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Inter-ethnic violence and counter-violence have been at the center of writings on identity politics among ethnic groups in India's Northeast. Yet, the existing literature on these aspects in India, especially in the Northeast region, has missed out on a very significant dimension. Very few studies have focused on the use of oral narratives and folklores as important methods that contribute to identity politics and conflict transformation among ethnic groups. Preliminary research suggests that ethnic violence in Northeast India exhibits variations in terms of the patterns of violence and state responses that shape the outcome of the conflicts. Oral narratives are the repositories of cultural reproduction of marginalized communities and serve as important tools that enable these communities to reclaim their identity, social justice and shape their agency. The aim of the paper is, therefore, to examine how and to what extent oral traditions and narratives in the form of folklore help mobilize marginalized ethnic groups in conflict zones in India's Northeast. The paper uses the case study of the historically marginalized Bodo ethnic group to examine the linkages between folklore, identity construction, mobilization and peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper seeks to understand the socio-political dimension of the political changes in Assam vis-a-vis "regionalism" and its contestations. The Changing contours of regionalism in Assam reflect its distinct character marked by the simultaneous articulation of regional, sub-regional and national identity in a complex socio-ethnic and historical context. The recent political trajectory of Assam bears testimony to the dual challenges facing the forces of regionalism; the presence of sub-regional ethnic identity articulation and the appropriation of regional space and issues by the national parties. Further, the shifting allegiance of ethnic identity-based parties to the national parties is critical to understand the dynamics of regionalism in Assam. Socio-political developments subsequent to the rise of BJP post-2014 provide an interesting landscape to comprehend the complexities inherent in understanding regionalism in contemporary Assam. On a contextual note, the paper also locates the question of regionalism in the ongoing debates of NRC and CAA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There appears to be a globally unifying discourse that suggests Muslim communities are not supportive of girls' education12. This paper aims to destabilize such a discourse by inserting the narratives of Muslim parents pursuing girls' education in Assam's Nagaon district. By paying attention to the concepts of bhal suwali (good girlhood) and bhal ghor (good family) articulated by parents in my study, this paper connects the performances of certain types of gender practices with the pursuit of class aspirations. It shows that good girlhood works as symbolic capital that helps Muslim parents to culturally authorize their daughters as legitimate actors in the field of education, while legitimizing themselves as good family. This paper draws attention to three practices of respectable femininity through which good girlhoods are enacted in the field of education, namely: negotiating poverty respectably, prioritizing gendered discipline, and merging career aspirations with marital prospects. [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 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]

Copyright of Gender & Development is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among the Dimasas (of Assam and Nagaland) in Northeastern India. This Indigenous group has a system of double descent which places them separately from the other ethnic groups in the Indian subcontinent. In double descent, lineages are drawn through both the paternal and maternal lines of descent. The existing literature suggests that studies on double descent have mostly focused on ethnic groups in Africa, while not much research has been done on Dimasas or other Indigenous groups with double descent in the region. The paper attempts to fill the gap in South Asian anthropological literature on kinship discourses by focusing on the Dimasas of Northeast India. Further, by taking gender as an analytical tool, the paper attempts to explore the complex cultural contours of the double descent system, which intricately gets subsumed within the patriarchal setup in Dimasa society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings light to the existing practice of cataloging in the college libraries of Assam in terms of utilizing the MARC 21 standard and its structure, i.e., the tags, subfield codes, and indicators. Catalog records from six college libraries are collected and a survey is conducted to understand the local users' information requirements for the catalog. Places, where libraries have scope to improve and which divisions of tags could be more helpful for them in information retrieval, are identified and suggested. This study fulfilled the need for local-level assessment of the catalogs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to locate the violence perpetrated on the bodies of the coolies in colonial Assam. The paper observes that the existing historiography on tea plantations in colonial Assam restricts corporeal violence on the coolies within the boundaries of the plantation estates and does not talk about the permeation of such violence to spaces and coolies totally outside of the plantation production process. This paper, with the evidence from a case from nineteenth-century Assam, extends the limits of corporeal violence on the coolies beyond the physical setup of the plantations. The paper proposes that histories of corporeal violence on labour in the colonial era need to look beyond the peripheries of the plantations and towards the social regimes of power under colonialism. The paper demonstrates the complicit character of the state and newly landed and moneyed native classes in the colony, which aggravated the magnitudes of violence on labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bovine has been the cause of conflict in the Indian sub-continent for the past few centuries owing to religious and cultural sentiments associated with it. This apparent irreconcilable conflict is localised in the binary of religious mannerism espoused by the religious groups in northern India, which is known as India's cow belt. Such