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This paper analyses the historical antecedents, character and implications of Assam’s National Register of Citizens as a socio-legal instrument. It seeks to understand how dominant nationalisms and the state produce volatile paper citizenship regimes, and use law – as a reified transcendental performance of social will – to construct the ‘minority citizen’ through categories of ‘belonging’ and ‘citizenship’. The paper does this by analysing three typologies of the law-society interaction. First, it examines what/who is a citizen from within law. Second, it critiques the mythology of law by giving an account of belonging and suffering of minority citizens without law. Third, it foregrounds peripheral subjectivities by offering an account of minority citizenship beyond law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disaster is often seen as a "leveller" that affects everyone equally but the impact of disasters varies due to structural inequalities, access to resources, gender roles, and power relations, leading to a disproportionate effect on certain populations. This paper is based on a case study of three flood-affected districts of Assam and explores how gender is often used in a restrictive manner, confining it to a binary and neglecting non-binary gender identities, their vulnerabilities, and capacities in disaster risk reduction. These case studies illustrate that communities are vulnerable not only because of their physical nature but also due to their social positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land alienation among its tribal communities has been one of the most disquieting issues in contemporary India despite existing laws for the protection of tribal land and habitat. This situation is attributed mainly to requisition of tribal land for various developmental activities undertaken by the state as well as its indifference in enforcing the existing laws. The situation in Assam clearly illustrates this. Despite the existing laws, the tribal communities have been unable to retain their ownership of the land. This paper shows that while the state-led development activities are significantly responsible for this, the various informal ways in which the transfer of tribal land takes place at a private level are also no less alarming. Explicating the dynamics behind this process, the paper divulges the multiple informal mechanisms, embedded in community network and trust at the local level to negotiate the protective land laws to facilitate the transfer of tribal land to non-tribal communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the case of hijras of Assam who are undocumented in the National Register of Citizens because of their fractured identity and adopted gender and face the risk of being declared illegal immigrants despite being citizens. The paper focuses on how transgender individuals are excluded from different aspects of citizenship as a consequence of document-focused procedures created and enforced by the state. The primary argument is that document-focused procedures of the modern state, rooted in heteronormative underpinnings, are exclusionary for transgender individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What drives insurgent groups to negotiation? The paper examines the conditions that facilitate insurgents to negotiate with governments. It examines the case of National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB), in Assam, India's northeast. Factors that may have contributed to the process of negotiation were change in relative costs and capabilities of insurgents. The paper argues that state's unwillingness to concede to the insurgent demands of territorial separation affect the outcomes of insurgencies that further contribute to the fragile peace process. Drawing on qualitative interviews of former insurgents, civil society organizations and government officials, this article contributes to studies on peace negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on my doctoral ethnographic research amongst the Miya community in one of the chars of Western Assam, shows how a particular category of identity documents shape their subjectivities, experiences, and aspirations. I focus on the identity documents which have errors, like mistakes in names, dates of birth or addresses, and badly angled photos. I refer to them as thin documents. Because of the thin documents, the Miyas find it difficult to assert formal citizenship rights, which they could normally assert based on accurate documentation. For the thin documents to help prove the Miyas’ citizenship, they must be further supported by an additional set of documents. The process questions the Miya’s formal citizenship rights. I present narratives of the Miya people living with thin documents to illustrate how the materiality of the identity document binds the Miya people to a state of liminal citizenship. I ask: what do these errors in the identity document or thin documents tell us about citizenship, particularly liminal citizenship with reference to the Miya community of Assam? