North-Easterner’s Eye, Entertainment - Books - Kolkata Mirror,Kolkata Mirror

By Suruchi Gupta

Posted On Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 07:43:13 PM

North-east India is a microcosm of India. “It looks less like India, and more like the highland society of South-East Asia,” said Subir Bhaumik from his latest book Troubled Periphery: Crisis of India’s North East, which he has penned for ‘mainland Indians’.

Sir Mark Tully launched the book at the British Council. “This book is out of Subir’s journalistic experience, not some academician’s work out of library, though one can find a formidable number of footnotes too!” said Tully remarking the book will have an impact on those looking at NE.

Bhaumik is presently BBC’s East India correspondent based in Kolkata, and has toured the NE on his journalistic ventures over the last three decades, witnessing the region, its people and problems from closer quarters, perhaps more than politicians in Delhi.

“This book is important for understanding the NE. The stereotype of NE being the land of easy going, gun and guitar people must be broken,” said Bhaumik about his book.

Tully gave the opening remarks on the book summarising the main problem of the NE from Subir’s perspective in three points - first, underdevelopment. “There is no lack of funds, but wrong direction of it being spent. Funds have been wasted to generate employment in the government department, resulting in bloated bureaucracy, corruption, etc.”

Second reason accounts for the absence of infrastructure for development as fallout of first, making the region lag behind its bordering states like China, while the last point lies in the brutality of armed forces in the region.

“Northeasterners are fiercely independent people,” said Bahumik and explained how the Mizo National Front was born out of Mizo National Famine Front after authorities did not help starving population in the famine-afflicted region, and not by going against the Indian government after independence.

“NE is a land of opportunities. There must be a trigger of rethinking for the region with people as the stakeholders in the region.”

In the interactive session with the audience, Bhaumik praised the late Maharaja Bir Bikram for his sense of ethnic management and recounted how in times of any riot in Bengal, he had rescued and brought the Bengali farmer to Tripura, given him lease to land so as to develop modern farming there and make a better administration, but “Congress pushed the Bengali refugee in NE so as to break the compactness of the tribal communist support”. The late Maharaja, not any elected minister, was voted as the hero of the millennium at the turn of the century by the people in a survey by a local paper, said Bhaumik.

With the politician interested in the vote bank, screaming about fights with China instead of diplomacy building, and investing their profits from NE in other countries or other parts of India on one hand and the insurgents not interested in developing the region too, it is the common man who is caught in the crossfire between the devil and the deep sea, said Bhaumik.

The book, published by Sage, costs Rs 595. According to Bhaumik, it gives an account of the problems of the multi-ethnic region, not yet understood by rest of Indians or the central government.

Photo: Gautam Karmakar

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