Liberalization and India’s North East

This volume is probably the first attempt to study the implications of economic reforms, i.e., globalization and liberalization, for India’s north-east. Although India’s north-east has been chosen here as a reference region, many of the inferences drawn by different authors may as well be applicable to any backward region of a country. Attempts have been made in this volume to address three basic questions: what will be the likely impact of the present phase of world capitalist development, including India’s attempt to go global, upon the backward regions like India’s north-east? In spite of being rich in natural resources, why does the region fail to accrue any benefit out of India’s drive towards liberalization? What will happen to the critical ethnic situation of the region in post-liberalized regime? Two approaches, broadly speaking, have been followed, in analyzing the above issues. Attempts have been made, on the one hand, to infer the likely impact of the reforms on the backward regions like India’s north-east on the basis of experiences gained from the working of the process of world capitalist development, and, on the other, local socio-economic structures have been studied in order to infer the implications of the global event for the region. The complementary nature of these two approaches helps in a better understanding of the issues concerned.