[Assam] Sanjib Baruah on Kakopathar
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060220/asp/opinion/story_5850159.asp The Telegraph (Calcutta) Monday, February 20, 2006 HOW THE STALEMATE MACHINE WORKS Sanjib Baruah The obvious lesson of Kakopathar is that counter-insurgency operations and negotiations towards peace do not go together, writes Sanjib Baruah The author is at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York The developments in Assam over the past few days have made one thing clear: that reports in recent years of the United Liberation Front of Assam losing influence have been highly exaggerated. At least that is not the case in those parts of rural upper Assam the home ground of ULFAs exiled top leadership and the site of the recent unrest. For a number of days, pro-ULFA slogans and sentiments have been in open display as villagers of the Kakopathar region blocked a national highway, stormed army pickets, vandalized vehicles and even dug up the highway to protest against the custodial killing of a fellow villager by the Indian army. That the army describes the victim as an ULFA hit-man has had no effect on the publics sense of outrage. Nine persons were killed in a police firing of protesters. ULFA called an Assam bandh on February 13, protesting against the Kakopathar firing and its chairman, Arabinda Rajkhowa, compared the incident with the Jalianwalla Bagh massacre. The backdrop to these developments might initially seem awkward. The second meeting between the government of India and the ULFA-appointed peoples consultative group had just taken place in Delhi where the government even promised confidence-building measures to facilitate what could some day be called a peace process. However, important differences exist on the government side on whether to negotiate with ULFA. No less a person than Assams governor, Lieutenant General Ajai Singh architect of two counter-insurgency operations against ULFA publicly opposes negotiations. What is there to negotiate with them? he asks. Instead, he favours instilling fear in the rebels so that they cannot dictate terms. By contrast, Assams elected chief minister, Tarun Gogoi, has been strongly supportive of negotiations. Singh and some others in the security establishment would probably interpret Kakopathar as no more than a temporary setback. But if a single incident could become a trigger to such public anger and expression of pro-ULFA sentiments, one can hardly have confidence in the security establishments reading of the ground situation and its recipe for bringing about peace. Indias track record of ending internal armed conflicts is quite poor. Today the world has numerous intra-state armed conflicts, and everywhere they last long on average about seven years as opposed to six months for international wars according to one count. However, the duration of intra-state armed conflicts in India and in the rest of south Asia have been much longer than the world average. The Naga war despite the nine-year old ceasefire will soon enter the sixth decade, making it one of the worlds oldest armed conflicts. There are many reasons why most of our conflicts have been long-lasting. But one common factor seems to suggest itself. Those who study armed internal conflicts emphasize the role of a mutually hurting stalemate felt by conflicting parties as a necessary condition for pushing conflicts in the direction of a negotiated settlement. These theorists argue that when parties realize that further military escalation would not produce victory and that the costs of the status quo are unacceptably high, a conflict becomes ripe for resolution. But in India, even when conflicts have been terribly hurtful, localized suffering has not easily translated into high costs for the government side. Doing something about conflicts in the Northeast may be important for our national-level politicians, but no government has fallen because of the way it has handled or mishandled them. And after decades of counter-insurgency and attention to security, we have further cushioned our decision-making elites from the hurting effects of a stalemate. In a new two-tiered order, the top echelons of the bureaucracy, the army and the political establishment who live and travel with very high levels of security are now the security haves. Under these conditions, despite enormous suffering by civilians, those who favour a military solution or rather a victors peace tend to win policy arguments. They seem to believe that given the obvious military superiority of the governments side, all armed groups can be eventually bullied into submission. This of course has meant, in effect, stalemated long-duration armed conflicts and the costs being paid almost entirely by the security have-nots. One obvious lesson of Kakopathar is that counter-insurgency operations and efforts toward a negotiated peace do not go together
[Assam] Poaching in Kaziranga for Bin Laden
Thought this report in the London Guardian would be of interest. Sanjib Baruah http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,2073168,00.html?gusrc=rssfeed=1 Poaching for Bin Laden In the jungles of India, local animal trappers have a new breed of client: Islamic militants using the trade in rare wildlife to raise funds for their cause. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report from Assam Saturday May 5, 2007 The Guardian It is so early in the morning that the cooks in the roadside dhabas along India's National Highway 37 are asleep in their kitchens, their tandoors unlit. Across the valley of Assam, in this far north-easterly corner of India, there is not a flicker of light except the feeble yellow beams from the Gypsies, the open-backed vehicles carrying small groups of tourists to the edge of one of the world's most bountiful jungles. Kaziranga - 429 sq km of forest, sandbanks and grassland - was recognised by Unesco in 1985 as a world heritage site. Tourists come in their thousands to glimpse some of the 480 species of bird, 34 kinds of mammal and 42 varieties of fish, many rare, endangered or near extinct, that inhabit this remote jungle. In recent times, however, the wildlife has attracted a new kind of visitor. According to India's security services, police, intelligence analysts, local traders and forestry officials, Islamic militants affiliated to al-Qaida are sponsoring poaching in the reserve for profit. These groups have established bases in the formerly moderate enclave of Bangladesh and have agents operating all along the country's porous 2,500-mile border with India. They have gone into business with local animal trappers and organised crime syndicates around Kaziranga - as well as in parks and reserves in Nepal, Burma and Thailand - in a quest for horns, ivory, pelts and other animal products with which to raise under the wire funds that they can move around the world invisibly. A small rhino horn, the size of a bag of sugar, with good provenance (the beast's tail and ears, presented to a prospective buyer) and in the right marketplace (in Asia, Europe or North America), can fetch 20,000. Big cat pelts can go for up to 10,000. Monkey brains, bear bile, musk, big cat carcasses, elephant feet, tails, horns and teeth have considerable value. A shipment worth 2.8m was recently intercepted by UK customs. Profits from the trade run from $15bn to an incredible $25bn a year, according to estimates from the WWF (formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature). The punishment for trading in these items is generally a fine as low as 300 in India and 900 in Nepal. A senior Indian security source, based in the north-east, who has tracked the incursion into the trade by Bangladeshi militants, warns that the poaching has global consequences. There is an environmental disaster in the offing here, but as pressing are the security ramifications, he says. Only a minuscule percentage of the vast profits need to trickle back into a nascent Islamic insurgency in a country like Bangladesh to bring it to the boil. And then it can reach out around the world. In 2000, US president Bill Clinton commissioned a global threat assessment which concluded that the illegal trade in animal parts and endangered species was second only to drugs in the profits it could turn. That same year, the UN general assembly expressed its strong conviction that the transnational crime of trafficking in endangered species had growing links with terrorism. The WWF took up the baton and commissioned a report from Wolverhampton University that found organised crime was taking advantage of existing routes used for smuggling small arms, drugs and humans. The UK scene was a microcosm, with 50% of those prosecuted for wildlife crimes having previous convictions for serious offences including drugs and guns. That's if there is such a prosecution: ill-defined laws often prevent police making arrests. British torpor was highlighted in London in 2004, when customs intercepted a multimillion-pound ivory haul but were powerless to arrest anyone. Meanwhile, radical Islamists from Bangladesh have done what conservationists had long predicted and moved in on the endangered species racket. One has only to tour Kaziranga, or any of the outlying parks in Assam or Nepal, to understand why. Dawn breaks as our convoy of Gypsies reaches the park. The rangers whisper urgently, Gorh, the local word for rhinoceros. Metres away, eight rhino are lumbering through the rich alluvial mud, showing off their prized uni-horn. There are more than 2,000 of these short-sighted beasts here, making up three-quarters of the global stock of one of the rarest pachyderms in the world. Beside them are scores of swamp deer coloured like the scrub. A group of wild buffalo, whose colossal horns have the span of a longboat oar, plod by, as does a troop of elephants, their tusks glinting in the purple dawn. Somewhere in the long
[Assam] Right to Information in Assam
RTI FINDINGS LEAD TO VIOLENT THREATS IN ASSAM Guwahati, May 20, 2007: Akhil Gogoi of Golaghat town in Assam has been a beleaguered man for more than a year now. His life under threat, he has been practically forced to go underground following multiple applications under the RTI Act that would bring to light massive corruption by local officials. He is not alone. Namita Subedi, Sanjit Tanti and many others in Assam have also faced violent threats after they questioned the implementation of various schemes through RTI. As the Secretary of the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), an activist group, Akhil Gogoi filed a number of RTI applications on March 2, 2006, seeking information on the implementation of schemes such as Indira Awas Yojana (IAY), Individual Beneficiary Scheme (IBS) and Sampoorna Gramin Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) from the concerned departments in Golaghat district. Thereupon, he was targeted by the authorities as a troublemaker and beaten up on several occasions. On December 9, 2006, KMSS workers on a cycle rally against the corrupt practices of the local authorities were assaulted, allegedly by Congress goons. Rumours were spread that KMSS was an illegal group and police complaints were filed against Akhil Gogoi and other KMSS members, which led to the arrest of two KMSS members, Mr. Horen Payeng and Mr. Jiten Doley, who were kept in custody for about 3 months. According to Akhil Gogoi, the concerned departments at first refused to divulge any information under various pretexts. It was only after he approached the state's Chief Information Commissioner in November 2006 that some action was taken, with the Golaghat DRDA divulging the requested information. Akhil Gogoi's group had conducted a thorough survey to crosscheck the implementation of the schemes by the panchayats, and visited all households in the Gomariguri Block of Golaghat district listed as IAY, IBS and SGRY beneficiaries. Not surprisingly, several irregularities came to light, including forged names listed as beneficiaries of IAY, half completed houses for some, and so on. Beneficiaries under the IBS scheme had not received most of the commodities. In the case of SGRY, road repair, digging of ponds and construction of houses had been done only on paper. The Cheque Release Register (CRR) for IAY, which the DRDA had to release under RTI, revealed malpractices to the tune of Rs. 35 lakhs. On August 7, 2006, cheques worth this amount were released through 12 panchayats for the construction of 140 IAY houses, for which there was no beneficiary list whatsoever. Following local media coverage of a press meet by KMSS in the first week of May this year, a staff person of the DRDA, Tarun Bora was dismissed on May 15, and the construction of 140 houses was finally begun. The CRR for SGRY also unveiled a Rs 25 lakh scam, whereby stationery material worth that amount was shown to have been bought on August 12, 2006, from a non-existent agency. According to the guidelines, stationery cannot be bought under SGRY. The purported stationery was also nowhere to be found in the SGRY storehouse. A women's organization, North East Network, (NEN), inspired by RTI crusaders such as Aruna Roy (MKSS), and the CHRI has taken the lead in training people from different organizations in Assam to use the Act since 2004. Based on information provided by NEN on the RTI process, Akhil Gogoi had appealed to the Information Commission of Assam. NEN has also compiled other instances of and has compiled many instances of such attempts. Ms. Namita Subedi of Teliagaon Mahila Samiti of Sonitpur district of Assam, filed an application regarding the appalling condition of a road in her area. She discovered that an amount of Rs. 30 lakh had been sanctioned for its repair. She went to the PWD office to complain about the lack of repairs, taking some photographs of the road as proof. Namita's 'inquisitiveness' incensed the contractor responsible for the repair, as well the area's MLA who is responsible of road construction under the MLA Fund. Ms. Subedi now has to be constantly vigilant in case of any attacks. In another instance, Sanjit Tanti of the Sodou Assam Adivashi Chatra Santha received information of massive misappropriation of funds under IAY in Udalguri district a few months back. The IAY officials offered Sanjit Tanti a bribe to not disclose the information. Two members of Sanjit Tanti's group, who went to the BDO on May 17, 2007 to follow up, were attacked by five men with kukris (machetes) while on their way back from the BDO's office, as reported in local papers of May 18, 2007. A veritable Pandora's box of such corruption has come tumbling out in Assam with the use of the RTI Act. Threats and violence such as those perpetrated against Akhil Gogoi have followed in their wake, with the guilty scrambling for cover and using any means to stifle the RTI applicants. Such
[Assam] Protests against Ulfa in Assam
