Northeast migrants in Delhi

The area generated tremendous interest among the anthropologists during and after the British imperial rule. The exotic land, people and culture were the focus of these early works which was also responsible for the creation of ‘Northeast Stereotypes’! The other genre of work that has dominated the Northeast in recent days is related to Development, Migration, Environment, Conflict and Violence. Most of these studies are regional and attempts to link to other spaces outside the region have been dominated by the core periphery discourses on development and migration. In fact, migration into the region from across the border, both national and international, has been the core issue overlapping all other concerns like development, resource exploitation, conflict and violence. The present volume under review is the first detailed exploration of the migrants from the region to other parts of India and therefore its significance and relevance. More importantly, as the author highlights, it is an insider’s perspective.

The volume under consideration is an ethnographic study of northeast migrants in Delhi and intends to provide insights into the changes taking place in the Northeast, the Indian cities, places of ethnic minorities in the modern Indian cities and the question of their identity and citizenship in contemporary India. It is also the story of survival and the invasion of the mainland by the frontier. The critical documentation of the recent migration flows from the Northeast provides rich insights into the dynamics of changes both in the Northeast and rapidly globalizing Indian cities. The author believes that the Indian case will also be able to provide insight which has ‘implications for studying ethnic minorities throughout globalizing Asia’.

Given the limitation of the structured questionnaire and quantification techniques, the author has instead adopted ethnographic approach to conduct the study. The principle tools have been participant observation, interviews and conversations. The limitation of statistical data, availability and reliability, both government and non government on Northeast migrants also made the ethnographic approach more preferable. The ethnographic surveys have been conducted both in the area of origin, Northeast and the area of destination, Delhi, which can be considered innovative. In Delhi, the Northeast neighborhood clusters, places of work and study have been surveyed and in the Northeast the approach has been to track down friends, their families and contacts in different Northeastern states. In both the places key informants and their leads have been useful. But more importantly the author has lived and worked the experience of the Northeastern migrants by eating, living, travelling and shopping with them, sharing their joy and sorrow. Both male and female migrants of working and studying age group are the respondents. Since the author is “telling the story from the perspective of Northeast migrants” he has not interviewed the employers, landlords and other actors in Delhi who cross and play important role in the lives of the migrants in Delhi. In exploring the topic and evolving the methodology including the contacts, the author has benefited from his deep engagement with the Northeastern issues and people since 2003, though the intense fieldwork for the present book only started in 2009. The long association and engagement is reflected in the in-depth understanding of the issues including the history, society, culture, development, violence and politics of Northeast.

The book contains seven chapters including the introduction and the conclusion. The chapter titles are simple but provocative at times. The introductory chapter gives the background of the Northeast, the history of the tribes, the development dichotomies the emergence of the conflict and the author’s interest, engagement with the Northeast, the evolution of the idea for the book and the insights into the ethnographic methodology followed in the study.

‘Leaving the Northeast’ documents the migration moment. The chapter details out the factors responsible for out-migration from the frontier of which the following are considered important: refuge due to violence and conflict, livelihoods search, changing aspirations, changing attitudes towards India, labour requirement in the flexible labour markets of urban India and increasing connectivity due to improved infrastructure and IT. The second chapter ‘Coming to Delhi’ elaborates and consolidates the migration story of the Northeastern people to Delhi. Both the push and pull factors are highlighted along with the inter-generational differences in the migration flows from the Northeast. For the young generation, India’s neoliberal urban labour markets provide an opportunity to escape and navigate violence in the Northeast, which was not possible for their parents. In some ways the migration is a story of distress and hope and also an opportunity to engage with the so-called mainstream India and Indian citizenship. Besides work, educational opportunity has been highlighted as one of the main reason for the Northeast migrants to come to Delhi. Migration for education preceded the recent trends for employment. The author rightly highlights that education in the universities of Delhi provided the migrants to ‘learn’ the tools in Indian state craft and explore opportunities to get selected in the Indian Bureaucracy.

Chapters four, five and six concentrate on the Northeasterners experience of Delhi with emphasis on racism, gender relations and place making. These three chapters are the essence of the book and provide insight into encounters, assertions and changes among the migrant community. Chapter four provocatively titled ‘Backward, Head-Hunter, Sexy, Chinky’ narrates the racism encountered by the Northeasterns in Delhi, India’s capital and global city through racial stereotypes, discrimination, harassment and violence. It is also an indictment of existing racial practices and double standards among the mainland Indians, especially towards the ethnic minorities from the Northeast. Racial discrimination and profiling extends not only in the streets and among the illiterate but also in the work place, neighbourhoods and sometimes educational institutions. The fact that the Northeast migrants have a better education, are more urbane and cosmopolitan, with high demand in the Neoliberal labour market, has not helped them in overcoming the race discrimination they encounter in urban India.

