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

Quote of the Day February 1, 2022

 

“Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got.”
Art Buchwald

“चाहे यह आपके लिए सबसे अच्छा समय हो, अथवा सबसे खराब समय हो, केवल और केवल समय ही हमारे पास होता है”
आर्ट बचवाल्ड

University Of East Anglia, UK Announces Sonny Mehta India Scholarship For Promising Indian Writers

 New Delhi : The University of East Anglia (UEA), one of the UK’s top 25 universities, has announced a fully sponsored annual Sonny Mehta India scholarship worth £28,500 for promising Indian writers.

 

This scholarship has been founded by Ms. Gita Mehta in the year 2021, to encourage young writers by providing them with substantial financial help in the form of scholarships. The scholarship is offered in the honour of her late husband Sonny Mehta, Editor-in-Chief of US publishing house Alfred A. Knopf and Chairman of the Knopf Doubleday Group.

 

The Sonny Mehta India Scholarship is open to creative writing students from India and the Indian sub-continent. It will cover tuition fees and living costs, as well as contribute towards all the moving expenses to the UK for the duration of the course.

 

This postgraduate scholarship program in the UEA is meant for all those aspirants who are self-funded and can validate genuine financial needs along with outstanding creative writing potential.

 Scholarships like these are meant to encourage Indian students to fulfill their dreams of studying at UEA without the financial constraints of supporting a post-graduate level foreign education.

 

UEA’s Director of Creative Writing, Prof Henry Sutton, said, ‘Our programme is always in quest for raw talent from around the world. Modern-day writing should have no boundaries and prejudices, as it strives to make sense of our world, and for all. Enabling students who might otherwise not have been able to develop their voices and be heard could not be more crucial.”

The deadline for the scholarship is 3rd June 2022 and for more details on the application and eligibility, students can visit: https://www.uea.ac.uk/study/fees-and-funding/scholarships-finder/scholarships-a-z/the-sonny-mehta-india-scholarship

UEA offers over £21m worth of scholarships every year with the majority of Indian offer holders receiving some form of award. These include guaranteed scholarships of upto £5000. Early application is encouraged, and you can explore all of our scholarships via their scholarship finder page at https://www.uea.ac.uk/study/fees-and-funding/scholarships-finder/international

Source: indiaeducationdiary.in, 29/01/22

Applications Invited From Indian Women Scientists & Entrepreneurs For Prestigious National Tech Excellence Award For Women 2022

 Applications have been invited from Indian Women Scientists and Entrepreneurs to felicitate a select few with the prestigious India National Tech Excellence Award for Women 2022 for pursuing, prevailing, creating an impact, and etching out stories of inspiration for future young girls.

Technology Development Board, a statutory Body of the Department of Science and Technology, on the special occasion of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, has instituted the award to honour the outstanding contribution of women scientists and entrepreneurs in commercializing innovative indigenous technologies. The awards will be presented on International Women’s Day on 8th March, 2022.

The awards are categorized under two categories National Women Scientist Award for Excellence in Translational Research and National Women Entrepreneur Award. Both the awards will be presented in two distinct subcategories of Senior (45 years and above) and Young (Below 45 years). The awardees will receive a cash award of ₹3 Lakh and ₹1 Lakh for senior and young, respectively, and number of awards will be two in each category.

The contribution of Indian women in the science & technology and entrepreneurship has been exemplary, and they have proved that they can own businesses, work tirelessly to show that they are adept and successful in the entrepreneurial space. In rural India, too, women entrepreneurs have made their way and emerged as leaders across different sectors, proving that they are capable mentors for future generations.

The contributions made by women across sectors have been evident over the centuries, science and technology being one of the most benefitted. Women like, Leelavati, a mathematician and astrologer; Janaki Ammal, first Indian scientist to have received the Padma Shri Award in 1977; Kadambini Ganguly, one of the first female physicians of South Asia to be trained in western medicine; Anna Mani, an Indian physicist, and meteorologist, also the former DDG of the Indian Meteorological Department; Indira Hinduja, the first Indian women who delivered a test tube baby; Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman & Managing Director, Biocon Limited, Kalpana Chawla, a first Indian woman in space, Dr. Renu Swaroop, first Woman Secretary to lead DST and Dr. Alka Mittal, first woman CMD of ONGC have made significant contribution to sectors such as aerospace, medical science, biotechnology, meteorology, and many others, they have proven it time, and again, that opportunity and access to knowledge & resources can make all the difference.