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070612/asp/opinion/story_7908619.asp NEVER A MOMENT TO BREATHE EASY Sanjib Baruah Telegraph (Calcutta) June 12, 2007 After yet another bloodbath carried out by Ulfa, Sanjib Baruah ponders whether negotiations can still hold the magic answer in Assam The public protests in Assam against the killing of innocent civilians by the United Liberation Front of Asom in indiscriminate bombings are good news. However, it would be premature to read them as a sign that a big change is round the corner, since another kind of reaction is also visible. An umbrella body of 30 trade associations, representing groups that bore the brunt of Ulfas attacks, has strongly come out in support of unconditional talks with Ulfa. The implications of this response are ambiguous. It is a contrast from the way similar groups had reacted when Ulfa targeted Hindi-speaking labourers last winter. The call then was for more security, for increased presence of the army, and for tougher counter-insurgency operations. The Ulfa may have reasons to be quite pleased with this turn of events. Counter-insurgency experts might see the support for talks among new groups as Ulfas devious game-plan. Indeed, this explains why some people feel that, with growing evidence of Ulfas isolation, there is even less reason for the government to talk to it now than before. This view, however, ignores the logic of asymmetric warfare. Insurgents everywhere choose tactics that play to their strengths, not to their weaknesses, vis--vis governments. It is nave to think that rebel groups would simply give up the battle and surrender once they lose militarily to government forces. After all, even the most elementary lesson of armed conflicts suggests that military power is only one factor among many in determining outcomes. Thus, when tough security barriers go up to protect VIPs and strategically or symbolically important public places, it is only to be expected that insurgent groups would turn to soft targets. The people can be excused for being shocked and surprised by such insurgent tactics, but those in charge of devising official strategy cannot claim to be equally surprised. They must be able to outsmart insurgent leaders, and anticipate how the logic of asymmetrical warfare plays out. There is a difference between the way governments as institutions may want to respond to insurgent demands, and those who bear the brunt of their threats and actions might. Such a difference becomes apparent in a situation like a kidnapping, when a government position of never negotiating with terrorists does not resonate with the families of victims. Insurgent groups can try to leverage this intrinsic asymmetry. There is plenty of evidence of insurgent groups making civilians pawns in their conflicts. A study at Uppsala Universitys Peace and Conflict Research Department found that in hundreds of low-intensity armed conflicts worldwide, attacks on civilians are a tactic of choice by armed rebel groups engaged in asymmetric warfare with government forces. According to Lisa Hultman, the author of this study, by targeting civilians, rebel groups signal both their resolve to continue the battle and their willingness to pay high costs in order to pursue victory against a militarily stronger adversary. This finding is in keeping with a long intellectual tradition of military thought that sees war as a violent form of bargaining. Insurgent groups, of course, realize that in attacking civilians, they run the risk of alienating their primary audience, from whom they draw their core support. The protests against Ulfas actions underscore that risk. At the same time, the return for such grave risks can be quite high. Targeting civilians in a foreign country is not quite the same as targeting civilians at home. Yet the terrorist attacks by al Qaida on the Madrid trains in 2004 must count as one of the most spectacular examples of political gains derived from an attack on civilians. The attacks caused a rift between the people of Spain and their elected government, and precipitated the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. What then are our policy choices in Assam today? The failure of two decades of counter-insurgency speaks for itself. At the same time, it is hard to argue that negotiations hold the magic answer at this stage. Insurgent groups do not usually fight long and costly battles against impossible military odds, for what someone once called the mere privilege of quitting. Ulfa is unlikely to be an exception. There is, however, a sense of deja vu about the current situation which is disturbing. Assam has been in similar situations before. Indeed counter-insurgency in the North-east is replete with instances of history repeating itself. Indian officials in charge of counter-insurgency never tire of repeating the clich that there are no military solutions, and that a solution
[Assam] Impasse in India
THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS VOLUME 54, NUMBER 11 JUNE 28, 2007 Review Impasse in India By Pankaj Mishra The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future by Martha C. Nussbaum Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 403 pp., $29.95 Last summer Foreign Affairs, Time, Newsweek, and The Economist highlighted a major shift in American perceptions of India when, in cover stories that appeared almost simultaneously, they described the country as a rising economic power and a likely strategic ally of the United States. In 1991, India partly opened its protectionist economy to foreign trade and investment. Since then agriculture, which employs more than 60 percent of the country's population, has stagnated, but the services sector has grown as corporate demand has increased in Europe and America for India's software engineers and English-speaking back-office workers.[1] In 2006, India's economy grew at a remarkable 9.2 percent. Dominated by modern office buildings, cafs, and gyms, and swarming with Blackberry-wielding executives of financial and software companies, parts of Indian cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Gurgaon resemble European and American downtowns. Regular elections and increasingly free markets make India appear to be a more convincing exemplar of economic globalization than China, which has adopted capitalism without embracing liberal democracy. However, many other aspects of India today make Foreign Affairs' description of the countrya roaring capitalist success-storyappear a bit optimistic. More than half of the children under the age of five in India are malnourished; failed crops and debt drove more than a hundred thousand farmers to suicide in the past decade.[2] Uneven economic growth and resulting inequalities have thrown up formidable new challenges to India's democracy and political stability. A recent report in the International Herald Tribune warned: Crime rates are rising in the major cities, a band of Maoist-inspired rebels is bombing and pillaging its way across a wide swath of central India, and violent protests against industrialization projects are popping up from coast to coast.[3] Militant Communist movements are only the most recent instance of the political extremism that has been on the rise since the early Nineties when India began to integrate into the global economy. Until 2004 the central government as well as many state governments in India were, as the philosopher Martha Nussbaum puts it in her new book, increasingly controlled by right-wing Hindu extremists who condone and in some cases actively support violence against minorities, especially the Muslim minority. Many seek fundamental changes in India's pluralistic democracy. In 1992, the Hindu nationalist BJP (Indian People's Party) gave early warning of its intentions when its members demolished the sixteenth-century Babri Mosque in North India, leading to the deaths of thousands in HinduMuslim riots across the country. In May 1998, just two months after it came to power, the BJP broke India's self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing by exploding five atomic bombs in the desert of Rajasthan. Pakistan responded with five nuclear tests of its own The starkest evidence of Hindu extremism came in late February and March 2002 in the prosperous western Indian state of Gujarat. In a region internationally famous for its business communities, Hindu mobs lynched over two thousand Muslims and left more than two hundred thousand homeless. The violence was ostensibly in retaliation for an alleged Muslim attack on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims in which a car was set on fire, killing fifty-eight people. Nussbaum, who is engaged in a passionate attempt to end American ignorance of India's history and current situation, makes the genocidal violence against Muslims in Gujarat the focal point of her troubled reflections on democracy in India. She points to forensic evidence which indicates that the fire in the train was most likely caused by a kerosene cooking stove carried by one of the Hindu pilgrims. In any case, as Nussbaum points out, there is copious evidence that the violent retaliation was planned by Hindu extremist organizations before the precipitating event. Low-caste Dalits joined affluent upper-caste Hindus in killing Muslims, who in Gujarat as well as in the rest of India tend to be poor. Approximately half of the victims, Nussbaum writes, were women, many of whom were raped and tortured before being killed and burned. Children were killed with their parents; fetuses were ripped from the bellies of pregnant women to be tossed into the fire. Gujarat's pro-business chief minister, Narendra Modi, an important leader of the BJP, rationalized and even encouraged the murders. The police were explicitly ordered not to stop the violence. The prime minister of India at the time, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, seemed to condone the killings when
[Assam] New Publication on Northeast India
The web version of the following new publication on the Northeast India is freely available from the website of the publisher: East West Center, Washington D.C. http://www.eastwestcenterwashington.org/ PS 33 Postfrontier Blues: Toward a New Policy Framework for Northeast India by Sanjib Baruah PDF Format A number of armed conflicts smolder in Indias Northeastern border region. For instance, the Naga rebellion, which began in the 1950s, is one of the worlds oldest unresolved armed conflicts. With its controversial human rights record and sluggish economic growth, Northeast India is a counterpoint to Indias new image as a mature democracy, dynamic economy, and emerging major power. This study proposes a democratic institution-building agenda that is sensitive to the particular dynamics of change in this postfrontier. In a historically sparsely populated region with long-term trends of demographic transformation, managing indigenous-settler tensions must be a priority. This and other challenges cannot be addressed through domestic policy alone. An effective alternative policy must have a transnational dimension; to turn the regions extensive international borders with Chinas Tibet region, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Burma from militarized zones of mistrust and confrontation to spaces of cooperation. ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] Migrants expelled from Arunachal Pradesh
The Telegraph (Guwahati edition) Thursday, July 26, 2007 http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070726/asp/northeast/story_8100239.asp# A migrants fight for survival GUEST COLUMN -SANJIB BARUAH The name Jamir Ali is perhaps fictional. But his story, recounted in the 2005 Arunachal Pradesh Human Development Report, might throw some light on the phenomenon of suspected Bangladeshi nationals currently being expelled from that state as the result of actions by the states student organisations. Barely two years ago, this Arunachal government report had chosen to recount Jamir Alis story to underscore a remarkable economic phenomenon in the state: a quiet agricultural revolution led by migrant sharecroppers. Ali lived in the Dikrong river valley and, according to the report, he had moved to Arunachal from Lakhimpur district of Assam. Bringing with them the technology of wet rice cultivation, Ali and other migrant sharecroppers are described as pioneers of settled cultivation in Arunachal Pradesh. Their bullock-driven plough is the main instrument for extending settled cultivation and is therefore the symbol of the states agricultural modernisation. Thus huts that belong to migrant sharecroppers dot the entire valley and people like Jamir Ali are increasingly becoming common in the other valleys of Arunachal as well. They are now an important segment of the peasantry extending settled cultivation to Arunachal. Despite their significant contribution to Arunachals economy, however, the report also indicates that political and economic status of this odd group of agricultural modernisers is extremely vulnerable. Banal existence Ali, for instance, leased five acres of land on a sharecropping arrangement, and his family of seven lived in a thatched hut he built on that land. Apart from the share of the crop, earnings from seasonal labour, including the part of his wages as a rickshawpuller that he can keep another part he pays as rent to the rickshaw owner were the familys sources of livelihood. He cannot think of sending his children to school. For a group heralded as agricultural modernisers, the vulnerability of the legal status of Jamir Ali and his peers perhaps has few parallels in the world. The contract between sharecroppers and landlords says the report, is only short-term and eviction may take place any time. Since access to land in Arunachal is governed by customary law, the oral leases that allow them to live and cultivate after all the residential rights of most outsiders in Arunachal are severely restricted under the inner-line permit (ILP) regime. Not surprisingly, the drive against suspected Bangladeshis in Arunachal Pradesh has resulted in an exodus to Assam and the political parties and other organisations in Assam have reacted along predictable lines. The All Assam Students Union and the youth wing of the BJP have urged the state government to ensure that these displaced suspected Bangladeshis do not settle in Assam. The All Bodo Students Union and the All Assam Koch Rajbongshi Students Union, too, have raised their voice on the same lines. The Bodoland Territorial Councils chief executive Hagrama Mohilary said, no foreigner will be allowed to settle in the BTC area at any cost. On the opposite camp is the Congress-led state government that describes those expelled from Arunachal Pradesh as residents of Assam. The Assam United Democratic Fronts president Badruddin Ajmal calls them Bengali- speaking Indian Muslims, and has said only a judicial authority can determine the citizenship status of each individual. But who is right and who is wrong in this debate? Since no one doubts that there are large numbers of illegal immigrants from Bangla-desh in the Northeast, given the highly porous international border, it is perhaps safe to guess that some of them are indeed Bangladeshi nationals. But such a guess can hardly be a basis for a programme of action. For it is equally clear that since India has no mandatory personal identification system, it would be impossible to say with certainty who is a Bangladeshi national and who is not. The dangers of the conflation between Bangladeshis and the descendants of earlier settlers are real. After all, given that many of these immigrants of an earlier generation had settled in erosion-prone chars and other vulnerable lands, mobility is essential for their strategies of survival. For instance, many older generation migrants had settled in char areas despite the hazards of floods, erosion and submergence since sediments make for very fertile soil. Yet most chars are notoriously inhospitable to round-the-year living. Thus over the years, descendants of those settled in chars of Assam have dispersed to all parts of the Northeast and beyond in search of economic opportunities. For instance, Jamir Alis great grandfather, according to the account in the human development report, migrated to Assam from
Re: [Assam] Post Frontier Blues
