ABSTRACT
The appropriation of nature – turning nature into a resource – is a key feature of the resource frontier. Nature is unbound, rivers run across international borders, and elephants travel along ancient routes that pass from southern forests of Nepal and Bhutan, through Northeast India and sometimes down to Myanmar and Bangladesh. Such unruliness of nature goes against the grain of nation-states who seek to control and assert ownership of natural resources within its respective territories, be it water or wildlife. Northeast India is a modern geographical entity, but it has retained the sense of a frontier space that is not (yet) fully regulated or incorporated into the Indian state. This entry shows how plants, rivers, and fossil deposits are being claimed as resources and turned into commodities for outside markets. Differently empowered actors figure in these stories and while death and destruction run through them, the resource frontier also generates glimpses of hope and struggles for better tomorrows. While certain groups have been able to enrich themselves the social and environmental costs of mining, logging, monocultural plantations and the damming of rivers are substantial.
