First steps to solve Assam-Meghalaya border dispute are welcome. The bigger contestations remain

 The Assam and Meghalaya governments have made an impressive beginning towards resolving a border dispute that has festered for 50 years now. The chief ministers of the two states have signed an agreement to settle six of the 12 contested spots on the 884-km border they share. True, the six other points of contestation are expected to involve longer and more complex negotiations. But that only highlights the pragmatism in not letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. The pact is a result of sustained talks and follow-up action between the two governments since last year, with the prodding of the Centre. It also suggests that both Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma and Meghalaya CM Conrad Sangma, whose NPP is also an NDA partner in the state, have staked political capital in disentangling this knot. That’s a striking — and refreshing — contrast from the situation in last July, when violence on the Assam-Mizoram border led to the death of six police personnel and descended into unseemly grandstanding by two CMs, both unwilling to yield an inch.

The many border disputes in the region are a function of history. While colonial Assam was a large lumbering landmass, administered to serve British revenue interests, several states were carved out from it after independence — as smaller tribes and local communities remained apprehensive about their interests going unrepresented in a vast political unit. Indeed, the map-making of the colonial-era ended up drawing random, arbitrary lines, leading to fault lines between communities that have only widened over time. Unfortunately, they also left a mark on the political boundaries that were drawn post-1947. As a result, nearly every state in the region has a disputed border with Assam. Land is a fraught issue in the Northeast, and often pits state against state in bitter disputes — the demand for a Greater Nagalim, for instance. Smaller states, especially, have remained anxious about not ceding territory. The contentions over the demarcation of Assam’s border with Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram are more numerous and more intractable. While Assam has initiated conversations with them, they remain at a very preliminary stage.

The gains made in Assam-Meghalaya, therefore, are significant. They offer a roadmap to the other states, have the potential of bringing down the temperature, and denting the Northeast’s image of a region of innumerable conflicts. That can only work to the region’s advantage in inviting investment and pushing for an infrastructure boost. For both Sarma and Sangma, however, the test will be to sell the agreement to their respective domestic constituencies, and ensure that the residents on the border villages are not alienated in the process. While this is a good beginning, neither the Centre nor the leaders of the region must underestimate the task that lies ahead.

Source: Indian Express, 31/03/22

Assam Governor launches ‘Bodoland super 50 mission’ to train youth for competitive examinations

 

The Bodoland Super 50 Mission also plans to provide 11 months of high-quality free residential coaching and mentorship programme to students from BTR who aspired for admissions into IITs, NITs and top engineering institutes.

Assam Governor Jagdish Mukhi on Tuesday launched the ‘Bodoland Super 50 Mission’, an initiative of BTR chief Pramod Boro to prepare Bodo youths for competitive examinations.

An official statement said the project of the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) administration aims at transforming the lives of engineering aspirants coming from economically weaker sections of five Bodo dominated districts of Assam.

The initiative is similar to some of the well-known examples of enhancing students achievements such as Anand Kumar-Super30 in Bihar, Oil India Super 30, ONGC Super 30 and Telangana Social Welfare ResidentiaAddressing the function, the governor expressed happiness on the launch of the “much-needed” programme.

“If we are to think about the development of Bodoland, we have to be self-dependent,” he said.

Boro thanked the governor for visiting the BTR and launching the programme.l Educational Institutions Society (TSWREIS).

The Bodoland Super 50 Mission also plans to provide 11 months of high-quality free residential coaching and mentorship programme to students from BTR who aspired for admissions into IITs, NITs and top engineering institutes.

Fifty candidates (10 from each district of Baksa, Chirang, Kokrajhar, Tamulpur and Udalguri) would be shortlisted through an entrance examination to participate in the programme each year, the statement said. The BTR is an elected autonomous body created under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution for the Bodo dominated areas of Assam. 

Source: Indian Express, 17/02/22

At the root of Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border dispute, a committee report from 1951

 

Arunachal Pradesh, which was earlier a part of Assam, shares a boundary of 804.1 km with the state—with frequent flare-ups reported along the border since the 1990s.

Last month, just days after Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma met with his Arunachal Pradesh counterpart, Pema Khandu, to discuss a “permanent solution” over the decades-old boundary dispute between the two states, fresh tensions were reported along their border. While the flashpoint this time was the ongoing construction of the Likabali-Durpai road being built under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), the boundary dispute between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, like other states in the region, dates back to colonial times.

Bone of contention: 1951

Arunachal Pradesh, which was earlier a part of Assam, shares a boundary of 804.1 km with the state—with frequent flare-ups reported along the border since the 1990s.

The dispute dates back to colonial times, when the British in 1873 announced the “inner line” regulation, demarcating an imaginary boundary between plains and the frontier hills, which were later designated as the North East Frontier Tracts in 1915. The latter corresponds to the area that makes up present-day Arunachal Pradesh.

After Independence, the Assam government assumed administrative jurisdiction over the North East Frontier Tracts, which later became the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) in 1954, and finally, the Union Territory of Arunachal Pradesh in 1972. It gained statehood in 1987.