Dear Mahanta, Many thanks for your kind words about my Postfrontier thesis. It is always satisfying when one finds readers reading ones work carefully and engaging it. Since this publication is freely available on the net, I hope, more people would read it. Whether the powers that be pays heed is of course always a difficult question. While the Northeast is not neglected the way it once was, it is far from clear that spending money in the name of development or knee-jerk counter-insurgency are going to be the magic bullets. Without attention to institutional reforms more development money could even make our region a less attractive place to live. As I said in that paper, you dont have to be a radical to recognize that. Even the World Bank points out that, poor institutional arrangements is the source of Northeast Indias problems with water resource management. The Banks example of how dysfunctional the institutional arrangements are is the case of an embankment project in Assam being opposed by the very people that it is designed to benefit. This point can be extended to other areas. People have very little trust in the institutions that are in place because there is very little input from locals in decision-making. Recently Rabin Deka had pointed out in a post that Government of India funded dams in Bhutan have caused floods and immense misery in certain parts of Assam. That certainly would suggest that people are right in not trusting institutions. Unfortunately there is very little patience in our style of policy-making for handling the kind of complexity that Northeast Indias frontier-like conditions present. Once upon a time forming high-powered commissions of inquiry was a way of bringing in a level of complexity to approaching policy questions. But now that hardly happens. Democracy is not only about elections. Unfortunately, there is very little interest in India in questions about the quality of our democracy. We even become defensive about criticisms. There is almost a Soviet-style economic determinism that the magic of development will answer all our problems. Good wishes, Sanjib Baruah On Mon, 27 Aug 2007, Chan Mahanta wrote: It seldom happens. Let us see, whether the suggestions in the book come handy to the Rulers or not. *** That is a function of how the citizenry , which would be your 'intelligentsia' responds, if at all. During recent years, the 'intelligentsia's' creativity and imagination has been on vacation and were consumed by 'security' and jingoist rants. And for the intelligentsia to discuss and debate them and generate an informed public opinion they need exposure. I am not always up to snuff on what Assamedia chooses to air and what it is either too afraid to or are unwilling to air. The only exposure so far that I am aware of was thru a Kolkata tabloid. For all practical purposes, desi-media's attention or absence of it regarding Assam issues will ultimately fall into deaf ears, if not snuffed out by the sekurity-wallas in Delhi who hold the powers over desi political imaginations as far as our region is concerned.. At 4:00 AM +0100 8/27/07, uttam borthakur wrote: We wish so many good things from the Rulers. But those usually do not happen unless and until the vested interests of the rulers become one with the aspirations of the people. It seldom happens. Let us see, whether the suggestions in the book come handy to the Rulers or not. Chan Mahanta [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dear Baruah: Read the book on one sitting. It was an almost unprecedented accomplishment for me, since I left college. I found it extremely informative, as always. I was particularly impressed by your realistic analysis of the unsustainable two-tiered citizenship, of the ethnic homeland model and the proposal of for citizenship of India as well as a state. Most of all, for me, it is the first comprehensive attempt at finding an attainable and sustainable resolution of these indigenous/immigrant conflicts that have so riven Assam and the other 'states' around it. In that it stands out from the xenophobic cacophony that has dominated the discourse not only in Assam but has even spilled over to assamnet. Big question however is if the powers that be will pay any heed? Best. m ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org Uttam Kumar Borthakur Did you know? You can CHAT without downloading messenger. http://in.rd.yahoo.com/tagline_webmessenger_2/*http://in.messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.phpClick here ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] India's middle class failure
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=9776 PROSPECT Magazine Issue 138 , September 2007 India's middle class failure by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad India's 200m-strong middle class is the most economically dynamic group on the planet, but is largely uninterested in politics or social reform. Until it begins to engage politically, India will suffer from a lop-sided modernisation Jaya Mary is a cleaner. Tall and thin, with some English, and at least two Indian languages, she quietly challenged her main employer, a medium-sized company, when it recently threatened to fire her without the pension to which she is entitled. When she works in a private house, she has no contract, and depends on the goodwill of the householder. She is a Christian, but also adheres to many cultural expressions of Hinduism. Her husband left her with two small children, and she relies on the support of her mother and brother. Her boy is in a local-language state school, but her clever daughter is in a private English-language school, which costs Jaya 20 per cent of her income. She has an empty bank account, but acquired a mobile phone from her scooter-driving brother (whose wife, a sworn enemy of Jaya, has just left him). Languages, religions, integrity, suffering, family stresses and ties, education, dependence, global aspirationshe encompasses them all, she is a Mother India. (And she is a very real person.) As the actual Mother India celebrates the 60th anniversary of her independence, there isas in Jaya Mary's lifeboth surging optimism and crushing despair about her future. As the saying goes, everything and its opposite is true in India. The seven Indian Institutes of Technology rank near the top of global surveys, and job offers to graduates from the Indian Institutes of Management rival those to graduates of the famous US business schools; yet a third of the country is still illiterate. Three hundred million Indians live on less than $1 a daya quarter of the world's utterly pooryet since 1985, more than 400m (out of a total population of 1bn) have risen out of relative povertyto $5 a dayand another 300m will follow over the next two decades if the economy continues to grow at over 7 per cent a year. Population growth, even at a slower pace, will mean that there will still be millions below the poverty line, but the fall in number will be steady. At the other end of the scale, India has the largest number of dollar billionaires outside the US and Russia. Historical success led India and China to their current demographic challenges. Their populations grew into the tens of millions because they were so economically advanced at the start of the first millenniumat a time when even the Roman empire lagged behind. By the time of the birth of European modernity, when technology provided leverage for smaller populations to improve their lives, India and China already had too many people for this to be possible. The legacy of this early success underlies both India's scale and the polarity of opinion over what the place is all about. India is near the top, or the bottom, of most international economic tables. To grapple with such extremes, and to peer into the country's future, we must above all try to understand India's rapidly growing middle class. For a country that was born of partition, has had a history of separatism, and that encompasses such linguistic, ethnic, social, religious and geographic variety, it is strange that even critics talk of India as if its legal unity was sufficient guarantor of its actual unity. Statistics that combine the city of Chennai, in the stable southern state of Tamil Nadu, with a village in newly constituted Jharkhand state, in eastern India, are likely to deceive as much as those that try to encompass both Denmark and Kosovo. India could have been many other thingsan even larger, undivided India, but also a much smaller one, or just a cluster of ancestral formations. Only the British empire and then the resolve of the leaders of the independence struggle ensured that the ancient yet amorphous idea became a single nation state. Sixty years later, there is a functional Indian state that is a rising world power despite its huge variationsbut there is also a dysfunctional Indian state that cannot realise the social purpose that the idea of national citizenship is meant to. In Tamil Nadu, half the population lived below the poverty line in the mid-1960s, but effective contraception, female education and primary healthcare led to population stability and a consequent drop in poverty by the end of the century. But in Bihar, which had the same percentage of people below the poverty line in the 1960s, the population still grows at a staggering pace, making anti-poverty measures hard to pursue. Both Assam and Punjab have histories of political violence and a poor school system, but the latter's infrastructure allows for
[Assam] A New Documentary on Kashmir
There is a provocative new documentary film on Kashmir. The following review in Outlook magazine may be of interest to Assamnet. http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20071004fname=ananyasid=1pn=1 October 12 2007. Azadi: Theirs And Ours By the logic of the Indian state, India is free and Kashmir is a part of India, ergo, Kashmir too, must be free. But Sanjay Kaks documentary provides visual attestation for something diametrically opposed to this logic: the reality of occupation. Sanjay Kaks new documentary Jashn-e-Azadi (How we celebrate freedom) is aimed primarily at an Indian audience. This two-part film, 138 min long, explores what Kak calls the sentiment, namely azadi (literally freedom) driving the conflict in the India controlled part of Kashmir for the past 18 years. This sentiment is inchoate: it does not have a unified movement, a symbol, a flag, a map, a slogan, a leader or any one party associated with it. Sometimes it means full territorial independence, and sometimes it means other things. Yet it is real, with a reality that neither outright repression nor fitful persuasion from India has managed to dissipate for almost two decades. Howsoever unclear its political shape, Kashmiris know the emotional charge of azadi, its ability to keep alive in every Kashmiri heart a sense of struggle, of dissent, of hope. It is for Indians who do not know about this sentiment, or do not know how to react to it, that Kak has made his difficult, powerful film. And it is with Indian audiences that Kak has already had, and is likely to continue having, the most heated debate. Between 1989 and 2007, nearly 100,000 people--soldiers and civilians, armed militants and unarmed citizens, Kashmiris and non-Kashmiris--lost their lives to the violence in Kashmir. 700,000 Indian military and paramilitary troops are stationed there, the largest such armed presence in what is supposedly peace time, anywhere in the world. Both residents of and visitors to Kashmir in recent years already know what Kaks film brings home to the viewer: how thoroughly militarized the Valley is, criss-crossed by barbed wire, littered with bunkers and sand-bags, dotted with men in uniform carrying guns, its roads bearing an unending stream of armoured vehicles up and down a landscape that used to be called, echoing the words of the Mughal Emperor Jehangir, Paradise on earth. Other places so mangled by a security apparatus as to make it impossible for life to proceed normally immediately come to mind: occupied Palestine, occupied Iraq. Locals, especially young men, must produce identification at all the check-posts that punctuate the land, or during sudden and frequent operations described by the dreaded words crackdown and cordon and search. Kaks camera shows us that even the most ordinary attempt to cross the city of Srinagar, or travel from one village to another is fraught with these security checks, as though the entire Valley were a gigantic airport terminal and every man were a threat to every other. As soldiers insultingly frisk folks for walking about in their own places, the expressions in their eyes--anger, fear, resignation, frustration, irritation, or just plain embarrassment--say it all. In one scene men are lined up, and some of them get their clothes pulled and their faces slapped while they are being searched. Somewhere beneath all these daily humiliations burns the unnamed sentiment: azadi. One reason that there is no Indian tolerance for this word in the context of Kashmir is that the desire for freedom immediately implies that its opposite is the case: Kashmir is not free. By the logic of the Indian state, India is free and Kashmir is a part of India, ergo, Kashmir too, must be free. But Kaks images provide visual attestation for something diametrically opposed to this logic: the reality of occupation. Kashmir is occupied by Indian troops, somewhat like Palestine is by Israeli troops, and Iraq is by American and coalition troops. But wait, objects the Indian viewer. Palestinians are Muslims and Israelis are Jews; Iraqis are Iraqis and Americans are Americans--how are their dynamics comparable to the situation in Kashmir? Indians and Kashmiris are all Indian; Muslims and non-Muslims in Kashmir (or anywhere in India) are all Indian. Neither the criterion of nationality nor the criterion of religion is applicable to explain what it is that puts Indian troops and Kashmiri citizens on either side of a line of hostility. How can we speak of an occupation when there are no enemies, no foreigners and no outsiders in the picture at all? And if occupation makes no sense, then how can azadi make any sense? Kak explained to an audience at a recent screening of his film in Boston (23/09) that he could only begin to approach the subject of his film, azadi, after he had made it past three barriers to understanding that stand in the way of an Indian mind trying to
[Assam] India's Myanmar Policy
