The waning popular support behind these armed campaigns appears to have marginal impact on their longevity, which appears to have been boosted enormously by a range of external support, networking among the outfits and also propelled by the sheer desire to continue. On the contrary, India’s counter-insurgency effort in the region, apart from few exceptions, has been a failure. Its political approach has been adhocish and directionless. While the small and peripheral insurgencies, with limited aims and objectives have tended to perish within few years of their formation, the bigger and potent formations have continued to wage their battle. The continuation of these larger armed formations, in turn, has inspired the regular propping of smaller outfits, contributing to the cycle of chaos and violence in this region.

The Naga insurgency, considered to be the oldest of the lot, started in the early 1950s. Although the Naga National Council (NNC), which initiated insurgency in Nagaland is no longer a potent military formation, the torch of rebellion has been kept alive by the Isak-Muivah and Khaplang factions of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN). In Assam, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) originated in 1979 and it continues to be the most violent outfit in the State even today, even while majority of its cadres are based outside the state. Manipur’s United National Liberation Front (UNLF) has been in existence for over 45 years and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for over 31 years. In Tripura, the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) was founded in 1991 and the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF)’s history goes back to 18 years. All these outfits, even while going through the ups and downs of their military capacities, continue to be sources of persistent challenge to the nation building exercise in the northeast.

Security forces and analysts, for good reasons, believe that the insurgency movements, over the years, have been corrupted and no longer represent the aspirations of the masses. A clear divide has come to exist between the ordinary people and the gun-toting militants and more often than not, it is the civilians who have been targeted by the insurgent cadres. However, defying prophecies of doom the insurgent outfits have bounced back. The trend of degeneration notwithstanding, the insurgent outfits continue to retain significant level of nuisance value, sufficient to keep the northeast on the boil.

India’s military response in the Northeast

Robert Taber says in his famous work on guerrilla warfare, “It is not in the nature of governments to treat with armed civilians, the insurrection must be put down, order established, and confidence restored.” The rise of the armed rebellions with an exclusive agenda of sovereignty did invite military response from India. Emerging from the British control, the national leaders were in little mood to allow the disintegration of the country, let alone allow armed separatists to hold parts of the country to ransom. The violence let loose by these insurgents targeting symbols of the Indian state was met with policies that let the army march into the northeast with an objective of ending these insurrections with force. With the state police force highly incapable to meet the challenges posed by the insurgents, the army contingents led the counter-insurgency campaign in the northeast.

The army, however, was clearly at a disadvantage. They had no experience of handling insurgency. Thus, the anti-insurgency campaigns in the initial days failed to distinguish between a conventional war in which the forces battle a foreign enemy and counter-insurgency campaign in which the adversary are the people of the country, albeit discontented. The campaign was somewhat militarily successful, but disastrous in terms of the image of India in the already alienated minds of the people of northeast. The insurgents were forced to surrender or to take refuge in the neighbouring countries and indulge in hit and escape style attacks. But at the same time, the counter-insurgents gained little sympathy of the people whom they were supposedly trying to protect.

Use of maximum force never pays, strategic use of force does. However, the immediate and continued preference of military methods over other techniques to deal with insurgencies in the northeast originated from the relative success this method has had in reducing the nuisance value of the outfits. For example, in the early 1980s, few years after the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) was introduced in Manipur, a series of army operations led to the arrest of chief of Manipuri insurgent outfit PLA, Bisheswar Singh and the subsequent killing of several first and second rank leaders were killed in encounters.” It led to a weakening of the outfit, albeit momentarily. Operation Bajrang and Rhino by the Indian military, in the early 1990s, forced the ULFA, which was running a parallel government in Assam, to seek refuge in Bangladesh. Army operations is said to have driven the NSCN-IM to agree for a ceasefire agreement with New Delhi in 1997. Again in 2003, military operations by the Bhutanese army supported by India led to the dismantling of the camps of the ULFA, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) in that country. While the KLO and the NDFB received serious operational setbacks as a result, the ULFA lost many of its senior and middle rung cadres.

