[Assam] Migrants expelled from Arunachal Pradesh

[Sanjib Baruah]

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