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071015/asp/opinion/story_8418724.asp The Telegraph (Calcutta), Monday October 15, 2007 Monday, October 15, 2007 EAST WITH BITS LEFT OUT --- A more imaginative Myanmar policy would do India good SANJIB BARUAH Most countries do public diplomacy abroad. In its standard use, the term refers to cultural and educational programmes, radio and television broadcasts, and citizen exchanges to promote foreign policy goals. In recent years, it has come to include soft power the goodwill that a country has because of the influence of popular culture and its positive image among foreigners. The target of public diplomacy is usually foreign audiences. India however, chooses to do public diplomacy at home. For the second time in less than four months, the external affairs minister, Pranab Mukherjee, visited the Northeast to explain the Look East policy. Both events were sponsored by the public diplomacy division of the ministry of external affairs. One can only welcome the belated discovery by the South Block of the value of the public discussions of foreign policy. But one wishes that these exercises were more about taking input from the ground, rather than about explaining policy from the top. From the perspective of Indias multiple global audiences, there may be some risks in calling these exercises public diplomacy. Does our external affairs ministry treat the Northeast as Indias near abroad or the far-east within? Mukherjee explained the promises that the Look East policy holds for northeastern India and how the priority given to its economic development fits into our foreign policy goals. The Planning Commission deputy chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, was around as well. He said that the Northeast would see a massive upsurge in economic development over the next five years. Audiences in the Northeast, however, have grown a bit tired of the repetitious nature of what they have been hearing about the Look East policy. The reporter for The Telegraph pointed out that Mukherjees speech in Guwahati was almost an exact reproduction of the speech he gave in Shillong four months earlier. But the missing 800-pound gorilla from the Guwahati deliberations was the situation in neighbouring Myanmar. What are its implications for the future of the Look East policy? As fear grips Myanmar following the crackdown by the military junta, questions are being asked everywhere about the implications of the recent developments. What, for instance, does the crackdown on the Buddhist monasteries mean with reference to whatever residual legitimacy the military regime still has? Since our Burma policy took a U-turn in the early Nineties, India has been betting on the military regimes durability. Thus, even though the decision of the army chief, Deepak Kapoor, to publicly articulate foreign policy goals raised some eyebrows, his statement calling the crackdown in Myanmar an internal matter was not out of line with official policy. Mukherjee has said, It is up to the Burmese people to struggle for democracy, it is their issue. And the most scandalous of all was the presence of the petroleum minister, Murli Deora, in Myanmar to sign a deal for natural gas exploration when the crackdown was in full swing. Our foreign policymakers like to describe our Myanmar policy as being premised on realism. The concept is subject to much criticism in the academic literature on international relations. Realism can easily be an excuse for lazy thinking: letting some supposedly objective national interests get the upper hand in shaping foreign policy. The sudden end of the Cold War in 1989 spelt the failure of realism to explain some of the new forces that were transforming the world. Among these emerging forms of more globalized political activism are those that have been further energized in recent years by the internet, the mobile phone and the proliferation of 24-hour news channels. The impact of some of these forces is apparent in the pressures on Myanmar and on many other governments including India vis--vis their Myanmar policy. In the past few days, India has had to modify its initial stance in response to these pressures. It voted for the European Union-sponsored resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council condemning the Myanmarese government for its violent repression of peaceful demonstrations. The council has also approved a resolution calling for an independent investigation of the human rights situation in Myanmar. Myanmar itself has responded to these pressures by clamping down on the internet, the mobile phone network and by taking steps to stop the flow of news and pictures from the country. Recently, Chinas sensitivity to world public opinion has been all too apparent. Even on Myanmar, unlike India, China did not take a strict internal matter line, but opted for behind-the-scenes diplomacy. With the the Beijing Olympics
[Assam] Adivasi Politics in Assam
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071211/asp/opinion/story_8654412.asp The Telegraph, Calcutta. Tuesday, December 11, 2007 READING THE TEA LEAVES - The understanding of tribal status must be rid of colonial errors SANJIB BARUAH After the mayhem in Guwahati around the adivasi rally of November 24, the government of Assam is reportedly considering legislation that would restrict the public display of bows and arrows and other 'traditional' weapons. That a group that provided the muscle for the 19th-century capitalist transformation of Assam today finds the bow and arrow to be an attractive ethnic symbol is rather interesting. So is its preferred self-description as adivasis, in sharp contrast to the English term 'tribe' preferred by most other groups that have legal recognition as scheduled tribes in northeast India. The adivasis of Assam trace their roots to Munda, Oraon, Santhal and other people of the Jharkhand region. They are descendants of indentured labourers brought to the tea plantations of Assam. Adivasi activists argue that since their ethnic kin in their places of origin are recognized as STs, they should have the same status in Assam. According to some estimates, there are as many as 4 million adivasis in Assam - more than half of Assam's tea labour community. They constitute the majority of the tea labour community in Lower Assam, but other groups outnumber them in Upper Assam. If ST status is about whether a group deserves reservations in jobs and in educational institutions, the case for adivasis being recognized as STs is indisputable. A study on the tea labour community by the North Eastern Social Research Centre found that 60 per cent of the girls and 35 per cent of the boys in the age group of 6 to 14 are out of school, and only 4 per cent study beyond class VII. Tea plantations are still the major sources of employment: half of them live near plantations and work as casual labourers. Many adivasis were displaced during the Bodoland agitation because they or their forefathers had settled in reserved forest lands after giving their working lives to tea plantations. Since their villages were not legal settlements, the government did not facilitate their return to their homes even after the Bodo movement ended. Political mobilization of a community in support of a demand for inclusion on a schedule that would entitle them to preferences is not surprising. Yet the demand of the tea workers' descendants for ST status, and the framework within which the debate is being conducted, draw attention to our continued reliance on a highly questionable stock of colonial knowledge about Indian society and culture. This should be a source of embarrassment, as well as cause for serious introspection. The tribal affairs minister, P.R. Kyndiah, a politician from the Khasi community, recognized as a scheduled tribe, says without any sense of irony that ST status for adivasis would involve examining the case using the criteria of tribal characteristics, including a primitive background and distinctive cultures and traditions. Ethnic activists opposed to the adivasi claim cite with approval the statement of the home minister, Shivraj Patil, that the adivasis have lost their tribal characteristics. They also argue that the adivasis are not aborigines of Assam. Since STs of Assam are not treated as STs in other parts of the country and even Bodos are not recognized as STs in Karbi Anglong, says a leader of an indigenous tribal organization, migrant communities cannot be recognized as STs in Assam. The argument points to a peculiarity of ST status in northeast India that goes back to British colonial thinking about race, caste and tribe in this region. However, whether migrants should be considered ST or not, given the contribution of the tea labour community in blood and in sweat to the formation of modern Assam, no other group has a better claim to full citizenship rights and compensatory justice than they do. Colonial ethnography relied on racist notions of tribes having fixed habitats and ethnic traits that are almost biological and even inheritable. In northeast India, the so-called 'hill tribes' were thus all fixed to their supposed natural habitats. Therefore, it became necessary to distinguish between so-called pure and impure types to account for those that stray away from the assigned physical spaces, or do not conform to particular ethnic stereotypes. The distinction between plains tribes and hill tribes can be traced to this difficulty of colonial ethnic classification. As the anthropologist, Matthew Rich, has shown, the relatively egalitarian mores and habits of many of the peoples of northeast India - for instance, the absence of caste in the hills - presented a 'problem' for colonial ethnographers. Since India for them was a hierarchical and a 'caste ridden' civilization, the question was: were these people outside or inside
[Assam] 20th anniversary
Dear Deep and Jugal, Hope you are well. I too want to join others in congratulating the two of you for starting this mailing list. It was wonderful to see Deep’s e-mail from 20 years ago starting ‘Luitporia.’ Is there a quick of way of putting together the information on how we have grown: both in numbers and in geographical distribution? Good wishes, Sanjib Baruah ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] Assam, Don’t Hold Your Breath
Forbes India Magazine, 06 May, 2011 http://business.in.com/article/special/assam-dont-hold-your-breath/24462/1 Assam, Don’t Hold Your Breath In spite of successful elections, it’s too early to declare that the troubled state is on the road to recovery by Sanjib Baruah | May 2, 2011 There are signs that the Assam elections mark the beginning of a new phase in the state’s politics. The voter turnout rate of 76.03 percent was impressive and the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) did not call for a poll boycott. While the familiar controversy over the citizenship status featured in the campaign, especially in the BJP platform, it was not a defining element as it was in 2006, or arguably, in all state elections since the beginning of the Assam Movement of 1979-85. Is this the end of Assam’s troubles and the inauguration of the politics of good governance and development? Unfortunately, such a reading would be premature, and it would be a triumph of hope over reality. Politicians often respond to problems with words rather than deeds, or by symbolic rather than instrumental actions. That buys time, but ultimately, rhetoric cannot be a substitute to solutions. And the problems underlying Assam’s political troubles are neither minor, nor provincial. They raise fundamental questions about the Partition’s vision of two, and subsequently three, bounded nation-states, and whether it matches the subcontinent’s subsequent ground realities. During the Assam Movement of 1979-85, the campaigners claimed that tens of thousands of “foreigners” were enfranchised in Assam. This is hardly an issue that can be settled in any obvious way. Thus, when the Supreme Court in 2005 — 20 years after the end of the Assam Movement — found the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act to be unconstitutional, its ruling read almost like an official text of the Assam Movement. There can be “no manner of doubt,” said the court that Assam is facing “external aggression and internal disturbance” because of large-scale illegal immigration from Bangladesh. To solve the problems animating Assam’s troubled politics would mean confronting a number of inconvenient facts. First, the insertion of an international border between India and East Pakistan in 1947 did not turn off the flow of people from one of the subcontinent’s most densely populated areas to a relatively sparsely populated one. The pressure of migration actually increased since the Partition because it generated a big and continuous movement of Hindus, while the economically induced migration of poor Muslims also continued. Second, our citizenship laws take little cognizance of the post-Partition cross-border population flows, except those that occurred during the immediate years after the Partition. Indian citizenship laws embody the spirit of the Nehru-Liaquat pact of 1950 that sought to maintain a population status quo. Thus, there is no way in Indian law to make a distinction between Hindu and Muslim arrivals from Pakistan or Bangladesh except in the context of the immediate post-Partition years; and that too only by implication. But there is a tension between the legal definition of Indian citizenship laws, and the fact that many Indians believe that Hindus have an implicit right of return to post-Partition India. Third, we have been able to live with these ambiguities because our citizenship practices enable a blurring of the line between citizens and non-citizens. In particular because the documentation that enables a person to be included in the electoral roll in India can be rather rudimentary including say, a ration card. In the words of the Japanese scholar Hiroshi Sato, there are fault lines between the normative definition of citizenship in Indian law, and the actual exercise of franchise by people “based on the legitimacy of rudimentary documents rather than on the registration of citizenship.” It is hardly surprising that by bringing the issue to the centre stage of Assam politics, the campaigners of the Assam Movement set in motion a virtual earthquake and multiple aftershocks in the state’s political landscape. ULFA was founded in 1979. Even though the citizenship issue has never been directly on ULFA’s agenda, it views the gradual political marginalisation of locals, because of immigration and the enfranchisement of non-citizens, as a symptom of Assam’s subordinate political status in the pan-Indian dispensation. ULFA as an idea has always been more powerful than the reality of ULFA as a political organisation. Unlike our security experts, politicians like Tarun Gogoi intuitively understand it. This has led to attentiveness to questions such as the dignity of ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa since his arrest. That the election season included a meeting between the ULFA leaders and the Prime Minister is hardly accidental. However, it is difficult to imagine a solution
[Assam] Indira Goswami Obituary by Aruni Kashyap