The changing gender relations among the migrants is captured in ‘Provincial Men, Worldly Women’. The chapter emphasizes the divergent experiences of men and women and the emergence of gender identities and fractures among the migrants. Despite the Northeast society being liberal and women occupying higher social status with better education than in other parts of India, the author highlights that male dominance is embedded in the tradition and is still experienced by women in their day to day lives. However, migration outside the region, especially in the urban areas, provides an opportunity to challenge and contest traditional male dominance when women become economically empowered because of more opportunities for jobs than men. Such changes create conflict and tension amongst the migrants and have implications on gender relations, not only in Delhi, but also in the frontier.

One of the most interesting chapters is about ‘Place making in the City’ by the migrants, which captures the “tactics, practices, politics and objects” that are important for place making in Delhi. Despite facing the odds in the lived experience the Northeasterners still contest and navigate the hurdles to create their social and physical space in various locations in Delhi. These places are marginal, but it is where the “migrants live, pray, socialize, celebrate and establish everyday patterns and rituals”. In some way the place making strategy is also a reflection of assertion and invasion of the centre by the frontier, reflecting their empowerment to contest and navigate the barriers. This process is also reflected in the increasing participation of the Northeasterners in the politics and protest in some of the landmark public spaces in Delhi. They are leaving imprints on the spaces and becoming more visible in the process. This chapter also discusses how borrowed ‘Cosmopolitanism’ from East Asian cultures like Korea forms an important part of ethnic identity, which helps migrants to keep their distinctiveness from the main stream and contest derogatory stereotypes.

Based on the Northeastern migrant experience in Delhi the concluding chapter explores possibilities for future research in three thematic areas in Asia’s frontier a) the relationship between the mainland citizenship and the frontier, which the author calls “inward pull of citizenship”; b) urban experiences of the ethnic minorities especially in the context of Asian countries; and c) alternative cosmopolitanism whereby communities relate with people outside the national boundaries to draw distinctness from within. These themes are relevant at present given the tremendous transformation taking place in Asia through rapid urbanization and gradual integration of the frontier society and economy in the core.

On the whole the book provides a very innovative perspective on relation between the frontier and the post colonial city in the emerging economy. Its interesting perspective on the idea of the frontier forces us to question the exotic ‘ideal’ types. The frontier today is much closer with the mainland than ever before, necessitating new forms and modes of engagement between the two. Though unequal, the new realities are also helping the frontiers to position and secure their place and visibility in the mainstream. This process is helping the frontier-mainland dichotomies to dilute and require innovative non-binary research approaches to understand the emergence of new relationship between the two. This, I think is a major achievement of the book under review.

However, the following concerns could have been addressed better. One of the most important problems, though the author has clarified, is not getting the perspective of non-Northeast actors who daily and directly interface with the migrants in Delhi. A postmodern ethnographic perspective could have been much better addressed by providing the perspective not only from the ‘insider’ but also the ‘outsider’. Such an approach could have been objective and much more holistic in positioning the migrants’ story in the city. Triangulating and cross verification of information is important in ethnographic studies. Otherwise it only provides the victims perspective, which at times may be emotional and subjective, especially for the people from the Northeast who have always seen themselves, either real or perceived, at the mercy of the Indian state. Locating people, place and culture is a dynamic process between opposite forces and processes. Vantage points differ and for a theme that cuts across multiple perspectives it is important to have multiple narratives and vantage points. The methodology also falls short because it fails to provide the number and representativeness of the case study. Given the diversity of the Northeast migrants - ethnicity, tribe, age, gender - it becomes difficult to understand if the author has improvised the methodology to capture the diversity. There is a danger in this for the research to simplify and become general and lose objectivity and specificity.