contradictions have caused bitter riots and conflicts resulting in social unrest in mainland India with spiralling effects spilling over to other regions. Although this issue has become a determiner in controlling electoral politics in some Indian states that affected the rise in Hindutva politics, in the case of Assam both cow-politics and Hindutva sentiments have had little effect. This paper proposes to examine this hypothesis by analysing Himanshu Prasad Das' Assamese feature film Goru (2021) through the lens of cultural nationalism. A study of the film within the framework of Assamese popular culture shall help us understand the implication behind the rejection of Hindutva ideology in this peripheral region. The primary focus of this paper is to read how cow politics and Hindutva have failed to make inroads in Assam's composite culture despite Bharatiya Janata Party's thumping victory in Assembly polls in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the movement of "item numbers" from mainstream Bollywood culture to the regional culture of Assam. Given the level of eroticism that is part of such songs, the paper will specifically explore the means of surveillance and control that these "non-normative" cultural texts are subjected to within a local spatial context. By deconstructing this inter-cultural movement of performance, the paper attempts to reveal whether and how cultural appropriation of the "mainstream" by the "periphery" functions to keep the power dynamics of gender and national/sub-national identities intact. Based on visual methodology and textual analysis of Assamese item songs and cringe pop songs, the paper will theorize the regulation of bodies in these spaces. Understanding the renewed relationship between music and bodies in a new context will situate the gendered nature of body-space politics through item numbers. While, on the one hand, the dancing body has the capability to subvert gender norms, on the other hand, the same dancing body is often controlled through hyper-nationalist imaginations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines indigenous epistemologies and the ways in which oral/verbal forms contribute to the archive of a people. By placing the central focus on the 66þ communities who identify under the exonym “Naga” situated across Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, and parts of Arunachal in the north- eastern part of India, the essay hopes to study emerging literature of the Nagas who are striving to find commonality between the language of speech and the language of writing. [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]

In recent times many indigenous Muslim groups in Assam have asserted their ethnic identities as Deshi, Goriya, Moriya by distancing themselves from the immigrant Miya Muslims. In this regard, they have received much patronage from the current BJP government. These developments have happened in the background of the consolidation of Hindutva in Assam and the consequent otherization of the Muslim community as a whole. This paper has two objectives: First, it tries to understand why a separate identity consciousness among indigenous Muslims have emerged. Secondly, it goes on to explore as to why indigenous Muslims in recent times have offered political support to the BJP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Assam, India, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) population enumeration process excluded about two million people from the final list. The NRC dropouts referred to in this study as 'paused citizens' are locked in a condition that is legally and socially ambiguous, hovering between citizens and stateless. This essay seeks to highlight the experiences of 'paused citizens' who have been thrown into this opaque and paralysing situation as they attempt to manage their precarious status, illustrate the tangled web of citizenship regimes, and the binary distinctions between inclusion and exclusion that are mediated by documents. A closer examination also reveals how the systems of power and control operate and how people trapped in time alternate between feelings of purposeful waiting and senseless stasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the ingression of Vaishnavism in the two states of Assam and Manipur, several changes were observed in the social and cultural arena. Vaishnavism was not just a religion but became an integral part of the lives of the people of the two states. This paper examines how Vaishnavism influenced people and culture in the two states. How dance, drama and music play an active role in proselytising the Vaishnavite faith, and how they manifested differently in both the states. Consequently, Sattriya (pronounced as Xattriya) and Manipuri dances, belonging to the two states respectively, evolved as Indian Classical dance forms in the later years as products of Vaishnavism, retaining their value in ritual and performance. [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]

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]

The experiences of insurgency and counter-insurgency in Northeast region of India have left behind some of the brutal memories of violence. This paper intends to explain how fear and suspicion in societies under counter-insurgency build up the narrative of silence and secrecy when the state and the security forces allegedly commit excesses against civilians. For this, the paper revisits the 'secret killings' of the family members, close aides, and sympathizers of the insurgent organization United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) between 1998 and 2001 in Assam. Personal narratives question the official statistics of deaths and explore the conditions under which silence is manufactured in cases of violence which do not qualify for legal evidence. The motivation then is to disrupt the silence in absence of closure to those affected. From interviews conducted with sixty individuals representing multiple backgrounds, violence and power emerge to be integral in understanding secret killings in Assam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gender & Development is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

The article discusses various reports within the issue on topics, including the refugee crisis in Assam, India following the military crackdown by the Pakistan army in Dhaka in 1971 and the distinction between citizens and illegal migrants in the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of 2019.