However, before it was carved out of Assam, a sub-committee headed by then Assam chief minister Gopinath Bordoloi made some recommendations in relation to the administration of NEFA (under Assam) and submitted a report in 1951. Based on the Bordoloi committee report, around 3,648 sq km of the “plain” area of Balipara and Sadiya foothills was transferred from Arunachal (then NEFA) to Assam’s then Darrang and Lakhimpur districts.

“This remains the bone of contention between the two states as Arunachal Pradesh refuses to accept this notification as the basis of demarcation,” said a senior government official from Assam, closely involved in inter-state border-related matters.

Arunachal Pradesh has long held that the transfer was done without the consultation of its people. “It was arbitrary, defective, and no tribal leader from Arunachal Pradesh was consulted before the land was transferred. They just decided to draw a line between the hills and plains,” said Tabom Dai, General Secretary, All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union (AAPSU). According to him, Arunachal had customary rights over these lands, considering the tribes living there would pay taxes to Ahom rulers. Assam, on the other hand, feels that this demarcation as per 1951 notification is constitutional and legal.

Efforts at demarcation

The border issues came to the fore after Arunachal Pradesh became a UT in 1972. Between 1971 and 1974, there were multiple efforts to demarcate the boundary but it did not work out. In April 1979, a high-powered tripartite committee was constituted to delineate the boundary on the basis of Survey of India maps, as well as discussions with both sides.

By 1983-84, out of the 800 km, 489 km, mostly in the north bank of the Brahmaputra, were demarcated. However, further demarcation could not commence because Arunachal Pradesh did not accept the recommendations, and claimed several kilometres out of the 3,648 sq km that was transferred as per the 1951 notification.

Assam objected and filed a case in the Supreme Court in 1989, highlighting an “encroachment” made by Arunachal Pradesh, while seeking demarcation of the boundary between the states.

To resolve the dispute between the two states, the apex court-appointed a local boundary commission in 2006, headed by a retired SC judge. In September 2014, the local commission submitted its report. Several recommendations were made (some of which suggested Arunachal Pradesh get back some of the territory which was transferred in 1951), and it was suggested that both states should arrive at a consensus through discussions. However, nothing came of it.

Flashpoints

According to a 2008 research paper from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, clashes were first reported in 1992 when the Arunachal state government alleged that people from Assam were “building houses, markets and even police stations on its territory”. Since then intermittent clashes have been taking place, making the border tense. Another paper by the same institute in 2020 said that Assam had raised the issue of Arunachal Pradesh encroaching on its forest land, and had periodically launched eviction drives, leading to tensions on the ground. One was in 2005 in Bhalukpong in Arunachal Pradesh’s West Kameng district and the other in 2014 in the Behali Reserve Forest area, in the foothills between Assam’s Sonitpur and Arunachal’s Papumpare districts. Ten people died in the Behali incident.

The recent flashpoint is the ongoing Likabali-Durpai PMGSY road project in Arunachal Pradesh’s Lower Siang district—Assam claims that some parts of the road, under construction since 2019, falls under its Dhemaji district.

The road, about 65 km to 70 km, is meant to connect at least 24 villages between Arunachal Pradesh’s Durpai and Likabali and has been granted after years of petitioning by local residents. Likabali is one of the oldest towns in the foothills and has long been a site of dispute.

Last week, a culvert under construction close to Hime, one of the villages through which the road runs, was burnt by “unidentified miscreants from the Assam side”, authorities said. Following that, there were unconfirmed reports of “firing in the air” by local residents from the Arunachal Pradesh side on Wednesday night. This was preceded by a team from Assam Police stopping the construction in Hime, claiming that the road was touching disputed territory.

Authorities from both sides say this was not the first instance of trouble along the road and that it keeps happening occasionally ever since construction started two years ago. However, they claim administrations of both districts were in touch with each other.

The road ahead

In the last few months, Assam chief minister Sarma has been taking a proactive role in resolving the border disputes not just with Arunachal Pradesh, but with the neighbouring states it has issues with. While Assam and Meghalaya have made some progress, with both governments submitting recommendations to the Centre last month, Sarma has been consistently meeting chief ministers of Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh as well. However, a concrete plan of action has not been chalked out yet. Just last week, Sarma met Khandu in Guwahati and both described the meeting as “positive”, saying they were ready to conduct a ground-level survey on boundary status.

Source: Indian Express, 1/02/22

Can elephant collaring help manage human-elephant conflict in Assam?

 

Assam's forest department is planning to collar at least five elephants in high-conflict habitats in the coming months. What is radio-collaring, what are the challenges involved, and can it really help?

Last week, a wild elephant was radio-collared for the first time in Assam’s Sonitpur district by the state’s Forest Department, in collaboration with NGO World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-India. The joint initiative is being described as a step to study and mitigate human-elephant conflict in the state. Experts say the exercise is challenging, and even runs the risk of having a low success rate. Yet, the forest department is planning to collar at least five elephants in high-conflict habitats in the coming months. What is radio-collaring, what are the challenges involved, and can it really help?

What are radio-collars?

