Dangers of ignoring N-E Indian states

Dangers of ignoring N-E Indian states

The Maharaja of Manipur was unwilling to join Indian Union: Sir Fuller considers the region as “a museum of nationalities”

Dr. Hari Desai’s Weekly Column “Back to Roots” in Asian Voice, the Newsweekly of ABPL Group, London 16 September 2017    Web Link :  http://bit.ly/2gWZiFY Blog : haridesai.blogspot.com

·         The efforts are on at all levels by the Government of India and various state governments level to bring the people from Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura along with Sikkim in the mainstream. The isolation needs to end. The Union government headed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) is making all out efforts for the political inroads and economic development of all the eight N-E states through the North-East Democratic Alliance(NEDA) headed by Himanta Biswa Sarma.

·         The Indian National Congress ruled over the states for decades and gave birth to lot many amoeba regional parties with regional aspirations to rule over. These days out of the eight states, five are being ruled by BJP or BJP coalition partners in NEDA. They are Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Nagaland and Manipur. 

·         B.G. Verghese, a leading Indian journalist who was born in Burma (now Myanmar), recognizes the North East India as “another India, the most diverse part of a most diverse country, very different, relatively little known and certainly not too well understood, once a coy but now turbulent and in transition within the Indian transition.”