Such operations have, however, been intermittent and done little to permanently damage the military capacities of the insurgents. The insurgents have networked among each other and also with the forces and governments outside to augment their capacities. The fact that the northeast has been surrounded by countries like Bangladesh and China, with whom India’s relations have been far from cordial and Myanmar, where Indian foreign policy is still struggling to make a favourable mark, the insurgents have found to convenient to either locate their camps or receive assistance. Outfits like the ULFA have served as virtual pawns in the hands of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The liberal assistance from foreign countries has ensured that the time gap between an outfit in infancy to a full-bodied insurgent grouping capable of posing challenges to the might of the state narrower every passing day.

Analysts have pointed at the structural breakdown of the Indian state in the northeast and the absence of a true federal spirit of the Indian constitution as factors that continue to promote insurgencies. Such administrative breakdown, however, is certainly not unique in the northeast and is true for most of the backward regions of the country. The reason, on the other hand, for the evolution and continuations of these armed movements, is be located in the strategic and operational failure of the counter-insurgency campaigns. In addition to the Indian state’s inability to ensure an end to the foreign support to these insurgents, the state failure at resolving conflicts have led to a culture of violence, that promotes and nurtures such mushrooming of insurgencies.

(i) Counter-insurgency strategy

For a long time, Mizoram remained India’s only success at ending an insurgency in the northeast. The Mizo insurgents who carried out a sustained campaign exploiting popular discontentment over the state apathy during a devastating famine, survived for over a decade, before a brute military campaign was unleashed on them. The Indian state allegedly used air power against the insurgents, the only such instance when the insurgent facilities were aerially bombarded and implemented in a successful yet controversial village clustering scheme. In addition, the end of foreign support to the insurgents made the agree to a negotiated settlement of disputes. The political regime of the day, in a rare magnanimity, made way for the insurgents to take over political power. Mizoram has never returned to the turbulent days ever since the Mizo accord of 1986.

It is ironic that till the Bodo rebels of the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) gave up violence to settle for the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) in 2003, the Mizo experience could never be repeated to end any of the protracted insurgencies in the region.

Analysts point out that a successful counter-terrorism strategy should include four core elements: reducing the systemic causes, deterring terrorists and their sponsors, reducing the risk of super-terrorism and retaliating where deterrence fails. The reason why the might of the Indian army and para-military forces has failed to suppress the little rebellions in the northeast is to do with the across the board failure in implementing a majority of these requirements. The analysis would specifically deal with the operational lacunae of the counter-insurgency campaigns.

Robert Taber noting the disadvantages of the security forces vis-à-vis the advantages enjoyed by the insurgents notes, “On the military level, a regular army, under whatever political system, has disadvantages that are owing to its very size and the complexity of the organisation, and again to its defensive role, as the guardian of the national wealth and of the whole of the national territory. The guerrilla, for his part, finds his strength in his freedom from territorial commitments, his mobility and his relationships to a discontented people, as the spokesman of their grievances, the armed vanguard, as Che Guevara puts it, of militant social protest.” The security forces in the northeast have been and continue to be pitted against such challenges.

As pointed out earlier, the army after its deployment in the northeast, was clearly handicapped by the absence of a counter-insurgency doctrine and it was not till the end of 2006 that a official ‘doctrine for sub-conventional operations’ was prepared. On a number of occasions, till the early 1990s, the army was simply amassing troops from several formations to put up a show of strength. The numbers looked impressive, but the size did not really contribute to its operational effectiveness. As a commentator noted, “Assembling troops from different formations transgresses the command and communication structure, which is the basis for success of any army operation.”

Moreover, the lack of coordination between the army, the para-military and the police, each of them engaged in counter-insurgency operations created additional problem. Operations were marked by an absence of sharing of information and more critically one-upmanship. To avoid these difficulties, a unified command structure (UCS) was set up in Assam in 1997 and followed by a similar one in Manipur in 2004. However, the UCS has not been able to smoothen out the difficulties of coordination between the forces. For example, in Assam the UCS was initially headed by the Army, which had a demoralising effect on the state police which did not want to work second fiddle to the central forces. Even after the Chief Minister started heading the UCS in 2007, the Army was being accused of unilateral actions and keeping the police in dark. In Manipur, serious difference of opinion emerged between the police and army, with the former in favour of repealing the controversial AFSPA and the latter opposing it. As David Galula notes, “Its not enough for the counterinsurgent leaders to be resolute; they must also be aware of the strategy and tactics required in fighting an insurgency.” The lack of operational coordination among the forces led to periodic breakdown of the organisational cohesion leading to haphazard operations that yielded very little.