http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/article2672271.ece The Hindu, November 30, 2011 A beloved daughter of Assam, writer, peacemaker Aruni Kashyap Indira Goswami, who died on Tuesday aged 69, was among India's most celebrated contemporary writers whose work spoke boldly and evocatively for the empowerment of women and other marginalised sections of society across the country. For this, she won the nation's highest literary honours, and respect and adulation in her home State Assam, where she was known as “baideiu” or elder sister. In recent years, she used her public standing and influence to mediate between the separatist group ULFA and the government, paving the way for talks between the two sides. Writing under the name of Mamoni Raisom, she won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1983, the Jnanpith in 2001, and literary prizes from almost every Indian State. In 2008, she received the Prince Claus Award in the Netherlands. With their pan-Indian themes, her novels and short stories, most of which have been translated from the Assamese into English and several Indian languages, had appeal wider than the boundaries of her State. Indira Goswami was not just an Assamese litterateur; she was a national writer from Assam. Far ahead of its times, her Neelkantha Braja was one of the earliest works of Indian literature to highlight the exploitation of destitute widows in Brindavan. The book was born out of Goswami's own early widowhood, and a short experimental stay in a widows' home in the U.P town. The plight of widows in Hindu society, and the oppression of girls and women were themes that ran through most of her other work, notably in Dontal Hatir Une Khowda Howda (The Moth Eaten Howdah of a Tusker), which is set in a sattra — a Vaishnavite monastery in Assam — and is a modern Indian classic. Her novel about the bloody anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, Pages Stained with Blood, haunts the reader long after it is read. She told me once about a visit to the riot-hit Jahangir Puri. “You know, I had never seen so many fresh widows together wailing in a chorus,” she said. Indira Goswami was born in November 1942 in a well-to-do Vaishnavite Brahmin family in Assam. She was educated in Shillong and Guwahati. In 1962, a meeting with Madhevan Raisom Ayengar, a young engineer from Mysore who was working on the construction of the Saraighat Bridge in Guwahati, led to love and to marriage. But the marriage was short-lived. Less than two years later, Madhevan was killed in a road accident in Kashmir, where the couple was then living. They had no children. In Assam, Indira Goswami's life is an open book. Her frank Adhalekha Dastavej (An Unfinished Autobiography), written in 1988, details her battle with intense depression after her husband's death, her nights with sleeping tablets, handfuls of which she swallowed in two attempts to end her life, and the story of how she won the struggle by immersing herself completely in her writing. It has been read widely in Assam. Even people who have not read it would know about her life, in the way everyone knows a folktale. Most of her early novels run so close to her real life that it is difficult to separate fiction from reality, especially for those who have read her autobiography. She later joined the Modern Indian Language (MIL) department of Delhi University, and went on to head its Assamese language department. To honour her, the University made her the Professor Emeritus in 2009 after her retirement. It was during her stint in the national capital that she attained national prominence. She drew on other diverse settings for her novels. The Rusted Sword is set against a worker's agitation in Madhya Pradesh. The Chenab's Current is the story of exploitation of labourers working for companies building an aqueduct over the Chenab River in Kashmir, and drew from her own experience in the Valley. It was the quest for justice, a running thread of her oeuvre, that may have propelled her into getting involved in mediating between the separatist group ULFA and the government; perhaps, she was the only person who both sides could trust. Her own efforts came at a time when the Assamese people had begun looking at the ULFA with mixed feelings. Like other Assamese, she was deeply disturbed by the Dhemaji blasts of 2004, in which the ULFA targeted a school on Independence Day, killing many children. She had been working on a novel set against the Assamese separatist movement. The bloodshed and human rights violations shook her to the core. She wanted the insurgency to end. But her desire to bring back the lost “boys” of the generation invited people to look at the militants with a new perspective, as products of the unjust eighties of Assam. Critics dismissed it as a political move but she was detached about her involvement from the beginning. She stressed she was just an “observer” in spite of playing an
[Assam] Lower Subansiri and the Politics of Expertise
From Assam Tribune, January 22, 2012 http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/showpage.asp?id=jan2212,6,417,108,999,855 Lower Subansiri and the Politics of Expertise Dr. Sanjib Baruah The mobilization of a variety of highly credentialed experts to settle the controversy over the Lower Subansiri hydropower project reminds me of an American Doonesbury comic strip. It features Stewie, a young researcher, who is frustrated with his calculator because it wouldn’t produce the ‘right’ answer. Stewie grumbles that he can’t get the ‘pesky scientific facts’ to ‘line up behind [his] beliefs.’ Some of our decision-makers seem to be behaving like Stewie. They are looking for experts whose opinions can be interpreted as being in line with what officials consider to be the ‘right answer’ to the questions raised about the Lower Subansiri hydropower project. It is perhaps not a coincidence that a North American comic strip speaks to our present predicament in Assam. The Doonesbury strip was a comment on former US president George W. Bush’s attitudes toward scientific truths vis-à-vis a number of issues including climate change and evolution. (Many of Bush’s Christian fundamentalist supporters are ‘creationists’ who believe in the Bible’s story of creation and reject Darwin’s theory of evolution). Thus an authority figure dressed in a white lab coat, based on the real-life character of the science adviser at the Bush White House, appears in the scene. He advises the confused Stewie on “situational science” which he explains is “about respecting both sides of a scientific argument, not just the ones supported by facts.” The “situational science adviser” then lists a number of “controversies” where “situational science” could be useful, among them the “evolution controversy,”“the global-warming controversy” and the “pesticides controversy.” In the comic strip cartoonist Garry Trudeau uses the term ‘controversy’ ironically with reference to subjects on which there are well-established scientific truths. However, we live in a world where knowledge controversies have become a familiar part of public debates in many parts of the world. Such knowledge controversies are examples of what Dutch social theorist Annemarie Mol calls ontological politics. Controversies about the dangers of the “mad cow disease” or what scientists call Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in the UK, and other recent panics about food safety in Europe, are examples of ontological politics. What is common about these controversies is that significant sections of the public challenge the knowledge claims of scientists and technologists that inform government decisions and practices. While a few years ago the authority of science and the reassurances provided by technocrats may have been enough to reassure the public about “acceptable risks,” they now fail to convince those that are affected by policy decisions informed by expert knowledge. The debate on the Lower Subansiri project is best seen as a knowledge controversy – an example of ontological politics. In these cases, the first-hand experience of citizens and the vernacular knowledge generated by that experience are in tension with what is regarded as authoritative science by decision-makers. They fail to allay public concerns. German sociologist Ulrich Beck explains this as a characteristic feature of “risk society.” Experts in the context of such knowledge controversies fail to convince the public that the risks involved in a new product or in an infrastructural project are “acceptable.” At the root of the controversy over the Lower Subansiri project are two sets of tensions (a) between first-hand experience and vernacular knowledge on the one hand, and expert knowledge that informs government decisions on the other; and (b) between expert knowledge produced by one group of well-credentialed experts familiar with the local context, and by a second group of equally well-credentialed experts based at institutions in the Indian heartland, but viewed locally as experts who have few stakes in the region. A number of factors account for these tensions. First, the people of the Brahmaputra valley have known floods in a way that very few other people in the world have. Second, the experience of the earthquake of 1950 and the catastrophic floods that followed are deeply etched in the collective memory of the people of the Brahmaputra Valley. A research team studying flood adaptation in the Brahmaputra Valley found that even after six decades villagers affected by those catastrophic floods remember them as ‘Pahar Bhanga Pani’ [hill-destroying floodwaters] and ‘Bolia Pani’ [floodwaters driven by madness]. It is hardly surprising that hydropower plants in the mountains that surround the valley would evoke a raw sense of danger and foreboding in Assam. In the words of an Assamese engineer who has had a long career
[Assam] LC Jain, Assam and Mega Dams
Assam Tribune, February 5th 2012. http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/epaper.asp?id=feb0512/Page6 L.C Jain, Assam and mega dams Dr. Sanjib Baruah There are often references to the World Commission on Dams [WCD] and its 2001 report Dams and Development in the discussions on Lower Subansiri and the other hydropower dams in Arunachal Pradesh. But one rarely hears of one of the report’s key authors -- the Commission’s Vice Chair, Gandhian activist and economist the late L. C Jain. Jain who passed away in November 2010 was once India’s High Commissioner to South Africa and a former member of the Planning Commission. What makes the absence of any significant reference to Jain surprising in this context is that Jain was a well-known friend and well-wisher of Assam and Northeast India. Prior to joining the WCD he chaired the Indian Planning Commission’s committee on development options for Assam for putting into effect Clause 7 of the Assam Accord. Indeed in his remembrance essay on Jain published in this newspaper, a retired senior civil servant from the region and former Tourism Secretary M. P. Bezbaruah calls Jain a “true friend and crusader for the Northeast” known for “his personal advocacy of NE development as one arm to fight the divisive violence.” The WCD was established jointly by the World Bank and the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in 1997 in response to the controversies over large dams that were raging in many parts of the world. As a major funder of dam building projects, the World Bank was at that time embroiled in a number of those controversies. The WCD’s mandate was to “review the development effectiveness of large dams and assess alternatives for water resources and energy development” and to “develop internationally acceptable criteria, guidelines and standards for the planning, design, appraisal, construction, operation, monitoring and decommissioning of dams.” It is a matter of remarkable good fortune that a person who had Northeast India’s best interest in mind and a person who was intimately familiar with the developmental challenges of Northeast India’s was a key figure in the WCD. One can venture to guess that Jain’s knowledge of Northeast India had indirectly found a place in its deliberations. As a result Dams and Development has perhaps more relevance to our region than any such global document. The 12-member WCD with South Africa´s Water Resources Minister Kader Asmal as chair and L.C. Jain as Vice-Chair was designed as what is sometimes called a “multi-stakeholder process,” that is it tried to include individuals who are representative of the diversity of perspectives on the question – that is industry representatives and large dam advocates, as well as their opponents. The Commission had the support of a full-time professional Secretariat, a 68-member advisory Forum, and numerous experts from a variety of academic disciplines. It built a comprehensive knowledge base of large dams and it closely examined many dam projects in different parts of the world and consulted extensively with people involved in those projects and those affected by them. The WCD’s report Dams and Development launched in 2000 by Nelson Mandela recognizes that “dams have made an important and significant contribution to human development, and the benefits derived from them have been considerable.” However, it concludes that “in too many cases an unacceptable and often unnecessary price has been paid to secure those benefits.” In its view, notwithstanding significant gains from such projects--for instance in terms of the production of hydropower--a very high social cost have been extracted because many dam building projects had failed to recognize the complex nature of rivers and river ecosystems. For instance, the dramatic changes to “rivers, watersheds and aquatic ecosystems” and their adverse impact on “downstream livelihoods” have been inadequately understood and as a result, thousands who depend on river ecosystems have been impoverished because of losing their traditions sources of livelihood. To ensure that future dam building projects do not extract such a heavy social cost, the WCD’s report proposes a policy framework that decisively breaks away from the idea that decisions on dams are primarily the domain of technical and economic experts. Consistent with Jain’s bottom-up and participatory view of development, the WCD’s report emphasizes the need to ensure that the affected people have a chance to make “informed choices” and that they should be active parties in negotiations and not just passive victims or beneficiaries. Dams and Development even recommends that dam building decisions should be made only with the “free, prior and informed consent” of the people affected by dams and that their acceptance of such projects be “demonstrable.” It will not be hard for anyone familiar with Jain’s work to see
[Assam] Dams and Livelihoods
The Assam Tribune, March 11, 2012 http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/showpage.asp?id=mar1112,6,420,903,660,933 Dams and Livelihoods Dr. Sanjib Baruah A major focus of the debate on dams has been the safety of large dams in earthquake prone Northeast India. By comparison, much less attention has been paid to a particular feature of these dams: that they are almost all designed solely to generate electricity. Most of the dams under construction in Arunachal Pradesh—or, in various stages of planning--are quite different from an earlier generation of “multipurpose” river valley projects that had irrigation and flood control as well as electricity generation, among their goals. Indeed initially dams on the Subansiri were designed with flood control as the main goal. Only after the project was turned over to the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, Lower Subansiri became a single-purpose “power-only” dam. Unlike multipurpose projects where the resources generated by hydropower are used to fund public goods like irrigation, flood control or navigation, in single purpose hydropower dams there is little effort to balancing the conflicting interest at stake, and to making development equitable. The economics favoring investments in hydropower dams are relatively straight forward. The fuel driving hydropower dams is moving water. When the rules are defined in a particular way a river can be a “free” resource. Hydropower dams require huge initial investments. But once they are built, their operational costs are minimal, unlike say, thermal power plants that use coal, oil or natural gas as fuel. In India, very small “host states” can get very large royalties from the sale of hydropower, which creates a particularly distorted incentive structure to favor single-purpose dams. It may be useful to compare this with the very different economics of hydropower dams in some developed countries. By and large, developed countries at present are not investing in large-scale hydropower like India or China. There are two reasons. First, today’s developed countries had built some of the earliest hydropower plants in the world. The first hydropower plant in the US -- at the Niagara Falls – for instance, was built in 1879. The best sites available for hydropower plants in these countries were taken up long time ago. By contrast, even though the hydropower potential of the Himalayan rivers has been known, it was not possible to build hydropower dams in remote Arunachal Pradesh till quite recently. But there is a second reason for the difference. Thanks to the changes in social attitudes towards the environment, the economics of hydropower dams have changed in developed countries. This is especially clear in the US where hydropower dams need licensing from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The licenses are usually valid for fifty years. When licenses expire, hydropower dams need re-licensing. Hundreds of dams were licensed during the first part of the last century. At that time the environment was not a major public concern. But they have come up for relicensing after the environmental movement had significantly influenced the legal regime governing hydropower generation. Take for example the Clean Water Act of 1972 which aims “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters.” That has to affect the economics of hydropower dams. The FERC’s licensing requirements for hydropower dams now include conditions that relate to various non-power uses of rivers such as water supply, irrigation and flood control, as well as the requirements of fish and wildlife preservation, river recreation, environmental quality, and energy conservation. The hydropower industry complains from time to time that these conditions have made hydropower plants unprofitable. But courts have rarely favored such arguments. As a result, owners of hydropower plants, writes environmental lawyer Sarah C Richardson, “who may have thought their largest costs had long since been paid off, now face new costs of upgrading or building fishways, installing turbine screens to deflect fish, or reducing generation in order to maintain streamflow requirements.” Thanks to these demands, hydropower in the US has lost the competitive advantage vis-à-vis other energy sources. Indeed a number of hydropower dams has been dismantled because of that. The lessons of the changing economics of hydropower dams are profound. One reason they are not more apparent is perhaps the misleading term “environment.” It is easy to say that rich countries can afford environmental regulations that poor countries cannot. But what are environmental issues in the US, are in a place like Assam matters that concern the livelihood and food security of thousands of poor people. . Dams change the flow regime of rivers. No one argues
Re: [Assam] [assam] The Schoool where every teacher/student has an iPad
This reminds me of a New York Times report last year of a Silicon Valley private school - with children whose parents are in the high tech world -- that does not allow computers. I especially liked the argument of one of the parents: “At Google and all these places, we make technology as brain-dead easy to use as possible. There’s no reason why kids can’t figure it out when they get older.” SB http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?pagewanted=all October 22, 2011 A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute By MATT RICHTEL LOS ALTOS, Calif. — The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard. But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home. Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix. This is the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, one of around 160 Waldorf schools in the country that subscribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans. The Waldorf method is nearly a century old, but its foothold here among the digerati puts into sharp relief an intensifying debate about the role of computers in education. “I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school,” said Alan Eagle, 50, whose daughter, Andie, is one of the 196 children at the Waldorf elementary school; his son William, 13, is at the nearby middle school. “The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.” Mr. Eagle knows a bit about technology. He holds a computer science degree from Dartmouth and works in executive communications at Google, where he has written speeches for the chairman, Eric E. Schmidt. He uses an iPad and a smartphone. But he says his daughter, a fifth grader, “doesn’t know how to use Google,” and his son is just learning. (Starting in eighth grade, the school endorses the limited use of gadgets.) Three-quarters of the students here have parents with a strong high-tech connection. Mr. Eagle, like other parents, sees no contradiction. Technology, he says, has its time and place: “If I worked at Miramax and made good, artsy, rated R movies, I wouldn’t want my kids to see them until they were 17.” While other schools in the region brag about their wired classrooms, the Waldorf school embraces a simple, retro look — blackboards with colorful chalk, bookshelves with encyclopedias, wooden desks filled with workbooks and No. 2 pencils. On a recent Tuesday, Andie Eagle and her fifth-grade classmates refreshed their knitting skills, crisscrossing wooden needles around balls of yarn, making fabric swatches. It’s an activity the school says helps develop problem-solving, patterning, math skills and coordination. The long-term goal: make socks. Down the hall, a teacher drilled third-graders on multiplication by asking them to pretend to turn their bodies into lightning bolts. She asked them a math problem — four times five — and, in unison, they shouted “20” and zapped their fingers at the number on the blackboard. A roomful of human calculators. In second grade, students standing in a circle learned language skills by repeating verses after the teacher, while simultaneously playing catch with bean bags. It’s an exercise aimed at synchronizing body and brain. Here, as in other classes, the day can start with a recitation or verse about God that reflects a nondenominational emphasis on the divine. Andie’s teacher, Cathy Waheed, who is a former computer engineer, tries to make learning both irresistible and highly tactile. Last year she taught fractions by having the children cut up food — apples, quesadillas, cake — into quarters, halves and sixteenths. “For three weeks, we ate our way through fractions,” she said. “When I made enough fractional pieces of cake to feed everyone, do you think I had their attention?” Some education experts say that the push to equip classrooms with computers is unwarranted because studies do not clearly show that this leads to better test scores or other measurable gains. Is learning through cake fractions and knitting any better? The Waldorf advocates make it tough to compare, partly because as private schools they
[Assam] Dam Protests -- Reports from Lakhimpur-Dhemaji
Priyanka Borpujari has done some excellent reporting of the situation in Lakhimpur-Dhemaji area in the past few days involving the controversy over dams. Some of you may be interested. Sanjib Baruah http://priyanka-borpujari.blogspot.in/2012/05/damning-dam-protesters.htm http://priyanka-borpujari.blogspot.in/2012/05/inside-tomorrows-mayhem.html http://priyanka-borpujari.blogspot.in/2012/05/administration-is-nothing-but-common.html ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
Re: [Assam] [asom] Text of the poem sagar dekhisa by poet Devakanta Barua
The exchange about 'Xagor Dekhisa reminded me of a translation of the poem that I did long time ago. Thought some of you may be interested. Good wishes, Sanjib Baruah HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE SEA? Devakanta Barooah Have you ever seen the sea? No? Never? Nor have I. I have heard though -- That endless blue waters And boundless waves Reach out to the horizon Far far away. Can you see My heart is as blue as the sea -- Full of sadness? A thousand waves of desire Gush up and die Kissing the edges Beyond which lie Memories Of our togetherness. Haven't you heard? Do you not hear The thunderous rage Of the bursting storm in my sea? Have you not grasped? Do you not feel The gentle, soft signs of spring In the garden? You have seen the rainbow, Haven't you? The serene glow of light In the monsoon cloud; Do you then see The festive lights In the love-lit sky of my heart? Have you ever woken up To the Keteki's heart-breaking cry In the middle of night? Have you ever thought -- That a bird's voice Can carry our heart's pain? O' my heartless lover, I know what you think You think That you are you and me, me. You would never know Why we would make Garlands of victory Out of withering malotis? Why we would build Grand palaces of union With bricks and clay -- Muddied in earth's sorrows? Why with our heart's blood We would wash The feet of an image? You won't know, my friend The sadness With which on a dull Bijoya evening We would immerse our Goddess -- The same Goddess that we instal With such anticipation Just a few nights before -- On the evening of Xosthee. It is getting to be dark Isn't it? No, we won't need lamps tonight The gentle light of your two eyes Will conquer The darkness of my world. (c) Translation: SANJIB BARUAH - Original Message - From: htha...@comcast.net To: assamonl...@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wed, 27 Jun 2012 21:43:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [asom] Text of the poem sagar dekhisa by poet Devakanta Barua Dear friends, Can someone give me the Assamese text of the poem sagar dekhisa by poet Devakanta Barua ? I am supposed to remember it, because I stood first by reciting this poem in Cotton College 63 years ago in 1949 and now I've frogotten the lines ! I'll be very grateful if someone will help !! With love to all, Himendra Telephone: USA-617-880-9667 ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] Whose Riveer is it Anyway?
Here is the link to a long article “Whose River is it Anyway? Political Economy of Hydropower in the Eastern Himalayas.” Some of you may be interested. It will be available free on the website of the journal Economic and Political Weekly for four weeks. http://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/2012_47/29/Whose_River_Is_It_Anyway.pdf Thanks, Sanjib ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] New York Times on the Exodus of Northeasterners
New York Times, Aug 18, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/world/asia/panic-radiates-from-indian-state-of-assam.html?pagewanted=all Panic Seizes India as a Region’s Strife Radiates By JIM YARDLEY BRAJAKHAL, India — Like a fever, fear has spread across India this week, from big cities like Bangalore to smaller places like Mysore, a contagion fueling a message: Run. Head home. Flee. And that is what thousands of migrants from the country’s distant northeastern states are doing, jamming into train stations in an exodus challenging the Indian ideals of tolerance and diversity. What began as an isolated communal conflict here in the remote state of Assam, a vicious if obscure fight over land and power between Muslims and the indigenous Bodo tribe, has unexpectedly set off widespread panic among northeastern migrants who had moved to more prosperous cities for a piece of India’s rising affluence. A swirl of unfounded rumors, spread by text messages and social media, had warned of attacks by Muslims against northeastern migrants, prompting the panic and the exodus. Indian leaders, deeply alarmed, have pleaded for calm, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared in Parliament on Friday to denounce the rumor mongering and offer reassurance to northeastern migrants. “What is at stake is the unity and integrity of our country,” Mr. Singh said. “What is at stake is communal harmony.” The hysteria in several of the country’s most advanced urban centers has underscored the deep roots of ethnic tensions in India, where communal conflict is usually simplified as Hindu versus Muslim, yet is often far more complex. For decades, Indian leaders have mostly managed to isolate and triangulate regional ethnic conflicts, if not always resolve them, but the public panic this week is a testament to how the old strategies may be less effective in an information age. Last week, the central government started moving to stabilize Assam, where at least 78 people have been killed and more than 300,000 have fled their homes for refugee camps. Then Muslims staged a large, angry protest in Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, on the western coast. A wave of fear began sweeping through the migrant communities after several people from the northeast were beaten up in Pune, a city not far from Mumbai. By Wednesday and Thursday, the exodus had begun. So many people were pouring into train stations in Bangalore and Chennai that the Railways Ministry later added special services to certain northeastern cities. By Friday, even as some of the fears eased in the biggest cities, people were leaving smaller cities, including Mysore and Mangalore. To many northeastern migrants, the impulse to rush home — despite the trouble in Assam — is a reminder of how alienated many feel from mainstream India. The northeast, tethered to the rest of the country by a narrow finger of land, has always been neglected. Populated by a complex mosaic of ethnic groups, the seven states of the northeast have also been plagued by insurgencies and rivalries as different groups compete for power. Here in Assam, the underlying frictions are over the control of land, immigration pressures and the fight for political power. The savagery and starkness of the violence have been startling. Of the 78 people killed, some were butchered. More than 14,000 homes have been burned. That 300,000 people are in refugee camps is remarkable; had so many people fled across sub-Saharan Africa to escape ethnic persecution, a humanitarian crisis almost certainly would have been declared. “If we go back and they attack us again, who will save us?” asked Subla Mushary, 35, who is now living with her two teenage daughters at a camp for Bodos. “I have visited my home. There is nothing left.” Assam, which has about 31 million people, has a long history of ethnic strife. The current violence is focused on the westernmost region of the state, which is claimed by the Bodos as their homeland. For years, Bodo insurgent groups fought for political autonomy, with some seeking statehood and others seeking an independent Bodo nation. In 2003, India’s central government, then led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, brokered a deal in which Bodo insurgents agreed to cease their rebellions in exchange for the creation of a special autonomous region, now known as the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts. It was a formula long used by Indian leaders to subdue regional rebellions: persuade rebels to trade the power of the gun for the power of the ballot box. Now the Bodos dominate the government overseeing the autonomous districts, even though they are not a majority, accounting for about 29 percent of a population otherwise splintered among Muslims, other indigenous tribal groups, Hindus and other native Assamese. Competition over landownership is a source of rivalry and resentment: the land rights of Muslims are tightly
[Assam] Seminar Magazine issue on 'Assam-Unstable Peace'
The December issue of the Delhi magazine ‘Seminar’ is just out and it is on: ‘Assam: Unstable Peace: A symposium on politics, society, culture and the challenges of reconciliation.’ Here is the link to the issue: http://www.india-seminar.com/semframe.html But the link will take you only to the cover, the table of contents and to selected articles. The entire issue will become available on line in January. To purchase copies of the magazine please contact: Seminar Publications, F-46 Malhotra Building (1st floor), Janpath, New Delhi 11000. Phone 23316534 and 23316445. Email: semi...@vsnl.com. The December issue includes the following: THE PROBLEM Posed by Sanjib Baruah, Professor of Political Studies, Bard College, New York CONNECTED HISTORIES Yasmin Saikia, Professor of History, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, ‘RETURNS’ TO THE PAST: VIOLENCE, COUNTER-MEMORY AND ETHICS Amit R. Baishya, Assistant Professor of English, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana ASSAMESE FOOD AND THE POLITICS OF TASTE Zilkia Janer, Associate Professor of Global Studies and Geography, Hofstra University, New York DEMOCRACY, DISSENT, DIVIDES Subir Bhaumik, former BBC correspondent and author THE BODOLAND VIOLENCE AND THE POLITICS OF EXPLANATION Banajit Hussain, researcher and Fellow, Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives (ARENA), Delhi WHAT’S UP WITH THE TERRITORIAL COUNCIL? Åshild Kolås, Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway ASSAM’S LANGUAGE WARRIORS Nabanipa Bhattacharjee, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi CIVIL SOCIETY POLITICS Nandana Dutta, Professor English, Gauhati University. CHANGING TRENDS OF ELECTORAL POLITICS Sandhya Goswami, Professor of Political Science, Gauhati University AFTER COUNTER-INSURGENCY: POLICING DISSENT IN ASSAM Sanjay Barbora, Associate Professor, TISS North Eastern Regional Centre, Guwahati OF ENDS AND BEGINNINGS: WAR, PEACE AND THE INTERREGNUM Rakhee Kalita, Associate Professor of English, Cotton College, Guwahati THE FICTION OF ASSAMESE AUGUSTS Aruni Kashyap, MFA candidate, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota THE PERSISTENCE OF THE RURAL Amiya Sharma, Executive Director, Rashtriya Gramin Vikas Nidhi, Guwahati. HYDROPOWER, MEGA DAMS, AND THE POLITICS OF RISK Sanjib Baruah, Professor of Political Studies, Bard College, New York FURTHER READING Uddipan Dutta, Research Associate, Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati BOOKS Jahnavi Barua, REBIRTH (Reviewed by S. Mitra Kalita); Manjeet Baruah, FRONTIER CULTURES: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF ASSAMESE LITERATURE (Reviewed by By Abikal Borah); M.S. Prabhakara, LOOKING BACK INTO THE FUTURE: IDENTITY AND INSURGENCY IN NORTHEAST INDIA (Reviewed by Uddipan Dutta); Arupyoti Saikia, FORESTS AND ECOLOGICAL HISTORY OF ASSAM (Reviewed by Gunnel Cederlöf); Sanghamitra Misra BECOMING A BORDERLAND: THE POLITICS OF SPACE AND IDENTITY IN COLONIAL NORTHEASTERN INDIA (Reviewed by Erik deMaaker); Jayeeta Sharma, EMPIRE’S GARDEN: ASSAM AND THE MAKING OF MODERN INDIA (Reviewed by Sanjib Baruah) and Arupa Patangia Kalita THE STORY OF FELANEE (trans. Deepika Phukan) (Reviewed by Mitra Phukan). COMMENT Kallol Bhattacherjee, journalist, ‘The Week’, Delhi COMMUNICATION Received from Aditya Nigam, CSDS, Delhi BACKPAGE COVER Designed by www.designosis.in ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] Seminar issue on Assam-Unstable Peace
The December issue of Seminar magazine on the theme 'Assam:Unstable Peace' is now available on line. You can access the following articles published in that issue. Click the following link. Then click 'Go to Issue.' Then click 2012 and then click the link to the December issue. http://www.india-seminar.com/ SEMINAR #640 December 2012 ASSAM: UNSTABLE PEACE a symposium on politics, society, culture and the challenges of reconciliation • THE PROBLEM Posed by Sanjib Baruah, Professor of Political Studies, Bard College, New York • CONNECTED HISTORIES Yasmin Saikia, Professor of History, Arizona State University, Tempe • 'RETURNS' TO THE PAST: VIOLENCE, COUNTER-MEMORY AND ETHICS Amit R. Baishya, Assistant Professor of English, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana • ASSAMESE FOOD AND THE POLITICS OF TASTE Zilkia Janer, Associate Professor of Global Studies and Geography, Hofstra University, New York • DEMOCRACY, DISSENT, DIVIDES Subir Bhaumik, former BBC correspondent and author, Guwahati • THE BODOLAND VIOLENCE AND THE POLITICS OF EXPLANATION Banajit Hussain, researcher and Fellow, Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives (ARENA), Delhi • WHAT'S UP WITH THE TERRITORIAL COUNCIL? Åshild Kolås, Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway • ASSAM'S LANGUAGE WARRIORS Nabanipa Bhattacharjee, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi • CIVIL SOCIETY POLITICS Nandana Dutta, Professor of English, Gauhati University, Guwahati • CHANGING TRENDS OF ELECTORAL POLITICS Sandhya Goswami, Professor of Political Science, Gauhati University • AFTER COUNTER-INSURGENCY: POLICING DISSENT IN ASSAM Sanjay Barbora, Associate Professor, TISS North Eastern Regional Centre, Guwahati • OF ENDS AND BEGINNINGS: WAR, PEACE AND THE INTERREGNUM Rakhee Kalita, Associate Professor of English, Cotton College, Guwahati • THE FICTION OF ASSAMESE AUGUSTS Aruni Kashyap, MFA candidate, Minnesota State University, Mankato • THE PERSISTENCE OF THE RURAL Amiya Sharma, Executive Director, Rashtriya Gramin Vikas NIdhi, Guwahati • HYDROPOWER, MEGA DAMS, AND THE POLITICS OF RISK Sanjib Baruah, Professor of Political Studies, Bard College, New York • FURTHER READING A select and relevant bibliography compiled by Uddipan Dutta, Research Associate, Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati • BOOKS Reviewed by S. Mitra Kalita, Abikal Borah, Uddipan Dutta, Gunnel Cederläf, Erik de Maaker, Sanjib Baruah and Mitra Phukan ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] New York Times 'For Young Readers, a Chance to Work Off Library Debt'
This New York Times story with an Assamese journalist Priyanka Borpujari's byline might interest some of you. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/for-young-readers-a-chance-to-work-off-library-debt/ ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] Diwali for seven people deported to China from Assam
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/51-years-after-war-it-is-diwali-for-seven-people-deported-to-china-from-assam/1190511/0 Indian Express, November 3rd. 2013 Samudra Gupta Kashyap : Makum, Sun Nov 03 2013, 06:15 hrs 51 years after war, it is Diwali for seven people deported to China from Assam It's Diwali that she missed the most, says Chang Yuet Ho. She was around 12, Chang estimates, when she last saw her friends lighting hundreds of earthern lamps and bursting crackers. Fifty-one years later, last month, Chang found herself back in the midst of the festival preparations. She went home to Hong Kong just before Diwali day, but not without meeting at least some of the people she had lost touch with all those years ago. Chang was among the estimated 1,500 people of Chinese origin — brought to Assam by British planters as tea was discovered here in the first half of the 19th century — who were arrested in the wake of the Chinese aggression of 1962, and packed off to different prisons. Many of them, including Chang, were later deported to China. Some of the Chinese families managed to stay behind as the deportation process was called off mid-way after the war came to an end. Others who were not deported made their way back after two years or more in prisons. Chang and six others who now live in Hong Kong returned to their birthplace, Makum township in Upper Assam, about 7 km from the commercial hub of Tinsukia, for the first time in 51 years last month. Of the six, five were women. Makum incidentally got its name from Makam, meaning a golden horse in Cantonese. The Chinese settlers though know it by its Mandarin name, Machin. I remember going to the Chinese school located by the main road. I remember so many of my classmates, as also Liu Mei Fang, a teacher who came from Kolkata, said Chang, a retired factory worker. That school, attended by most of the children of Chinese descent, is now a Hindi high school. Everything has changed, Chang noted, the railway track was bigger and more shops had sprung up. My Assamese friends would sing and dance during Bihu and organise a very colourful Durga Puja near the railway station. But what I liked most was Diwali, she added. One night, police came, huddled us into a large cattle-shed, and then took us away, first to Dibrugarh, and then by train to a prison in Rajasthan. I still remember the journey to Rajasthan, packed like pigs in a train that had no light, no water. After over a year or so in the prison, we were shifted to Madras. We were put on a ship there and sent off to Hong Kong, Chang said. Several children died during that journey to Rajasthan, she claimed. Ho Choi Fung, 63, also clearly remembers the day her family — she, her parents, two little sisters and a brother — were huddled into a bus and taken away from Chinapatti in Makum. Named after the Chinese settlers who lived there, Chinapatti now barely has any Chinese families. Ho Yuet Ming, who was among the seven, introduced herself to locals as 'Anjali Goala', the name her mother, who was of Assamese origin, gave her. Tears rolled down the 60-year-old's face as she was cheered by a crowd of 300 at a gathering in the township. A woman said the name had rung a bell. Yes, I can recognise her now, said Kaushalya Barua, a retired principal of Gangabisan Higher Secondary School at Makum. Later Ho Yuet, sister Ho Hung Owai, brother Ho Man Heng and his wife Ho Yuk Mui drove around Makum trying to recognise the houses and landmarks they had left behind. Our father Ho Kong Wa died a few years after we landed in Hong Kong, and mother Rasmoni Goala a few years later, said Ho Yuet. Ho Yuet, who is now retired from an insurance job, named her only son Goala Rahul Wa, and he is currently doing graduation in Australia. You never know where fate takes you, she said, wondering what happened to the many others rounded up along with her family. Ho Man Heng, who was in Class III when his family was deported, said he wanted to visit the places with which his childhood memories are intertwined. I looked around Makum, but I could find nothing except for the two huge trees in the (former Chinese) school compound, and a couple of old houses, he said. He recalled that the headmaster of the school was a Ling Lao Su. A gross injustice was meted out to these innocent people whose grandparents had come to Assam over 150 years ago. As a resident of Makum I am ashamed, said Haren Borthakur, a well-known playwright who lives in Makum. The property of most of the families who were deported was confiscated by the government. There were allegations of some influential people usurping the properties. Among those whose families returned to Makum later was Wang Shing Tung. My mother can describe vividly how the people of our community suddenly become the enemy, said Wang, 49, whose Hong Kong Restaurant in Tinsukia town has been the area's most popular joint for chowmein
[Assam] Race in India
Al Jazeera got me to comment on the race debate in India after the killing of an Arunachali student in Delhi. The piece may be of interest. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/02/student-death-india-racism-debat-20142197266693973.html SB ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] Rajdhani to Arunachal and the Inner Line
This may be of interest to some of you. http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/dividing-line/ Indian Express, October 3, 2014 Dividing line By: Sanjib Baruah Northeast policy should dispense with archaic systems like the inner line There is a deep anachronism at the heart of India’s Northeast policy: the continuing reliance on archaic colonial-era institutions. The disconnect between the original rationale for those institutions and modern realities grows wider each day. The controversy over inner-line permits for passengers travelling on the proposed Rajdhani Express between Arunachal Pradesh and New Delhi brings home this contradiction. The decision to let the train reservations do the work of inner-line permits may make eminent practical sense. But the issue raises a deeper question: can the ideas that the Rajdhani symbolises — national connectivity, mobility, speed and economic dynamism — be reconciled with an archaic institution like the inner line? First introduced in 1873, the inner line can only be understood in the context of what Curzon described as the “frontier system” of the empire, which had a “threefold” frontier: an administrative border, a frontier of active protection and an outer or advanced strategic frontier. Only in the areas inside its “administrative” border did the British establish direct rule. Most of present-day Assam was the area within the administrative border of colonial Assam, where a promising new economy of tea, oil and coal production was taking shape in the latter half of the 19th century. Establishing modern property rights and a legal and administrative system in this enclave of global capitalism was a priority. Beyond the inner line were “tribal areas”, which Curzon described as a zone of “active protection”. The British had given away huge tracts of land to European tea planters using the fiction of Assam’s vast “wastelands”. But the process involved the subversion of old economic and social networks and property regimes. Thus in the early years, the tea plantations were frequently attacked by marauding “barbarians”. The inner line was a way of fencing in the tea plantations. The colonial government had little interest in extending modern institutions beyond the administrative border. Launching occasional military expeditions to teach the “primitive tribesmen” a lesson was considered enough. There was also a set of racial assumptions at work: the colonial habit of fixing peoples to their supposed natural habitats. Certain peoples beyond the inner line were described as “very primitive peoples”. Sometimes ,members of an ethnic group living in one location would be described as “a degraded, backward type”, contrasting them to members of the same group living in their “abode proper”, which supposedly had superior qualities. Thus it became necessary to distinguish between so-called pure and impure types, which in turn required fences to keep people in their assigned physical spaces. What explains the contemporary appeal of the inner line? Its appeal is not restricted to Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland, where the inner line has continued since colonial times. There have been campaigns demanding the inner line in Meghalaya and Manipur as well. Even ethnic activists in Assam have flirted with the idea. And successive generations of Indian policymakers have found the inner line to be a necessary condition for political stability. The economic heartland of colonial Assam, not surprisingly, comprised the plains districts located within the administrative border. By contrast, most of the sparsely populated hill areas — especially those beyond the inner line — became the economic backwaters. It is a curious stroke of fate that the inner line is now viewed so positively. It is seen primarily as a legal instrument for excluding outsiders — an unintended consequence of incremental policymaking that has created a number of de facto ethnic homelands in the Northeast. There is growing appeal for the idea among those who don’t yet have such exclusionary homelands. However, contemporary ethnic activists are not entirely unaware of the ambiguous legacy of the inner line. It is a factor in the border disputes between some Northeastern states and Assam. Ethnic activists in states beyond the inner line covet certain plains and foothill areas — located outside the inner line — partly because of the relative economic dynamism they exude. The inner line produces a major structural dilemma for the 21st century practice of citizenship. To borrow the words of Mahmood Mamdani, they penalise those that the commodity economy dynamises. Those that are mobile and find their way into areas beyond the inner line are defined as outsiders. Further, mobility on the part of those considered native to that zone is discouraged because preferences that go with native status are made specific to habitats to which
[Assam] Our floods, their floods
Asian Age, October 15, 2014 http://www.asianage.com/sanjib-baruah-843 Our floods, their floods Sanjib Baruah There was a time when the charge of neglect by the central government was the staple of Northeast India’s politics. That is no longer the case. The region now features prominently on the national agenda. Complaints against the central government are less frequent. Yet there is a deep reservoir of suspicion that the country’s governing elites do not take the region’s concerns seriously. And the feeling is that the attitude is the same no matter who is in power in Delhi. These suspicions surfaced recently when floods and landslides caused large-scale devastation and misery in Assam and Meghalaya. The late September floods occurred just as floodwaters were receding in Jammu and Kashmir. The timing brought home the dramatic contrast between the media coverage of the two flood stories. The national electronic media covered the JK floods with all the frenzy of the 24/7 cable news channels multiple angles, relentless replays, and the “Here is How You Can Help” guides. Its coverage of the floods in Assam and Meghalaya, on the other hand, had none of those bells and whistles: it was low-key and matter-of-fact. Floods in Northeast India and in Assam in particular are of course, more common than floods in Srinagar. To that extent the conventional distinction between unusual and infrequent events that constitute “news” in a way that ordinary, everyday occurrences do not, might explain the difference in coverage. But it also says something about the calculations that media houses make regarding their “home markets” in terms of audiences and advertisers. There the media’s self-representation as a societal institution with a vital role in a democracy comes in conflict with the reality of media houses as businesses. Whatever the reason, in a democracy media coverage has consequences. Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi complained that the Modi government responded more promptly and generously to the JK floods than it did to the floods in his state. He expressed regret that the Prime Minister visited JK, but he did not come to the Northeast. But whether it is the Northeast or JK, how much money is available for flood relief may not be that important in the long run. What is crucial is the intellectual investment that the country makes to understand the causes of these “natural” disasters. For so-called natural disasters are rarely just natural; man-made factors always play a role. That flood destruction has become routine in Assam is no comfort to an Assamese. It is only a reminder that what has been done so far in the name of flood control has been either awfully inadequate, or profoundly wrong-headed. After the JK floods, the Supreme Court asked the central government for a report. In 2013, it had ordered an inquiry into the floods in Uttarakhand. Those floods also received significant media attention because major Hindu pilgrimage centres like Kedarnath and Badrinath were affected, and thousands of pilgrims were stranded. The expert body submitted its report earlier this year. It concluded that the hydroelectric dams under construction had contributed to the flood disaster and recommended the cancelation of 23 proposed projects on the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi river basins. One aspect of Assam’s frequent floods has been relentless riverbank erosion. It does not produce dramatic one-time losses associated with temporary submergence during a flood, but the permanent loss of land and property. Over the years erosion of riverbanks has led to the loss of livelihood of thousands. Flood control in Assam has mostly consisted of structural interventions such as embankments and dykes. Between 1953 and 2004, 4,500 kilometers of embankments were built in Assam making it the state with the third most extensive flood control embankments in the country. At the same time, flood damages and the total flood prone area in the state have increased significantly. Embankment breaches have been the cause of a number of devastating floods. There are now efforts to raise and strengthen embankments. In recent years there has been talk of geo-tube constructions to reclaim lost embankments and build new ones. Could it be that structural interventions of this sort are inappropriate in the particular conditions of the Brahmaputra river system? Geo-hydrologist Dulal Goswami tells us how, as the Brahmaputra enters the plains of Assam after cascading through deep Himalayan gorges, because of the sudden dissipation of its immense energy it unloads enormous amounts of sediments downstream. The Assam earthquake of 1950 has dramatically changed the river regime. Massive landslides in the Himalayas blocked the downstream flow of a number of its tributaries and when the trapped water burst through a few days later, it caused catastrophic floods downstream. The enormous volume
[Assam] Assamese woman wants to meet her Chinese parents deported during 1962 War
Indian Express, May 19th 2015 http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/assamese-woman-wants-to-meet-her-chinese-parents-deported-during-1962-war/ Assamese woman wants to meet her Chinese parents deported during 1962 War Leong Linchi has been able to establish contact with her parents who are now living in China after they were deported over 53 years ago. Fifty nine-year-old Leong Linchi aka Pramila Das – a woman of Chinese origin who belongs to Makum in upper Assam – was separated from her parents in the wake of the Chinese aggression of 1962. Of late she has been able to establish contact with them, now living in China after they were deported over 53 years ago. “I was in my grandmother’s house when police came and whisked away my parents from Rangagora tea estate along with many other people of Chinese origin. They were first shifted to an internment camp in Deoli in Rajasthan, and from there packed off to China. I was only about six years old then,” recalled the woman. Related • 51 years after war,it is Diwali for seven people deported to China from Assam • Voting today,the Assamese Chinese • Book on displaced Chinese-origin people sets stage for reunion of friends after 48 yrs Leong alias Pramila, who now lives in Kehung tea estate in Tinsukia district in upper Assam, however, managed to establish contact with her parents about 20 years ago. “They sent me a letter by post. That was around 1990. Since then I have been exchanging letters with them. But they are now growing old. They must be between 80 and 90. I want to desperately see them,” said the woman. Leong was in Guwahati to release the English version of ‘Makam’, an Assamese novel written by Sahitya Akademi award-winning author Rita Choudhury that for the first time focused on the plight of a small community whose roots were in China, but had become Assamese after having spent at least four generations now since they were brought to Assam by British tea planters. “Separated from my parents, I have been passing my days with deep pain in my heart. I have never seen my parents since then. However, now that I know that they are alive and are longing to see me, I want to go and see them. They are growing old, and time will not wait for long,” she lamented, tears in her eyes. Leong alias Pramila Das, lives with her husband, a son and a daughter and their families in Kehung. Interestingly, though her mother was deported along with her father on the pretext of being of Chinese origin, she said her mother was actually a Mizo. “Though my father Leong Kok Hoi was of Chinese origin, my mother was not. She was actually a Lushai (Mizo). But the police and the government took he to be a Chinese just because of her facial appearance,” she said. Author Rita Choudhury, who last week introduced her to union home minister Rajnath Singh when the latter was releasing the English version of her novel in the national capital, said the home minister listened intently to Leong’s life story. “The home minister has promised to do something. But since time won’t wait, I appeal to the people to come forward to help her with funds so that Leong can travel to China and meet her parents,” Choudhury said. ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
Re: [Assam] Looking for right information
A recent news report in the Telegraph said Majuli was 1,244 square km in 1950, and is now 650 square km. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1151223/jsp/northeast/story_59886.jsp#.VoEftVLBTPM I suspect what complicates measurements a bit is that Majuli is not a single land mass. It has a mainland – where the most of the places we associate with Majuli, the Xatras, government departments etc are -- and a large number of chars and chaporis. Officially the island has 34 chaporis. Some these chaporis are connected to the mainland during the dry months , but others are permanently separated. Sanjib Baruah - Original Message - From: "Wahid Saleh - Indiawijzer" <w.sa...@indiawijzer.nl> To: supportachild-as...@yahoogroups.com Cc: "Assamnet" <assam@assamnet.org> Sent: Monday, December 28, 2015 5:33:48 AM Subject: [Assam] Looking for right information As an Assamese we proudly say that Majuli is the biggest river-island in the world. It might have been once upon a time. But due to different reason every year we are offering a part of Majuli to Brahmaputra. I have come across information on the internet announcing that Majuli is no longer the largest river-island in the world. 1. According to World Island Information Majuli is the 7th largest river-island in the world http://www.worldislandinfo.com/MISINFORMATION.htm 2. Wikipedia mentions that Marajó island of Brasil is the largest river-island of the world. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraj%C3%B3> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraj%C3%B3 Marajó is an island located at the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil. It is part of the state of Pará. Marajó is the largest fluvial island in the world, and the second largest island in South America. With a land area of 40,100 square kilometres (15,500 sq mi) Marajó is comparable in size to Switzerland. It is approximately 295 kilometres (183 mi) long and 200 kilometres (120 mi) wide This is also mentioned by Britannica. <http://www.britannica.com/place/Marajo-Island> http://www.britannica.com/place/Marajo-Island Greetings, Wahid ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
Re: [Assam] Looking for right information
Dear Deka, Below is an excerpt from a journal article by Debojyoti Das of Birkbeck College, University of London. It does not answer your question directly. But it may be helpful. It may shed some doubt on whether “engineers can come up with a solution.” There is a debate among experts. Hope all is well, Sanjib Baruah “Majuli is surrounded by a complex geological structure of sedimentary formation and tertiary sandstone in the Upper Brahmaputra Valley in northeastern part of India. The landscape is characterized in geo-tectonic discourse as vulnerable and particularly susceptible to the tectonic hazards posed by plate movements and the hydraulic ebb and flow of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries …… Geologists and hydrologist working for the Brahmaputra Board argued that the lift of the riverbed following the Assam earthquake triggered more destructive floods. Before that period, water flow maintained a relative equilibrium with the natural flow in the tributaries of the Brahmaputra. However, as embankments were built to protect key settlements all along the southern side of the Brahmaputra valley, the flow of the river was squeezed with linear embankment structures that became vulnerable to breaches from hydraulic pressure and peak discharge during monsoons…. Structural measures meant to tame the Brahmaputra have had more catastrophic ecological effects than the physical rise of the riverbed resulting from the 1950 earthquake.” - Original Message - From: "Dilip Deka" <dilipd...@yahoo.com> To: "A Mailing list for people interested in Assam from around the world" <assam@assamnet.org> Sent: Monday, December 28, 2015 11:54:07 AM Subject: Re: [Assam] Looking for right information How much do we know about the geological formation of Majuli? Has there been a geotechnical study of the island done by taking deep core samples? If there is rock underneath, there is some hope to salvage the island. Engineers can come up with a solution. Any comment from geotechnical engineers in Assamnet? Dilip Deka Houston, Texas Sent from my iPad > On Dec 28, 2015, at 9:06 AM, Anna <annasa...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Dear All > Thanks for all these discussions on Majuli and erosions. The real question > is whether this is due to man made causes or is part of the natural process? > If natural, then we should leave it at that. All over the world natural > changes are happening - creating new islands from volcanic activities as well > as submerging existing islands with floods, icebergs etc. If completely due > to our own foolishness then of course there should be concern. By the way, > native people all over the world such as aborigines in Australia, various > tribes in Amazon have always lived in harmony with nature without harming it. > So it is possible to live and let live but none of us in this list is > equipped to do so as well as these native folks did and are continuing to do. > I am not sure where do current Majuli inhabitants fall - native or with the > rest of us? My two cents only. > > Wishing you all a very happy 2016! > Aradhana Baruah Satin > NJ, USA > (Originally from Jorhat - across the river from Majuli) > > Sent from my iPhone > >> On Dec 28, 2015, at 9:19 AM, kamal deka <kjit.d...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> True, Isla de Marajo, in the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil, is the >> real holder of that title. But if Marajo is bigger than Majuli, Majuli >> is certainly home to far more people: more than 150,000 of them, on >> something like 500 sq km. And they face a unique and grave problem: >> the island is being steadily eroded by the Brahmaputra. Just since >> 1991, half of Majuli has been washed away. This is the problem where >> everyone should try to put the spotlight on. >> >>> On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 5:49 AM, Sanjib Baruah <bar...@bard.edu> wrote: >>> >>> A recent news report in the Telegraph said Majuli was 1,244 square km in >>> 1950, and is now 650 square km. >>> >>> http://www.telegraphindia.com/1151223/jsp/northeast/story_59886.jsp#.VoEftVLBTPM >>> >>> I suspect what complicates measurements a bit is that Majuli is not a >>> single land mass. It has a mainland – where the most of the places we >>> associate with Majuli, the Xatras, government departments etc are -- and a >>> large number of chars and chaporis. Officially the island has 34 chaporis. >>> Some these chaporis are connected to the mainland during the dry months , >>> but others are permanently separated. >>> >>> Sanjib Baruah >>> >>> >>> - Original Message - >>> From: "Wahid Saleh - Indiawijzer" <w.sa.
[Assam] Assam Elections
This may be of interest: New election, old scars Veterans of the Assam Movement now fight polls. But the bitterness — and the issues — linger on. http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/assam-assembly-polls-2016-elections-assam-movement/ ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
