Ethnography of Buffaloes: Herding Cattle from Kabaw Valley (Myanmar) to Naga Hills (India)

The Assam Cattle Preservation Act, 2021, implemented by the Assam Government, has drastically changed the cattle trade landscape in India’s Northeast borderland towns. The Indo (Naga)-Myanmar borderland villages have emerged as preferred locations for cattle trade. Our paper examines this cross-border animal trade and its methodological approach to unravel diverse ontologies. Walking as a mode of transport for trade, livelihood, medical help, and deepening kith and kin relations in the borderland is a common practice to evade the state’s agents. Moreover, after the Government of India scrapped the Free Movement Regime and introduced a biometric system for border management, indigenous tribes at the border faced adverse implications. Borderland communities, especially those from the Myanmar side, face multiple burdens marked by poverty of infrastructure, insurgency, and others. Our ethnographic experience opens up a new terrain to rethink how state and non-state actors are constituted, experienced, and contested vis-à-vis co-exist in practice.