2026-06-25 –, Room 403 PC Desk (Seats 30)
The Indo-Myanmar frontier, historically sustained by fluid ecological, cultural, and commercial exchanges, is undergoing profound transformation as climate change reshapes landscapes and livelihoods. Drawing on oral histories from Naga, Mizo, and Kuki-Chin borderland communities, this presentation explores how environmental disruptions—such as erratic rainfall, landslides, crop failures, changing river courses, and forest depletion—intersect with the region’s geopolitically sensitive border regime. For generations, these communities relied on shifting cultivation, forest gathering, and seasonal mobility across what is now an international boundary, guided by ecological cues and longstanding kinship ties. Their testimonies evoke memories of predictable agricultural cycles, abundant forests, and shared cross-border resource practices that are now destabilized by climatic uncertainty.
These oral narratives reveal how climate change interacts with militarization, tightening border controls, and declining access to natural resources, creating new forms of vulnerability, livelihood stress, and displacement. Elders recall a living landscape once experienced as open and relational, now experienced as both environmentally fragile and politically constrained. By foregrounding lived experiences, the study demonstrates how climate change is not only an environmental phenomenon but also a social and geopolitical force that alters cultural memory, border ecologies, and local notions of belonging.
Ultimately, the research argues that oral histories provide critical insights into how borderland societies interpret environmental transformation, negotiate new risks, and reimagine their relationship with the land in an era of climatic and political uncertainty.
Climate change, oral history, borderlands, Indo-Myanmar frontier, Northeast India, Indigenous ecological knowledge, environmental change, climate-induced mobility, cultural memory, geopolitics of environment.
I am a doctorate and researcher in oral history with a passion for uncovering and preserving the stories of individuals and communities. My academic and research training, in conducting in-depth interviews and collecting personal narratives, has developed a unique ability to listen actively and empathetically, drawing out rich and nuanced stories from participants. My interdisciplinary research methodology brings together historic, political, cultural, and social perspectives to explore oral history. This consists of relations between individual and collective memories, oral interviews, and conducting surveys to collect primary data and answer research questions. Furthermore, the main areas of my research are wide theoretical expertise include post-modern war history, political & Cultural changes in India as well as in South Asia.