Radio collars are GPS-enabled collars that can relay information about an elephants’ whereabouts. They weigh roughly 8 kg and are fitted around the elephant’s neck. According to a WWF blog, collaring includes identifying a suitable candidate (generally an adult elephant), darting it with a sedative, and fitting a collar around the elephant’s neck, before the animal is revived.

Additionally, the team also attaches an accelerometer to the collar to “understand what exactly an elephant is doing at any given time (running, walking, eating, drinking, etc)”.

How does radio-collaring help?

The objectives are twofold, M K Yadava, Chief Wildlife Warden, Assam said. “Information from the GPS would help us track and study the movement patterns of the herd, across regions and habitats,” he said. Added Hiten Baishya of the WWF, “We will know where they are moving, which corridors they frequent, if the habitat is sufficient, if it needs protection, etc.” This would help in understanding what is driving the conflict.

The second objective is incidental, said Yadava. The collars would serve as an early warning system, and if people know which direction an elephant is moving, they can prepare accordingly. “Villagers and forest officials will know about approaching elephants… very much how weather forecasting works. And this would help mitigate conflict incidents,” said veterinarian and elephant expert Kushal Konwar Sharma, who is involved in the exercise.

However, the main objective is long-term study of movement patterns, says experts. “Gradually, as habitats are shrinking and traditional corridors are not in use anymore, it is imperative to study the range of travels and make an inventory of the new habitats. This is where collaring can come in,” said ano

What is the plan in Assam?

In March 2020, the Ministry of Environment of Forest & Climate Change, gave approval to collar five elephants in Sonitpur and Biswanath districts in Assam, stating a number of conditions, among them being “minimum trauma” to the elephants during the operation and submission of regular periodic reports.

Yadava said the department aimed at collaring eleven elephants across the landscape in the future. “We have eleven elephant herds to be tracked in high human elephant-conflict areas. These include areas in Sonitpur, Golaghat, Nagaon, Goalpara, Udalguri, among others,” he said. He added that there was no time frame involved since this was such a “delicate and complicated” exercise.

Is it easy collaring an elephant?

Not at all. Experts say it is an extremely time-consuming and challenging exercise. “We first have to identify the matriarch of the herd we will tag… identification alone takes time and involves us stalking them for days,” said the elephant expert Sarma, adding that there were “practical challenges” in tagging them too.

“We don’t have helicopters and other sophisticated equipment to approach elephants to tranquillise them. We go by foot. There is risk — for both our life and the elephant’s life. But we have very skilled experts on board and they are doing the job with utmost care,” added Baishya. When the approval comes from the Centre, we take into account all the conditions and follow them all, he added.ther forest department official, requesting anonymity.

Any other challenges/drawbacks?

Officials said all components for radio collaring are not available in India, including collars and tranquilising drugs. These have to be imported and are quite expensive.

Baishya said they also have to take into account that elephants grow in size. “Collars may become tight, so we usually take a senior elephant so there is less chance of growth,” he said.

The state’s topography too, marked by hills and rivers, including the Brahmaputra that runs across it, can be a challenge. “Each state has its own peculiar problems. We have elephants that are long ranging, and have a diverse topography,” said Yadava.

“Many times elephants are not able to keep the collar on. They will have it on for maximum six months, before it falls off,” said Bibhuti Lahkar, a senior scientist with Guwhati-based conservation NGO Aaranyak. He added that there may be technical glitches with the device too.

In Assam, too, an elephant who had strayed from the Amchang Wildlife Sanctuary, that borders Guwahati, into the city in 2019, was radio-collared on a trial basis last year. “We monitored it for a month, but due to the weight of the belt and elephant brushing against trees, the signal was feeble and ultimately the collar fell off,” said a forest official, who did not want to be named.

So is it worth it?

Yadava added that while there were risks and the success rate was low, there has been no better mechanism (other than collaring) to study conflict long term.

Lahkar said that in Africa, such an exercise had worked well.

“Of course, the terrain is different here and may prove to be more difficult, but it is worth doing it,” he said, adding that if it works well, and if even six out of ten elephants are collared, it would yield “lots of information”.

Collaring has been attempted in Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Tamil Nadu too.

How bad is human-elephant conflict in Assam?

From 2010-2019, 761 people and 249 elephants were killed in Assam as a direct consequence of human-elephant conflict, stated the WWF blog.

“More than 65 per cent of the habitat north of the river has been lost in the past few decades to agriculture and settlements, and conflict between humans and elephants has been steadily increasing ever since,” it said.

Yadava said there are currently about 6,000 wild elephants in Assam.

Source: Indian Express, 24/11/21

There is more to the evictions in Assam than the demands of ‘development’

 

Sanjib Baruah writes: Evictions have long been an explosive subject due to the region’s demographic and political history, as well as the displacement and dispossession caused by riverbank erosion.

Encroachment of land designated as “government lands”, “reserve forests” or “grazing lands” and the eviction of “encroachers” have long been a staple of politics in Assam. The recent evictions in Sipajhar are in line with this history, but they also stand strikingly apart in significant ways.

Encroachments and evictions are not unique to Assam. But they are more common and widespread — and they span the urban-rural divide — because of certain peculiarities of the region’s physical landscape and political and demographic history.

