ABSTRACT
A brief exegesis on the seemingly impending resolution of the Naga nationalist struggle and the Bodo demand for greater autonomy will perhaps help to see why such ‘permanent solutions’ are at best a fetish and a mirage and at worst a calculated tactic to keep the people whose cause they claim to espouse permanently in ferment. Rather, owing to factors that have an all-too-material foundation, the social reality has repeatedly defeated every search for a ‘permanent solution’, or even a workable solution, to the problems of the region. The issues do not admit of permanent solutions, simply because the historical processes of which they are a part defy all formulas. Whatever be the political identity of the formation in office in Dispur, on issues seen to affect the core population of the Brahmaputra valley — the Assamese people, an expression which itself is full of contentious ambiguities — no government in Dispur can make concessions beyond a point.
