[Assam] Essay by Sanjib Baruah

[Chan Mahanta]

*** What do netters think?

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Eastern Quarterly
(Publication of the Manipur Research Forum, Delhi)
Vol. 5, Issue I, April - June 2008, pp. 61-65

'A Road, Smooth and Sleek like a Snake':  Development and the 
Rhetoric of Vision

Sanjib Baruah

"The World Bank will be replacing the old rundown road with a new 
road that will be smooth and sleek like a snake."

                                                 -Zoramthanga, Chief 
Minister of Mizoram

Zoramthanga's choice of metaphor, though wonderfully resonant with 
the Northeast Indian landscape, is perhaps unusual.  But to readers 
of 'vision statements' about the region's future, the spirit may be 
familiar.  Development in this genre of writing, like Zoramthanga's 
image of a road of the future, is a fantasized object, not a 
realistic vision of the future that people can relate to.

The editors of Eastern Quarterly [EQ] deserve our gratitude for 
organizing a discussion on a new document, Peace, Progress and 
Prosperity in the North Eastern Region: Vision 2020, put together by 
the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy [NIPFP] and 
brought out under the auspices of the Ministry of Development of 
North Eastern Region.

B. George Verghese, one of the authors of Vision 2020, opens the EQ 
discussion.  "The stage appears now to be reasonably well set," he 
writes, "for a major thrust forward. Things are changing and there is 
ground for cautious optimism. Development and opening up to its 
neighbours could provide impetus for the next stage."  In contrast to 
the radical views of the other contributors, Verghese's approach 
might seem conventional-though his ideas on institutional reforms are 
anything but that.  I will refer to those proposals later in the 
essay.  He estimates that the Northeast will have to grow by 12 to 13 
percent every year in per capita income and basic social indices, if 
it were to catch up with the rest of India by 2020--assuming a 9 per 
cent growth rate for India. "Closing the gap," he believes, "will not 
be easy but is doable." However, the centre will have to make major 
investments.

Contrast this way of thinking about development to that of Prasenjit 
Biswas who rejects the very idea of a region lacking development. 
The idea of "lack," he says, "is not simply a negative idea, it is 
rather a complex outcome of developmental practices." On a similar 
note, Rohan D'Souza rejects the foundational notion of economic 
backwardness. Once the absence of markets is "declared to be 
indicative of backwardness," it "leads almost automatically to the 
desire for markets for development."

Politics of Representation

The major question that Biswas, D'Souza and others raise is this: Can 
development theory and practice ignore the politics of 
representation?  I mean 'representation' both in the political sense, 
and in the sense of ways of seeing, and portraying. The way we 
represent poverty and underdevelopment has consequences. Some of our 
official categories and those of the social sciences - Economics in 
particular - are good at capturing certain realities, but not others.

Let us take the example of a poor community with a degree of reliance 
on a public lake where people fish.   We can see the people as a 
community that survives, using a mix of market and non-market goods. 
Or we can see them as part of an aggregated mass of people "living 
below the poverty-line."  If taking the latter view, a development 
agency decides to finance commercial fishing--even on a modest 
scale--it could make one or two people rich, a few more would find 
employment, but many more people might be worse off if they catch 
fewer fish, because of the mechanized fishing methods now in use in 
the same water.  In terms of basic nutrition, they would be 
worse-off.  Theoretically, the dynamism that the new enterprise could 
bring to the local economy might in future compensate for that. But 
the stakes are simply too high to take leave it at that.

Development, in my view, is not just one thing: self-evident and 
predictable. It is not good or bad in some a priori sense.  If it is 
about removing major sources of un-freedom, "poverty as well as 
tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social 
deprivation,"  we must ask very concretely, whether it enables or 
restricts freedoms and capabilities.  These questions must be asked 
about each and every intervention that claims development as its 
goal. The answers will not be easy: inevitably, there will be winner 
and losers.  But at least one thing is obvious. The state should not 
regard itself, to use Monirul Hussain's words, as the "development 
giver," and treat the people as "development takers."  And since 
increasingly, the central government is the major source of funds for 
the development of the region,  and the bureaucrats in Delhi are key 
players, questions of voice and representation are more important 
than ever.

It is not enough to point at elections, and ignore substantive 
questions about representation. "The restless and discontented," says 
Verghese, "fall prey to adventurism and subversion." Others 
understand the strength and persistence of insurgencies, at least 
partly, in terms of the diffuse presence -- in the background -- of 
an inchoate constituency that feels un-represented. Let us assume for 
the moment that Verghese is right. But does it allow the authors of 
Vision 2020 to go from there, and make a set of assertions implying 
that it is what, the people of the Northeast want?  As Rohan D'Souza 
suggests insightfully, the authors of the NIPFP document appears to 
have the remarkable ability not only to speak for the people of the 
Northeast, but what the people want, happens to match exactly with 
what these "visionaries" want to see in the region.