Assam regularly loses large swathes of land to riverbank erosion. Unlike the annual floods that attract significant media attention — though yielding little by way of a long-term flood hazard management strategy — riverbank erosion is less dramatic, and it barely makes news. Significant numbers of people are regularly displaced and dispossessed by riverbank erosion. An article by an IAS officer, Aranyak Saikia, that draws on his experience as assistant commissioner of a flood-prone district in Assam is quite telling (‘Not just floods, Assam needs an urgent, long-term strategy on erosion’, IE, September 12, 2021). Riverbank erosion uproots people from their land — their most important asset — forcing them to relocate. Some of the displaced, he observes, seek refuge in government lands, protected forests, or wildlife sanctuaries. “While undocumented migration has been a historical problem in Assam,” writes Saikia, “today a large fraction of the encroachments are also by families, uprooted by erosion”.

For more than a century Assam and Northeast India have been a settlement frontier attracting massive immigration from the rest of the subcontinent. While the colonial government that pictured Assam as a wasteland initially encouraged immigration and settlement by peasants from deltaic eastern Bengal to raise revenue, it also introduced the line system demarcating areas where immigrants could settle. But the colonial state found it difficult to defend the no-occupation areas against the pressure of immigration and many forest reserves, grazing reserves and tribal belts had to be de-reserved. The state, in effect, accepted its failure to prevent settlement in those spaces. This process has continued in old and new forms since decolonisation.

In recent decades, internal factors such as riverbank erosion and development-induced displacement — not immigration — have been the primary sources of demographic pressure on public lands. For example, Assam’s present capital complex in Dispur was built in the 1970s after the “de-tribalisation” of land belonging to a tribal belt. Like those displaced by riverbank erosion, those displaced by development too find their way into government lands and reserve forests, turning these land-use designations into little more than legal fictions.

It is hardly surprising that while officials like to present the eviction of encroachments in the apparently neutral language of the law, it has been an intensely political subject.

Evictions became an explosive political issue in the 1980s. One of the demands of the Assam movement (1979-85) was the eviction of non-tribals from the tribal belts. The All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) were behind this demand. One of the clauses of the Assam Accord stipulated the prevention of encroachment and the eviction of unauthorised encroachers from public lands and tribal belts and blocks. But when the first Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government tried to implement this clause, it quickly learned that the “unauthorised encroachers” are a motley group of people that included many Bodos and other tribals as well.

It was a costly political mistake for the AGP. It was the single major factor that alienated the Bodos from the ethnic Assamese political society and radicalised the Bodo movement. From a movement focused on Bodo culture and the deprivation of educational and employment opportunities, the focus of the Bodo movement changed to the demand for a separate state, captured by the slogan, “Divide Assam 50-50”.

Assam has come a long way since then. The current state government of Assam does not take any political chances. Evictable encroached areas are carefully identified and targeted for development projects, which apparently involves foreknowledge of the alleged encroachers to be evicted. Their religious and ethnic affiliations appear to feature in the design of the project. The development project is fast-tracked to start immediately after the physical eviction is completed by the police, bulldozers, and elephants.

In her budget speech to the state Assembly in July, Finance Minister Ajanta Neog spoke of an “experiment” to “remove encroachers from more than 77,420 bighas of land” in the Garukhuti area of Sipajhar. A committee of legislators was formed “to lead the agricultural initiatives for development of agriculture and allied activities”. The project’s goal, she claimed, was to provide livelihood opportunities to the area’s “indigenous youth”.

The so-called experiment was fast-tracked in an unparalleled manner. The state government had already identified a group of farmers to form part of a Multipurpose Agricultural Producer Organisation. There was no explanation for why none of the alleged encroachers could be included among the project’s potential beneficiaries.

The government, she said, had already deployed an advance party of the Indian Army’s 134 battalion of the Ecological Task Force (ETF) to undertake “massive afforestation activities” in the evicted area; and a veterinary expert team from Gujarat was already in place to oversee a pilot project for the introduction of the Gir cow to the area.

The local media reported that the committee of legislators overseeing the project had “camped in the Gorukhuti area to monitor the eviction drive”. On the day of the eviction, the committee chairman said it had engaged 22 tractors to till the land.

Development has been aptly called “a concept of monumental emptiness” since it can mean just about anything. Therefore critical scholars of development have long argued that it is crucial to ask, “what development does, who does it, and whom it actually benefits”. It is hard to think of a better case to illustrate this argument than Assam’s new “experiment” with eviction for development.

This column first appeared in the print edition on October 8, 2021 under the title ‘Eviction and development’. The writer is Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, New York.

Source: 8/10/21

Assam’s Miya community is now threatened with eviction

 

Nazimuddin Siddique writes:The attack on their citizenship has created unprecedented fear among members of the community. Eviction is the latest weapon being used to trap them in a cycle of poverty and hardship.

On September 23, a video trended on social media. In the video, a lungi-clad man holding a stick— later identified as Moinul Haque — is seen to approach some 20 armed police personnel. Over the next few seconds, he is shot at close range. As he falls to the ground, a dozen policemen or so are seen beating and kicking the dying man. The video also showed a civilian, later identified as a government photographer, stomping on the man lying on the ground. This display of medieval barbarism was witnessed during an eviction drive in Darrang district in central Assam.

