As a result of the Indian Government's Act East Policy, the region called Northeast India, which link South and Southeast Asia, have been attracting strong attention from inside and outside the country due to their potential value. Especially in the recent decades, it has been observed that there have been attempts at re-establishing connectivity between countries in  the ‘region’ comprising the present North East India, Bangladesh and Myanmar through a series of multilateral infrastructural initiatives aiming at a shared future. However, it seems that such results of initiatives are heavily and most profoundly conditioned by ‘social reconciliation’ effected through people to people contact based on mutual trust, confidence and friendships.
The proposed study intends to understand this conditionality by specifically looking at a) whether the ‘shared history’ of the region can constitute the core of the ‘social capital’ essential to forge an effective people to people contact and b) what is the scope and possibility of accommodating such an initiative to understand ‘shared history’ within the ongoing framework of ‘regional cooperation’. In particular, attempts will be made to forge academic collaborations among individuals and institutions in answering these two questions.