For the North East Region to fulfil the role of connector, the ongoing work should be accelerated on the India-Myanmar-Thailand trilateral corridor, as well as the Kaladan corridor (India-Myanmar), and the corresponding motor vehicles/transport agreements be negotiated. These corridors will be truly meaningful for the NER if they are not only connectors but also enable the NER to ride on them.
Full Text PDFThis article explores the U.S.-India engagement by employing Parrondo’s Paradox, a game theory describing a combination of losing strategies that could be turned into a winning one. The U.S.-India relationship has been characterized as the defining partnership of the twenty-first century, manifest in a raft of agreements on economic, military and strategic issues. The article argues that if both countries had not dealt with common strategic issues together as allies, they may have faced serious security threats. One example is of India’s lone fight against terrorism, which could not achieve much success since the 1980s, but when the United States launched its global war on terror after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. homeland, it resulted in a decline in terrorist incidents in India. Demonstrably, if both countries had fought global terrorism separately, or without cooperation, it would have been unfeasible to defeat it, but when they put up a united front, they won. In other theaters of conflict where both countries have worked together as global partners, they have reaped positive outcomes—such as in the Sino-India War of 1962, the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and in the Galwan Valley conflict.
Full Text PDFOn June 30, 2020, Mizoram celebrated thirty-four years of peace after the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of 1986, popularly known as the Mizo Accord that put an end to the twenty year-long Mizo war of independence spearheaded by the Mizo National Front (MNF). The Accord, often hailed in both the political and the academic fora as the most successful agreement of the Indian state with an armed insurgent group and a model of conflict resolution, has in fact withstood the test of time, generating durable peace. This article, however, debunks the idea of the Mizo Accord as a model agreement by underlining its defects and non-implementation, and rather argues that sustainable peace in the state of Mizoram was possible due to the social administrative system and political culture of the Mizos, largely shaped and molded by civil society organizations.
Full Text PDFThis article examines the prevailing misinterpretations of Bodos in popular Indian cinema and in historical studies and media. It attempts to understand the perception of Bodos in particular and ‘tribals’ in general through the writings about them by political leaders, scholars and journalists. To provide the Bodo perspective, the article delves into two Bodo novels, Mwihur (To Hunt) and Bigrai Arw Dwisrai (Bigrai and Dwisrai), that are distinguished works of semi-historical fiction. Mwihur records the dislocation of Bodo people from their forest homelands after the area had been declared as the Manas National Park. The author reads Mwihur employing Ecocriticism theory to excavate the idea of the ‘savage’ which reveals the biases held towards certain communities, and how the ‘savage’ was conceptualized and understood by Indian leaders that cast doubt on the capability of aboriginal communities to run their independent governments. The article argues that Bigrai Arw Dwisrai, set during the Bodoland agitation, amplifies the voice of the All Bodo Students' Union, whose emphasis on using the Gandhian model of peaceful struggle—by using constitutional methods—helps in reaching a new understanding of the Bodoland Movement that is often represented in the popular discourse as a struggle sustained through military means. The novel establishes the demand for Bodoland as a desire within the community for political representation within the Indian union while accepting itself as a part of the larger nation.
Full Text PDFIn just a few short years, the Khmer Rouge presided over one of the twentieth century’s cruelest reigns of terror. Since its 1979 overthrow, there have been several attempts to hold the perpetrators accountable, from a People’s Revolutionary Tribunal shortly afterward through the early 2000s Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia [ECCC], also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Extraordinary Justice offers a definitive account of the quest for justice in Cambodia that uses this history to develop a theoretical framework for understanding the interaction between law and politics in war crimes tribunals.
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