Linking India and Eastern Neighbours: Development in the Northeast and Borderlands

Linking India and Eastern Neighbours: Development in the Northeast and Borderlands studies different aspects of India’s bilateral relations with neighbouring countries and discusses implications of development initiatives in India’s northeastern region (NER) and its borderlands. The NER shares borders with five countries. The central government has shown interest in developing infrastructure in the NER, and state governments are taking initiatives to promote trade relations with the bordering countries.

The book discusses the causes for underdevelopment and examines the initiatives taken to overcome the problems of the land-locked region. It provides a comprehensive account of varied processes at work in India’s northeastern borderlands. The book looks closely at the lifeworld of the border communities and myriad cross-border interactions. It throws light on the economic potentiality and preparedness of the NER, the significance of border haats, diverse manifestatsions of border crossing and nature of inter-ethnic interactions. The book also explains the theoretical significance and practical relevance of studying border processes.

H. Srikanth is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, India. His research has primarily focused on issues concerning ethnicity, indigenous people and the political economy of Northeast India. Dr Srikanth was awarded the Shastri Indo-Canadian Faculty Research Fellowship to work on Native Indians in British Columbia. His publications include Indigenous Peoples in Liberal Democratic States: Conflict and Reconciliation in Canada and India (2010) and the co-edited volumes Vision for Meghalaya: On and Beyond Inner Line Permit (2014) and Ethnicity and Political Economy in Northeast India (2016). He has also published many research papers in such journals as International Studies, Economic & Political Weekly and Man and Society. During 2012–2017, he was the editor of the NEHU journal.

Munmun Majumdar is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, NEHU, Shillong, India. She completed her MA, MPhil and PhD at the School of International Relations, Jawaharlal Nehru University ( JNU), Delhi. She was awarded the UGC Research Awards (earlier known as Career Award and National Fellow) for Post-Doctoral Research. She had been a Visiting Professor to University of Yangon, Myanmar, and Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. She has been a Visiting Fellow at Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and an Associate at Institute of Advance Study, Shimla. She has published three books and many research papers as book chapters and journal articles in journals such as Strategic Analysis, India Quarterly, Indonesian Quarterly, and Asian Affairs. Her areas of interest are Southeast Asian studies and international politics.