The recent violence at the Assam-Meghalaya border has once again highlighted that border conflicts are an incessant problem among the Northeastern states and have some historical perspective to them. The bone of contention between these state borders is always due to one or the other colonial notification, which kept on changing from time to time.
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However, the incident which happened very recently in the Assam-Meghalaya border is not simply a border conflict between two administrative blocks of the Indian Union as it has been put in the headlines of the various dailies. In most of the foothill borders of the northeastern states, various forms of shadow economy get momentum.
The shadow exchanges are informal economic transactions in these foothill borders, often based on interpersonal networks and trust. It is always the border checkpoints which boost the shadow economy. The trading activities under the shadow economy can be formal and informal, as well as legal and illegal.
Haugen (2019) shows in her article on inter-continental trade between China and Africa, traders in southern China’s Guangzhou province made use of both formal channels such as container shipments, air cargo, courier service, groupage (where people/companies consolidate their goods for shipment to reduce costs) and informal arrangements like suitcase carriage, and other grey practices like the use of logistic brokers in buying and selling of luggage allowances.
Similarly, both informal and formal arrangements are used for trading activities in the foothill borders of Northeastern states. Even the Assam-Meghalaya foothill border is also not exceptional. In the inter-state borders, there are various types of Check Gates operating in the foothills: Forest Check Gates, Excise & Transport Check Gates, Para-military forces Check Gates, Inner-Line Permit Check gates, etc. These check gates exist to monitor the movement of people and goods between the two states, but the role of these check gates is very conspicuous.
Despite these check-gates, the forest-covered foothills have become a place for clandestine activities of varied sorts such as illegal timber trade, illegal coal mining, a place to hide stolen vehicles, drug and alcohol peddling, exchanges of illegal arms and ammunitions, and many more. Whenever the interpersonal networks and trust between various stakeholders get disrupted, the social equilibrium also gets affected, and it may even lead to violence. I believe that these types of shadow exchanges also facilitate economic activities in the peripheral region, and at the same time, also lead to “arbitrary” border conflict.
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It seems the administration and governments of the two states, media, scholars and political scientists of the region are only concerned with documenting the experiences of suffered people and proceeding with the various commissions of the Indian state from time to time. Unfortunately, there is a strong proclivity to address and resolve the border issue exclusively based on a juridico-administrative approach. It is, however, not unknown that this approach is predicated on the yardsticks often fixed arbitrarily by the colonial regime to serve the colonial economic-administrative imperatives and pursued and perpetuated by the post-colonial Indian state.
One, therefore, wonders how the tangled border issue with a complex socio-historical and political background could be solved by resorting to mere legal provisions. This inability of the government and various commissions appointed by it from time to time to find an amicable settlement to the border issue is ample testimony to the futility of the legalistic approach. In the backdrop of that, it seems a tall order to expect the ongoing local boundary commission to offer a final answer to the problem.
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Yet, to address the problems of the foothills and to bring them back to the mainstream socio-political discourse of the region it is essential to sort out the border issue in a sustainable, mutually acceptable manner. For this, the stake-holding states must eschew the administratively-driven, territory-centric mindset and opt for a historically informed, people-centric approach.
Moreover, the local people’s views and sentiments must be taken into consideration while solving the problem. It seems that their views and voices are hardly audible to policy makers. The historical and social ties in these foothills can become a framework to resolve the dispute. Instead, the rival states’ territorial claims threaten to seal off the hill-valley relations forever.
Flying to Delhi every time there is a crisis will not solve our problem.
The author is Assistant Professor, Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati. Views expressed are personal.
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