Indian govt struggles to strike balance between peace, development in northeastern states

New Delhi [India], April 18 (ANI): The Indian government has taken many initiatives like 'Look East Policy' and 'Act East' in order to bring development and peace to the north-eastern states but still, it remains a challenge for the government to strike a balance between development and peace.
After 1962, Indo-China war, different ethnic-based separatism in several north-eastern states received the fund and support from Communist China to keep India occupied in the subcontinent, according to the author, Rahul Mishra, a Senior Lecturer at the Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya, Malaysia.
Some of the leading separatist leaders, such as Isak Chishi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah--leaders of NSCN-IM (Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland- Isak Muivah)--and even Paresh Barua of the United Liberation Front of Assam received the training in China.
After this, India came up with the 'Look East policy' in 1992, preceded by a number of peace agreements with rebel groups, India adopted a multi-pronged approach in dealing with a slew of measures, including infrastructure, connectivity, and financial initiatives.
The main objective of this policy was to break the link between the local rebel groups and their foreign sponsors, as per reported by the author, Rahul Mishra.
In 2014, India came up with another policy, Act East (2014), in an attempt to break the link of its north-eastern states with neighbouring Southeast Asian countries, and also strove to bring north-eastern states to the forefront of developmental discourse in India
Despite all efforts, the separatist still attacks the Indian army. In November 2021, the terrorists ambushed a colonel of the 46 Assam Rifles and his family in Manipur. In this incident, six jawans of the Assam Rifles were also injured. Two Manipur-based terrorist organizations, the People's Liberation Army and the Manipur Naga People's Front, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The author believed that most of the work of these organizations is done by Myanmar.
Another case of militants attack came in December 2021 when over a dozen civilians and one member of the security forces were killed in Nagaland after Indian forces mistook a group of labourers for militants and opened fire.
Myanmar-based Naga separatist organizations played an important role in fuelling the separatism in north-eastern India. The Manipur People's Liberation Army has the support of another separatist organisation, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang). This organisation was led by Khaplang, after the split from its parent organization, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak Muivah), a Senior Lecturer at the Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya, Malaysia, Rahul Mishra reported.
The Khaplang group has carried out several major attacks on the Indian Army in the past, in which the attack in June 2015 is notable.
China, which has been supporting the separatist group in India since the 1962 war, has also supported the Khaplang faction. In 2017, the Khaplang faction leader SS Khaplang had also gone there for his treatment at Chinese expense (he died of cardiac arrest shortly after his arrival).
The major reason for the problem is that most of these separatist groups operating in India and Myanmar received small arms and light weaponry from China. For China, it is an easy and effective source of resource generation.
The difference between the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first century is that earlier the narrative about northeast India was "security vs. freedom of expression"; which has now changed to "development versus security", according to author Rahul Mishra.
In these past years, the northeastern states have seen the development but the trouble largely resides in Nagaland, Manipur, and to a certain extent in the Assam state of north-eastern India.
Over the past seven years, the Modi government has also paid considerable political attention to this area, while consistently focussing on the field of infrastructure; a lot of progress has been made.
India's internal security challenges in the northeast are not just about security and law and order problems, they are a compound of inter-related challenges: drug trafficking, illegal small arms trade, human trafficking, natural resource exploitation, and state-sponsored violence against India. (ANI)