State vs. Society in Northeast India: History, Politics and the Everyday looks at a state as an entity that does not operate strictly as a rational, legal and administrative organization. State in the Northeast region is very much shaped by the social, economic and political practices on the ground. Using archival and ethnographic evidences, the book questions notions of region and border as fixed spaces. A state, in the process of governing society, produces itself through formal and informal practices on the ground, and the book argues that Northeast India is a significant site for studying this. It engages with conceptual, theoretical and methodological challenges thrown up by the political experiences of ordinary people in the Northeast. The book discusses everyday legal discourse, official public memory, development discourse, cases of becoming marginalized, resistance and ways of networking with the authorities. The objective is to understand the various ways in which state and society engage with each other; and to look at layers of historical interconnections that inform much of contemporary Northeast politics. The book will especially be of interest to scholars in politics, history, sociology and anthropology. Contents: Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: State, Region and Border Anup Shekhar Chakraborty Social Imaginaries, Minorities and the Postcolonial History of a Region Santosh Hasnu Colonial State and Annexation of Cachar in a Strategic Frontier of British Bengal Sherin Ajin Spatializing Nation at the Border District of Arunachal Pradesh PART II Memory, Ethnicity and Civil Society Jangkhomang Guite Public Spaces and the Politics of Remembering in Northeast India Oyindrila Chattopadhyay The Socio-spatial Politics of ‘Tribal’ and ‘Non-Tribal’ in Meghalaya Rashi Bhargava Interrogating the ‘Civil Society’ in Naga Society PART III Security, Emergency Laws and Protest M. Amarjeet Singh and R. K. Sanayaima Politics of Counterinsurgency and the Expansion of Security Bureaucracy Chubatila Emergency Law in Nagaland and State’s Classification of People as Suspect L. Basanti Devi Encountering the State in Manipur: A Political History of Women in Public Space PART IV Development, Trans-nationality and Accessibility G. Amarjit Sharma The Trajectory of ‘Development’ in a Resource Frontier Tanmoy Das Development Schemes and How People Engage with the State in Manipur Amiya Kumar Das Informal Political Networks, Dalals and Local Governance in Assam Index