For the incumbent

The verdicts in Tripura,Meghalaya and Nagaland are clear and emphatic. The incumbent governments (or in Nagaland’s case,the party that was leading the coalition) have been returned to power in elections that saw phenomenally high voter turnouts — more than 90 per cent in Tripura and well over 80 per cent in the other two states. These are states with high literacy and a heightened popular understanding of the political economy at the national and local level — and local and national parties must discern the lines of argument that propelled the vote.

In a feat drawing as much on Chief Minister Manik Sarkar’s personal standing as on his party’s dominance of state politics,the CPM-led Left Front has won a fifth consecutive term. In Nagaland,the Naga People’s Front,which led the Democratic Alliance of Nagaland government but went its separate way in the elections,is in a commanding position to form a government on its own terms. In Meghalaya,the Congress finds itself placed advantageously,having seen off the challenge from the bitterly estranged Purno Sangma by sticking to bread-and-butter issues. Each vote has a particularly state-level dynamic,and the Congress should rightfully wonder how its hopes were dashed yet again in Tripura. After the West Bengal loss,the Left Front’s armour of invincibility stands significantly dented. But the Congress failed to modernise its message to craft a conversation on terms that would interest the voters. Voters are increasingly taking the incumbent’s record as the baseline,and assessing the opposition’s challenge accordingly.

However,what the people of the three states have unambiguously sought is a political and economic environment in which their life chances can be optimally enhanced. It is this message that the Centre needs to heed and act upon to shape a strategy to (howsoever belatedly) touch off prosperity in the Northeast. It is criminal that the entire region continues to be held back by such inadequate connectivity,social infrastructure and utilisation of its strategic location as the gateway to and from East Asia. This cannot be rectified without Centrally-facilitated regional cooperation.