The Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in Tripura and its success in pulling off a winning combination in Nagaland and in Meghalaya had led to a mood of celebration in the saffron camp. But this celebratory mood has been undone by the ethnic conflagration in Manipur. Not only did the N. Biren Singh government fail to anticipate the scale and the timing of the violence but it also seems to have contributed to it with its ill-conceived, large-scale eviction of Kuki tribals and its inability to remind the Manipur High Court that passing the judgment on scheduled tribe status for Meiteis was beyond its purview.
In Tripura, the BJP staved off strong anti-incumbency by effecting a timely change in leadership and followed it up by leveraging the ethnic polarisation emerging from the ‘Greater Tipraland’ demand. Once the BJP failed to strike a deal with Pradyot Kishore Debbarma’s Tipra Motha Party, it focussed on whipping up the passion of Bengalis against a separate tribal homeland by pitching strongly for the state’s integrity. With the tribals swinging towards the Tipra Motha and Bengalis towards the BJP, the Congress-Left alliance lost out.
In Nagaland, the electorate decided to give Narendra Modi and his ally, the chief minister, Neiphiu Rio, another chance to finalise the Naga settlement and bring to a closure seven decades of conflict. In Meghalaya, the tribal people saw in the BJP’s anti-Bangladesh pitch a reassuring safeguard even as the minorities perceived the BJP as a saviour against tribal aggression.
But the BJP’s smart strategy of serving something to everyone may soon run into rough weather unless its governments in the Northeast begin to deliver.
In Tripura, the chief minister, Manik Saha, would need to show some progress with livelihood schemes in tribal areas and elsewhere in the state. He needs to be mindful of the experience of his predecessor, Manik Sarkar. Sarkar crushed the tribal insurgency but the Left lost 18 of the 20 seats reserved for scheduled tribes on account of the perception that Sarkar was anti-tribal. Saha has very little direct exposure to tribal life. He can win over tribals by undertaking a drive to get them to plant spices and commercial cash crops to augment their income since rubber cultivation is proving to be environmentally adverse as well as by decommissioning the Gumti hydel project to reclaim fertile land for redistribution among landless tribals. He should also leverage India’s third internet gateway in Agartala to set up IT parks and get infotech majors to set up shop in the state to provide jobs for tribal and Bengali students. Moreover, if Saha has to curb the growing cannabis cultivation and ensure that farmers desist from considering poppy cultivation, he must offer financially rewarding crops to agriculturalists. A ginger ale factory on the Tripura-Mizoram border will also be good news for Mizo ginger farmers.
Across the Northeast, the BJP will have to carefully work out a modern land-use policy to prevent land alienation among indigenous landholders and boost agricultural incomes. Whipping up the bogey of Bangladeshi infiltration will not be enough to sustain its electoral success. This has been driven home by the Manipur crisis. The solution to the crisis of development very often lies in the management of land and livelihood that urbane Left leaders like Manik Sarkar did not understand. Manik Saha and the BJP’s other chief ministers in the Northeast have to get that right.
The Centre must also deliver on unfulfilled promises. The Naga insurgency is the mother of all separatist movements in the Northeast and New Delhi has to secure this region for the sake of peace and development. New Delhi will also have to get on board the powerful Meitei insurgent groups, an area where Biren Singh can do his bit. There is no way the BJP can block the demand for a separate Bodoland or Tipraland and then fan the embers for a separate Eastern Nagaland or a tribal state in North Bengal. Ethnicity-driven territorial states will not work in the Northeast whose diversity is as mind-boggling as India’s.
Subir Bhaumik is a former BBC correspondent