[Assam] Forcing unilateral choice-The Sentinel Editorial

[Chan Mahanta]

Great to hear from you Santanu? Where are you these days?

*** So, it was a Sentinel Editorial, was it? Should have known ! What 
a bunch of nonsense.

You explained things very well, and thanks for that. Hope you will 
stay with us and help elevate the discourse a bit :-)











At 7:18 AM -0500 3/22/09, Roy, Santanu wrote:
>The editorial fails to inform us how "autonomy" (or more correctly, 
>greater devolution of political and economic power from the Indian 
>centre to the state of Assam) is going to be detrimental to the 
>interests of the people of Assam.
>
>
>
>Why would they be worse off? And if they are not worse off, why 
>would they be opposed to it?
>
>To be fair, there are hints of the thinking behind it in the editorial piece.
>
>
>
>It consists of two arguments:
>
>(a) The folks spearheading the demand for autonomy are proven 
>monsters that will use the post-autonomy political environment to 
>expand their political and economic clout (possibly extra-legal) to 
>expropriate the honest commoners and entrepreneurs.
>
>
>
>(b) People of Assam are so corrupt and incompetent that any greater 
>"share of the decision making cake" devolved to the state will be 
>preyed on and wasted.
>
>There may be other arguments - but I could not see them in the piece.
>
>First, consider (a).
>The extra-legal clout exercised by any group, the amount of money it 
>can extract by force, the way they can influence decisions - are 
>they really dependent on whether the initial resource allocation and 
>other government decisions are made in Delhi or Dispur? Is there any 
>evidence, for example, that nefarious groups have been more 
>effective in gathering monies from activities in Assam that pertain 
>to the "state list" and less intensively in activities that pertain 
>to the "central list" i.e., funded and approved by the central 
>government and officials of the central government? If there is any 
>such evidence that central agencies and centrally funded projoects 
>have been better at fending off corrupt monsters, we would really 
>like to know.
>
>More importantly, even if this is the case, isn't there a 
>self-correcting process here? Why would the people of Assam not 
>eventually vote out a government that feeds such extra-legal clout 
>by any group?
>
>
>
>The answer is probably related to (b).
>
>
>
>There is something intrinsically inferior about the public morale of 
>the citizens of the state. Therefore, the greater the share of 
>economic decisions and political power kept safely vested in the 
>centre, the better it would be for the people of the state. Just 
>repeat this sentence for a moment in your mind and see if you find 
>it convincing. At least you will know that this was the famous 
>argument for British rule in India and all colonial rule by white 
>people elsewhere. The natives are inferior.
>
>
>
>And nobody, not even someone compulsively argumentative as I, can 
>argue against such an article of faith.
>
>
>
>Regards,
>
>
>
>Santanu.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>________________________________________
>From: assam-bounces at assamnet.org [assam-bounces at assamnet.org] On 
>Behalf Of assam-request at assamnet.org [assam-request at assamnet.org]
>Sent: Sunday, March 22, 2009 1:30 AM
>To: assam at assamnet.org
>Subject: assam Digest, Vol 44, Issue 34
>
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