How did you come to choose your research topic?

My research topic evolved from observations during fieldwork in India’s Northeast, at the border with Myanmar. I noticed that armed group taxation went beyond what we commonly understand as extortion, that unexpected actors (like unarmed women) were also able to tax in a situation of active conflict, and that road and transit taxes shaped many things beyond the business environment – like how violence is used. The starting point for my research topic was empirical, based on observations and conversations that were surprising and unintuitive.

Can you describe your thesis questions and your methodology?

My thesis asks three separate but interconnected questions, all revolving around taxation and order. The first looks at the question of whether taxation by armed groups can be understood as extortion or rather as a technology of governance. The second explores the question of how highway taxes taken by non-state armed groups shape legitimacy, violence and the economy. The third asks how gender and conflict are linked by investigating taxation and roadblocks by women. In all three, I take a relational approach and my methods are ethnographically influenced, including interviews, observations and document analysis. Most of my data is primary data, based on years of fieldwork.

What are your major findings?

In my first paper, my co-author Zachariah Mampilly and I examine how an armed group in northeast India, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah (NSCN-IM), collects taxes across four regions. We find that rebel taxation isn’t just about extortion – it can also create systems of control governance.

The second paper broadens the lens to study how multiple armed groups use checkpoints in the same region. These checkpoints aren’t just about collecting money; they reshape politics, create rivalries between groups, and redefine who holds power. The research argues that such interactions challenge traditional ideas of state authority, proposing a new way to analyse how power shifts in conflict zones.

The third paper focuses on women’s roles in these conflicts. Surprisingly, unarmed women often wield significant influence at checkpoints, controlling movement and goods. Their actions – shaped by societal gender norms – can alter conflict dynamics in unexpected ways, showing how gender and power intersect in armed struggles.

Together, these works reveal how taxation, mobility control, and gender norms collectively shape authority in conflict zones. They highlight the messy reality of power in conflict zones, where armed groups, civilians, and social norms interact to create complex systems of governance in which the state is just one of the actors.

What could be the political implications of your thesis?

Understanding how authority and power are shaped by and shape armed conflict is an important first step to any sort of conflict resolution. While we often tend to focus on ideology, violence and demands, taxation provides us with an important and relatively less explored lens through which we can understand political order, a necessary step to any kind of eventual political resolution.

What are you doing now?

I am now a postdoctoral researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), in their Peace and Violence Unit. I work on a project called “Trade-based Statecraft” where we look at how control over trade, conflict and governance are interlinked. It is great because I get to continue research on the themes and the region that I am interested in.

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On 28 August 2024, Shalaka Thakur defended her PhD thesis in International Relations/Political Science, titled “TOLL & CONTROL: Political Order and Armed Conflict in Northeast India”. Professor Elisabeth Prügl (right) presided over the committee, which included Professor Keith Krause (left), Thesis Director, and, as External reader, Professor Klaus Schlichte, Universität Bremen, Germany.

Citation of the PhD thesis: 
Thakur, Shalaka. “TOLL & CONTROL: Political Order and Armed Conflict in Northeast India”. PhD thesis, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, 2024.

An abstract of the PhD thesis is available on this page of the Geneva Graduate Institute’s repository. As the thesis itself is embargoed until November 2027, please contact Dr Thakur for access.

Banner image: Interview with non-state armed group. Author/Shalaka Thakur.
Interview by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.