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 Mymensingh district of East Bengal (todays Bangladesh) in the early part of the 20th century. But this fourth generation immigrant from East Bengal could easily be labelled a Bangladeshi today. Indeed the Bangladeshi discourse could be an alternative framing of the reports story on migrant sharecroppers as agricultural modernisers in Arunachal Pradesh. Descent matters The exclusive focus on citizenship status obscures the economic forces that attract them to Arunachal Pradesh and the inescapable fact that the impact of immigration to the Northeast today internal and cross-national, legal as well as illegal -- is not the same everywhere. While continuing immigration produces acute stress ecological, political and economic in the Assam plains, Alis story also suggests that from an economic point of view, additional population is not a problem but a solution for places like Arunachal Pradesh. Development is bound to bring more people to Arunachal and other parts of the Northeast that are still sparsely populated. For instance, if the goal is to bring about a transition from shifting cultivation to settled cultivation, it cannot be done without significant expansion of the labour force. The story of migrant sharecroppers like Ali, who makes intensive use of family labour, simply illustrates this economic logic. The expansion of the labour force is even more of a prerequisite when it comes to other economic activities such as building roads or introducing modern businesses, industry or services. It is a new world of informal land markets and economic opportunities growing behind the legal fictions of community ownership of land and customary law that attract immigrants like Ali to Arunachal Pradesh. Calling the shots While our public discourse continues to be shaped by the image of migrant settlers taking advantage of the misery of a poor tribal, there are many places in the Northeast today where a tribal landlord, often empowered by positions in or connections to the state government, is in a position of power and dominance vis--vis the migrant sharecropper informally leasing his land to foreigners as well as Indian citizens. The informality of the arrangements exposes a large number of poor people to a more vulnerable legal position than that already implied in the marginal nature of the economic niches they occupy. The exodus from Arunachal Pradesh is a dramatic illustration of that. There is a remarkable symbiosis between the mobility-intensive livelihood strategies of generations of char settlers in Assam, and the new economic niches opening up in Arunachal Pradesh and other historically sparsely populated parts of the Northeast. It is important to address this dimension of the problem raised by the exodus from Arunachal Pradesh. Should we not begin thinking about legalising and formalising the land rental markets that bring the Jamir Alis to Arunachal Pradesh? In a political democracy, is it too much to ask that we begin working towards giving people like Ali a permanent stake in the regions economic future and more equal citizenship rights than what they could have under the colonial-era ILP regime? The writer is a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Tech _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
