Indian Home Minister, Amit Shah, center, with the leaders of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) after signing a memorandum of settlement with them in New Delhi.

After India’s independence, Assam, unlike its peers, barely found a moment to act on its strengths and prosper. Its Naga and Lushai Hills (later Mizoram) districts got engulfed with militancy of a gigantic proportion. As the state became synonymous with separatism and militancy with cycles of violence, there was no question of Assam wooing any big-ticket industrial investments then.

One of the forgotten stories in Independent India is about Assam housing a thriving industrial belt during the Raj. The long militancy that had first erupted in the erstwhile Naga Hills district of Assam in the 1950s before getting spread to other pockets has blurred many historical vignettes from our national consciousness. Sample this: India’s first tea garden was set up in the Brahmaputra Valley back in 1833, a move that catalysed Assam tea into a global brand. Digboi, an Upper Assam town where an oil refinery was commissioned back in 1901, is the birthplace of India’s oil sector. And on the eve of Independence, per capita income of the tea and oil rich Assam was higher by 4% than that of the country’s average. (Source: North Eastern Region Vision 2020, a government document published in 2008).

The trigger for revisiting this buried account of Assam’s industrial past is a peace accord signed in New Delhi on Friday (December 29) by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the deadliest of the state’s insurgent outfits which have laid down arms and joined the mainstream during the recent years. The refusal of one faction of the outfit, the ULFA-Independent, to shun violence will no doubt be a lingering concern, but Assam is all set to pass through the most peaceful phase in post-independence era, as all other militant outfits in Bodo and Karbi dominated areas in the state have already surrendered, making most part of the state free from the clutches of insurgents.

As peace attracts capital, “Invest Assam” should be the next battle cry. The governments, both in New Delhi and Dispur, should display an unwavering commitment to woo investors to the state that has experienced a downturn in its economic fortunes. An influx of capital will spur economic growth, create jobs, help end alienation and make peace a permanent feature.