The Way Forward for Northeast India

This paper seeks to explain the idea of linking Northeast India to Southeast Asia, which gained popular imagination following the release of the North Eastern Region Vision 2020 document in 2008. However, at the time, despite the rest of the country appreciably benefiting from greater integration with Southeast Asia, the Northeast Region (NER) had gained very little. Five years on, little has changed. The rhetoric of possible connections to Southeast Asia has not been matched by corresponding allocation of funds and burst of action. Then, there are deep internal challenges in the Northeast as well as in two of the key neighbouring countries, Bangladesh and Myanmar, which are crucial for any plan based on „imagining new geography? in respect of socio-economic connections for Northeast India.