Sriram Ananthanarayanan, in a very long post, documents the history and consequences of India’s ’sub-imperialistic’ policies in the Northeast:

The term “Northeast India” itself is very much a post-colonial construct, coming into existence only after Indian Independence in 1947, and the region has suffered for a long time under extremely oppressive Indian state hegemony as well as spatial discrimination in comparison to the rest of India. While the region is extremely rich in terms of mineral and natural resources, including tea, oil, limestone, coal as well as bamboo for papermaking, much of this has been usurped by national and private capital without any benefit to the local population. Development in the region is often never accorded the priority it merits and the Indian government maintains an extremely oppressive hold over the entire region. Indeed while education levels and other Human Development Indices are on par with the far better developed South Indian States, economic development levels languish at levels comparable to poorer Central and North Indian states.