According to Sanjib Baruah, loosely organized federations are not only less prone to violent conflicts, they make better democracies and, in our era of globalization, they make more economic sense as well. He illustrates the argument with an analysis of conflicts in India's northeastern province of Assam.

Baruah offers an original and lucid interpretation of the political and economic history of Assam since it became a part of British India and one of the world's leading tea-producing regions in the nineteenth century.