The Government of India has been continuously focusing on women empowerment in Science and Technology, through various schemes and initiatives like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, “KIRAN” (Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through Nurturing), “GATI” – Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions and many other women scientist schemes.  All these aim to support the talents of Indian women, and the Department of Science and Technology has played a key role in supporting talented women in science.

For applying, interested candidates may visit www.tdb.gov.in

Source: indiaeducationdiary.in, 31/01/22

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

 

Vol. 57, Issue No. 5, 29 Jan, 2022

Editorials

What Must be the Priority of the Budget?

Comment

The All India Services and Cadre Deputation

From the Editor's Desk

The Life and Times of Media

From 50 Years Ago

From 50 Years Ago: Utilitarianism and Inequality

Commentary

Repeal of the ‘Black Farm Laws’ - A Momentous Battle Won, But the War Ahead Is Long and Hard

Praveen Jha

Farmers’ Suicides in India

Pradyut Guha, Tiken Das

Remembering M S Gore (1921–2010) - A Birth Centenary Tribute

N Jayaram

Referees

Referees Consulted 2021

Book Reviews

Biography of Chandrashekhar Azad - Interrogating a Methodology in Writing Political History

Chaman Lal

Social Entrepreneurship Journeys in Agriculture

Richa Govil

Perspectives

Understanding Cooperatives as Social Enterprises

Roopesh Kaushik

Review of Urban Affairs

Pandemic and the City

Karen Coelho, Vinay Gidwani, Anant Maringanti, Partha Mukhopadhyay

Recovery as Resilience - Domestic Work and Workers in the Aftermath of COVID-19

Kinjal Sampat, Antara Rai Chowdhury, Gautam Bhan

Pandemic Precarity - Life, Livelihood, and Death in the Time of the Pandemic

Aseem Prakash, Hem Borker

Intensifying Urbanities in Karachi - A South Asian City in the Time of COVID-19

Adam Abdullah, Soha Macktoom, Nausheen H Anwar, Noman Ahmed

COVID-19 and the State of Exception - Urban Mobility under the Epidemic State

Gaurav Mittal

How Places Matter - Understanding Workers’ Responses to Garment Factory Closures during the Pandemic in Bengaluru and Srirangapatna

Swathi Shivanand, R Prathibha

COVID-19 and the Women at Work - An Ethnographic Account of Sanjay Colony, Bhatti Mines

Vanshika Singh, Syeda Asia, Shivangi Gupta, Lakshay Talwar, Aashna Gutgutia, Pushpa

Closure of Schools and Migration of Adolescent Tribal Girls - A Case Study of Surat

Shilajit Sengupta

Current Statistics

Current Statistics

Letters

Open Letter to the Chief Minister of Kerala

M K Prasad, M P Parameswaran, M A Oommen, C T S Nair, G Vijayaraghavan, R V G Menon, and 35 others

Online Trading of Cryptocurrency

Deepayan Malaviya

India needs a new social contract

 

Harsh Mander writes: The pandemic exposed the horrors of the existing economic and social arrangements that privilege some but treat others as expendable

The pandemic has dramatically laid bare the catastrophic public costs of inequality. Thousands of lives could have been saved if much greater investments had been made in public health provisioning. The explosion of mass hunger and joblessness and the dislocation of millions of working poor people could have been averted had labour protection, social security, and wage levels of workers been secured.

