Includes bibliographical references (p. [343]-369) and index.

1: Introduction (Sanjib Baruah)
Part I: Stalemated Conflicts: What Cost?
2: Resenting the Indian State: For a New Political Practice in the Northeast (Ananya Vajpeyi)
3: When was the Postcolonial?: A History of Policing Impossible Lines (Bodhisattva Kar)
Part II: Nation and its Discontents
4: From Loin Cloth, Suits, to Battle Greens: Politics of Clothing the 'Naked' Nagas (Dolly Kikon)
5: Writing Terror: Men of Rebellion and Contemporary Assamese Literature (Rakhee Kalita)
6: Narrative Agency and Thinking about Conflicts (Nandana Dutta)
Part III: Discourses of Inclusion and Exclusion
7: Northeast Problems as a Subject and Object (Pradip Phanjoubam)
8: Preparing for a Cohesive 'Northeast': Problems of Discourse (Bhagat Oinam)
9: Agency of Rioters: A Study of Decision-Making in the Nellie Massacre, Assam, 1983 (Makiko Kimura)
Part IV: Making Peace, Making War: India's Peace Policy
10: The Mizo Exception: State-Society Cohesion and Institutional Capability (M. Sajjad Hassan)
11: Peace sans Democracy?: A Study of Ethnic Peace Accords in Northeast India (Samir Kumar Das)
12: Hills-Valley Divide as a Site of Conflict: Emerging Dialogic Space in Manipur (H. Kham Khan Suan)
Part V: Breaking the Impasse
13: Just Development: A Strategy for Ethnic Reconciliation in Tripura (Subir Bhaumik)
14: Grounds for Democratic Hope in Arunachal Pradesh (Betsy Taylor)
15: Rethinking Delhi's Northeast India Policy: Why neither Counterinsurgency nor Winning Hearts and Minds is the Way Forward (Bethany Lacina)