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile theatre being the one and only regional fully commercial cultural industry in Assam (India) has significant representation of the Assamese culture. The theatre medium started as a socially responsible cultural forum later translated itself into a commercial enterprise. The 1990s repertoire of Mobile theatre can be seen as popular and it often resonates the regional-political events, while by the 20th century, it took an entirely commercial shift and created a 'populist model'. This paper aims to understand this shift between these popular (political) and populist, through some of the classic theatre productions like Soraguri Sapori (1983) and Titanic (1996). While the first case study attempts to read the performance against the backdrop of Assam Movement and its subsequent emergence of insurgency in the state. Then, the other tries to develop an understanding on the populist shift against the socio-political and neo-economic changes in 20th century. The paper takes performance analysis approach while studying the productions and also trying address the debates around the idea of 'Popular'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular singer-songwriter-composer Bhupen Hazarika has exerted enormous influence in shaping the aesthetics of contemporary Assamese popular music. As an artist and public intellectual who often engaged with contemporary political questions, his songs have come to be regarded as a distilled expression of Assamese linguistic-national identity in postcolonial India. This paper deals with his entry into the Hindi music market in the mid-1990s, with songs for films and two music albums. Specifically, it maps the transformation of the Bhupen persona through this period as a conjuncture overdetermined by two relatively autonomous logics – first, the emerging cassette culture of the 1980s and its effects on the market for popular music; and second, the articulation of linguistic national identity in the wake of the Assam Movement (1979–85). The paper begins by showing how Bhupen's foray into Hindi music tied together the economics of bringing a regional star into the Hindi market with the ongoing reconstitution of linguistic-national identity in the post-liberalisation Indian ideology. Then, through a reading of his live performances and the Bhupen-related fan literature appearing at the time, it looks at how these ventures came to be seen by his Assamese fans, to argue that the Bhupen persona here becomes an ambivalent figure through which the internal schisms within Assamese national identity came to be articulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stereotyping of the Miya Muslims as "illegal immigrants" is an everyday phenomenon in Assam, a state in the north eastern part of India. This paper seeks to understand this phenomenon in the context of British colonial politics and the history of migration in this region. The acrimonious question of citizenship is raised from time to time, especially in the course of political debates that attempt to identify "illegal citizens". This entails a dominant politics of aesthetics in the making of the unwanted or "doubtful Bangladeshis". This paper explores the construction of "doubtful Bangladeshis", based on certain visual attributes like lungi (sarong), dari (beard) and topi (skullcap). Interrogating the nuances of everyday visual identity, the paper argues that the stereotype of a "doubtful Bangladeshi" is manufactured and reproduced through upper class and caste aesthetics manufactured by Assamese nationalism, framed within a radicalized discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a new and original perspective on the plight of migrants in India. It incorporates an in-depth and practical analysis of Indian legal policies through the lens of migrant and refugee rights. In examining the extra-legal provisions operating in two of India's borderland states--Assam and Jammu & Kashmir--I show how special legal exemptions in Indian law inherently undermine efforts to protect migrant rights. I argue that these extraordinary laws hinder pathways to justice in three distinct ways: by circumventing international principles of non-refoulement; challenging the jurisdiction of India's Supreme Court; and delegitimising migrant-friendly laws. In highlighting an often overlooked aspect of migrants' rights issues, this paper brings the human element of India's regional border disputes and related legal mechanisms to the fore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper articulates the issue of ethnicity and identity formation among the Misings of Assam. It navigates the life graph of the community and unearthed the subtlety involved in their identity formation, articulation and assertion. The nuances involved in their identity formation and the subsequent intra-community ethnic fragmentation reflect the fact that the case does not purely fit into a singular theoretical framework of either 'primordialism' or 'constructivism'. Rather it necessitates the call for traversing through different theoretical frameworks. On a descriptive note, the paper tends to examine the role of social, political and historical forces influencing the Mising identity narratives. Besides delineating the historical trajectories of Mising identity in different historical periods, – pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial – the study has explored the multiple processes of identity formation vis-a-vis migration, politics of (re)naming, role of middle class organisations and the vitality of script and language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines the contemporary Bangladesh–India relationship analyzing the dynamics of geopolitics centring the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA)-2019 in Assam, India. On the basis of secondary data, this paper explores the historical and geopolitical roots of volatile present and uncertain future of the non-registered people, often termed as 'illegal Bangladeshi migrants' living in Assam, portrayed by the Indian ethnocratic state sidelining India's longstanding pluralist traditions and exercises. The central argument of the study is that peddling the issue of 'illegal Bangladeshi migrants' by Indian political elites is destined to transcend the boundary infusing hostility in future into Bangladesh–India relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent developments in the evolution of 'labor history' as an academic field have injected new direction into theories of Gender, Sex and Bodies. Incidents of sexual violence and gender oppression have long been a brutal part of human history. In contemporary times, plantation societies are finally receiving critical attention as historians embark on gendered reappraisals of history, especially in countries like India. This article sets out to retrieve several accounts of sexual violence in the tea plantations of Assam during the colonial period. It also shows how the colonial masters (Sahibs) of the tea gardens have oppressed/sexualized the bodies of men/women workers in the tea gardens of Assam. An attempt is also made to reconstruct the forgotten stories of two tea-garden working-class women, Mangri Orang alias Malati Mem and Durgi Bhumij alias Durgi Mem, who were sexually abused by the European tea planters. From their objectification as sexualized bodies, the duo later showed their abilities of agency when they joined India's freedom struggle and transformed into freedom fighters. The paper analyzes the connections between oppressed/sexualized bodies of women tea plantation workers and the colonial capitalist patriarchy in the history of Assam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northeast India, a 'zipper region' that gives impetus to Southeast Asian and Himalasian studies, is marked by complexities and ambiguities. The paper examines the multiple identity construction in contemporary Assam, the central state of this region and seeks to recover the other experiences that make ethnic life-world possible while challenging the ethnocentric discourses—in academia, politics, public and social movements. Acknowledging the presence of common or possibly universal processes behind the production of such discourses, it aims to interrogate the factors that cut across socio-cultural, political-economical or ecological dimensions. It further examines the multiple discourses and narratives that makes that social possible in the region. In doing so, it locates the strategic positioning of such discourses and how they deal with Indian nation-state and beyond. This paper in essence is interested in the question of possibility of various discourses—as a question of post-history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do survivors of violence process their experiences of trauma when they continue to live in and identify the place of the attack as their home? While narrating the 1983 Nellie Massacre, survivors create an oral map that expresses the continuation of the extreme past into their present, revealing a sense of what David Lloyd calls the 'living on' of survivors of an event of collective trauma. In the narratives, collected through snowball sampling and purposive sampling during my doctoral research, topographical features such as roads, houses and open fields constantly feature in the descriptions of the massacre today to reveal a consciousness of the survivors being 'surrounded' even decades after the attack, which also indicates the survivors' sense of their political location in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2014 Lok Sabha election marks a watershed for Indian politics. The elections in the state of Assam have been marked by interethnic violence, fuelled by issues of indigeneity and ‘illegal’ migration. This paper primarily discusses the electoral result from the Kokrajhar constituency in lower Assam, the heart of Bodo politics and a hotbed for ethnic conflict. Two decades of armed struggle resulted in concessions granted to the Bodos, the largest plains tribe in Assam, in the form of a territorial council, under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian constitution. In the 2014 election, for the first time in the history of the constituency, a non-Bodo candidate won, with an impressive 51% of the vote share. The electoral outcome may be seen as a further polarization of the existing ethnic cleavage between Bodos and non-Bodos in the region. Using the theory of outbidding, it will be shown that the victory of a non-Bodo in the constituency may be seen as an outcome of a history of inter-group conflict in the region as well as intra-group rivalry among various factions of the Bodo leadership. Further, this case also illustrates that the propensity of the outbidding effect to foment inter-ethnic violence is greater in contexts where political institutions (in this case autonomous/territorial councils) encourage a singular axis of identity as a basis of mobilization. In conclusion, the paper discusses the implications of this election result for the politics of ‘ethnic homeland’ in Assam. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A growing evidence base highlights the value of high-quality early childhood education (ECE) to children's cognitive and social development. However, far less is known about how families and children, especially in developing countries, participate in ECE or how these participation patterns reflect families' thinking and decision-making. This paper utilises a mixed-methods approach to analyse longitudinal household survey and interview data (on 7336 and 180 children, respectively) from the India Early Childhood Education Impact study. Our results indicate that children's participation trajectories in the early years (age four to eight) do not reflect the age or grade norms specified by national educational policies. And, far from being linear, children's educational pathways entail considerable back and forth between home, preschool and school. The authors argue that these trajectories reflect both poor implementation of national norms as well as an inadequate understanding among both