Galula further notes, “In any situation, whatever the cause, there will be an active minority for the cause, a neutral majority, and an active minority against the cause. The technique of power consists in relying on the favourable minority in order to rally the neutral majority and to neutralise or eliminate the hostile minority.” In clear contravention of this basic principle of neutralising the adversary and protecting the non-aligned, the counter-insurgency strategy in the region has unevenly focussed on the insurgents and less on defending the civilian population. And not surprisingly, such tactic has backfired in states like Manipur. While neutralising the insurgents and clearing areas that have long been dominated by the outfits, little attention appears to have been given in stopping the extortion and abduction activities in places such as the state capital Imphal. As a result, the gains made by the security forces have made little differences to the lives of the people. This disconnect has been exploited to the hilt by the militants who have managed to rake up popular discontentment against the army. A clear example of this trend is the mishandling of the Manorama Devi episode of 2003. After the alleged rape and killing of a woman, whom the Assam Rifles personnel described as a PLA cadre, the utter lack of concern shown by the uniformed class towards the sentiments of the people, turned what could have been an innocuous protest into a mass uprising of sorts against the AFSPA. This single incident provided a much needed fillip to the militants who had otherwise been on the verge of neutralisation in the pre-2003 period.

The security forces have tried to overcome the difficulty of absence of flow of information from the people about the insurgents by co-opting the surrendered militants. While on occasions the latter have indeed found to be critical in terms of providing information about their erstwhile comrades, in states like Assam, the lack of control on such renegades have created a band of malcontents. The surrendered ULFA or the SULFA, for its rampant involvement in secret killings, extortions and active involvement in a regime of lawlessness, for long remained an anathema in the counter-insurgency campaign in Assam. The ULFA, on the other hand, received significant popular sympathy as the SULFA cadres let loose a reign of terror.

The lack of a strategy for peace in the northeast is further evident in which the Indian state has handled the ceasefire agreements with the insurgent outfits. Apart from the ceasefire with the two NSCN factions in Nagaland, at least six groups from Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura have come over-ground opting for a negotiated settlement of their grievances. The ceasefire with the NSCN-IM dates back to August 1997 and with its counter-part NSCN-K to 2001. Interestingly, while about 100 rounds of dialogue have been held in both India and abroad with the NSCN-IM, not a single round of deliberations has taken place with the NSCN-K. Similarly, apart from periodic extension of ceasefire agreements, no round of dialogue has been conducted with the Bodo, Dimasa, Karbi, Adivasi outfits in Asssm, Garo outfit in Meghalaya and the NLFT militants in Tripura.

These ceasefire or suspension of operation arrangements, which have been described as mere attempts at procrastinating peace by many, has been exploited by the militants to carry out sustained extortion, abduction and killing campaigns. This has been a feature in almost all the states of the region where the outfits have been under such agreements. The NSCN-IM in Nagaland has not only increased its cadre strength to more than 2500 from a mere 1500 in the last 12 years of ceasefire, it has abducted and extorted with impunity. Ceasefire with both the NSCN-IM and the NSCN-K has brought little relief to the state as both factions have engaged in bitter fratricidal clashes with each other. Other outfits such as the NDFB, Dima Halim Daogah (DHD) and United People’s Democratic Solidarity (UPDS) in Assam and Achik National Volunteers Council (ANVC) in Meghalaya have been accused by the respective state governments of repeated violations of the ceasefire ground rules.

From an operational level, the counter-insurgency strategy has also failed to effect a generational change in the armed outfits, with a bid to expose the ideology and objective of these formations to the wisdom of a new set of leadership. It needs emphasis that all the intractable insurgencies in the Northeast continue to be led by the same set of leadership which found them. ULFA, since its 1979 formation is led by its commander-in-chief Paresh Baruah and chairman Arabainda Rajkhowa. Since the infamous and violent split in the NSCN in 1988, the IM faction of the NSCN is led by General Secretary Thuingaleng Muivah and Chairman Isak Chisi Swu and the NSCN-Khaplang is led by its chief S S Khaplang. The major Manipuri outfits like the PLA and UNLF have not undergone much of leadership change. As a result, the commitment of the old leadership to the original objective of the outfit possibly remains unwavering and essentially not open to compromises. On the other hand, attempts at effecting a generational change by the security forces, through covert operations targeted at eliminating these top leaders or by way of creating splits within organisations have not been very effective. The handful of successes in this regard was the rise of factionalism within the NLFT which broke into small groups led by leaders such as Nayanbashi Jamatiya and Joshua Debbarma. Eventually, these groups opted for ceasefire leaving the NLFT faction led by its original leaders to remain committed to an armed struggle. Similarly, in July 2008, the ULFA’s potent 28th battalion underwent a split after two of its companies broke away to start negotiations with the government, much to the chagrin of the outfit’s top leadership in Bangladesh. Such ‘successes’, however, have provided only temporary relief, only till the time the outfits recruit and let loose a fresh gang of cadres.

