Synopsis The present title has been the result of three years’ of hard toil through the insurgent-torn Tripura and six other relatively calm and peaceful states of the North-East. It seeks to resolve a few paradoxes from the perspective of policy science exploiting the economic deprivation and social-cum ethno-cultural identities of the people of this region. The North-East has been in flames almost since Indian independence but is it due to ethnic factors alone or more for economic deprivation that the youth are taking up arms against the formal center of power. How is it that the state of Tripura, where the tribal people started accumulating and absorbing the cultural norms and patterns of the migrant Bengalees much earlier that others in the North-East, is now the worst-hit in insurgent activities, while Nagaland with its stubborn ethnic autonomy and independent frame of mind remains not that troublesome? If geo-strategy is important Arunachal, now the abode of peace, would have been the