Commentary / Ashok Mitra
In Delhi, the North-East has all along occupied a much lower order of priority than Kashmir
The cynicism is not confined to the passive response to
the challenge of the Brahmaputra alone. Immaculate sylvan surroundings have
been left undisturbed' hardly any railway network, few roads, sparse
infrastructural activity of all kinds, a couple of oil refineries,
a couple of mini-steel plants more as sops than as serious industrial
ventures, handicrafts and sericulture and such like, adding up
to a framework of low-level equilibrium.
Meanwhile, the population
has grown, unemployed youth have swelled in numbers, the invocation
of the theme of national integrity has received a derisive response
from them. Once the season of breaking into expletives is
over, they have drifted towards the insurgency road.
New Delhi has had other pre-occupations, the North-East has all
along occupied a much lower order of priority than Kashmir. What,
after all, was the problem? Has not the Planning Commission been
asked to give the North-Eastern region the pride of place among
the so-called Special Category States? Has not one-half or thereabouts
of the commission's overall plan assistance been earmarked for
it? But the issue has not been simply one of the quantum of
funds dispensed.
Shady deals
The choice of personnel charged with the responsibility of actually
dispensing these funds could not have been more disastrous. The
deep calls to the deep; crooks discover a commonalty of interests
with other crooks. The party ruling a long time at the Centre
considered the the North-Eastern states as its private territory.
Chieftains were picked who were keen, often over-keen, to serve
the ruling party's cause.
On paper, per capita Plan and non-Plan
allocations for the North-Eastern states were higher than for
the non-Special Category States. It was a huge private racket
though; most of the money disappeared in shady deals.
The reach of the Comptroller and Auditor General does not normally
stretch beyond the reach of the state's accountant-general.
Even as legislators were bought and sold in the excellent tradition
of free market arrangements, ways and means were devised to bully
into silence conscientious individuals still lurking in the nooks
and corners of the administration.
Ruling politicians in New Delhi
occasionally take a fancy to shuffle the intermediaries through
whom to operate in the distant North-East. That ensured a somewhat
even lubrication of spoils among the chieftains. But only among
the chieftains.
As disturbing news of rising insurgency activity have reached
New Delhi the standard riposte has been to despatch additional
regiments of army and paramilitary forces. These contingents
have generally behaved in the manner of a conquering army in a
vanquished foreign land; every now and then raping a school girl,
every now and then bayoneting a schoolboy, every now and then snatching
the hooch an old woman was trying to sell to make a living.
The
consequences have been predictable; more of the citizenry have
had their allegiance shifted to the insurgents.
Whatever the fresh political process that might now be sought
to bet set in motion there, Kashmir will, by and large, remain
army occupied territory. The country's North-East will be no less
so. The ranks of the rebels will multiply. Encouragement from
outside, quite unlike in the case of Kashmir, is still only marginal.
This circumstance is also likely to change. The academic-minded
may express wonder why the Rajya Sabha, set up as a Council of
States, and with fair representations from all states, including
from the North-East, has failed to articulate the state of mind
in the region.
Insensitivity is as insensitivity does; the ruling
party in New Delhi thought it was a great lark; the statutory
provision that, in order to be elected a member of the Rajya Sabha
from a particular state, one had to be a permanent resident of
the state, thus enabling him or her to highlight the problems
of the state, has been flouted with impunity.
Of the seven members
currently elected by the Assam legislative assembly to the Rajya
Sabha, at least two happen to the sturdy Singhs from the Indo-Gangetic
valley. They belong, as per American terminology, to the species
of carpetbaggers.
Far harder days are now ahead. At least in the past the Planning
Commission could be goaded into making special allocations for
the North-Eastern states: that these allocations were not adequate
or horrendously misused is a different matter. We have now entered
the era of full-scale economic liberalisation. The Planning Commission's
role is henceforth expected to dwindle into insignificance; plan
allocations for development are supposed to be phased out.
This, the zealots will say, is as it should be. Private initiative
will now take over, and everything will be sorted out nicely.
Just check with the statisticians how much private capital has
flowed into the North-East since 1991 despite the most comprehensive
tax holiday dispensation declared for such investments. Ten million rupees?
Conceivably not even that. Private investors are not
arm-chair academics. They know which side their bread is buttered.
'Liberalisation'
If, in the course of the next quarter of a century, the Seven
Sisters get detached from India, part of the reason will, of course,
be the excesses committed by the marauding military and paramilitary
personnel. The other major reason will be the excesses of economic
liberalisation, which have choked whatever possibilities that were
there for public sector outlay and growth.
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