The Assam Movement (1979–1985) has been a turning point in the politics of Assam in India that has raised the question of identity and at the same time triggered the struggle to self-determination by the insurgent organization United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). This paper aims to take identity as the point of departure to mark the transition of women's role from the Assam Movement into their underground roles in ULFA. In such narratives of hero-making and patriotism, under-representation of women's strategic involvement and self-sacrifices in the insurgent outfit often leaves the lives of the women members misrepresented and fails to highlight the in-betweens of life and death. This paper pushes the idea of identity assertion in Northeast India beyond citizenship and questions the way women's presence in the insurgent organization gets narrated, documented, and established. Oral histories are crucial sources of data for this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper attempts to understand the genealogy of certain 'spatial' and conceptual dichotomies and categories pertaining to India's North East. Representation of the geography, climate and simultaneously the dwellers of this space since middle of nineteenth century still reverberates in contemporary knowledge production about the region. These discursive practices for more than two and a half century had been (re)organizing and inscribing space, disciplining subjectivity. This problematic of representation was selectively incorporated into the biography of the 'modern nation state' in India that further accentuated the dichotomies and categories. The colonial dichotomy of 'nature/culture' staged, performed and articulated by the practices of representation enacted geographically determined social relations. These practices of representation operate not only at the level of discourse but also at the cultural, political, geographical and psychological domains. It would be crucial not only to understand the long sequence of representation but also to understand the material effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically low average pass rate has been a perennial challenge for the universities and provincialised colleges in the North-Eastern states of India (Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh). Pass rate refers to the proportion of students promoted from one semester to the next and also the proportion of students who pass the final examination to be a graduate. The paper attempts to trace the key parameters for quality improvement for higher education in the region and subsequently augment the pass rate. An inductive content analysis was conducted based on focus group interviews at various levels at Assam University, Silchar and its affiliated provincialised colleges. The four broad categories thus identified (academic, administrative, socio-economic and placement issues) were subjected to Pareto 80-20 principle to identify the issues that are to be given priority for evolving the system. The study would help the administrators to measure the quality of higher education system in a hostile environment characterised by adverse topography, political disturbances, skewed distribution of income, widespread poverty and lack of literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following reclamation of ethnic identity amid the gnawing scarcities, Assamese ethnic movement germinated in the 1950s, manifested in the form of language and anti-migrants agitations. It became more apparent in the early 1960s. Despite the Assam accord, signed in 1985, certain section of the society with radical leanings picked up arms for a mission of secession from India. Unfortunately, State’s intervention seemingly failed to contain armed conflict, rather convoluted the situation and gave rise to hybrid ethnic identities. In this manner, since the 2000s, the entire state is engulfed in internal feuds. How have the Assamese movements shifted from the socio-cultural to armed struggle for secession and then to internal feuds, and why has the State failed in curbing them are discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining the connections between identity and memory, I explore the emergence of a new community known as Tai-Ahom in the heterogeneously fluid northeastern Indian state of Assam. My focus is on the community's struggle to unravel the past; particularly their attempts to memorialize a new history that is represented as authentically and uniquely Tai-Ahom. The paper also examines the Tai-Ahoms' often competing and contradictory claims of seeking legitimation from the national government of India while looking beyond to Thailand as the foundation of their historical ancestry. Finally, the paper demonstrates how the Luit river provides the gluing metaphor for the Tai-Ahoms to imagine a mythical history and homeland in Ujjani Aaham. Tai-Ahom identity, like the river, is fluid, defying strict categorization, being neither an end product of 'imagination' nor a fixed 'national reality.