parents and service providers of how best to support young children's cognitive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the theatre experiments of Badungduppa theatre (Assam, India). This theatre group is made up of tribal 'Rabha' community actors, a director, and theatre workers, and it incorporates the forgotten aesthetics of the community into its theatre practice and actor training. Over time, the Rabha community has been exploited by the mainstream Assamese society in terms representation, development, and cultural space. Badungduppa has come to practise a form of aesthetic assertion inside a broad range of identity conflicts, and at the same time it challenges the popular idea of theatre through its own aesthetics. While reviewing these elements, this article engages in a performance analysis of the play 'Rather Rashi', which is also explored in relation to the position of the theatre group and the community it represents in the larger State of Assam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to develop a few measures or scales of entrepreneurial motives of women, given the socio-cultural factors in developing economies. Within the push–pull theory of entrepreneurial motivation, we use exploratory factor analysis with an orthogonal varimax rotation technique to examine entrepreneurial motivation, integrating it with socio-cultural beliefs. We identify five entrepreneurial motives—self-dependence, preserving handloom culture, providing monetary support, formal job environment, and work-flexibility. Within socially constructed gender roles, generic desires of women are crucial for entrepreneurial behavior. Contrary to existing findings, we found that women with a higher desire to provide monetary support to their family were found to be less likely to become micro-entrepreneurs, which can be accounted for their poor economic conditions, a significant risk-averse attitude, and credit constraints. The scales constructed could be used across cultures, especially in developing economies. Their replication should provide an understanding of why women micro-entrepreneurs tend to be concentrated in specific sectors, resulting in gender segregation. Given the context specific measurement items, scholars interested in studying socio-cultural attributes in entrepreneurial motivation can further develop and validate the multi-item constructs that distinguish women's motivations for specific activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Testing of groundwater used for drinking for arsenic has been undertaken more widely by state governments in several states of India in recent years with the support of UNICEF. Available data for five states are collated in this paper and this provides the most up-to-date picture of areas known to be affected by arsenic in groundwater in the Indian portion of the Ganges-Brahmaputra river basin. In West Bengal, water from 132,262 government installed handpumps in 8 districts has been tested and overall 25.5% of samples were found to contain arsenic at concentrations greater than 50 μ gL-1 and 57.9% at concentrations greater than 10 μ gL-1. On the banks of the Brahmaputra in Assam, to date, samples from 5,729 government handpump sources in 22 districts have been tested for arsenic. Overall, samples from 6.3% of sources were found to contain arsenic at concentrations greater than 50 μ gL-1 and 26.1% at concentrations greater than 10 μ gL-1. In Bihar, on the River Ganges upstream of West Bengal, 66,623 sources from 11 districts have been tested and water samples from 10.8% of sources were found to contain arsenic at concentrations greater than 50 μ gL-1 and 28.9% at concentrations greater than 10 μ gL-1. Upstream of Bihar in Uttar Pradesh, home of the Taj Mahal, to date water samples from 20,126 government-installed handpump sources have been tested. As a result 2.4% of the samples tested were found to contain arsenic at concentrations greater than 50 μ gL-1 and 21.5% at concentrations greater than 10 μ gL-1. Finally in one district of Jharkhand, lying on the Ganges alluvial plain between Bihar and West Bengal, 9,007 sources have been tested and water samples from 3.7% of sources were found to contain arsenic at concentrations greater than 50 μ gL-1 and 7.5% at concentrations greater than 10 μ gL-1. State governments have adopted different sampling strategies and these are described in this paper. Testing is ongoing in several states and the complete picture is yet to emerge in some areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to income through home-based activities is important for empowering disadvantaged groups of society, especially women. The present paper seeks to analyze the extent of empowerment of women engaged in the handloom sector in Assam in North Eastern India. Our study refines five empowerment indicators of economic, social, and cultural relevance, such as decision-making ability, freedom of movement, ownership of assets and income, male preference, and domestic violence. This is based on primary survey data collected from 328 married women from six districts of Assam to examine how engagement in handloom activities empowers them. Results indicate the existence of spatial variations as well as gaps in women’s empowerment. The parsimonious regression results show that age, educational attainment, income from handloom activities, and government support have had positive influences. Engagement in the handloom activities improves intra-household power relations significantly in favor of women and thereby reduces preference for males and domestic violence. The study urges that there should be better policies to facilitate women in accessing productive resources, especially financial ones. Micro-finance institutions can be encouraged to promote women’s active participation in home-based activities, which in turn should improve the overall empowerment of women. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the post-liberalization period the Indian tea industry has been facing a severe crisis. This study looks at the question of inter-generational occupational mobility among tea garden labour in Assam, against the backdrop of, on the one hand, a fall in tea auction prices, decline in exports, and closure and abandonment of tea gardens; and on the other hand, increasing labour unrest, at times leading to violent protests and confrontations, declining living standards and worsening human security in the tea gardens. On the basis of data collected through first-hand primary research in three tea gardens of upper Assam, the paper analyses limitations on the inter-generational occupational mobility of tea garden labourers. We also probe into the reasons behind the relative mobility or immobility of tea garden labourers within and outside the tea gardens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the relationship of a migrant community with the state in a borderland. The relationship between the Indian state and Chinese-origin migrants in post-colonial Assam can be characterised by two themes: control and resilience. On the one hand, the state tried to control the community through strict bureaucratic procedures. On the other hand, the Chinese community showed resilience by adhering to or negotiating with the control mechanisms. This article also seeks to understand the nationality and citizenship issues of community members, in particular the second and third generations of migrants. In this article, I argue that ambiguities of citizenship status, and the state's reluctance or negligence in resolving their citizenship issues, had grave consequences for the community as they had to struggle for their fundamental rights. This issue of ambiguous citizenship caused severe unrest in the region in the later decades, which could also have been avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is near consensus that early childhood education and care (ECEC) is essential to children's early development. A common corollary is that early learning will be pivotal to helping redress inequities in educational outcomes. We examine whether this is true among rural communities in the Indian states of Assam, Rajasthan, and Telangana. Specifically, we assess whether learning gains for the most disadvantaged are retained in comparison to more advantaged children who had lower initial learning levels. We find that lower-achieving, more advantaged children (as measured by mother's education) soon overtake higher-achieving but less advantaged children. In contrast, higher-achieving girls remain ahead of lower-achieving boys in Assam and Telangana, although they are caught up in Rajasthan. Given the differing patterns across the states, we explore the extent to which these may be shaped by their respective social and policy contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Floods are frequently occurring events in the Assam region due to the presence of the Brahmaputra River and the heavy monsoon period. An efficient and reliable methodology is utilized to prepare a GIS-based flood risk map for the Assam region, India. At the regional and administrative level, the flood hazard index (FHI), flood vulnerability index (FVI), and flood risk index (FRI) are developed using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) – analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The selected indicators define the topographical, geological, meteorological, drainage characteristics, land use land cover, and demographical features of Assam. The results show that more than 70%, 57.37%, and 50% of the total area lie in moderate to very high FHI, FVI, and FRI classes, respectively. The proposed methodology can be applied to identify high flood risk zones and to carry out effective flood risk management and mitigation strategies in vulnerable areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies on community-based conservation in India, while highlighting the results and effectiveness of conservation interventions fail to engage with the underlining social processes emerging from the interactions among conservation actors. This article demonstrates conservation as a social process in which the actors interact with each other daily. We use the notion of 'Everyday Conservation' to highlight that actors use their resources, skills and limitations to create a space where conservation processes are negotiated and shaped on an everyday basis. Using ethnographic work carried out in Assam (India), this article analyzes an Asian elephant conservation project to understand the various actors involved in the project, such as project managers, staff, local community, funding organization and forest department and their interactions, resulting in 'Everyday Conservation.' The inter-actor interactions were of varying intensity, depending upon which the actors negotiated, collaborated, or came into conflict, thereby producing conservation results embedded in contextual factors. We suggest that conservation needs rethinking and the framework of 'Everyday Conservation' can provide a fresh perspective on community-based wildlife conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1966 the Mizo National Front (MNF) instigated a separatist conflict against the Indian state. This article argues that an environment conducive for separatist insurgency was created by the early 1960s in the Mizo Hills, a direct result of problematic state- and nation- building practices. First, there was an inability to initiate a successful state-building drive to overcome