(ii) Political Patronage

The survival and the growth of the armed factions within various states of the region have unarguably been aided by political patronage. For reasons, not unknown to many, politicians in various states- belonging both to the ruling party as well as the opposition- have used the insurgents for their furthering their own political as well as other interests. In the first government of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) which was established immediately after the seven years-long Assam agitation, the ULFA enjoyed unhindered access to the corridors of power. The Assam Home Minister Bhrigu Kumar Phukan described the cadres of the outfit as “our boys”. Such expression of collusion with insurgents and a complete state failure to rein in violence was principally the reason why Assam had to be put under President’s Rule. In Nagaland, former Chief Minister S C Jamir used the Khaplang faction of the NSCN for his protection from the Isak-Muivah faction. In fact, Khaplang faction is said to have saved Jamir’s life during three attacks carried out by the Isak-Muivah faction. In Tripura, the Congress was aligned with the NLFT whereas the ATTF was seen as a benefactor of its linkages with the Left Front.

Such patronage, often based on ethnicity, kinship and sometimes on pure fear factor, also existed between the administration including the state police forces and the insurgents. It not only ensured the steady trickling of government funds to the coffers of the outfits, but also translated into strategic leakages of information regarding impending security force raids on insurgent camps. During Operation Bajrang in Assam, launched in November 1990, the army’s ‘surprise raids’ achieved little as the ULFA militants were always notified in advance of such decisions, allegedly by the state police personnel. In one such instance, a huge army contingent reached the ULFA headquarters at Lakhipathar only to find that the insurgents had abandoned it much earlier. Sanjoy Hazarika writes, “The intelligence leak was at a high level for the information about the army assault was known only to a handful of officials in the Home Ministry and the army command.”

Sympathy for the boys has also led to early termination of vital military operations in Assam. On a number of occasions, the army has managed to corner ULFA senior functionaries in strategic locations. However, sudden political decisions have led to a loosening of the hold allowing the insurgents to escape. This has been a constant source of irritation for the army.

Similarly, in Manipur, the insurgent outfits managed to penetrate the state and central administration and carved out specific areas of influence. “Every month when salaries are disbursed, a percentage is deducted and paid to the militant groups. ..The militant groups reportedly interfere in the award of contracts and are also known to enter offices carrying files to secure signatures of officers at gunpoint.” This is a continuing phenomenon in Manipur. Not long ago that the chief minister of the state Okram Ibobi Singh was accused by the army chief of contributing to the coffers of two insurgent outfits. Such dominance has also translated into interference of the insurgents in the polling process. Regular ransom demands by several outfits have forced a number of local politicians from Manipur to shift to the safety of neighbouring Silchar in Assam. ULFA’s strategic weakness in Assam has not deterred the outfit from attempting to influence the political outcome in various constituencies. Such domination has been more pronounced in smaller and remote districts, where even the fringe outfits have not only generated large amount of resources from political parties, but also have fielded candidates of their choice. At least two members of the state legislative assembly in Assam today are former ULFA cadres.

It is important to note wherever political patronage has disappeared; the insurgents have quickly been stripped of their notoriety and have been exposed to the counter-insurgency measures. The political sanction behind the police operations in Tripura was a crucial factor behind the speedy neutralisation of militancy in that state. It is a pity that such developments and sudden desire to cut the umbilical ties with the insurgents have not been repeated in many theatres.

(iii) Opinion Management:

Walter Laqueur points out, “A full-scale sustained terrorist campaign was frequently beyond the capacity of the tribe, the minority, or the political faction being supported from abroad, especially if the state under attack did not play by liberal rules but brutally combated terrorism.” In case of the northeast, the outfits, big or small, irrespective of their military preparedness, have mostly been spoilers and do not stand a chance if India were to carry out a sustained military campaign against them over a prolonged period.

