Summary:
No region in India has undergone such fragmentation as North East has in the four decades after independence. What remains of the old province of Assam after the last reorganization in 1972 are virtually the districts of the Brahmaputra and barak valleys where British rule in the north east began after the first Anglo Burmese War (1824-26). The hill regions that were brought under the administrative control of Assam as the eastern frontier of the empire extended, now formed as separate states. While the process of expansion and integration was spread over a century, the disintegration and territorial reorganisation has occurred with in relatively short time. The volume is planned to go into the historical background of the problem with special reference to the fragile nature of the administrative unity given to the erstwhile province of Assam by the British; the partition at Independence and the Question of ethnic identity including the role of language and the demand for reorganisation. It further examines the consequences of partition and reorganization particularly on the social end economic developmental process in the region and the political fall out