Developmentalism as Strategy: Interrogating Post-colonial Narratives on India’s North East critically examines the post-colonial developmental trajectory of the Indian State at its northeastern periphery. Due to its unique historical geography, India’s North East has been systematically marginalized and was imagined as ‘underdeveloped’. The dominant narrative of India’s economic nationalism has largely acted as a strategy within the North East in the context of resource appropriation and national security, and producing new arrangements of knowledge, power and practices. Adopting a methodological approach of interdisciplinarity, this book attempts to understand the exceptions to India’s dominant development policy as applied in the North East. In the changing dynamics of political economy of development in the region, the book further examines the subsequent transformation of the narrative of the North East from a ‘geographic marginality’ to a ‘natural gateway’, and explores the alternative to such mainstream development approach by raising debates in India’s North East.

Contents: Foreword by C P Chandrasekhar. Introduction. I. Between Subsistence and surplus: 1. Traditional Economy, Sustainability and Subsistence: Understanding India’s North East/Tiplut Nongbri. 2. The Post-colonial Market: India’s North East/Samir Kumar Das. II. Developmental Impacts on People: 3. Developmentalism and Consequences: Displacement and Marginalization in India’s North East/Walter Fernandes. 4. India’s Developmentalism in Northeast Region and Its Consequences: Identity, Uncertainty and Migration/Deepak K Mishra. 5. Development and Women Labour Market in India’s North East: An Empirical Understanding/Archana Sharma. III. New Development at the Periphery: 6. Neoliberal Developmentalism: State Strategy in India’s North East/Rakhee Bhattacharya. 7. The Politics of Corridors: ‘Seamless Connectivity’, Trans-regional Engagements and Narratives of Development/Anita Sengupta. 8. Development of India’s North East: Cross-border Market, Trade and Sub-regional Cooperation/Gurudas Das. 9. Development through Trade: Re-examining India’s Act East Policy and the Northeastern Region/Thongkholal Haokip. IV. Alternative from Below: 10. Environmental Security and Human Rights: Foundations for Real Development? Felix Padel. 11. Conservations versus Peoples’ Entitlements: Contestations in Kaziranga National Park/Akhil Ranjan Dutta. 12. International Financial Institutions in India’s North East: Pattern and Impact on People and Environment Jiten Yumnam. Index.