Assam needs help to find a solution
Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi, who not long ago accused the media of distorting the picture and exaggerating the extent of the trouble in the wake of the continuing violence around Kokrajhar between Bodos and others (primarily Bengali-speaking Muslims), has done an about-turn.
He has now spoken of Assam “sitting on a volcano”, although he has not cared to explain why he thinks so. Perhaps this is the CM’s way of soliciting the help of other parties in finding a way out. Perhaps it is also an appeal to the Centre to do more to help with military forces with greater promptness as the paramilitary forces and state police have not been able to come to grips with the problem. About 75 people have been killed in the violence so far, and three to four lakh uprooted from their homes. In case the Congress chief minister is seeking the help of others, he has hit the right button. But he needs to offer a clearer picture of what help he needs.
Most people in Assam frame the problem, which has a history going back nearly a hundred years, as foreigner versus local — poor Bangladeshi migrants grabbing the land of local people. In the debate in Parliament on Wednesday, the BJP and Assamese regional parties also articulated the same concerns. This is at best a partial analysis, for in the pre-independence years and for a period after that, low-paid migrants from the former East Bengal (later East Pakistan, then Bangladesh) became the much-needed labour force in Assam’s agriculture. But the trouble is that the migration did not abate and has continued even after 1971, the reference point under the Assam Accord of 1985 under which illegal migrants were to be identified and sent back. Since neither Congress nor AGP governments in the state — during Congress rule at the Centre or the one by the BJP leading the NDA alliance — were able to check the flow or identify illegal migrants, the problem has grown in size.
The Congress has sought to reduce the problem to being one of dealing with violence and rehabilitation alone. This naturally won’t do. True, lakhs of people — even if they are correctly identified as “foreigners” — cannot be deported. The other problem is where to deport them, for Bangladesh doesn’t accept they are from that country. We have to recognise the issue as a national problem, not just Assam’s, and put our heads together, eschewing party-level differences. If not, the Congress and other parties can carry on with the blame game, leading nowhere. One way is to find large-sized projects that can absorb displaced persons as employees or entrepreneurs in order to take the pressure off land.
Comments
dear sir, As u r
rakeshpurohit
16 Aug 2012 - 17:41
dear sir,
As u r aware of recent riots caused by muslims the simple way to get rid off from this is to just kill all the migrants of bangladesh which are all muslims because if u try to send them back then it is a long process but it is easy to kill them all as they don't belong to india so no legal case was filed against us .
kindly refer myanmar/burma governement effective steps applied.
happy to help
rakeshpurohit
Strongly agreed with the
Bibhuti B. Kakoti
11 Aug 2012 - 08:29
Strongly agreed with the views. Every parties must work hard to solve this grave problem.
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