Connectivity and Popular Protest

As Asia steps into a new era of connectivity the interface of logistics and popular movements has
become the topic of discussion in a multitude of forums with attempts to look into what happens to
people beyond logistics and the logistical aspects of popular politics. It is a given that social, cultural and
material infrastructure shape the attitude of different segments of society and that popular movements
in their turn shape logistics thereby indicating a delicate balance where the flow of labour and capital
and incidents of social turmoil are often intrinsically linked. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor and
the resultant Baluch protests is a classic recent example of what to expect in case of a disconnect and
the resultant identity anxiety of the local population. Similarly the Rohingya crisis cannot be understood
without an appreciation of the infrastructural framework that is being designed for the entire
neighbourhood extending across South and South East Asia. The need to reconnect with the people
therefore remains an important part of infrastructural development and it is with a view to addressing
this in the context of the impact of India’s Look/Act East Policy for its North East that the Calcutta
Research Group in collaboration with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung organized a workshop on “Beyond
Infrastructure and Logistics: Reconnecting with the Peoples and Societies of the North East” on 29
November 2017.
India’s Look East Policy (LEP) that began as part of the country’s economic restructuring in 1991, raised
questions that were largely developmental in their focus. What were the economic resources that could
be got from a region otherwise famous for extractive industry like tea, coal and oil? How would the
exploration of new resources transform an unruly, insurgent frontier? An important focus that emerged
from these and other discussions over the last two decades has been on the question of connectivity.
For the LEP to show some degree of success (or failure), an understanding of the manner in which the
landscape and its resources were connected to flows of labour and capital was considered crucial.
Paradoxically, the region’s supposed isolation – geographically, economically and politically – from the
mainland, was also the primary reason for its long connection with the advocacy of civil and democratic
rights. This isolation extends at various levels — – to its relations with societies to its east, between the
North East and mainland India and within the North East itself and goes beyond logistics to reluctance to
engage with trans-national initiatives. It also extends to a disconnect in the understanding of who
defines Look East as a policy and how it is lived, a lack of engagement with the structures of power and a
consequent legitimation of violence. The alternative would be in terms of a shared imagination of
connects that took note of the everyday but looked beyond the mundane.