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The release of the final draft of the National Register of Citizen for the Indian state of Assam has created anxiety among more than four million people whose names are missing. It is not clear what will happen to those whose names may not appear in the final list, which is in the process. Historically, the population movement in the region started centuries back when India was under the British rule. In 1947, the British India was partitioned between India and Pakistan, and in 1971 the West and East Pakistan separated, and Bangladesh was born. Despite such changes in the territorial and political sovereignty, immigration and population movement in the India's northeast from across the International border continues for many reasons, though the Bangladesh government does not accept it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the importance of rice-beer (zao) amongst the Zeme Nagas of Assam. Colonial officials and Christian missionaries brought new ideas into Zeme social and cultural practices, quite different from their own. One way to frame this interaction is to examine the tension between world-views held by indigenous religions and Christianity, and what this tension represents for the Zeme. I aim to demonstrate how the terms ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ can be understood by examining the position of rice-beer in Zeme society. I will show how these debates were influenced by nineteenth-century Victorian interlocutors, and equally how local discourses have appropriated these colonial concepts as a point of leverage for internal social dynamics in contemporary times. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Integrated effects of fly ash (FA), farmyard manure (FYM), and chemical fertilizers recommended dose of fertilizer (RDF) on the performance of rice (Oryza sativa L.) and their residual effect on rapeseed (Brassica camprestris L. vartoria) were studied for two years in loamy acidic inceptisol of Assam, India. The FA was generated from a bituminous and lignite coal-based captive thermal power plant of Hindustan Paper Corporation Ltd (HPCL), Assam. Rice yields were higher when FA, FYM, and RDF were used collectively vis-à-vis sole application of RDF reflected also in rapeseed under residual effect . FA effect on mean rice equivalent yield of the rice–rapeseed system was the highest (24.4%) under integrated application. Nickel (Ni) and cadmium (Cd) contents in rice decreased with increasing FA, while arsenic (As) was just the opposite. Integration of FA, FYM, and RDF was effective in lowering Ni, Cd, and As in rice compared to 100% RDF alone or together with FA. The residual effect on rapeseed was similar for Ni and As while the Cd content increased. Blending of FA, FYM, and RDF also positively altered the residual soil pH, organic carbon (C), and nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK). Thus, FA can be an integral component of integrated plant nutrition system (IPNS) in augmenting crop yield and residual benefits in loamy acid inceptisol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The success of democratic institutions at the grassroots level in allocating public benefits to the target groups depends on people’s political participation. Applying logistic regression, ordinary least squares (OLS), and the Heckman model based on a data set collected from 30 panchayats from three districts of Assam (India), this article addresses three questions: (a) who participates? (b) who gets the public benefits? and (c) whether participants get more benefits. The results suggest no overwhelming elite capture and clientalization, and contributes to the current debate on the association between democracy and development by way of establishing that democracy at the grassroots does, indeed, deliver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the distribution of sulfur in different lithotypes in Assam coal is reported and an attempt is made for organic desulfurization of Assam coal by directly using original run-of-mine coal as well as by taking its sulfur-rich lithotypes, using sequential solvent extraction to obtain cleaner fuel. More than 80% organic sulfur was found to have been removed by this treatment. The vitrinite content of the coal seemed to play no significant role on the organic desulfurization of the coal and sulfur-rich lithotypes. Successive sequential extraction of coal may help in desulfurization of high sulfur coals to obtain cleaner fuels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We advance a framework for analysis of democratic contestation in the policy and media spheres, in the context of the interest group theory and the stages of public policy evolution, to assess whether the contestation process favors some stakeholders over others in India, with a model that predicts pro- or anti-dam policy discourses in the news. There is evidence from participation in environmental movements, especially in the case of anti-dam protest groups, in the policy sphere that play a role in the contestation of scientific knowledge. Our core concern is to understand whether representation of the voices of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and protest groups in the news media affects public policy on controversial mega-projects such as the building of a mega-dam. Our focus is on the timely and critically important case of the Lower Subansiri Hydro Electric Project (LSHEP), a mega-dam on the border of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, the highest earthquake zoned states through which runs the mighty Brahmaputra river. The mega-dam construction was suspended after