[Assam] Sentinel Op Ed

[Ram Sarangapani]

http://www.sentinelassam.com/editorial/story.php?sec=3&subsec=0&id=60947&dtP=2011-01-19&ppr=1#60947

**"country does neither depend on raising slogans nor on chastising people
who want to opt out because they are maltreated and denied what a dominant
group in a State enjoys as its right. This leads to desperation and people
come to have faith in extremism. In some cases, the ethnic cleansing is
considered a way out. Small evidence is visible on the border of Meghalaya
and Assam where people speaking other languages have been pushed out of
territories...."


A good article by Kuldip Nayar.

My own take is a bit different. Though Nayar alludes to it indirectly, I
think, one of the big reason is due to much baser human qualities, of greed,
power, and corruption. The more states, autonomous units, and districts (in
a state), the more the avenues for siphoning off funds into the pockets of
the leaders clamoring for these entities.

If there ever were any good reasons for a separate state or district in
India, they are all long gone, given the highly corrupt state of the
country.

Time and again, we have seen in the case of India, and certainly Assam,
these 'limbs' that Nayar talks about have little or no effect on development
of the area in question. The leaders only drum up regional or nationalistic
feelings among their 'flock' to create unrest and havoc to get their way.

In the end, the spoils usually go to the leaders of these disparate groups,
and an already suffering state, suffers more, and more severely.

To be fair, though,  the power centers, whether it is Dispur or Delhi, never
pay any attention to so many outlying areas till there is a huge unrest.
This knee-jerk attitude both at the center and state levels have caused
immense harm to the country.

This time, we happened to travel to Titabor.  Along the way from Guwahati to
Titabor there were huge areas of little or no development. If there were
any, they were just haphazard outgrowths of shanty towns in the making - a
wannabe Guwahati. The approach to Titabor was done up, we heard that CM
sahib hails from Titabor.

It is little wonder, that many political or 'social' opportunists prey on
tired, beat-up sections of people when demanding such political divisions.
The goals of these opportunities are in complete variance with the needs of
the people they purport to lead. The bigger the clamor, the bigger the
payoffs for these opportunists. Unfortunately, before most people realize,
the opportunists have made off with the loot.


Sad state of affairs indeed.

--Ram