Miyas are Muslims of East Bengal origin or Asomiya Muslims of Bengali origin. The history of migration of this social group into Assam dates back to the mid-19th century. Migration continued till the first half of the 20th century. The migrants assimilated with Asomiya culture and adopted Asomiya as their identity and language. Their doing so directly contributed to keeping Asomiya as the language spoken by the majority of people in multilingual and heterogeneous Assam.Yet, the post-colonial society of Assam has witnessed large-scale othering and persecution of the Miya community. There can be no better illustration of the result of this process of othering than the killing of Moinul Haque and the desecration of his corpse.

Persecution of Miyas has a long history in Assam. They are regularly vilified as Gedas, “illegal immigrants”, “Bangladeshis”, “doubtful Bangladeshis”, “illegal encroachers”, etc. Many academics from the region label them as illegal immigrants. Using racial slurs against this social group has been widespread. Apart from quotidian dehumanisation inflicted by many in Assam, there have also been multiple killings with attendant impunity of the perpetrators. None of the perpetrators has hitherto been brought to justice for these mass crimes.

The targeting of the community continued in the name of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and through the creation of the infamous detention camps. A special category of people was created in Assam called “doubtful-voters”; citizenship of thousands of Miyas came under a cloud, based on prejudice and stereotypes. Many were forcibly sent to detention camps. The attack on the very citizenship of thousands of Miya people, including the elderly, women and children, has heaped unprecedented fear, melancholy and hardship on the community. In this series of persecution, “eviction” is the government’s new weapon to imprison this community in an unending cycle of poverty and hardship.

Assam has, of late, been witnessing several eviction drives. Most of these evictions are targeting Muslims. The eviction in Darrang has been executed without proper implementation of a rehabilitation plan. People were served notices to vacate their land at midnight, and evictions commenced the very next morning. Many of them did not receive any notice. The mainstream media has not asked appropriate questions to the government. The civil society lacks the moral courage to protest these evictions, though aware that this is a tool being used to leave thousands of people homeless, landless, and jobless. In the locations earmarked as eviction sites, human beings are reduced, in the now-famous characterisation of India’s home minister, to “termites”. The constitutional guarantee of equality for all citizens has been ground to dust. The backdrop of this collective failure of society is the prevailing Hindu-Muslim divide.

Assam has thousands of landless people. Most of them are Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). The IDPs are a creation of past instances of violence and natural calamities that include rivers running amok seasonally and riverbank erosion. But successive governments have not gotten round to resolving the issue of landlessness. Many of the landless are labelled as “illegal Bangladeshis”. Many people in eastern Assam think that lower Assam is full of Miyas. The political class leaves no stone unturned to fan prejudice and creates a fertile ground for hatred.

Civil society must, therefore, initiate a dialogue to bridge the inter-community gap and reclaim the truth. The people of upper Assam must be educated that Miyas are not Bangladeshi. This may be done by the civil society perhaps through a bridging project. Under such a project some people from villages of eastern Assam could be invited to spend time in Miya villages of western Assam, thereby building social bridges.

This column first appeared in the print edition on October 6, 2021 under the title ‘A bridge to Assam’s other’. The writer is an Assam-based researcher

Source: Indian Express, 6/10/21

Assam: Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi Award

 On October 3, 2021, the “Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi Award for National Integration and National Contribution 2021” was conferred by the Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu.

Key Facts

• Awards were conferred to “Shillong Chamber Choir”, Assam branch of Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust as well as writer Nirod Kumar Baruah.
• This award is one of the biggest civilian awards in Assam. It carries a citation along with a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh.
• Award is conferred in the name of first chief minister of Assam, Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi. He was a multi-dimensional figure with outstanding accomplishments. He was also conferred the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1999.

Shillong Chamber Choir

Shillong Chamber Choir was founded in 2001 by founder, mentor and conductor of the choir Neil Nongkynrih. Its repertoire includes the works of western classical music such as Bach, Handel, Gershwin and Mozart besides Khasi folk songs & opera. The choir has performed in Poland, Britain, Switzerland, Italy, Sri Lanka, as well as in Indian cities of Delhi, Mombai, Bangalore and Guwahati. In the year 2021, it had won the reality TV show, India’s Got Talent. It had also awarded with three gold awards at the 6th World Choir Games for Gospel, Musica Sacra and Popular Music.

Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi Award

It is one of the biggest civilian awards of Assam, which is bestowed upon the institutions and individuals from diverse fields to honour their exemplary contributions towards integration of nation.

Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust

This trust was set up on January 9, 1946, when Mahatma Gandhi visited Assam. It has been working for rural women and children.

Dr Nirod Kumar Baruah

He is based in Germany. He did his masters in History and Political Science from Kashi Hindu University while M Phil from Bonn University, Germany. He has written several books on Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi.

Where does all our hatred come from?

 

Harsh Mander writes: The violence in Assam, like that inflicted by lynch mobs, shows normalisation of hatred against communities. It cannot be ascribed to social anomalies.

