In New Delhi: My cousin Sumita for getting hold of Supreme Court documents and decisions; Dr M.R. Vijayunni, then Registrar-General of India, and the staff of the Census Commission; Jaswant Singh, External Affairs Minister (EAM) and friend of the North East; R.S. Jassal, spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs; Lalit Mansingh, Foreign Secretary; Salman Haidar, former Foreign Secretary; Arun Kumar, Joint Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs (Policy Planning); S. Deb-Mukherjee, former High Commissioner to Bangladesh; Ranjit Rae, former Director in the EAM’s office; Raghuvendra Singh, former Personal Secretary to the EAM; Chaman Lal, Special Rapporteur in the National Human Rights Commission; K.P.S. Gill, and G.K. Pillai, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, who was a source of information. It was a pleasure to discuss issues related to the North East with him. He made time even during the most demanding of schedules.

At CPR: Prof B.G. Verghese, K.C. Sivaramakrishnan, former Urban Development Secretary, Rajmohan Gandhi, Ved Marwah, recently appointed Govenor of Manipur, and Gen V. K. Nayar.

Kamaljit Kumar and the CPR library staff who were always helpful.

Mr P. Dhokrekar, Chief of Adminstrative Services, and his accounts team, P.K. Rao, P. Khanna and M.C. Bhatt helped me keep track of the health of my project’s finances.

Among others, Kamini Mahadevan, my editor at Penguin Books India, who prodded, pushed, cajoled and made key suggestions.

Preeti Gill, for reading the initial drafts, and urging me to discipline my writing hours.

In Switzerland:

Rajiv Kapur of UNHCR and his wife Smriti for their help and hospitality in Geneva, and the solitude of their farm house in Delhi, and Mohan Ram’s quiet efficiency which helped fine-tune a chapter and other work.

In Britain:

Belinda Wright, Barbara Harrell-Bond, David Turpin of Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Programme; also Dr Amrita Dhillon and Dr Fabian Essler.

In the United States:

Dr Amartya Sen, then of Harvard University, and Dr Sharon Stanton Russell of MIT and her many colleagues and assistants in Cambridge, Massachussetts; Prof Ashutosh Varshney and Vibha Pingle, and also Michael Teitelbaum of the Sloan Foundation.

But above all, my thoughts go to the one person to whom I owe this interest and involvement in issues of migration, displacement and refugees, and the deeper underlying questions: the late Myron Weiner. This book is dedicated to his memory.

Myron was without doubt one of the extraordinarily gifted persons I have had the privilege of knowing. His interest in the world and especially the subcontinent and our little North Eastern corner was deep and abiding. I had the privilege of sharing a platform in December 1993 at MIT with Myron in the chair and Prof Amartya Sen as one of the speakers. I was also the second listed speaker on Ayodhya: India, a year later. I suppose I was asked to speak since I had reported on the situation for the New York Times after the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya.