On situation in the Hill Districts. Harekrishna Deka The recent spurt of violence in Karbi-Anglong has to be viewed in larger perspective rather than from the law and order point of view. Edward Azar, a Lebanese analyst called all need-based long duration internal conflicts as Protracted Social Conflicts (PSC). He defined PSCs as “the prolonged and often violent struggle by communal groups for such basic needs as security, recognition, and acceptance, fair access to political institutions and economic participation.” In this, I will bring ‘ethnicity’ too within the rubric of communality. Azar said that the main sources of PSCs are Communal (add ethnic) content, Deprivation of human needs, Governance and the State’s role, and international linkages. Except the last one, all three other sources of causes are discernible behind the happenings of the recent decades in Karbi Anglong and N.C. Hills districts. On communal content, Azar said that it is the relationship between identity groups and the state, which is at the core of the problem. There is disarticulation between the state and the society as a whole. In a book called ‘Karbi Studies’ published by Karbi Young Writers Guild, I notice a perception which is significant and reflect a psychological state following from economic deprivation. On page 170 it uses the term hegemony to describe the Assamese people’s domination of the state apparatus and says that the Karbi and the Dimasa are languishing under their hegemony. To quote the study, “This is the reason for the resentment and protraction of the agitation in Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills which is now sliding towards virtual anarchy.’ This perception, whether resented by the larger community of the Assamese, cannot be dismissed as irrelevant and will need to be addressed in an objective manner. There is resentment over political representation in the State Assembly, the hill people’s destiny being dependent on the ‘goodwill of the majority Assamese people.’ The study points out how per capita govt expenditure in Karbi Anglong at Rs 2558.11 in 1999 was very low compared to hill states like Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram. This reflects a perception behind the demand for an autonomous state. But this is not the whole story. If the resentment is simply against the hegemony of the Assamese, then why there have been clashes between different tribal communities during the last decade or so while they lived harmoniously before? The aspirations of different communities must have come into conflict to have found violent expressions in ethnic and communal clashes. Before looking at the political causes, we need to take into account the economic causes. According to Azar, one of the sources of conflict is underdevelopment. Territorial space of both the district is vast and yet its economic space is narrow. There has been no industrial development and agricultural yield is low. People in general are yet moored to the traditional mode of agricultural practices that is shifting cultivation which keeps them at the subsistence level of economy. Over and above this, vast areas of land are barren and uncultivable. Geographically, Karbi Anglong has 10,43400 hectares of land, of which 59,2851 hectares are barren while 201957 hectares are only under cultivation, rest being mostly forest. In N.C. Hills, of the 488800 hectares of geographical land, 393394 hectares are barren and uncultivable and only 34866 hectares are cropped areas. Because of the prevalence of shifting cultivation, use of high yielding variety of crop has not caught on for the rural economy to look up. Of the 2633 villages of Karbi Anglong, only 40% of the villages are electrified and in N.C. Hills only 33%. Karbi Anglong is the biggest district of the State, but it has only 4185 km of roads of which 3159 kms are yet to be surfaced. In N.C. Hills total road length is only 1500 km but even out of this, 965 kms remain unsurfaced. (The data given here are a few years old but relevant as a cause of discontent). While because of shifting cultivation, each tribe has become communally organized among themselves in a shared manner of life, lack of intercommunication amongst the different tribes is a hindrance to inter-community social exchanges and does not facilitate creation of a civic space of inter-relationship in a cohesive manner. Though the geographical space is very large and the population of different tribes is not so large, yet the economic space remains narrow and the communities have to compete within this narrow space, not only among themselves but also with migrants from the plains and other states. The tribes therefore look for exclusive political space with enough power to fulfill their other aspirations. The district Council structure was adopted in the Constitution to provide a political space to the tribal community for organizing their economic life free from imposition by the larger state structure influenced by non-tribal state considerations. There is dissatisfaction over the quantum of fund made available to the district through this structure. But even the allotted fund is not properly utilized and corrupt practices abound. This has resulted in developmental failures and the people at the grassroots have not tasted the economic fruit. Within the district Council politics, the political power