I am haunted by the lament of two young researchers from Assam, Suraj Gogoi and Nazimuddin Siddique. “We are shaken and frozen”, they say. “Is this the last sky?” The majority of the Indian people have become so inured to brutal public displays of hate violence that when we consume video images of lynching, gangrape and killing of Dalit women, and the flaunting of bigotry by our leaders, we just turn our faces away. What was it then about the recent images from Darrang in Assam — of a man with a lathi shot in his chest trying to defend his home against hundreds of armed security men, and of a young civilian jumping on and kicking the man’s body even as his last breaths cease — that has stirred public outrage?

A local activist likened the scene of the Assam village to one “from a war”. There were at least 1,500 armed police and paramilitary soldiers, he said. Eight hundred homes were rapidly razed. A 28-year-old man in a lungi with a stick in his hand ran towards the soldiers in anguish about being rendered landless and homeless. He could easily have been overpowered without firing even a shot. And even if compelled to shoot, the forces are trained to shoot below the waist, so as to temporarily disable but not kill the protester. Instead, they choose to shoot him in the chest.

The village, Dholpur, is one amongst hundreds of riverine islands and riverbanks, vulnerable to erosion every year. On one side is the mighty Brahmaputra and on the other its tributary Nonoi. Landless peasants, mostly of Bengali Muslim origin, have settled here for decades. These are families displaced both by riverine erosion and periodic targeted violence — the most violent incidents took place during the Assam agitation.

Sabita Goswami in Along the Red River describes how in 1983, along with the forgotten massacre of Nellie — the largest post-Independence communal massacre for which not a single person has even been tried, let alone punished — an uncounted number of people were slaughtered in Chaolkhowa Chapori, close to Dholpur.

In the intensely flood-vulnerable riverine islands and banks, large numbers of landless peasants cultivate, under conditions of immense hardship and insecurity, tracts of land for which they have not been issued papers by the state administration. These lands get washed away by floods every few years, and the peasants shift to a new island or river bank each time. In Dholpur, they cultivated three crops every year — corn, jute and peanut — and vegetables like cabbage, brinjal and cauliflower. To call them encroachers is dangerous official fiction.

Almost immediately after assuming office, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced the resolve of his government to remove these “encroachments”. He has not explained why only the settlements populated largely by Muslims of Bengali origin were chosen for demolition. At the Dholpur site, Sarma announced that the land reclaimed from these encroachers would be used to settle “indigenous” Assamese for collective farming. It may seem mystifying why the state chose to replace one set of landless peasants with another. But when it’s about replacing “Bangladeshis” (read Assamese Muslims of Bengali origin) with “indigenous” people (read Assamese Hindus), the unashamedly communal political character of the project becomes evident.

Sarma has announced, after criticism, that the landless people displaced would be resettled elsewhere. The humane administrative response would then have been to resettle the displaced people before displacing them. Instead, local people told me that they got notices one night, and early the next morning, the forces began demolishing their homes. They asked for time to at least collect their housing materials and belongings, but instead, these were wrecked and often set on fire by the police forces.

Finally stands the question of this man who vented his hate with such malevolence on the man shot by police bullets. We know now that he was a photographer often engaged by the district administration, charged with filming the police action against the “encroachers”. To understand the photographer’s actions, we need first to see the dark hole into which we — the people in Assam and rest of India — have fallen. The perversity of hate of the photographer, indeed of lynch mobs in many parts of the country, cannot be dismissed as individual social anomalies. These public displays of violent hate targeting India’s Muslims and sometimes Dalits have increasingly become normalised, and public resistance to it is increasingly rare.

I speak from the experience of 30 journeys of solidarity and atonement of the Karwan e Mohabbat to families of those felled by hate violence. Families would tell us, “We wish they had just shot him or stabbed him to death. Why did they torture him so much?”

Do we need to ask ourselves where this hate comes from? There is no doubt today that we are being tutored into hate from above, from those in positions of power. It is they who have valorised hate against the “termites”, the “infiltrators”, the “cow-killers”, the “temple-breakers”, the “love jihadis”.

To people from dominant communities, I ask: Is it that you don’t care because you think this hate will only damage the hated “other”? Look at the photographer in Darrang, look at the faces of young men in innumerable videos of lynch mobs or gang-rapists. Don’t imagine that hate would leave you untouched. Do you want your children also to grow so savagely damaged by hate?

This column first appeared in the print edition on September 26, 2021 under the title ‘The doctrine of hate’. Mander is a Richard von Weizsacker Fellow and a peace and human rights worker and writer

Source: Indian Express, 28/09/21

Assam’s quest for rhino conservation

 In the face of the poaching challenge, the Assam government’s decision to publicly burn horns sends out a strong message that the body part has no commercial and medicinal value, and that India values its wildlife heritage

To mark World Rhino Day, the Assam government on Wednesday destroyed nearly 2,500 horns of the one-horned rhinoceros, elephant tusks, and other body parts of other wild animals. The destruction of horns and other animal parts complies with the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, and a later Supreme Court order. While Assam had disposed of horns recovered before 1979, those collected later were at the forest department’s district treasuries after they were recovered from poachers or collected from dead rhinos. In India, one-horned rhinos were declared endangered in 1975, but downgraded to “vulnerable” in 2008. Assam has the largest population of one-horn rhino in the world, numbering about 2,600.

