SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 2025
The Silent Surrender: How Market Forces Are Dismantling Our Sovereignty
In the unfolding saga of development across the Northeast and beyond, there is an urgent and silent crisis unravelling beneath the glossy promises of prosperity and investment.
Published on May 25, 2025
By EMN
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- In the unfolding saga of development across the Northeast and beyond, there is an urgent and silent crisis unravelling beneath the glossy promises of prosperity and investment. Official rhetoric heralds the region as a gateway to a $200 billion trade corridor with ASEAN, backed by mega-investments from corporate giants and state machinery. Yet, beneath this façade lies a troubling pattern: the rapid erosion of local autonomy, ecological devastation, and the hollowing out of democratic decision-making under the weight of unchecked market forces.
- A geopolitical and historical context
- The Northeast, with its complex history of self-governance and cultural resilience, stands at a geopolitical crossroads. Its strategic location bordering multiple countries has long attracted economic interest — often to the detriment of its people. Post-colonial developmental frameworks imposed from New Delhi have consistently subordinated local needs to national and global capitalist agendas. This trajectory intensified under neoliberal reforms introduced by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and accelerated by the current Modi-led NDA government through structural adjustment programmes.
- Historically, these programmes promised integration into global markets as a path to modernisation and prosperity. Yet, decades of experience across India and many global south nations expose a pattern of broken promises and displaced communities. These programmes prioritise extraction over empowerment, corporate profit over people’s welfare, and market-led growth over sustainable development.
- Socio-economic and demographic realities
- The socio-economic fabric of the Northeast — rich in indigenous cultures, biodiversity, and community-based economies — is ill-served by market-driven models that commodify land and labour. Large-scale investments in industries such as oil palm cultivation, mining, and infrastructure projects often bypass participatory governance mechanisms. Instead, they impose top-down decisions that disrupt traditional livelihoods, marginalise vulnerable groups, and deepen inequalities.
- Demographically, the region’s youth face limited opportunities despite grandiose investment plans. Jobs promised by corporate-led projects rarely materialise at scale or in quality. Instead, many young people are pushed into precarious informal economies or forced migration. This disconnect between rhetoric and lived reality fuels disillusionment and social unrest.
- Voices from the ground
- Local communities express deep concern over these developments. Traditional guardians of the land watch as their forests and fields are converted into industrial zones or monoculture plantations. Women, often primary managers of local resources, see their roles undermined by market-centric interventions that prioritise export crops over food security. Civil society organisations struggle against powerful state-corporate coalitions that frame dissent as anti-development or even anti-national.
- This disconnect between powerful interests and community aspirations underscores a democratic deficit. Governance appears increasingly opaque, with decision-making concentrated in corridors inaccessible to ordinary citizens. Policy frameworks often reflect corporate agendas rather than public good, creating a governance paradox where democratic processes exist in form but not in substance.
- Hidden power structures and contradictions
- Behind the glossy investor summits and government pronouncements lies a web of powerful interests — political elites, corporate conglomerates, and global financial institutions — that shape the region’s development trajectory. These actors benefit from regulatory environments tailored to ease capital flows, while social and environmental safeguards are sidelined as ‘obstacles to growth.’
- Civil society’s limited influence often results from co-optation or repression, further consolidating elite control. Moreover, contradictions abound: while the state promotes ‘inclusive development,’ its policies accelerate dispossession and ecological harm. The state’s role as a guarantor of public welfare is increasingly compromised by its function as a facilitator of private profit.
- Not isolated failures — but a systemic pattern
- Sceptics may be quick to dismiss the failures of neoliberal mega-projects as unfortunate exceptions — outliers in an otherwise successful model of economic growth. But such a framing dangerously oversimplifies what is in fact a widespread pattern, not a statistical anomaly. Across the Global South — and increasingly within marginalised regions of India — a common thread runs through these stories: development driven by market logic, state-corporate alliances, and extractive capital, repeatedly failing to deliver on promises of jobs, equity, and sustainability.
- This is not about a few projects going wrong due to local mismanagement or bad luck. Rather, these failures reveal a structural crisis: a development model built on the commodification of land, labour, and life; one that concentrates wealth, uproots communities, weakens democratic decision-making, and often leaves behind devastated ecologies and broken promises.
