghalaya, where land is privately owned, simply could not resist the lure of easy money from coal extraction. This new money from land acquisitions and mineral extraction makes a few people millionaires, but further impoverishes the majority and ravages the land. It exacerbates income inequality, dilutes deeply held values and threatens to tear apart the social fabric. There is warning here for other tribal regions too, including the Zomi areas of the Manipur hills, where land is held in the name of the village chiefs.
An expose of what ails the northeast from the inside, this book also provides words of caution on what is coming from the outside. Urgent questions need to be answered: What mechanisms can ensure community participation in development plans? What are the downsides of tourism promotion? What are the ecological costs of the necessary transition from jhum cultivation to plantations or cash crops? Are call centres and hotel management the only avenues for unemployed youth? The conversation must start now.
Thangkhanlal Ngaihte teaches political science at Churachandpur College, Lamka, Manipur.