The decision to create (or re-create) Telengana carved out of Andhra Pradesh has already stirred statehood movements all over the country. If all these campaigns are rewarded with new states, India may end up with upto 50 rather than 29 states. But if the statehood demands are not conceded, the country may face various degrees of agitation and violence. Nowhere is the threat more ominous than in the country’s East and North-east, a region already home to dozens of ethnic insurgencies , some separatist, others seeking separate states or Union Territories.

For those who believe smaller states are better governed or atleast can be, the experience in the East-Northeast is varied . While smaller states like Tripura have done well in development and in checking corruption, those that broke away from Assam have not done so well.  The tribal elites in these states have been as , if not more corrupt, than those in Assam.  But after Telengana, many of the battling ethnicities in the East-Northeast will not settle for anything short of a separate state.

The movement for separate Gorkhaland and Kamatapur in West Bengal and those for separate Bodoland  lie on either side of the 21-kms wide Siliguri Corridor or ‘Chicken’s Neck’ that connects the seven northeastern states  to the country’s mainland. The road-rail links between northeast and the rest of the country pass through this sensitive and volatile area. Since the Gorkhaland proponents now want a redrawn boundary for their homeland by including some part of the foothills which is opposed by other communities in the area, the movement has the potential for an ethnic conflagration uncomfortably close to the ‘Chicken’s Neck”. 

 The violent Bodo movement for a separate state in the 1980-90s have systematically targeted the railroad communications connecting Northeast to the mainland and that could happen again if the revived movement goes violent. The Bodo movement for a separate state has again resumed with a spate of long strikes disrupting rail-road communication between India and its northeast.

Further south of the Bodoland area likes the districts of Dima Hasao and Karbi Anglong , Assam’s spine connecting the two valleys of Brahmaputra and Barak. Violence has already erupted in Karbi Anglong over the demand for a separate Karbi state . Long strikes in Karbi Anglong and the neighbouring Dima Hasao district has already impacted on rail road communication not only between the two valleys of Assam but also between upper and lower reaches of India’s northeast.

The statehood movements are erupting , this time simultaneously as a result of the T-effect, in areas strategic to communications and defence of the sensitive frontier region. India is raising a mountain strike corps to bolster its preparedness vis-à-vis China , focused on not just developing offensive potential into Tibet from Sikkim but also to protect the Chicken’s Neck from being cut off in the event of a war with China. Hitler’s Panzers did not touch the Maginot line – all they did was to go into France through Belgium. The Chinese , goes the military argument, might do the same, in the event of a conflict, by pushing big formations through Nepal and Bhutan , to cut the Chicken’s Neck. 

India can thus ill afford persisting violent agitations on either side of the ‘Chicken’s Neck’ or in the Karbi-Dimasa corridor that not only connects the two valleys of Assam but also the upper and lower reaches of Northeast. This corridor on the Barail ranges has been used by Naga insurgents and other rebel groups to access bases in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

To add to the restiveness, some Bengali organisations in the Barak valley have now demanded a separate state, feeding on the long alienation that the area suffers from.With the Garos threatening a separate statehood movement in western Meghalaya, the only option of bypassing the Karbi-Dimasa hill corridor is also lost. The movement for a separate ‘Kukiland’ in Manipur or for an Union Territory in southern Mizoram (involving Lai, Mara and Chakmas) can be equally unsettling in strategic terms. And then if you have ‘Kukiland’ , it will be difficult to stop Nagas from pushing for integration of Naga areas into neighbouring Nagaland, which the Naga rebels  demand.

 The movements may adversely affect Northeast more than West Bengal . Creation of Bodo, Karbi and Dimasa states will dismember Assam and weaken the tenuous link between the two valleys that will be left in it, as both are ethnically diverse. That will pave a separate Bengali-dominated Barak state inevitable. The Northeast will loose out on a pivot that Assam, despite its past fragmentation, has been for the region. 

A separate Gorkhaland will remain economically dependent on West Bengal , like Sikkim ( or Nepal and Bhutan) is . The Kamatapur movement may create problems for both Bengal and Assam because the homeland the Loch-Rajbongshis are looking for straddles both the states all across the Chicken’s Neck—and may therefore be more difficult for Delhi to accept.   

Break-up of Assam and West Bengal (more Assam than Bengal actually) would mean the end to the concept of multi-ethnic states in an area settled by diverse ethnic groups and bordering on several neighbouring countries, not all friendly and some ever willing to take advantage of the domestic  fissures. Unless the statehood movements are capped immediately with more autonomy , the whole of India's East-Northeast, the Achilles Heel of the Republic,  may erupt into an unmanageable phase of agitations and insurrections . The downslide of the Indian economy may aggravate the situation still further.

For regional politicians like West Bengal Chief minister Mamata Banerji, a movement like Gorkhaland may help in consolidation of the majority ethnic base behind her party . But for India, the 'Eastern Question' will never again be easy to resolve. 

(Mr. Subir Bhaumik is a veteran journalist, former BBC correspondant and author of  two well acclaimed books ‘Insurgent Crossfire’ and ‘Troubled Periphery’) 

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