widespread protests led by social and environmental activists in 2010–11. However, the construction resumed after the election of the BJP-led national government in 2014 and in the state of Assam in 2016. The revival precipitated a new phase of democratic contestation in the policy sphere in 2015–17 which is modeled here, based on content analysis of news reporting. We find that in the policy sphere, the voices of anti-dam activists did not succeed in fostering an anti-dam frame in the news media in the form of news stories opposing the dam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sampling procedure involving repeated application of double sampling for stratification on several successive occasions is considered. The formulae for the estimate of the mean on any current occasion and its variance are obtained. The determination of optimum allocation of available resources and the extension of the procedures for uni-stage sampling, to multi-stage sampling, are briefly indicated. The use of the design, suggested in this paper, is illustrated by its application to a recently conducted survey for estimation of coconut production in the State of Assam. [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]

This essay examines the complex intertwining of colonial and postcolonial subjectivities in the making of memories about the colonial past. The essay uses literature and cinema as archive and intersubjectivity as the lens to argue that memories of the Empire are culled in the complex intersection of the subjective experiences of the individual and a community's collective perceptions of the past and the present. Accordingly, the essay calls for due diligence to the immediate postcolonial context in which the colonial memory project is ordained. At a more elementary level, the essay argues that the reduction of colonial experiences to a conflictual negation of the imperialist project impairs our understanding of the myriad factors mediating the colonial encounter. The polysemy of colonial memories reflects the multiplicity of intersubjective exchanges within a community. In this case, the Assamese short story, 'Chameli Memsaab', written by Nirode Choudhury, and describing the affection of a benign planter sahib for Chameli, a coolie woman, becomes our focal point for entry into the neglected domain of Assamese literary representations of the European planter, that put a gloss on the dark side of Plantation abuses in Assam, to project the plantation economy as a desirable addendum to the Raj. Our survey of short stories written in Assamese, in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, reveal a profoundly ambivalent attitude towards the unequal sexual exchange between the European sahib and the coolie woman, which we call 'the intimate economy of tea' in Assam, and which, as the coercive underside of the economy, denuded the production relations on the plantations of their putatively capitalist character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article seeks to understand how the deepening logic of neoliberal governmentality transforms the lives, labour and access to resources such as land, for women in West Karbi Anglong, Assam, Northeast India. It explores new forms of social (in)equality and mobility in gender relations and community dynamics in Sixth Schedule districts, tracing the evolving conjuncture between community, state and the market. We approach this question in two ways: first, how the neoliberal market rationality reconstitutes and is reconstituted by existing customs of inheritance, patterns of labour, notions of community and belonging, and gender relations; second, the strategies that women adopt in a context where forms of women's work and modes of access to resources such as land are going through rapid changes. The aim is to encourage critical reflections on women's access/rights to land and their labour in the Sixth Schedule areas, and what changes with the neoliberal turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article leverages data from an oft-overlooked case of rebel governance – India's United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) – to demonstrate the importance of de-centring territorial control as a prerequisite for rebel governance. ULFA neither controlled territory nor developed formalised bureaucratic institutions, yet its 'parallel government' held considerable sway over Assamese public life during 1985–1990, underpinned by its social embeddedness, influence upon media discourse and crucially its subversion of state structures, until its ability to limit state repression collapsed. The rise and fall of ULFA's rebel governance illustrates the hybrid socio-political terrain upon which rebel governance is often laid. [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]

