I began this book by narrating the binary concept of how people narrate jhum as a non-sustainable wasteful practice, and at the same time see it as central to their culture. I return to this proposal in the conclusion by drawing on the histories of received wisdom and local innovations that have brought changes in swiddeners’ lives. I draw upon the principal arguments developed in the previous chapters, organizing this summary around themes: state–Naga relations, episodes of violence, jhum conservation, state science and patronage, state and missionary mediation and NEPED intervention that have shaped the development discourse surrounding jhum settlement in the Naga Hills and among the Yimchungers in particular.

I mentioned in Chapter 2 that the monograph was originally designed to work on a jhum development programme, the NEPED project, its policy and practice of jhumland development in Nagaland. I was made to believe reading the NEPED project literature that their programme was a unique intervention, where in the past state intervention aimed prima facie at eradicating the jhum. The NEPED project claimed to have reversed this approach through valuing indigenous knowledge of jhummias and promoting participatory planning and development by putting local farmers at the centre of jhumland improvement. However, my relationship with the project officials came to a crescendo only after a few months of fieldwork, and this resulted in complete inaccessibility to the inner world of project staff and consultants. I was put off this aspect of the study for good, and this turned out to be a new challenge and at the same time an opportunity to look at the wider timeline and social field of development in contemporary Nagaland by tracing development back to colonial times and unpacking Naga–state relations.

I based my fieldwork in a Yimchunger village after a long struggle but, quite unconventional to anthropological tradition, I moved back and forth between the village, the town and local archives, making sense of the longitudinal history of colonial contact and post-independence intervention in the Naga Hills. I thus referred to the rich archival documentation that became the source of my understanding of colonial state control alongside the numerous monographs that were written in the ‘Notes and Queries’ style of ethnography.