Is it time to stop saying NE? A geographical concept, the Northeast comprises Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. Earlier the region was known as the Seven Sisters but the term was hardly used officially. The concept of economic homogeniety and geographical continuity was ignored while admitting Sikkim in 1994 as a member of the North-Eastern Council, set up for balanced and integrated development of the region. For a long time some politicians and intellectuals in the region had been arguing that since the nomenclature Northeast hides the individual identity of a state, it should be done away with.

Nagas seem to fear that being clubbed with others will cause them one day to lose the special status enjoyed by them in the matter of allocation of Central funds. And there are some who want the change because elsewhere in the country it has come to have a derogatory connotation. Who coined the nomenclature is not known but it appears to have caught the imagination only after the formation of the North-Eastern Council. Despite the Centre reportedly prohibiting the use of North-East in 1995 in its official communications, the nomenclature has stuck.

At a recent seminar held at Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi) a speaker said “The very idea of the North-east created a sense of exception as people of the were looked upon as different or not even loyal to the country”. To this one may add “the mainlanders’” hatred for and mistrust of North-easterners. While a substitute word or phrase may not now be possible, certainly it is important to educate the rest of the country about the diversity of the region, and the varying problems and challenges its different parts face. The “Northeast” is not one place.