However, in spite of the fact that most of the insurgents in the northeast, do not inhabit the civilian areas, people’s power remain one of their critical sources of sustenance. In Manipur’s “valley and hills, while the common people look to the government for succour, there is a half educated crust which has become increasingly anti-national and blame the Union government for all the ills.” Thus, the continuous failure of the official measure at establishing peace needs also to be seen in the context of the ability of the insurgencies to garner popular support. This, to a significant measure, has been achieved through the civil society organisations and the front organisations set up by the outfits from time to time.

The Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti (MASS) in Assam and the Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR) in Nagaland are examples of such organisations which have constantly managed to generate public opinion in favour of the insurgents. Similarly, groups like the Committee on Human Rights (COHR) and Human Rights Alert in Manipur are outfits that are in the forefront of protecting human rights of people from abuses by security force personnel and maintain a stoic silence when it comes to dealing with the excesses of the insurgents. The ULFA in 2005 even set up the People’s Consultative Group (PCG) consisting of 11 persons to prepare the ground-work for the eventual initiation of talks with the Union Government. The PCG not only held two rounds of dialogue with the government, but also generated tremendous popular opinion in favour of a dialogue on Assam’s sovereignty, which is a key ULFA demand. Subsequently, two members of the PCG were arrested for their nexus with the outfit.

Official efforts at generating sanction of people behind its actions do not match the rather successful exploitation of popular sympathy by the insurgents. Barring few cases such as Tripura where the counter-insurgency grid managed to wean away the insurgent sympathisers, the schism between the government and the people has not simply been bridged. Episodes like the killing of Manorama Devi have further fuelled popular alienation.

Development as a solution?

The longevity of the insurgency movements creates a sense of their intractability. The failure of the visionless and strategically poor military efforts has been seen as the worthlessness of using force against rebellions that challenge the concept of India. Such realisations have led to formation of policies that believe massive developmental investment will eliminate the sources of popular discontent and return the rebels to the ambit of democracy.

Apart from the fact that the concerned the states simply do not have the capacity to absorb the financial largesse that has bestowed on them either through the mandatory ten percent reservation of funds of all ministries for the region or in form of announcement during the periodic visits of the Prime Minister, “no empirical studies demonstrating any causal linkages between specific and consistent parameters of underdevelopment, exploitation or injustice, on the one hand, and the emergence and persistence specifically of terrorism on the other, are available.”

As pointed out earlier, in “the climate of collapse”, much of these funds have either turned into phantom aids, finding its way to the Indian mainland through a curious channel of bureaucrats and contractors or a large chunk of its has simply vanished into the coffers of the insurgent outfits. It is important to note the statement of the Chief Minister of Manipur describing the extent on insurgent dominance on his State. Speaking at a public meeting in Thoubal District on April 23, 2006, for instance, Singh confessed, “All development projects have been stalled for interference by militant outfits. The construction of a flyover in Imphal is delayed because the militant outfits are demanding a certain percentage of the project fund. The construction of the Assembly complex has also been similarly stalled. Militants are extorting money from each and every one, including barbers, small-time traders and low-ranking Government employees. This has become unbearable for the people. Militant groups have sprung up as cooperative societies in Manipur.”

This state of affairs, however, has not deterred the specialists opining in favour of continuing the development paradigm not only through the massive injection of funds but also by unveiling the proposed look-east policy by linking up the northeast with its South-east Asian neighbourhood. Such policies, invariably, are based on the falsified presumption that forces of development can overshadow the insurgencies. Experts, however, suggest alternatives. In the context of Manipur, a former Police official wrote, “Development schemes should be taken up with a view to open up employment in the private sector. The unemployed educated and dropouts are the main source of recruitment for militant groups. Thus, this section should be targeted in all development projects.”

Managing without grand mantras

In the Indian context, counter-insurgency is essentially a function of the state police. The police, compared to the army or the para-military enjoys inherent advantages of knowledge of local conditions and psyche, so essential for dealing with the rebels. Police-led counter-insurgency operations were a critical factor in the elimination of militancy in the Indian state of Punjab in the early 1990s. Within the north-eastern region, the state of Tripura, which was ravaged by a Bangladesh-aided tribal insurgency for over one-and-a-half decades, benefited immensely from an official policy that not only better equipped its police force, but also made policing available to the population in the most inaccessible of places. Police-led responses have also been critical to successes against the left-wing extremists in Andhra Pradesh. Even where central forces remain pivotal to the counter-insurgency effort, as in Jammu & Kashmir, the police have come to play an increasing role in counter-insurgency.

