Posted: 26 Aug 2007 12:20
From today's Pioneer
That's our land too
Dil se: Meenakshi Rao
Just the other day, a prominent Assamese businessman from Guwahati expressed the desire to invest a bulk of his money in Himachal Pradesh. Assamese people, by tradition, are known to either live their whole life in Guwahati or come to Delhi for studies and work or simply immigrate abroad. States like Himachal do not figure in their trajectory.
So, it was surprising why this gentleman thought of an out of his world place like Himachal to put his millions into, that too in a venture far removed from his core business. The reason was not far to locate. After a lull in insurgency first triggered by the AGP coming to power and then lingering on for some time, terror is now back, that too in a virulent form of opportunism more than a movement for any so-called cause. Massacres, blasts, extortions and links with the ISI have become part and parcel of the State in a year that the nation celebrates its 60 years of Independence.
People no longer venture out two days before and after I-Day and prefer to stay away from market places on holidays, fearing a strike. Doctors do not want to earn much, lest they figure in the insurgents' extortion list and businessmen like this gentleman would rather show up as a bankrupt corporate house than robust enterprise. Life is quite a menace in itself. And death is something that looms larger than the monsoon clouds over N-E.
Added to this is the unforgiving angst of the people over the neglect by the rest of India. Do we really need to lose the confidence of such a sprawling territory in our own nation? The political class does not care and social organisations are too scared to go in.
Infrastructure in N-E is something that the modern generation is explained only in textbooks and the region's economy is on a perpetual poverty anthem. Government servants have not been paid for months and jobs stopped coming decades back. With the youth frustrated and cut off from the economic boom of the rest of the nation, guns are the easiest to pick up. The entire N-E, this gentleman agitatedly said, has all but slipped out of India's hand "much, much more than Kashmir has."
The failure of successive Indian Governments to amalgamate a socially different but territorially linked region has been consistent, blatant and unwarranted enough for one to say they deserve to lose this frontier. But a nation is not just about the political class which rules it but also of its people, sovereign pride, nationalistic togetherness and unity despite the diversity, as India touts at international fora.
But they are hollow as hell, all those claims. Most of the N-E is out of hand. Votebank politics has let the demographic change turn into a monster with a virtual Bangladeshi takeover. The Muslim population in Assam alone has increased by over 313 per cent in half-a-century, between 1951 and 2001. The ISI has taken control of big insurgent groups, most of who had formed to fight the infiltration issue in the first place. In this duel for identity, a conscience has been lost - on either side. Remember, the Kargil War coffins also went to N-E. Their sons died too for the independence of our nation. Maniram Dewan, Piyoli Phukan and Piyali Barua were hanged for the Sepoy Mutiny. Martyrs like Kanak Lata, Kushal Konwar and Bhogeswari Phukanani gave their lives for the Mahatma's cause. Their sacrifices seem to have gone in vain.
A politician once infamously said about Arunachal: "It is so far away. If the Chinese want some of it what is there in giving some away." If distance was this man's criterion for making Arunachal a sacrificial goat for a war not won, then perhaps we should know that from Delhi, Kohima is just 2298 km away as opposed to Kanyakumari which is 2742. If difference in culture is the reason, what could be more far removed than a Keralite in Kozikode from a Punjabi in New Delhi? And if resources were the reason, well, 60 years after Independence, six of the seven State capitals in the N-E are not connected by rail; Itanagar, Kohima and Shillong do not have proper airports; N-E has to import essential goods worth nearly Rs 3,500 crore annually; two-thirds of India's tea production and a substantial part of oil is produced in the region but not even a tiny percentage of the profits is re-invested there; out of the Rs 50,000 crore plus sanctioned by financial institutions, Assam gets a measly Rs 114 crore, Nagaland Rs 4 crore and the rest of the States not a single paisa. Assam's internal debt is a staggering Rs 10,000 crore.
If Sir Cyril Radcliffe isolated the region by drawing the Radcliffe line all those decades back, all Governments of free India have made rigorous isolation of the region a fine art. Perhaps, we can spare a thought on where we are headed or how close Bangladesh and China are to a complete takeover of a neglected region and its neglected people.
And once we realise that, Editors of mainstream dailies will stop consigning the resurgent massacres in N-E to inside pages, next to daily rapes, daily thefts and daily diaries.