Vajpayee's Vaccine for the North-east

Mansoor Mamoon examines India's recent concern regarding its north-eastern states

THE BJP-led NDA government in India, and for that matter, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee are clearly in a quandary as to what to do with secessionist trends and insurgencies in the Delhi administered Kashmir as well as in the north-east. Both the troubled spots are not only costing India heavily, but also calling for urgent attention in view of increased security risks. For both the thorns in its foot, India, as usual, is blaming Pakistan. The trauma of the Millennium eve's airbus skyjack drama is still lingering with its fallouts both inside and outside the country.

Pakistan Chief Executive Pervez Musharraf's successful trip to China and Beijing's otherwise firm commitment for continued support to its traditional ally, have increased Vajpayee's concern. This new Sino-Pakistan realignment in the subcontinental plane has seemingly forced India to look towards Washington for moral and logistic support, albeit analysts' differing view of a possible US-India axis, leading to Musharraf's seeking closer rapport with China to avoid possible international isolation for giving no timeframe for restoring democracy and for alleged shielding of the Islamic fundamentalists. A strategist of no less calibre, Vajpayee knows rather too well that apart from seeking blessings from Clinton administration in this apparently difficult situation, he needs some effective homework to do of his own. With this intent, he called a grand conference of the chief ministers and governors of eight north-eastern states including Sikkim at Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya on January 21 last. Home Minister L K Advani, Defence Minister George Fernandes and Foreign Minister Jashwant Singh, among others, were present in the meeting. The meeting was mainly convened to discuss the issue of insurgency in the region.

Strategically important, these eight states have common borders with Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, Bhutan and Nepal. The north-eastern states are geographically far-flung and somewhat isolated. Though rich in oil and tea, these states have not developed at par with the rest of the country. Integration of the region with the country's mainstream has posed to be a difficult task because of five-decade-long tribal insurgency which so far had allegedly cost at least 25,000 lives. Thirty odd guerrilla groups are reportedly operating allegedly with the covert support and assistance of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. Islamabad has, however, persistently denied its involvement in fomenting insurgency in the region. But New Delhi insists that it has definite proof of Islamabad's incitement and abatement which the latter is doing as part of its gameplan to destabilise India.

India has also claimed to have discovered Pakistan's hand in the Kashmir imbroglio centring which the two countries fought three wars and had cost India another 25,000 lives since the separatist struggle began in the valley in 1989. The latest incident of plane hijacking after their Kargil encounter has brought their relations to its lowest ebb with the flurry of accusation and counter-accusation against each other alongside pin-prickling by the two sides in their common border.

At Shillong, Prime Minister Vajpayee unveiled an economic development and rehabilitation package amounting to a staggering amount of ten thousand two hundred seventy-one Indian rupees to be spent over a period of three years for infrastructure development in the north-eastern region as well as to generate sufficient employment opportunities. Vajpayee diagnosed that it was endemic unemployment among the youths in the region that is compelling them to join in the bush war. The package includes building of roads, developing agriculture, installing two hydropower plants for generating electricity etc. Besides three bordering points with Myanmar and two with Bangladesh will also be so equipped as to facilitate cross-border trades with the two neighbouring countries. Side by side the centre will also post battalions of its reserve force to counter-insurgency and to maintain security in the strife-torn states at its own cost.

The participating chief ministers called for meaningful negotiation with the insurgents so as to gradually help them return to normal life and arrange for proper rehabilitation of those who will surrender arms of their own volition.

That Vajpayee means business in his plan for snuffing out insurgency through initiating development in the lon-neglected region has been evidenced by his despatch of his state minister for external affairs Ajit Panja, to convince Bangladesh to provide transhipment of Indian goods through Bangladesh territory to the north-eastern states and multi-modal communication facilities between the two countries. Bangladesh and India reportedly agreed for opening bus service between Dhaka and Agartala and rail link between Benapole in Bangladesh and Petrapole in West Bengal. The proposal for rail movement between Akhaura and Agartala has also been mooted by Ajit Panja. But how transhipment could be possible without reducing the yawning trade gap in favour of India and the latter's reciprocity in providing the same facilities to Bangladesh for linkages with Bhutan and Nepal are to be seen. The opposition in Bangladesh is vehemently opposing what it terms it as corridor to India terming it as bartering the country's independence, sovereignty and security to please Delhi. Being almost at the fag end of its five-year term how the present government in Bangladesh will accommodate India's request for opening up to the requirement of its north-eastern states in the face of strong opposition from its political rivals will be difficult to gauge.

Prior to this, the Indian business circle met with their counterparts in Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal for subregional economic cooperation grouping in Delhi. Ostensibly called the GMB (Ganges, Meghna and Brhmaputra) growth triangle comprising 11 north-Indian states, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan was first mooted at Kathmandu under the aegis of the Asian Development Bank. The Delhi meeting was a follow-up and a declaration to this effect was adopted calling for working out modalities of cooperation between the littoral states and creating necessary public awareness about the benefits such a subregional grouping will accrue for collective benefit. A meeting of the parliament members belonging to both the ruling and opposition parties, businessmen, planners and others belonging to the proposed GMB is schedued to be held in Calcutta in March next. But the private sectors of both Bhutan and Nepal raised doubt about its success citing the example of Saarc now in limbo due to hostilities between India and Pakistan. On this count also the opposition political parties in Bangladesh are not likely to give their agreement but will rather stand as a stumbling block.

Vajpayee government, in short, is seriously seeking all avenues, both domestic and regional, to bring to an end the long-drawn insurgencies. It thinks that through mitigating economic deprivation of the local people and through a process of planned development the dissenters could be tamed. The formula is that if economic men in the region could be liberated, political men will not lag behind. But how far his economic dosage to cure political ailments would succeed is to be seen in the immediate future.

But the cooperation from the neighbouring countries is not likely to be coming in the desired channel unless India changes its big-brotherly attitude to its smaller neighbours. And without their help it will take quite a long time to root out insurgencies in the north-eastern region of India. What India needs most is confidence-building and guaranteeing mutual benefit to the GMB countries. But any attempt to isolate Pakistan by substituting GMB for Saarc is likely to backfire. Smaller South Asian countries will not take the risk of such a situation which is likely to further destabilise South Asia.