In recent years, there has been a surge in hydropower projects in the North-east part of India, constructed under the aegis of the national state. Foregrounding this fact, our article conceptualizes North-east India as a ‘region’ that is not only physiographic in nature but also discursively constructed by history, culture and politics, in the colonial and postcolonial times. We argue that when large developmental projects such as hydropower projects are commissioned in this messy context of the North-eastern region in India, it gives rise to myriad problems of ethnic strife, cultural identity and indigenous rights that reflect a ‘regional pattern’. In tandem with these various dispossessions brought about by such developmental projects, there is a slowly emerging political consciousness at the regional level to counter these developmental projects. This is still in a very burgeoning stage. In this article, we have envisioned such a regional level collaboration among various ethnic identity based mobilizations, as a counterpart of civil society. Such an ethnic alliance is an imperative, to balance the ‘excesses’ of the ‘sovereign nation state’ and its notion of ‘development’.
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