Developing a Postcolonial Region: Capital, Extraction, and Expansion

Two significant concerns emerge from the developmental projects undertaken in India’s northeast region. First, development is essentially a centralized action, and there is a lack of people’s will in the decision-making process; second, there is not much space for the people to force changes in national and state government policies and acts. What does it mean to develop a region of postcolonial India? What is the specific trajectory of development as thought and action in a postcolonial region? This study, therefore, problematizes what developing a region means and the trajectory of state-guided capitalist development in the northeastern region of India. It looks at the objective and subjective nature of capitalist investment and development expansion. The developmental projects encounter protests, disagreements, and a complex social and political power milieu. Capitalist financing and development, while attempting to overcome such social and political barriers, deepen ethnic complexity and unleash environmental risks.