Economic Determinants of Ethnic and Insurgent Conflict: an empirical study of northeast Indian states

This paper attempts to study the association between armed ethnic conflict and its economic, socio-political and policy determinants through an econometric analysis in the seven northeast Indian states, namely, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura over a span of 27 years (1990-2016). Through a pooled Probit and a system Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) exercise, along with a historical review of insurgent movements in these states, the paper concludes that previous levels of conflict, low levels of NSDP, high Debt-GSDP ratio, diverse ethnolinguistic identities, economic discrimination among ethnicities, depleting forest cover and certain counter-insurgency measures such as the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 have had an adverse bearing on the peace and political stability and have contributed to higher probability of ethnic conflict in this region