has remained confined to a political elite. The younger aspirants seeking political space have to find a different route outside the political parties that are under the control of these elites. The ongoing North-East insurgency was copied by some sections in the hills but they too were splintered, perhaps due to conflicts over sharing of spoils. A proliferating arms market in the surrounding environment, techniques of extortion fine-tuned by other extremist groups in the neighbourhood, training willingly provided by some insurgent organizations, particularly NSCN, who are required to be heavily paid, hill terrain and communication bottleneck facilitating guerrilla-type action and hampering the movement of security forces—all these factors came handy for mounting armed actions in a spectacular manner. Eventually, not only extortion became organized in a business-like manner, even the fund of the district council of N.C.Hills was directly accessed by one of the armed outfit in nexus with corrupt politicians, as investigations revealed. Recent dialogues between some hill insurgent groups and the Center have brought down the level of violence but the underlying causes are yet to be properly addressed. Though the economic demands of the tribes are of similar nature, the politically formulated territorial demands raised by the outfits have points of conflict. The demand for Dimaraji includes parts of Karbi Anglong and Nagaland and the KLNLF’s demand for an autonomous state is not only for Karbi Anglong but also includes North Cachar Hills as well. Both these demands cannot converge. To complicate the matter further in regard to territorial demands, the N.S.C.N. has asked for some portions of N.C.Hills (renamed Dima Hasao) and parts of Karbi Anglong to be included in Nagalim, on the argument that these are territories inhabited by some of the Naga tribes outside Nagaland. The recent naming of the N.C.Hills district as Dima Hasao has also caused some resentment amongst the other tribes living there, whose lands were added by the British administration by way of accretion into either Nowgong or Cachar districts when the areas were annexed. Then during the period of insurgency even a couple of years back, the turf of activities of the Dimasa outfit extended to a part of Karbi Anglong and that of the Karbi outfit also extended to parts of N.C.Hills, thus generating much conflict between them. The resultant turf –war a few years back caused serious disturbance affecting both the communities with large number of casualties and displacement of people. Divergence in ethnic interests fuelled by activities of armed outfits led to serious communal clashes between the Hmar and the Dimasa in 2003 and between the Zemi and the Dimasa in 2009. Kukis whose number has increased manifold due to migration of their people to Singhasan hill area of Karbi Anglong after disturbance in Manipur in the 1990s have become successful ginger cultivators and they have a demand for an autonomous regional council, which the Karbis who consider them outsiders vehemently oppose. There has been conflict over trade rights of ginger too but the main cause of conflict appears to be over Kuki’s demand for a political space in an area which the Karbis consider to be traditionally theirs. There were violent clashes between the two groups in the recent past. The book ‘Karbi studies’ gives figures of casualties and number of displaced people in violent clashes in the hill districts between 2003 and 2007 as follows: Year communities involved no of people died no of people displaced 2003 Hmar-Dimasa 62 22000 2003 Karbi-Kuki 72 35000 2003 Karbi-Khasis 6 7000 2005 Bihari-Adibasis 5 3500 2005 Karbi-Dimasa 136 80,000 2007 Biharis 36 75,000 total 317 222,500 In the two hill districts, protracted social conflicts stem from security concerns and unfulfilled developmental needs of the tribes involved. But these needs have been divergent for different tribal communities. The Karbi is the major tribe in Karbi Anglong and the the Dimasa is in N.C.Hills. Their political and economic aspirations need to be addressed but at the same time there is a need to balance their demands against the genuine concerns of other tribal communities through a mode of consensus. This will need wide consultations with the representative organizations of the communities involved. Addressing identity-driven needs is not easy. It wants psychological fulfillment as well as economic security. The latter can be addressed by adopting the inclusive growth model under 5 year plans and giving financial awards through the Finance Commission. But psychological fulfillment is lashed with political aspirations. Perhaps a mechanism to assure democratic decentralization to the grass roots enabling them to shape their political economy through an active village council model that would be similar to the Panchayat Raj instead of resorting to a top-down approach by expanding the playing field for a vocal section only will be a more useful model here. Development funds need to be distributed equitably with growth happening from the below. -------------------- This is a full length article, not published before.My journalist facebook friends may use the content acknowledging authorship.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Aug 2013 03:30:40 +0000
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