State, Constitutional Provisions, and Customary Practices in North East India

Abstract

 This paper seeks to understand how power dynamics between governmentality and constitutionally recognised customary practices reshape and reconfigure land relations through the language of development in the Northeast. It explores the complex dynamics of social realities shaped by multifaceted land transactions involving diverse stakeholders, including the state, corporate or private entities, communities, and individuals. These interactions can foster cooperation, but also spark conflicts, indicating new opportunities and anxieties in the process. The paper approaches these dynamics first by examining how customary practices, which are protected by constitutional provisions, act as a stumbling block to market rationality, including customary land inheritance, the essence of community, and the notion of labour. Second, how customary practices reconstitute and are reconstituted by governmental policies and market forces, typically in the name of development. Third, the multifaceted attitudes and articulations of local communities – shaped by their unique historical, socio-economic, cultural, and political salience – are imbued with agency of their own and often clash with, if not complicate, the state’s development logic, which is guided by market principles.