Violence turns spotlight on India's impoverished northeast

[hari../..kumar]

http://www.dw.de/violence-turns-spotlight-on-indias-impoverished-northeast/a-18152698?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf

Tribal plantation workers armed with tools for self-defence move to a
safer place after ethnic clashes in Tenganala village in Sonitpur
district, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam December 24, 2014
(Photo: REUTERS/Stringer)

Around 2,000 people have fled their homes in Assam since a militant
attack by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), which has
been waging a decades-long armed insurgency in pursuit of an
independent country for the ethnic Bodo people.

Those who were killed on December 23 were tea plantation workers
belonging to the Adivasi tribe, a mixture of Hindus and Christians.
Earlier this year, some 10,000 people were forced to flee their homes
following a similar outbreak of clashes that left 45 people dead.

The volatile northeastern state, famous for its tea estates, has been
devastated by worst fighting between rival tribes as well as the
insurgents' attacks on security forces and government officials in the
past decades. The state government regularly targets the militants'
hideouts in the countryside but has not been able to wipe them out from
the region.