Despite the international ban on rhino horn trade since 1977, extensive illegal trade persists through Asia because it is used as an ingredient in traditional medicine in China and some South Asian countries. However, there is no scientific proof of its medical value. Last month, the Assam government said that poachers have killed 22 one-horned rhinos in the state since 2017 and that till June 2021, 644 poachers have been arrested for the crime. In April, Assam successfully increased its rhino population to 3,000 as targeted under Indian Rhino Vision 2020.

In the face of the poaching challenge, the Assam government’s decision to publicly burn horns sends out a strong message that the body part has no commercial and medicinal value, and that India values its wildlife heritage. However, along with strengthening monitoring and law enforcement systems and tackling wildlife trade, Assam needs to restore the quality of rhino habitat and ensure rhino population density and genetic diversity.

Source: Hindustan Times, 22/09/21

Why a Gauhati HC order on a citizenship case is important

 Apart from a careful consideration of the documentary evidence, it noted that the structure of the Foreigners’ Tribunal proceedings was such that those accused of being a foreigner had no knowledge about the circumstances under which they had been referred to the tribunal or the nature of the accusations against them — no documents or evidence had to be furnished to them.

Over the last two years, several reports have exposed the flawed workings of Assam’s Foreigners’ Tribunals, where individuals accused of being “illegal immigrants” have to prove their citizenship. The reports suggest that these tribunals have followed arbitrary processes, placed the burden of producing extensive documentary proof on marginalised individuals, exercised little genuine independence vis-a-vis the executive, and that their tenure is linked to how many people they can declare to be “non-citizens”. This is particularly serious, given that the stripping of citizenship means the loss of all basic rights, and vulnerability to deportation.

In this context, a recent Gauhati High Court (HC) judgment comes as an important corrective, and raises some hope for bringing the foreigners’ tribunal process more in line with the rule of law.

The tribunal had declared one Haidar Ali to be a non-citizen, despite extensive documentation — including voter lists and property documents — being placed to show that Ali’s parents and grandparents were Indian citizens, and had been so for decades. The tribunal did so on the basis of perverse reasoning — for example, that along with Ali’s parents, there were certain other names in the voting lists that had not been explained; that Ali had stated during oral evidence that he had certain siblings while he had not done so in his written evidence, and that this justified drawing an “adverse inference” against him; and that despite Ali’s father himself testifying to their relationship before the tribunal, a “sufficient link” between the two had not been proven.

The Gauhati HC — speaking through Justice N Kotiswar Singh — set aside the order, and declared Ali to be an Indian citizen. Apart from a careful consideration of the documentary evidence, it noted that the structure of the Foreigners’ Tribunal proceedings was such that those accused of being a foreigner had no knowledge about the circumstances under which they had been referred to the tribunal or the nature of the accusations against them — no documents or evidence had to be furnished to them. In HC’s words, the individual “is totally in [the] dark as to how he came to be considered a foreigner and not an Indian.”

For this reason, the court held that if an individual “introduces new facts to discharge his onus [of proof], it cannot be said to take the State by surprise ... in fact, all opportunities should be given to a proceedee to enable him to produce all such documents which come to his possession even at a later stage also, to substantiate his claim that he is an Indian. No pedantic view should be taken, if there has been some delay or if the same is not mentioned in the written statement.”

HC’s observations are important, as it is an oft-repeated statement that “strict procedural rules” do not apply to the workings of the Foreigners’ Tribunals. More often than not, however, this laxity in procedure is used to the disadvantage of accused individuals — for example, by denying the application of the rules of natural justice. HC, however, restored parity by specifying that in the same manner, strict procedural rules should not be used to shut out an individual’s ability to prove her citizenship.

Justice Singh also made two further important observations. First, he noted that in cases where individuals were illiterate, or where their birth had not been recorded, documentary evidence would be impossible to obtain. In such cases, facts about date or place of birth could be proved by oral evidence. And second, as the standard of proof was one of “preponderance of probabilities”, a few inconsistencies ought not to be used to defeat an individual’s claim to citizenship. Both observations — while not new — bore reiteration by HC, especially in view of the conduct of the Foreigners’ Tribunals.

While the judgment of the Gauhati HC will not solve all the issues that continue to plague the Foreigners’ Tribunals — and inflict great hardship and suffering on ordinary people — it, and more judgments like it, will at least help to restore a semblance of the rule of law to the process.

Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based advocate The views expressed are personal

Source: Hindustant Times, 18/04/21

Frontier politics: On identity issues in Assam polls

 

Identity issues have taken centrestage in the Assembly election in Assam

The BJP’s rise to power in Assam in 2016 was remarkable, and the party has set an even higher goal this time, to win 100 of the 126 Assembly seats along with its allies, the Asom Gana Parishad, United People’s Party Liberal and the Rabha Joutha Mancha. The electoral landscape is significantly different this time, with rearranged alliances and the emergence of new issues such as the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). Going by 2016 figures, the Mahajot of parties including the Congress, the All India United Democratic Front, and the Bodoland People’s Front has 48.81% share of the votes. The combined vote share of the Congress and AIUDF was higher in 17 seats the BJP had won last time. An alliance of regional parties, the Assam Jatiya Parishad and Akhil Gogoi’s Raijor Dal, both formed six months ago following the anti-CAA movement, could make the contest triangular, at least in the eastern parts. The Congress is facing a leadership vacuum and tussle at the same time; and the BJP has to reconcile with the friction arising out of the fact that its most effective and popular leader is Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, a former Congressman. The BJP claims Assam saw fast-paced development and there is no noticeable anti-incumbency. The outcome will be determined by other issues, and particularly identity questions that have become more fraught this time.

Regional variations in political trends are sharp, and the BJP’s attempt is to construct a Hindu identity that subsumes ethnic and linguistic ones. Mr. Sarma has been targeting Muslims in his rhetoric. The CAA, along with the National Register of Citizens, got the religious fault line intertwined with the ethnic one, denying the BJP any clear advantage. The fear of illegal migrants overrunning indigenous populations has been a perennial issue; but this time, the focus has shifted from migrant “Bangladeshi” Muslims to “Bangladeshi” Hindus, whose side the BJP sought to take through the new citizenship regime. The party is now trying to underplay the CAA as an electoral issue, but the other two alliances are trying to keep the focus on it, and put the BJP on the back foot among the indigenous population. The issue is also a red flag for a majority of Muslims, who constitute 34% of Assam’s population. The BJP has been trying to mobilise sentiments around the encroachment by ‘Bangladeshis’ of forests and swathes of land belonging to Vaishnav monasteries. Floods that wash away farmland and dwelling areas, and the distress among plantation workers — a voting block, particularly in 45 seats in eastern and southern Assam — are also campaign issues. Sadly, such material questions are only secondary in a campaign overwhelmed by identity issues.

Source: The Hindu, 12/03/21

Himalayan Serow Spotted in Assam

 A Himalayan mammal is the newest creatures that has been spotted in the state of Assam.

About Himalayan Serow

The Himalayan serow looks like somewhere between a goat and an antelope. It was spotted in the Manas Tiger Reserve which is having the area of 950-sq. km on December 3, 2020. This animal is a high-altitude dweller which is usually found around 2000 to 4000 metres above the sea level.  The Himalayan serow is a subspecies of mainland serow. The species is native to the Himalayas. The Himalayan serow was previously considered its own species as Capricornis thar. It is mostly blackish along with the flanks, hindquarters. The upper legs of the species are rusty red in colour while the lower legs are whitish. The specie has been listed in CITES Appendix I.

Mainland Serow

The scientific name of the mainland serow is Capricornis sumatraensis. The serow is a native to the China, Himalayas and Southeast Asia. The serow is having the guard hairs on its coat which are bristly or coarse. The hairs cover the layer of fur which is closest to the skin of serow. The animal also has a mane which runs from horns to middle of dorsal aspect serow in between the scapulae that covers the skin. The males are characterised by the horns and are light-coloured. It is six inches in length and curve slightly towards to the back of the animal. The mainland serow grow up to six feet long. The adult serow weighs around 150 kg.

Manas National Park

It is a national park which is UNESCO Natural World Heritage site. It is also a Project Tiger reserve, an elephant reserve and the biosphere reserve. It is located in the state of Assam in the foothills of Himalaya. The reserve is in contiguous with Royal Manas National Park of Bhutan. It is known for its rare and endangered endemic wildlife including hispid hare, Assam roofed turtle, pygmy hog and golden langur.

Assam CM launches schemes for college students, literary bodies

 

Education Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the state governments plan to provide pocket money to college students in the near future apart from the money provided for the purchase of textbooks.

Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Monday launched two schemes to provide monetary assistance to college students and literary bodies of the state.

Under Pragyan Bharati scheme, 3,26,046 college students were given Rs 1,500 each for purchasing textbooks, while a total of Rs 161 crore was reimbursed for the free admission of 4 lakh eligible students.

The second scheme is Bhasha Gourab, under which the state government provided 21 Sahitya Sabhas (literary bodies) with a total of Rs 43 crore as a contribution towards their corpus funds.Under the scheme, 600 writers have also got Rs 50,000 each to help in their literary activities.

The young generation must strive for knowledge through education and utilise the opportunity provided by the two schemes, the chief minister said.

The state government is committed to providing higher education to the poorest of the poor, he said.

Sonowal also urged parents and teachers to encourage the younger generation to take part in sports and cultural activities for their holistic development.

Literature is a reflection of the society and the Assam government is taking steps for providing financial assistance to writers and indigenous Sahitya Sabhas, he said

Education Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the state government has taken steps for providing primary education till Class V to all students in their mother tongues.

He also said about the state governments plan to provide pocket money to college students in the near future apart from the money provided for the purchase of textbooks.

Because of the relentless efforts of the state government, Assam is at the second position in the country in the index for educational development and also second in the performance of taking education to the poor, Sarma added.

Source: Indian Express, 2/02/21