Conflict Resolution in the North-East (November 14)
By Prof. N. Sanajaoba.

The complex conflict-structure, conflict-genesis, its morphology and conflict-phenomenon that characterize the civil society in the North-East in the last century would demonstrate that conflict-resolution, more particularly through a process of peaceful 'settlement' of disputes is going to be an uphill task. 

However, every knot leaves some space to untie itself or space for dialogue. The patterns of dialogue correspond to the entire gamut of constants and parameters involved. A stable civil society is invariably the end-result of all these efforts. In the event of major wars, after the cessation of hostilities, even the belligerents return to deskwork. The parties work out the timetable though.

The board patterns of socio-political and economic phenomenon including their variant modes that effect or influence the North-East civil society encompass:

1) Ethnicity and indigenous peoples' rights compounded with illegal migration and anti-foreigners' movements since the late 1970s. Enduring boundary problems that perturb the restive civil society- threat to pre-constitutional state boundary vis-à-vis Article 3 of the Constitution;
2) Economic stagnation, regional imbalance, misgovernance and underutilization of both human resource and human development; their direct and indirect socio-economic and political consequences on the civil society;
3) National questions, armed insurgency, militarization of civil society and subsequent fall-outs like gross human rights violations and grave breaches of humanitarian laws.

These broad conflicts, despite their autonomous articulations are interconnected and are the offshoots of common underlying causes.

Issue Interface
The broad classification of the conflicts that arose between Government and people, people vis-à-vis people, army versus the armed militants is based on effective popular movements in the North-East civil society in the last century, which spill over to the 21st century. These intertwined conflicts, which mutually facilitate each other or transform into qualitatively discrete complex variants because of their prolonged toxicity and incremental pathological disorder are deep rooted in the North-East civil society. Alienation has been on the rise. A just and equitable solution shall not materialize without probing into the underlying causes and hammering out racial solutions, because of the deep-rooted nature of contradictions, some of which bearing incipient non-antagonistic parameters assumed over the years, antagonistic or malignant character. Any price to be paid for misgovernance or irresponsibility is proverbially high. It is ostensibly Hobson's choice.

Issue I
Colossal illegal migrations of foreign nationals into Assam and the North-Eastern States should have been checked and stalled in the wake of the Nehru-Liaqat Ali Pact, 1951 and the Indira-Mujib Agreement, 1971. The Federal Government and its regional governments abdicated governance thereby leaving the political vacuum to be filled in by mass-movements, a fringe section of which grew into national liberation movement, currently labeled as terrorists by the Federal Government. The damage-control exercises have been done too late and civil society has been completely militarized. No saner counsel could harbor two opinions about the real damage-occasionally irreversible- brought about by prolonged militarization. Dialogues, negotiations, accords followed but a social audit of the non-performing accords lead to dismal inaction and unpleasant popular reaction. Government of India's initiative to break open a substantial dialogue with an outfit is a non-starter after four years.

The claims and counter claims advanced by Nagaland State in particular over the territories of several sister States in the North-East and upper Burma (Myanmar) since its first Assembly resolution in 1964 could have been placed before a Boundary Commission in the 1960s or Inter-State Council in later period or before the Supreme Court for advice on reference by the Union Government in the late 1960s. Every successive government abdicated governance and bypassed peaceful solution thereby leaving adequate room in four decades for inter-state disputes to occupy space, animosity and ultimate confrontation- engineered or otherwise invented. The price is for instance is the June 18, 2001 mass uprising in Manipur and widespread commotions in the North-East civil society. The government owes an explanation and a white paper on the subject to the people of India and that institutional responsibility is awaited.

Similarly, several inter-communal riots, ethnic cleansing in Manipur Hills or elsewhere relating to ethnic identity missed the timely attention of the government. People have to take law into their own hands and NGOs or Non-State Actors (NSA) could intercede thereby leaving the administrative structure redundant and purposeless. Parallel Governments under the aegis of the NSA have virtually replaced the official administrative structure.

Issue II
Non-performing Governments are not new, but State Governments incapable of paying salaries to their employees in the North-East are post-NDA features. The world public opinion would shudder to hear this. How the Governments at the Center and in the State made the resource surplus NE civil society an impoverished region is a million-dollar question! Fifty years after independence is too short a period for the Federal Government to tame the Brahmaputra flood that impoverished rural economy in Assam. Any government worth the name could have tamed it in the 1960s. Similarly, the Federal Government's gift to the region is nothing but poverty and the lowest per capita income. The dialogue can continue at the NGO level or intra-state platforms. Economists of tall order have delivered tons of recommendations, whereas the teeming millions expected 5 grams of concrete results. These people are vomiting their doctrines twenty-four hours a day. Doctrines cannot substitute basic needs.

Issue III
The civil society has been historically experiencing an objective reality under the weight of an history of ongoing-armed conflicts between the government forces and armed opposition groups or dissidents. They bear two names- officially, insurgency or extremism or even terrorism and National Liberation movements as they are known as the Non-State Actors on the other hand. Gross human rights violations as well as grave breach of humanitarian laws occur because of the half-century old conflicts. The opposite warring parties make self-righteous justification of their activities based on two principles- 'Territorial Integrity Principle' and 'Right to Self-Determination Principle' under the 1966 International Covenants to which the Federal Government has been a party.

Framework for hard issues:
By taking a leaf out of two chronic outstanding armed conflicts like the IRA movement in UK and the Palestine movement in the Middle-East, constructive dialogue was made a reality by the parties involved in the armed conflicts. How far the conflicts matured into political negotiations within their respective framework call for an elaborative, bipartisan evaluation.
Can anybody fit in the armed paradigm in the North-East in similar mechanism and structure of political dialogues would remain a significant proposition for the State and the Non-State Actors that are involved in the bloody half-a-century old conflict. The search for two successful dialogue models could be considered a starting point, in as much as the framework and structure of dialogue would profoundly shape the political outcome. Had conflicts not been meant for just resolution, what then, conflicts are for?

The writer is Dean of Law, University of Guwahati, Assam, India)
(Courtesy: The Sangai Express)

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