The sobriquet of Seven Sisters was first coined in 1972 by a journalist named Jyoti Prakash Salgia during the inaugural foundation of these north eastern states of India. Despite the ethnic disparities, all the states in the region share similar geographical and cultural features. Initially, they also shared the isolation from the rest of India which lead to a mutual interdependence of social, political and economic nature. Though Sikkim joined this group in 1975, it is often referred to as a brother rather than the eighth sister. Therefore, these north eastern states are still collectively referred to as the seven sisters.