A Frontier Betrayed by Policy and Politics

Unchecked migration in Arunachal Pradesh is the predictable consequence of decades of political indulgence, weak enforcement and selective secularism.

Arunachal Pradesh has long been treated as India’s remote frontier, more a buffer against foreign powers than a society to be governed. Last week, Itanagar witnessed a fierce display of civic mobilisation in form of a 12-hour bandh against rampant illegal Bangladeshi immigration called by three indigenous youth organisations that emptied streets and compelled a heavy deployment of police and paramilitary forces.

For decades, demographic anxieties in India’s north easternmost state have accumulated quietly, and now they are finding a public voice.

The immediate triggers of the bandh were the removal of an illegal Jama Masjid in Naharlagun, a ban on weekly haats accused of attracting undocumented migrants and the deportation of alleged illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

Political Blunders

The recent grievances are rooted in a longer history of political and administrative choices, many of them dating back to the era of Congress dominance in both Delhi and the northeast. Successive governments cultivated a selective approach to legality, tolerating or even regularising unauthorised settlements in the name of secularism and electoral convenience. The result today is the erosion of law, social trust, and the demographic equilibrium of a fragile tribal society.

The northeast has long been porous. Assam’s history is instructive. Decades of illegal immigration from erstwhile East Pakistan, and later Bangladesh, were met with intermittent enforcement, periodic evictions, and frequent political backtracking. The Assam Accord of 1985 promised detection and deportation, but its implementation was repeatedly diluted under Congress administrations, which feared alienating minority voters. When eviction drives finally accelerated in the past decade, many displaced migrants simply moved eastward, crossing into Arunachal Pradesh, a sparsely populated state with difficult terrain and under-resourced administration. Congress governments in Itanagar and Dispur largely looked the other way. Enforcement of Inner Line Permit (ILP) rules, the state’s primary instrument for controlling movement and settlement, remained lax.

Migration into Arunachal today is a demographic and political problem. The state is constitutionally designated as tribal, and its land and settlement patterns are tightly regulated. Even small-scale demographic shifts are visible and politically significant. Reports from local youth forums and civil society groups allege a rise in unauthorised settlements, makeshift mosques, and madrassas, particularly in market towns and peri-urban areas. These structures are often tolerated, either because officials lack capacity or because previous administrations have feared appearing ‘communal’ if enforcement disproportionately affects minority migrants.

The consequences extend beyond civic frustration. Arunachal shares an extensive 1,100-kilometre border with China, whose territorial claims remain unresolved, and long internal boundaries with Assam. Control over population, territory, and administration is central to national security in the region. When migrants settle informally, when religious structures emerge outside legal sanction, and when local enforcement is inconsistent, the state’s claim to the territory is weakened. The credibility of India’s border administration relies as much on effective governance as on troop deployments. The earlier Congress-era policies, characterised by political indulgence and selective enforcement, have gradually undermined that credibility.

But if the Congress bears responsibility for creating the conditions that allowed illegal migration to fester, the present Bharatiya Janata Party governments at the Centre and in Itanagar must answer a simpler and more damaging question: why, with power firmly in hand, has so little visibly changed?

This is the wellspring of the anger now audible on Arunachal’s streets. Today, indigenous tribal organisations are not protesting in a state under a Congress dispensation. They are confronting a BJP government that campaigned nationally on border control, cultural protection and the primacy of law. For local communities, the contrast between promise and performance is becoming increasingly disheartening. Illegal immigration continues. Unauthorised mosques and madrassas remain standing.

The problem is compounded by administrative neglect. Arunachal Pradesh was long administered as a strategic glacis rather than a society. Even after statehood in 1987, enforcement institutions remained thin, particularly in remote districts. Inner Line Permit rules exist, but monitoring is inconsistent. Land records are incomplete. Local revenue and police machinery is under-resourced. Against this backdrop, small-scale settlement by migrants from Assam has the effect of slow demographic change.

The comparison most frequently invoked by protesters is that of Assam. There, under Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, the BJP has pursued an unapologetically muscular approach by carrying out eviction drives, demolition of illegal structures, and aggressive assertions of state authority.

In Arunachal Pradesh, governed by Pema Khandu’s BJP, no comparable clarity or the political will to carry out such a drive has emerged as yet.

The bandh in Itanagar reflected these accumulated grievances. The Arunachal Pradesh Indigenous Youth Organisation, Indigenous Youth Force of Arunachal, and All Naharlagun Youth Organisation were explicit that the protest was not aimed at any community, but at illegal structures and undocumented migration.

Unique Challenges

The unique challenges the state faces are amplified by geography: population pressure, porous internal borders and a sensitive international frontier all interact to magnify the impact of weak enforcement.

The national security dimension is unavoidable. China’s claims on Arunachal remain unresolved, and the strength of India’s position rests on both presence and administration. Demographic stability is part of that presence. Uncontrolled settlement by migrants undermines the state’s legitimacy, complicates intelligence and policing, and weakens the political cohesion of tribal societies whose loyalty is central to India’s strategic posture.

The fear animating the protests in Arunachal today is demographic change by accretion rather than invasion. Unlike Assam, Arunachal has not seen waves of mass migration that dramatically alter census figures overnight. Instead, it has experienced something subtler - slow settlement along transport corridors, market towns and peri-urban spaces, often by migrants pushed out of Assam after eviction drives or lured by weak enforcement and economic opportunity.

For indigenous communities in Arunachal, this feels eerily familiar given Assam’s history looms large across the border. The Assam Movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s was driven by precisely such fears of being outnumbered, outvoted and eventually dispossessed. The Assam Accord promised detection, deletion and deportation. Four decades later, the problem remains unresolved and merely redistributed despite the coming of strong and firm hands like Himanta Biswa Sarma. When eviction bulldozers roll through one district, people move to the next softer frontier. Thus Arunachal, sparsely populated and administratively overstretched, becomes the obvious destination.

Before Arunachal turns into another Assam, the path forward requires administrative seriousness. Transparent audits of unauthorised settlements, strict enforcement of ILP regulations, clear guidelines for religious and commercial construction in tribal areas must be carried out by the state government, and coordination with Assam to prevent displacement from becoming redistribution are essential.

Arunachal Pradesh is often romanticised as India’s last frontier, a Shangri-La of hills and rivers. That romanticism obscures a harder truth that frontiers are where the state is tested, where weak enforcement is quickly felt, and where political neglect becomes strategic liability. This must change. Both New Delhi and Itanagar must realize that if they continue to defer enforcement, the silent frustration of Arunachal’s citizens may translate into louder, harder-to-manage political pressures very soon.