“Inequality Kills” is the apt title of a devastating report by Oxfam India released at the time of the World Economic Forum in Davos. For India’s super-rich, the pandemic became a time to swell their wealth dizzyingly. The worst year of the pandemic for India was 2021. In this year, the net wealth of just one Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, multiplied eight times, from $8.9 billion in 2020 to $50.5 billion in 2021. The net worth of Mukesh Ambani doubled to $85.5 billion in 2021, rocketing him from India’s to Asia’s richest man. In fact, Ambani added Rs 90 crore to his wealth every hour right from March 2020, the start of the pandemic. In 2021, the number of dollar billionaires in India expanded by 39 per cent. India is home today to the largest number of dollar billionaires, after the US and China, with more billionaires than France, Sweden and Switzerland combined. In 2020, 98 families held more wealth than 555 million Indians. India’s top 10 per cent owned 45 per cent of the country’s wealth. Three-fifths of India’s top 100 added $1 billion or more to their wealth in 2021 over the previous year.

In this same period, as many as 84 per cent Indian households suffered a fall of income, for many into deep and stubborn poverty. The RBI estimated a GDP contraction of minus 8.7 to 7 per cent. 120 million jobs were lost, of which 92 million were in the informal sector. In 2021, FAO reported there were 200 million undernourished people in India and India was home to a quarter of all undernourished people around the world. Pew estimated that the number of poor people in India doubled from 55 million in 2020 to 120 million in 2021. Oxfam reports that daily-wage workers topped the numbers of people who committed suicide in 2020, followed by self-employed and unemployed individuals.

Evaluations in the media do not adequately recognise that the greater part of the grim economic devastation that surrounds us in India today — deaths, joblessness, hunger — is not caused primarily by the Covid-19 virus. They are the consequence of market-led public policies that have fostered unequal life chances. This got exposed more in these times of global calamity.

Imagine a vastly different India. Imagine, for instance, a country that has secured free and quality healthcare for every citizen, a guarantee of food for all, workers’ rights to social security and wage payments to all during lockdowns, and decent housing and clean water. The deaths and unemployment that engulfed a large section of Indians could have been eschewed. If millions of working people had more money in their hands, the greatest contraction of the economy since Independence could have been forestalled. If decent social housing and clean water supply had been secured by governments for all residents, it would have enabled the millions forced into overcrowded shanties to protect themselves by keeping distance in well-ventilated tenements and washing their hands regularly. Millennials might then argue: All of this is unattainable; what, then, is the point of painting scenarios of utopias?

But just as the humanitarian crisis today could have been prevented, the alternative is eminently feasible if people and government commit themselves to the goals of the Constitution. India spends only 3.54 per cent of its budgetary resources on healthcare, much less, as noted by Oxfam, than other middle-income countries like Brazil (9.51), South Africa (8.25) and China (5.35). Income inequalities reduce life chances in India even more for those disadvantaged by caste, gender and religious identities. A Dalit woman, for instance, has 15 years lower life expectancy than an upper-caste woman. Confronted by a broken and starved public health system, even the poor have to rely on private health providers, and 60 per cent of health spending in India is out-of-pocket, among the highest in the world, and a major cause of poverty. In the pandemic, the exclusions were even more spectacular. Oxfam found middle-class families spending Rs 4 lakh a day in private hospitals during the second wave — sometThe starting point of our vision of a new India is for the state to assume responsibility to provision quality healthcare, education, food, pension, clean water and housing, free or in affordable ways for all citizens. Economist Prabhat Patnaik, in his contribution to the India Exclusion Report brought out by the Centre for Equity Studies, says that to resource all of this would demand a public resolve to expand taxation of the super-rich. Sufficient to fund all of this, he calculates, is two taxes levied only on the top 1 per cent of the population — a wealth tax of 2 per cent and an inheritance tax of 33 per cent. Our government is doing the opposite; it withdrew the wealth tax in 2015 and reduced the already low levels of corporate tax. The result is regressive taxation burdening the poor and abysmally low public spending.

Those who care for a kinder world must not miss this moment when the pandemic has revealed to us the horror of our moral collapse; of economic and social arrangements that privilege some lives, but treat the rest as expendable. The struggle of our times must be for a new social contract based on solidarity and inclusion.hing a casual worker earns in 1,000 days.

Written by Harsh Mander

Source: Indian Express, 29/01/22

Quote of the Day January 27, 2022

 

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
Benjamin Franklin

“ज्ञान में पूंजी लगाने से सर्वाधिक ब्याज मिलता है।”
बेंजामिन फ्रेंकलिन