Impact of partition of india on north eastern india
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Answer:Partitioning states into smaller units is a solution that is often suggested to resolve ethnic conflicts around the world. The appealing elementary school logic of fostering peace by separating groups that are not playing well together continues to be actively discussed by both policymakers and academics, assuming a prominent role in contemporary debates over the continued conflict in Iraq, Syria, and beyond.
Yet, little is known about the conditions under which what appears to be a viable political compromise devolves into a human disaster. Neither are the economic and political consequences of partition well understood. The partition of South Asia on religious grounds in August 1947 has the potential to teach us much about these issues. Seen initially as a viable political compromise, the partition of the Indian subcontinent instead led to one of the largest forced migrations in world history, with an estimated 17.9 million people leaving their homes (Aiyar 1998, Bharadwaj et al. 2008a). Estimates of the number killed between March 1947 and January 1948 range from 180,000 to one million. There were 3.4 million ‘missing’ members of targeted minorities in the 1951 census (Bharadwaj et al. 2008a).
Disruptions to trade
Beyond the distribution of skills, the Partition had the potential to disrupt the patterns of trade between groups and regions. In some Indian cities, including modern cities and those with origins as Muslim capitals and patronage centres, members of different religions had competed economically; the Partition provided an opportunity to get rid of minority competitors. In medieval port cities, however, historic Muslim advantages in going to Mecca had led to a long tradition of trade and trust between religious groups (Jha 2013). In these medieval port towns, combat experience led to less cleansing of ethnic minorities (Jha and Wilkinson 2012).
Though the Partition was not as disruptive to trade within towns with histories of inter-religious trade, it did draw a boundary between previously economic integrated regions that had large economic consequences. The case of jute in the east provides a classic case study on a flourishing industry disrupted by the Partition. Bengal was one of the most important centres for growing and producing jute, which at the time was known as the ‘golden fibre’. The boundaries separating West Bengal from East Pakistan (which later becomes Bangladesh) separated the jute growing areas in East Pakistan from the jute mills in West Bengal. As a result, the price of jute in the world markets sky-rocketed (Bharadwaj and Fenske 2012). In subsequent years, independent India started growing jute itself, and the areas in which jute is grown correlate strongly with areas that received migrants from East Pakistan. A likely reason is that refugees from East Pakistan came with knowledge specific to cultivating and growing the crop. Hence, while the Partition lines and a trade embargo disrupted a flourishing industry in the short run, refugee specific knowledge may have mitigated long-term damage to this industry (Bharadwaj and Fenske 2012).
Literacy levels, demographic changes, and economic activity
While the Partition directly affected economic activity by disrupting trade and other essential inputs, the long-run impacts on economic activity can also be viewed as the result of demographic changes that accompanied it. As a result of the population transfer in the west of then India, where the numbers of Hindus and Sikhs entering India were comparable to the number of Muslims who entered Pakistan, districts in India that saw more refugee activity also tended to see increases in literacy (Bharadwaj et al. 2008b). This was in part due to the historical differences in education levels between Muslims in South Asia and their Hindu and Sikh counterparts. The relatively literate Hindu and Sikh minorities that left rural Pakistan replaced the relatively less educated Muslims, increasing the availability of skills in India. In ongoing work, Bharadwaj and Mirza (2017) examine the long-run impacts of such demographic changes on agricultural productivity on the Indian side. The preliminary findings, which analyse district-level agricultural yields between 1956-2009, suggest that places with more activity by displaced persons as a result of the Partition were more likely to experience higher agricultural yields, although such increases are only observed after the advent of the Green Revolution in India (in the late 1960s). One important channel through which this is likely to have occurred is the relative education of the refugees, which made them more likely to take up technologies and new methods of cultivation that were part of the Green Revolution.
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