deep-seated challenges bestowed by colonial rule. Second, the friction between regional and national conceptions of identity was not resolved. This argument exploits a clear research gap. Currently there is a convincing explanation for the MNF's transition towards civil war between 1961-66. Yet, explaining the structural factors which created an environment conducive for separatist conflict remains elusive. This article plugs that gap, through archive-led historical analysis. In the process, it provides wider insights for conflict dynamics in India's northeast and raises broader questions about interdisciplinary research in the subfield of intrastate conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political campaigning in Assam and the Northeast region is distinctive in India's hybrid media system. This study discusses parties and political campaigning in Assam's hybrid media environment in the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 Legislative Assembly elections. The history of the state, party system development, and the media landscape precedes a discussion of the 2019 campaign drawing on interviews with party strategiests and television journalists. Although Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were on the rise as important campaign tools in Assam and the Northeast region in 2019, traditional political advertising (posters, pamphlets), coverage of political issues in traditional media (print and television news), as well as face-to-face communication (public meetings, door-to-door canvassing and rallies) remained the most important sources of political communication between voters and parties due to substantially lower teledensity than the national average. We explore how political parties used a mix of 'advanced' and 'traditional' campaigning tools to mobilize voters to support party agendas during the 2019 Lok Sabha election and the 2021 Legislative Assembly election campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1971 when nearly ten million refugees crossed the border between East Pakistan and India following the outbreak of violence in Dacca on 25 March 1971, it would have surprised many to know that nearly fifty years later that date would be the dividing line between India's putative citizens and those it deemed 'foreigners'. This article takes a look at the immigration debate in Assam, and the protests against the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act to argue that it is the erasure of 1971 from the latter that gives rise to the backlash against it. I argue that the events of 1971 produces a moment in which both an affective border emerges against the refugees, followed soon after by an effective legal border through citizenship legislation pertinent to Assam. This article investigates the peculiarity of this moment to determine citizenship within India, its consequences and by doing so rewrites the history of 1971 back into debates about citizenship in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The threat of statelessness has the potential to be realized anew in India with the announcement of the impending National Register of Citizens (NRC). It has propelled this populous democracy once again into controversy. The importance of this announcement in conjunction with the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) cannot be overstated. We draw on the case of Assam for its potential to predict the implications and consequences of a pan-national register of citizens and the threat of detention, deportation, and large-scale rendering of statelessness for those excluded from the drafts. We stress the need for India to take incremental steps to establish transparent procedures and a clear trajectory for persons rendered stateless in situ by this state project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did the Muslims of Assam become outsiders in Assam? This essay attempts to answer this question by probing the colonial and post-colonial history of categorising people that has located Muslims outside the category of 'Assamese'. The political effort to make the Assamese into a homogenous Hindu group undoes the xanmiholi or blended humanity of Assam. By focusing on two Muslim communities—the Goriyas or Assamese Muslims and the Miyas or Muslims of East Bengali origin—this essay explores the project of making Muslims outsiders in Assam. Finally, the essay examines the inclusion of the transplanted tea-tribe communities as a possible resolution to the Muslim situation in Assam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Assam Rifles, the oldest paramilitary group in India, was formed as a defensive force to protect tea estates from tribal raiding. Following independence, the Indian government reversed British policy in the North-East frontier to extend administrative control over tribal areas that were largely neglected under colonial rule. In aid of this policy change, the government shifted the role of the Assam Rifles to an offensive counterinsurgency force. Based on primary sources, this analysis helps to demonstrate how post-colonial states co-opt colonial institutions to reflect new policies and the use of coercive force by paramilitary groups in the state-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A few small tea growers in Assam, India, shifted to organic production of tea considering the ecological and economic benefits of organic cultivation. However, lack of sufficient training, technical know-how, inadequate experience, and market access posed serious threats to sustaining their business. Amidst the difficulties, some of these growers managed to overcome the initial problems of the production of organic tea. The present study uses a mixed method, multi-site, collective case