ABSTRACT
Politics of identity, whether through secessionist sentiments or the desire to create local ethnic ‘home-lands’, have long featured as major drivers behind the conflicts in northeast India. The Indian government made minimal progress with other armed groups in the region in 2018. New Delhi’s ‘Act East’ programme, initiated in 2014 as an extension to India’s post-1991 ‘Look East’ policy, seeks to improve connectivity between India and Southeast Asian countries through the development of secure and reliable access corridors into neighbouring states such as Myanmar. Diplomatic agreements between India and Myanmar nonetheless promised to increase cross-border trade and enhance prospects for human development in the areas immediately adjacent to the international border. The Indian government might let the general election pass before re-engaging with peace processes in earnest, as it did in the case of the Nagaland State Assembly elections of 2018.