The fact that a successful counter-insurgency strategy is not based on grand ideas, but implementation of simple principles of policing, was proven beyond doubt from the recent execution of a high-successful policy in Tripura. A radical reorganisation of the state’s police force left the entrenched militant groups in disarray. Building on a model of a police-led response to terrorism, Tripura’s police has managed to reverse the trajectory of insurgent violence and, crucially, mobilisation. As an assessment of the counter-insurgency strategy noted,
ULFA Leaders J Dutta and P Neog
“The core of the police strategy of response is to dominate the most remote areas in the State, and to minimize the reaction time for counter-insurgent operations. There has also been a dramatic augmentation of the Police intelligence network. The improved geographical dominance of the Forces has resulted in increasing flows of information from the general public, who have long borne the brunt of militant excesses, but had been too terrorized to extend cooperation to the Police in the past. Improved geographical dominance has also cut the lifelines of militant survival in terms of finance. The cumulative impact of these initiatives and operations has drastically affected militant morale.

The replication of such a strategy is possible in other theatres. However, such endeavours would need dramatic undoing of the existing problem areas. Writing on the availability of arms with the police in the northeast in 2001, the Union Home Ministry said, “The condition of police forces in the North Eastern States is quite poor. Many of the militant groups have far more modern arms and equipment than the State Police.” There is little evidence of any dramatic transformation in the circumstances since this observation was made.

For example, six years after the observation was made by the MHA, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) said that police modernisation programme in Assam appears to have led to a scenario in which the police personnel have sophisticated AK series rifles, but no bullets to load them with. The CAG report for 2007-08 indicated that the 2000 AK-47 rifles supplied by the Ministry of Home Affairs at a cost of Rupees 1.60 crore in 2004-05 did not come with bullets and state police department’s delayed effort at procuring bullets did not materialise till March 2008. The near absence of police participation in counter-insurgency measures in other states of the region has created enormous problems for the Army and the para-military. Not that these forces, much in demand in all sorts of conceivable law and order and terrorism problems all over the country appear to be permanently stationed in specific parts, but the perennial dependence of the state governments on these forces do not lead to the augmentation of police force’s capacity to deal with insurgencies on their own.

This is true both in case of the conflict-ridden Manipur as well as Nagaland. The counter-insurgency operations in Manipur have been led by the army and para-military. Ever since the army was introduced into the valley areas of the state in late 1970s citing rampant militant activities, the central forces have been the vanguard of anti-insurgency operations, with the police playing no or little role in dealing with the insurgents. In Nagaland where both the primary insurgent groups are under separate ceasefire agreements with the Indian government, the police simply does not display any attempt to rein in the insurgents. Even though the police department is the biggest government department in the state, its personnel have not even deployed rationally, either in terms of the security requirements or the distribution of population across various districts and police jurisdictions.

Even when the army has managed to clear off the militants from their liberated zones, the incapacity of the police in establishing a hold over the area and make way for the establishment of civilian administration has brought about quick reversals in the gains made. This is a recurrent feature in Manipur’s Chandel area, where numerous army operations have not been successful in dislodging the UNLF militants from the Sajik Tampak and New Samtal areas.

End game

Northeast’s woes stem as much from the deep sense of alienation among the people of the region which has served as a constant feeder for the insurgents as the legacy of half-baked and visionless policies to address such estrangement. Years of haphazard swinging between military operations to unprincipled collusions and peace negotiations and further to developmental approaches notwithstanding, the Indian state remains as clueless about the insurgencies of the region as it was decades back. While none would like to repeat the military means that led to the resolution of the conflict in Mizoram, there appears to be little appreciation of the counter-insurgency efforts in Tripura. Whether it is about border management or dealing with foreign support to the insurgents, there is a clear and unmistakable element of apathy in New Delhi’s approach towards the state of affairs in the northeast. This sense of detachment and disinterest by the Indian policy makers, consequently, would keep the lamp of insurgency burning in that remote corner of the country, for years to come.