The Pagladia Dam and the Politics of Development Finance

Monirum Hussain's account of the protests against the 
on-again-off-again Pagladiya Dam project in Assam brings out the 
politics of development finance. The dam is likely to displace more 
than one hundred thousand people from agricultural lands and homes. 
Originally conceived as far back as 1968, it has been shelved a 
number of times because of grassroots opposition--but only to be 
brought back later when the political climate changes. At each phase 
of confrontation between the state and the protesters, an 
extraordinary gap becomes evident between official and local 
knowledge.  The area where initially, the government intended to 
settle the displaced people was officially "vacant," but the people 
about to lose their land found out that the land was already 
occupied, albeit "illegally." Among the people that would be 
displaced by the project are some that lack legal documents to prove 
property ownership. The protesters knew only too well the reality of 
bureaucratic practice; that it would be hard to resettle and 
compensate those without proper land documents.

The interesting question that arises is this: why has the state and 
its agency, the Brahmaputra Board, been so persistent?  The answer 
that emerges from Hussain's study is simple, but quite revealing and 
persuasive.  The government agencies --and the contractors lobby-seem 
to salivate at the prospects of laying their hands on the money 
allocated to the project by the central government. For politicians, 
the patronage possibilities that large sums of money open up far 
outweigh any other consideration. Hence, the persistence in efforts 
to revive the project.

International Finance Comes to Northeast India

If one goes by this insight, things are only likely to get worse, 
suggests Ramananda Wangkheirakpam.  The coming of international 
financial institutions such as the Asian Development Bank [ADB] and 
the World Bank, he fears, could only mean growing "disempowerment and 
helplessness of the people in the region." The ADB, he points out, 
has completed technical assistances studies on sectors including 
tourism, roads, urban development, waste management, waterways and 
governance. Their entry could mean that, decisions that would impact 
millions of lives would be made in places, much further than New 
Delhi. Drawing on his experience as an activist, he writes, "getting 
access to key policy and project documents now requires writing to 
Manila and/or Washington DC and to complain against a project one 
might need to even spend meagre resources to go to these Headquarters 
to meet project officials."

A Reform/Revolution Debate?

If D'Souza radically challenges the very idea of development, Biswas 
while sharing some of the vocabulary of post-development thinking, 
has instincts that are Marxist in a more familiar sense. He is 
concerned that Vision 2020 seeks to reproduce "capitalist relations 
of reproduction," and the language of comparative advantage simply, a 
way of making the natural resources of the region available to global 
markets.  His alternative does not threaten the old left-liberal 
consensus on development.  The focus, be believes, must be "on 
improving economic condition for the poorest, through the creation of 
economic growth opportunities." That would require "structural 
change": a shift of employment opportunities from agriculture to 
industry and service.

Thingnam Kishan Singh is radical in his reading of colonial economic 
history. During that period, he says, economies of Northeast India 
went through "a transition from its various pre-capitalist social 
formations to a quasi-capitalist organization of productive forces." 
When it comes to options today, however, he too settles for 
conventional left-liberal answers.  He accepts that a low gross 
domestic product is not "congenial for improving the living 
conditions of the people" and "people in areas with low per capita do 
not live well."  He advocates strategies that would develop a 
production base that uses the region's resources to benefit its 
people.

As I have indicated, Verghese's proposals for institutional reforms 
are innovative. Northeasterners should not shy away from debating 
them. He proposes ending Inner Line and Restricted Area permits. He 
recommends Trusteeship Zones for disputed areas between Assam and 
Arunachal, as sites for "railheads, airstrips, communication hubs, 
warehouses, cold storages, entrepots, [and] training centres." He 
proposes expedited cadastral surveys of land in hill areas, and 
non-territorial electoral constituencies for workers brought in from 
outside the state to work.

Development and the Democracy Deficit

The discussion in EQ brings out sharply one major weakness in our way 
of trying to develop Northeast India: the region's democracy 
deficit-a consequence of decades of insurgency and 
counter-insurgency.  Sources of funds being sources of power, and 
development financing becoming a way of imposing other people's 
priorities, are not unique to Northeast India.  But observers far 
less radical, than the contributors to this issue of EQ, have been 
struck by how democracy deficit presents unusual difficulties for 
development projects in Northeast India.  A World Bank Strategy 
Report, for instance, finds "the paternalism of central-level 
bureaucrats, coercive top-down planning, and little support or 
feedback from locals" to be the principal obstacle to the utilization 
of the region's vast water resources for sustainable development. 
These observers are struck by the extraordinary phenomena of 
potential beneficiaries of embankment projects, opposing them. There 
is deep distrust of the central government's development-oriented 
institutions like the Brahmaputra Board. As the World Bank report 
puts it, local stakeholders in the Northeast simply do not believe 
that most developmental initiatives are designed to benefit them.

Indian elites do not like to acknowledge that. Thus our bureaucrats 
and politicians quote World Bank reports on many other matters-mostly 
when they appear to authorize more money--but not when it comes to 
this crucial political insight. It is unlikely therefore that the 
radical voices represented in this issue of EQ, will get the 
attention they deserve.  Given this state of denial in our national 
public intellectual life, vision statements about Northeast India's 
future, like the epigraph at the beginning of this essay, are bound 
to sound like the marketing pitch of salesmen selling snake oil.