Oil recovery potential of surfactant flooding is restricted due to the inability of single surfactant to achieve ultra-low interfacial tension (IFT) and strong water-wet conditions. To overcome these limitations, surfactant mixtures are employed to achieve the desired enhanced oil recovery (EOR) properties. In this study, the efficacy of a combined bio and synthetic surfactants system as a potential means of enhancing oil recovery was examined. The surface, interfacial, and wettability alteration properties of biosurfactant, synthetic surfactant, glycerol, and their combined mixture were investigated. The results revealed that the combined surfactant system had a more pronounced effect on oil-water IFT and wettability alteration compared to the individual solutions separately. Ultralow IFT (0.005 mN/m) was obtainable using the combined surfactant system. The core flooding experiments conducted on Gray Berea sandstone cores using Assam crude oil showed that an additional 15–20% of original oil in place (OOIP) could be recovered with the combined surfactant system. Additionally, simulation studies showed that on a field-scale incremental oil recovery of 12–15% OOIP could achieve depending on the injection mode. Thus, the study revealed that through the unique combination of bio and synthetic surfactants with glycerol, a competent EOR fluid could be developed. [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]

Railway development is an important component of sustainable transportation systems but also affects wildlife habitats worldwide. Here, we assess spatiotemporal patterns of elephant-train collisions and mortalities within the state of Assam, India, and relate them to spatial and temporal land cover change (LCC) from 1988 to 2018. The results indicate that an extension of railways into forested landscapes is associated with large-scale LCC and increased elephant-train collisions and mortality. Prior to 1997, when the railway system used narrower gauge rails, elephant deaths from collisions occurred at a rate of one or two per year. After 1997, when the system was converted to larger gauge rails, elephant deaths increased starkly and now occur at a rate approaching ten per year. While the rail gauges were being converted, the landscape around the Habaipur-Diphu railway line saw a sevenfold increase in annual net loss of dense forest. The transition from forest to croplands was the most dominant process of deforestation and forest fragmentation during the postconversion period. Although elephant-train collisions are strongly associated with the land use transitions shown here, conservation and remediation measures can help to stem further declines in forest habitats and promote safe movement by elephants between resource patches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tea is by and large a highly penetrated product in south India. Hence the adulteration risk in tea dust gets hiked in the markets. We constructed a standard database using plant plastid markers (rbcL, matK, trnH-psbA, rpoC, rpoB, ycf 1) and nuclear (ITS2) locus from prominent south Indian tea clones representing Assam, China, and Cambod varieties. These barcodes were used as reference algorithm to investigate the authenticity of 10 sampled commercial tea dust by recovering its DNA barcodes using rbcL, matK, and ITS2 loci. PCR amplification success, sequencing efficiency, genetic polymorphisms, BLAST search, and phylogenetic analysis were performed to enhance genotypic information on south tea cultivars and in authenticating the commercial samples of Camellia sinensis. Findings suggest that the chloroplast and nuclear loci can identify tea plant at the genus and varietal level respectively and rbcL as the potential marker for detecting plant-based admixtures coupled with TA cloning after DNA barcoding. [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]

In this article, we scrutinise the everyday challenges for street vendors, the various facets of representation, the everyday practices of civic authorities, and the existing protective measures for street vendors and their implementation in Guwahati City, Assam. Street vendors in Guwahati are deprived of their legal protection and subjected to frequent harassment, eviction and confiscation of merchandise. Vendors are often forced to take refuge in illegal activities like bribery, either cash or kind, to sustain their business. We examine how municipal officials, police and collection intermediaries deal with these illicit and corrupt practices. We also examine the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act 2014 as a means for protecting the rights of the street vendors in India and progress in the implementation of this Act in Guwahati. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kaziranga National Park (KNP), a World Heritage Site in the state of Assam, India, represents an area of unique importance to global rhinoceros conservation. It is home to the world's largest population of the famous black Asiatic one-horned rhinoceros, which remains an endangered species, and one that has been closely threatened with extinction. This article explores the conservation strategies for the great endangered Indian one-horned rhinoceros in Kaziranga by situating it in a regional spectrum of conservation and regimes of ecological governance. It considers the crucial issue of rhinoceros poaching and the current anti-poaching mechanisms in KNP in the light of global wildlife conservation efforts and domestic anti-poaching mechanisms in India. It further identifies the gaps between policy formulation and implementation of conservation strategies regarding the rhinoceros of KNP, a species that holds a unique geopolitical importance, both in the global context of the conservation of endangered species generally, and more locally as the national symbol of the state of Assam, India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]