Migration and Development Nexus in the Princely State Tripura (1900-1949)

Book excerpt: The development of a state cannot be confined only to its economic arena but the socio-political, as well as cultural fields of a state, were also needed to be developed and modernized. Among the various guiding forces behind the development process of a state, migration sometimes plays a vital role in it. During the last fifty years of Manikya rule, a large number of immigrants, especially Bengali immigrants, entered into the princely, hilly state of Tripura from colonial India. These immigrations though outnumbered the aborigines of this hilly state, but it stimulated the developmental process of this Princely State which was initiated by the Manikya rulers in the last quarter of the 19th century. This book is a humble attempt to find out the relations between migration and the material development of Tripura. Furthermore, how much migration is responsible for changing the total infrastructural change of the Princely State Tripura and what were the factors that worked behind the immigrations during the last fifty years of Manikya rule are highlighted from a historical perspective.