- The examples that follow — from India's industrial corridors to Sri Lanka’s debt-fuelled mega-infrastructure, and from Africa's oil palm experiments to Latin America’s mining disasters — are not aberrations. They are evidence of a global pattern where profit is privatised, and risk is socialised. These are the rule, not the exception. And if we don’t interrogate the model itself, the same fate awaits any community seduced by its language of prosperity.
- While industrial giants like Adani, Ambani, and Vedanta announce massive investments in India's Northeast, promising a transformation akin to Singapore's success, the ground realities paint a starkly different picture. India's agrarian sector is in deep crisis, with over 40% of the population still dependent on agriculture, yet facing declining incomes and increasing indebtedness. The manufacturing sector, expected to absorb the surplus labour, has not kept pace; employment in this sector has stagnated, and job creation remains insufficient to meet the demands of a growing workforce. Unemployment rates have reached alarming levels, with reports indicating that nearly 37 million people were actively seeking jobs in 2023-24, a figure not seen since the peak of the pandemic. This raises a critical question: with a struggling agricultural sector and an underperforming manufacturing industry, where will the products come from to fulfil the ambitious trade plans with ASEAN nations? Moreover, the motives of these conglomerates warrant scrutiny. Their investments often prioritise resource extraction and infrastructure projects that benefit their business interests, sometimes at the expense of local communities and environmental sustainability. The recent bribery allegations against the Adani Group in the U.S. further highlight concerns about the ethical practices of these corporations. Such developments suggest that these investment pledges may serve more to consolidate corporate power and influence rather than genuinely address the economic challenges facing the region.
- Miserably failed projects: A catalogue of lessons ignored
- India
- • Sardesai Industrial Corridor, Maharashtra: Promised as an engine of industrial growth, it became mired in land acquisition conflicts, displacement of farming communities, and environmental degradation. (Source: Economic & Political Weekly, 2019)
- • Sterlite Copper Plant, Tamil Nadu: Despite promises of jobs and development, the plant faced massive protests over pollution and health hazards, leading to its closure amid local uproar. (Source: The Hindu, 2018)
- • Sterlite’s environmental violation led to widespread public health crises and legal battles highlighting corporate impunity. (Source: Centre for Science and Environment, 2018)
- Sri Lanka
- • Hambantota Port Project: Built under Chinese investment and government partnership, this mega-infrastructure project led to unsustainable debt, forcing a 99-year lease to China. The local economy and sovereignty suffered severely. (Source: World Bank, 2020)
- Africa
- • Oil Palm Plantations in Ghana and Cameroon: Multinational corporations displaced indigenous farmers and destroyed forests, with promised economic benefits failing to materialise, leading to food insecurity and social conflicts. (Source: Journal of Peasant Studies, 2017)
- Latin America
- • Mining operations in Peru and Chile: Large-scale extractive projects driven by foreign capital have caused environmental devastation, violated indigenous rights, and incited violent conflicts. (Source: Human Rights Watch, 2019)
- Toward a just and autonomous future
- The way forward demands a radical recalibration of priorities — from market-led extraction to people-centred guardianship of resources and decision-making. Sustainable development cannot be achieved without restoring local sovereignty over land and livelihoods, strengthening democratic governance, and embedding justice and equity at the core of all policies.
- Practical steps include:
- • Institutionalising free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) for communities affected by development projects.
- • Strengthening decentralised governance structures to ensure transparency and accountability.
- • Promoting community-based economies rooted in ecological balance and cultural integrity.
- • Encouraging legal frameworks that limit corporate power and safeguard environmental and human rights.
- • Investing in education and capacity-building for marginalised groups to become drivers of their development.
- The right thing to do
- Legislators must scrutinise and overhaul policies that enable predatory capitalism under the guise of development. Civil society must unite to hold power accountable and amplify the voices of those on the frontlines. The public must resist narratives that sacrifice autonomy for illusory prosperity.
- The future of the region — its people, its ecology, its democracy — hinges on a collective refusal to surrender silently to the false promises of market forces. Justice, autonomy, and solidarity are not mere ideals; they are imperatives for survival and dignity.
- James Pochury
Nagaland Districts
