[Assam] Who is the Sentinel of Freedom?

Thu Jul 26 19:52:30 PDT 2007

>Migration should then cease after a period of time. 

  It will cease when the economic opportunities become equal on both sides of the border.

  I tend to believe that a point has been missed here. In the US, workers from nearby Mexico come in because of the same 'potential difference'. However, some people, politicians, policemen too aid illegal migration in some way or the other. The requirement of cheap labour is one of the major factors that the authorities have been taking a lenient view there. (Looks the other way, we can say)

   Similarly, not only the potential difference, but also the need for revenue generation in Assam was a facilitating factor. Moreover, these people from across the border continued to pour in to offer labour and create tangible goods, whereas the legal migrants have mainly come to play the middlemen, save and except the slaves from central india for tea plantation.  As you have rightly said, these are the streamrollers of history and there is no point in crying foul here.

  The potential difference on both sides of the border decreases over time for obvious reasons, but it also implies an increase in the entropy of the target area because different ethnicity/national groups vie for dominance. In such troubled waters, some people would like to fish: the arm selling nations especially, because people believe that dominance comes through swords. Also those people, corporations or countries having an eye for the target area's natural resources may have an axe to grind. There are the  religious fanatics also who may contribute their mite here.

  And we'll wax eloquent over it.

Dilip/Dil Deka <dilipdeka at yahoo.com> wrote:
    Santanu,
  Being a teacher, you explained it a lot better than I could. Essentially I was saying the same thing, though not as eloquently.
  The migration to India from Bangladesh was not motivated by religion or politics to start with. There has been a fallout now, due to interference from Indian politicians (majority and minority groups). In my opinion the migration is not reversible any more, The locals in Assam have to learn to live with it.
  Dilipda

"Roy, Santanu" <sroy at mail.smu.edu> wrote:

The flow of human beings from the plains of Bengal (including
Bangladesh) to Assam is and has always been driven by differences in
economic opportunities except possibly the middle class Hindus who moved
after 1947. 

[Even in the latter case, it is not clear that all of the migration to
Assam is driven by the fear of political persecution - for after all,
poor Hindus (not babus) from these areas had moved into Assam throughout
20th century.]

The differences in economic opportunities arise mainly from differences
in availability of natural resources per person (land, fishing water,
forests) and from differences in availability and the degree of access
to common property and state owned resources. 

These differences in economic opportunities are dying out for obvious
reasons - except possibly in tribal/hill areas of Assam, Arunachal
Pradesh, Nagaland etc where natural resources are still up for grabs. 

[Sanjib Baruah has written very authoritatively on the historical
process related to some of these issues.] 

Migration should then cease after a period of time. 

As for politicians encouraging migration and the existence of corruption
in state agencies that legitimise illegal migration - these should seen
as mere exploitation of the fact that migrants want to move in search of
economic opportnuities. The migrant is willing to pay with money and
vote for the right to live here - there is a market - the politicians
and the bureaucrats will be suppliers in this market. Nothing that one
can think of can prevent this. 

And then all this talk about Bangladeshi versus Indian migration. If
Bongals had not filled up the land, the vacuum created by the wedge
between per capita resource availability in Assam and rest of "Bharat"
would have meant a huge migration of people from mainland India.
Counterfactual history is always dangerous. But think about it for a
moment. If walls of fire were erected to prevent people from coming to
Assam from East Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1947, the Indian constitution
would not have defended the state from potential migration that the
economic mechanism would have engineered instead from mainland India.
The pace would be different. The fact that the poor arid regions of
central and eastern India do not have the skills to exploit wet areas
would have been a factor. In the long run, however, the socio-economic
picture would probably not be very different. The faces would have
looked different. Less of lungis, less Bengali, more Hindi, more Hindu
possibly. 

Then, what remains of the 1979 agitation? Perhaps, an awareness of the
reality that just won't go away. A gnawing feeling in the indigenous
soul that something has changed, something has been lost - realized in
hard facts. For the urban dwellers, the veils have been lifted. And as
the last thirt years have taught, the change is irretrievable. The
politics of camouflage has been replaced by the politics of ethnic
polarization. The middle class has learnt that language. Even the
oxomiya bhdralok has. 

Santanu. 

-----Original Message-----
From: assam-bounces at assamnet.org [mailto:assam-bounces at assamnet.org] On
Behalf Of xourov pathok
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 10:17 AM
To: assam at assamnet.org; Dilip/Dil Deka
Subject: [Assam] Who is the Sentinel of Freedom?

> I can see you are trying to steer the discussion 
> to the same issues that you are so fond of and 
> have discussed here so many times - that India has
> totally failed and Assam will be better off by
> opting out of India.

dilip-da, that is c-da, not me. could you show me
where i have argued assam is better off opting out of
india? the possibility of that happening is too
remote, imho, and there is not point in speculating on
it. it is not going to happen. period.

i am trying to keep to the issue of immigration, and
not going on a tangent on freedom. independence.
principles. or thought experiments. 

i am trying to focus on the failure of the assam
agitation and what it means for assam. also, i am
trying to focus on the mechanism how immigration is
happening. what sustains it. etc.

> On your email below - All of your allegations are
> valid, not always but in many instances. India is
> still experimenting with democracy 
[snipped]

i am not interested in the discussion on indian
democracy in the present context. i am strongly
interested in the issue of democracy, of course. but
that is an entirely different issue.

x

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