While reading through the book sometimes one gets an impression that the author has lost objectivity by narrating only the perspectives of the migrants and their sufferings. It appears that in an attempt to provide the insider’s story the author himself has become an ‘insider’ and lost sight of objectivity. The view of the Indian state and the mainstream realities of politics and nation building in the frontier have been omitted despite the fact that the author acknowledges the importance of citizenship in the life of the migrant in the city. One wonders why that citizenship should not be important even in the frontier. Contradictions in situating the citizenship issue is a weakness of the book. After reading through the book one gets a feeling that all Northeasterners migrants in Delhi are in a perpetual and pathetic state of suffering, and that they have no hope but to cling to their roots and get back to the frontier to redeem their self esteem. This I feel is a very partial explanation, mainly because the case studies have ignored the positive stories of the migrant community. Despite the odds there are a number of migrants who have succeeded in establishing themselves in the mainstream. The positive stories of Northeast migrants could have portrayed a different reality and that could have also helped in building up a much balanced discourse on the migrant’s ethnography. The present narration only highlights the helplessness of the frontier and the migrants suffering in eternity. History and other migration studies and stories from all over the world indicate that all migrants suffer, but they also succeed in establishing themselves in the new land. Therefore migration is not only a story of suffering but also of hope and aspirations. The fact that many of the female Northeast migrants do not want to go back home is testimony to the opportunities that migration provides to the people. I am sure this will be true for many male respondents as well even if peace was to prevail in the Northeast. To say that all migrants want to leave if there was peace in the Northeast is to simplify the problem and reflects a poor understanding of the dynamic world. Mobility and migration is the reality of today’s shrinking economic space and the Northeast is part of that world. Maybe in this shrinkage and mobility lies the hope of finding a solution to end the violence in the region. One has to also understand that economic consolidation for migrants does not happen overnight - it takes at least two to three generations. To conclude that most of them do not own property and assets is not a reflection of the consolidation process. The fact that the respondent sample has picked up only the young and the working population who are recent migrants reflects that they have not reached the economic consolidation stage. If the case study had included the older migrants the narratives could have been different. There are families from the Northeast who have succeeded in establishing themselves with a job, own property and assets in Delhi. In that sense these migrants are much more integrated than the recent young migrants from the Northeast. I think if the survey had included some of the older migrants who have consolidated their position the discourse could have been balanced.

I would have also liked the author to dwell a little more on the University life of the migrants. They are not only considerable in number but their life chances, survival strategies, aspirations and their world views may be different. Though few cases have been enumerated most of them seem to be living outside the university and suffering as others in Delhi’s badland. I would have liked to know the difference between them and the other Northeast migrants and understand if the University culture makes any significant impact on their lives and if it ameliorates their suffering in Delhi. University helps them understand the mainstream politics, lifestyle and cultures and also provides an opportunity to engage with others on a more equal footing, or maybe sometimes unequal footing. I write this from my personal experience. I come from Pedong a small settlement in the Kalimpong subdivision of Darjeeling District. I followed the same path as hundreds of other Northeast migrants (though Darjeeling is not officially part of Northeast, its geography and culture are similar, the author has also treated it under the Northeast) to Santiniketan, Delhi and Ahmedabad looking for educational avenues and life opportunities. I could relate with a number of stories that the author has highlighted and appreciated his knowledge and engagement with the region. There were lots of negatives, but many positives as well in the journey. In some way the hardships and suffering provided a new opportunity and perspective in life. A new way to look at your home and problems and new ways to assess opportunities back home and certainly new ways to engage the state, other communities and claims on the citizenship. There were many like me. I never regretted moving out of the place though the nostalgia remained. I am still outside, but still in constant touch with the native place. After me, my younger family members moved to Delhi, studied and moved on. Some worked in call centres, some are still working, some went back and used all the knowledge acquired to start small businesses successfully. Now they travel to Delhi to do business on their terms and engage communities that know nothing about ‘Pedong’. This is the other positive perspective of mobility. It has helped break insularity and ghetto-isation and connect to the lager world, full of possibility and adventure. Yes tradition and culture is under threat, and nostalgia for the pristine is recurrent, but change is inevitable either through internal or external dynamics. Resilience and the ability to cope with such changes in any community, including the frontier, will depend on their ability to perceive these threats and address them proactively. In a world where the external forces are critical in inducing changes ability to identify, contest, engage and navigate the threats can be effective only if we have a world view that looks beyond the narrow confines of the self and community. From that perspective migration matters for it engages and provides the world view. No matter how difficult and traumatic in the beginning it provides life chances and possibility of consolidation in the long run. This is true for all migrants whether from the frontier or the core.

On the whole a very engaging book and the author certainly needs to be commended for his untiring engagement with the Northeast, which very few scholars from outside the region have ever attempted. The existential question for the survival, contestation and navigation of ethnic minorities against the forces of globalization and the engagement with the mainstream, if at all that exists, will be an important challenge to be explored in the coming decades in India. It is from this perspective the study is relevant and contemporary. The book should be read not only by the scholars and researchers, but also policy makers, bureaucrats, and the police in India. There is much to learn and know about the Northeast migrants, and to debunk the Northeast stereotypes that persists even amongst the elite and educated. The book will also be very useful for urban planning in multicultural societies like India, to understand the problems of ethnic migrants and their place making strategies. The book, however, is also important for the Northeast community both in the frontier and the mainstream to know and understand the changes that they have been going through in the last few decades. It will help them understand and contemplate their position better and engage better with their world both within and outside the frontier.

Shrawan Kumar Acharya, Professor at the Faculty of Planning and Public Policy, CEPT University (Ahmedabad), and former UKNA Fellow at IIAS (Leiden) (shrawanacharya@cept.ac.in).