study approach to understand the situation of these growers and to analyze it within the framework of farm entrepreneurship. The organic growers displayed entrepreneurial characteristics of being innovative, risk-taking, and opportunity seeking to overcome the initial difficulties. The findings suggest that the development of entrepreneurial skills among small growers would be crucial to promoting organic cultivation in the small tea growers sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to unpack how the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016 that proposed citizenship on the basis of religious affiliation trace its past from narrative rooted in partition and idea of religious identity in determination of citizenship status in India. The act proposes, persons belonging to minority community namely Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsi and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who have either entered into India without valid travel documents or the validity of their documents have expired are eligible to apply for Indian citizenship by naturalisation in 7 years instead of existing 12 years. Building on existing scholarship, field experience and media reports this article argues proposed citizenship amendment bill that favours citizenship status for persecuted minorities defined primarily as Hindus leaving Muslims is not an attempt to redefine citizenship but reinforce logic that favours narrative of India for Hindus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that historians in post-colonial nation-states and spaces cannot offer connected histories across spaces shaped by war and the partitions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It provides examples of these hurdles from a space called ‘Assam’ in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial archive. Native scribes collaborated with colonial Britons in writing accounts that set up spaces as culturally separate and disconnected from erstwhile hegemons. The essay concludes that connected histories of pre-colonial pasts remain a dream in a post-colonial context shaped by global and local investments in mythologised spaces, governing ideals and culturally separatist institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multi-criteria analysis (MCA) approach to describe the effective utilization of geospatial techniques for disaster risk reduction at village level in Kopili River Basin (KRB) of Assam State, India is presented. The KRB is chronically flood affected due to seasonal monsoon and rise in water levels of Kopili River. Based on the MCA approach using flood hazard layer derived from the spatio-multi-temporal historic satellite data-sets (comprising of sensors from RISAT-1 SAR, Radarsat SAR and IRS AWiFS), socio-economic data (based on five census variables), infrastructure (road network) and land use vulnerabilities (cropped and uncropped areas), flood risk zones are derived. Our study elucidates that 24,837 ha of crop area spread across 95 villages in the KRB falls in high risk zone, about 39,209 ha distributed in 150 villages falls under moderate-high risk zones and remaining area spread over 162 villages is more or less unaffected. The proposed approach can be applied elsewhere in other river basins to estimate the flood risk so as to mitigate the disaster risk posed by the floods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at three iconic Assamese films, Joymoti (1935), Runumi (1953) and Maniram Dewan (1964), which have been restored in the last two decades. Using a broad definition of the term restoration, this article argues that these three restorations give us an opportunity to read against the grain of the prescriptive account of Assamese cinema produced through local film societies and critics as well as national-level film journals. The restored versions of the three films provide us with a way to deconstruct the myths of purity associated with such pioneering films and enable a critical look at the politics of language and region that are so deeply inscribed within the act of restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the framing of ‘ethnic conflict’ in Northeast India, focusing on militant groups and insurgency in the hill areas of Assam and a form of political violence known locally as ‘ethnic clashes’. The article argues that ‘ethnic clashes’ have become an institutionalized form of armed violence in the region, while ‘ethnic rivalry’ is a key diagnostic frame for conflict. As enactments and imaginaries of institutionalized violence, ‘ethnic clashes’ are a product of actors who hold stakes in representing armed political violence as a result of ‘ethnic conflict’ between rivaling tribal communities. The article looks at the representation of causes of conflict as well as the framing of acts of violence as key sites of contestation, and thus as integral aspects of the conflict. This raises questions about the feasibility of scholarly efforts to make sense of specific cases of conflict via generic categories such as the ‘ethnic conflict’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Northeast India, ethnic and religious conversions may be intimately associated. In the Assam–Meghalaya borderlands, conversions to Christianity throughout the twentieth century introduced a new factor in the interplay of spatial movements and cultural mutations, without fundamentally disrupting its basic principles. It is these complex dynamics that are described in this article through the history of three localities. Epidemics, religious conversions and cultural segmentation largely account for the present distribution of ethnicities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Tying together the different threads that explain the