Roundtable series on Migration on December 3 Photo Exhibition on December 3-4 Time – 10:00AM Venue – Hotel Acacia, Dimapur
Sanjay (Xonzoi) Barbora "Everything that is of economic and political significance here is linked to flows of water and humans”, said Prithibhushan Deka, a functionary of Gramya Vikas Mancha (GVM) in Nalbari District, as he explained the importance of migration to the author. GVM is a significant institution in Assam that works with developmental issues among the rural people, especially in the areas where people struggle with floods, conflicts and diminishing returns from agriculture. The villagers of Borbari, where the GVM office is located, had organised an interaction between farmers and journalists from Guwahati on January 20, 2013. It was an effort to get the urban media to pay some attention to the plight of rural agriculturalists and their families. Against the backdrop of the ethnic violence that had taken place in western Assam in 2012, the meeting was a reminder that the media and researchers had failed to understand the pressures being faced by various agricultural communities in Assam. [caption id="attachment_234047" align="aligncenter" width="650"]
Villagers catching fish in local pond, Nalbari.[/caption]
Activists like Deka had a very detailed and nuanced understanding of history, topography and governmental interventions in their area. The Borbari area was flanked by major embankments that were built during the 1950s and 60s, ever since India embarked on a Soviet-style planned economic growth. Building canals and embankments were foundational instruments of development during that time. However, as local activists were at pains to point out, the construction of one embankment in a particular area often meant the loss of wetlands around its neighbourhood. In such densely populated areas, the embankments resulted in impoverishment of one section, while creating opportunities for another. This led to resentment, especially when some had to migrate outside the region in search of other opportunities.
For instance, a suburi (locality) of Scheduled Caste Assamese villagers dependent on fishing and subsistence farming, were left without any viable livelihood options as their beels disappeared after the river water was diverted. With parcels of land too small to sell, or even to rely on for cultivation, many youth began to question the imperious manner in which their pasts had been summarily snatched away from them. A few joined the armed struggle, while others simply left Nalbari and the daily depredations that they had to face from the military in the 1990s.
Even as one group of people were forced to leave in search of political and economic alternatives, others were quick to occupy the land that was vacated. Hence, over a few seasons, groups of landless peasants appeared from other districts. Some were brought there by richer farmers who had shifted their money from agriculture to dairy; others came seeing the opportunity for acquiring land at very low prices. This process started another cycle, whereby those without land titles were in a hurry to achieve high yields from the lands that they had leased, or were going to sell off after a few seasons of growing paddy. They used chemicals and fertilizers that would scar the quality of the soil, leaving behind ill animals and poorer people willing to migrate further in order to earn a little more.
For activists like Prithbhushan Deka, piece-meal solutions about agriculture and incomplete discussions about migration will not solve the complex problems that arise from bad planning. Instead, they argue that solutions have to be rooted in dialogue with those who have been most affected by the outcomes of these developmental schemes. It would necessarily involve looking at the kind of future one envisages for those dependent on agriculture in Assam.
[Fieldwork for this study was supported by Stockholm University’s project titled “The Indian Underbelly: Marginalisation, Migration and State Intervention in the Periphery” that was carried out between 2013 and 14.]