persistence of violent conflicts in defining the politics of Assam is a difficult proposition, more so because the analyses tend to concentrate on big episodes and rely on a causal explanation that leaves little room for understanding the layered realities that have emerged as a result of three decades of conflict. This article attempts to suture together the different levels at which expressions of violence have been manifested in contemporary political entanglements in Assam. It does so by reflecting on the repertoire of melancholic manifestations of these conflicts in everyday life. It argues that decades of engagement between rebels and the Indian state have led to emotional suffering and self-preservation, but have been sacrificed to a cynical political vocabulary that narrows the possibility of solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The partition of the Indian subcontinent not only created new state boundaries, but also forged or altered cultural identities. It left a lasting legacy in Sylhet, a Bangla-speaking, Muslim majority district of Assam, which was partitioned in July 1947. Like other partitioned groups in the subcontinent, Sylhetis too are spread across international borders and boundaries, in this case in Bangladesh as well as India. This essay shows how modern state-dictated contours of political geography more often than not create spaces of anxiety and conflict where multiple identities, mostly fluid and contested, emerge, dwell and play politics. Beginning with the colonial history of Sylhet, particularly since 1874 when the district was separated from Bengal Presidency and attached to Assam, the essay moves across 1947 to map the process by which the distinctly fused colonial Sylheti identity stood re-constructed in post-colonial India. Divided into three sections, it begins with the political history of colonial Sylhet until referendum and partition, followed by a contemporary account of the community, its middle class in particular. The third and final part of the essay attempts to map the trajectory of Sylheti identity discourse in colonial and contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two new and one known species of dorylaim nematodes are described and illustrated from Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India. Prothornenema vulvatum sp. nov. is characterized by having body 1.06–1.17 mm long; lip region cap-like, slightly rounded, offset by constriction with moderate labial and post-labial sclerotization; 10–11 μm long odontostyle; vulva a transverse slit; cuticle both anterior and posterior to vulva with two or three deep invaginations; female tail long filiform, male tail short conoid with 13 or 14 contiguous ventromedian supplements. Allodorylaimus kazirangus sp. nov. is characterized by having body 1.84–2.16 mm long; truncate, slightly offset lip region; 30 μm long odontostyle; amphids duplex; cardia short conoid, an asymmetrical ring-like structure surrounds the junction between pharyngeal base and cardia; transverse vulva; uterus characteristically long, tripartite with wide proximal portion followed by a long narrow intermediate portion with moderately sclerotized inner lining joining a wider pars dilatata distalis; short conoid tail with no sexual dimorphism and males with 13 or 14 contiguous ventromedian supplements. Thornia propinqua (Paesler, 1941) Andrássy, 1957 is redescribed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of the study is to assess the level of expectation and experience regarding the consideration of the skills relating to internal marketing in performance appraisal report while evaluating performance of human resources in Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) (AOD; Assam Oil Division), Digboi. This study also attempts to assess the level of expectation and experience regarding ideal 'post-performance-appraisal-scenario' in IOCL (AOD), Digboi. Furthermore, the study ventures to assess the level of overall satisfaction with performance appraisal system of the company as perceived by the employees, i.e. the internal customers. The study has looked into performance appraisal as a tool of human resource management through the lenses of internal marketing skills in the context of Central Public Sector Undertakings, which have very narrow base of internal Customers. This new approach has the potential to orient the Public Sector Undertakings to the market-driven economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian Army, a force trained primarily for conventional warfare, has been engaged in internal counter-insurgency operations since the 1950s. Despite such a long innings on a counter-insurgency mode, little attention has been accorded within military circles to doctrinal innovation for waging sub-conventional warfare in India's democratic political context. At best, the Army continues to view counter-insurgency duty as secondary to its primary duty of defending India from external conventional threats. By conceptualizing a counter-insurgency strategy of 'trust and nurture', this article aims to fill this critical doctrinal gap in India's military policy. The author argues that a counter-insurgency strategy of 'trust and nurture' based on democratic political culture, measured military methods, special counter-insurgency forces, local social and cultural awareness and an integrative nation-building approach will result in positive handling of India's internal security problems. The author utilizes India's counter-insurgency experiences in Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, and Operation 'Sadhbhavana' in Jammu and Kashmir as illustrative empirical indicants in order to validate the 'trust and nurture' strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]