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By Oishik Sircar and Maria Ahlqvist Phoolbari in southwest Bengal is located in the 150-metre strip of no man's land between India's electric fences and the actual international border with Bangladesh. Entry into 'mainland' India is restricted to a few hours a day, and villagers must hurry back before curfew at 6 pm or be shut out of their own homes. This is a photo-feature on the lives of Phoolbari's borderland people
 After a three-hour-long jeep ride on dusty red sand roads from Krishnanagar, a town in southwest Bengal, when we reached Phoolbari (House of Flowers), a small patch of land on the India-Bangladesh international border in West Bengal, it was difficult to ascribe a geo-political identity to the place. Phoolbari is ostensibly a village that is part of India. Yet those who inhabit Phoolbari are kept out of ‘mainland’ India by huge stretches of electrified fencing that the Indian government is building along the boundary lines to stop smuggling and ‘infiltration’.
We were part of an international contingent of scholars and activists on a field trip to document the conditions of borderland people. We were confused about how we would ethnographically locate Phoolbari: was it India, or Bangladesh? Or neither? Were the people Indian nationals or were they stateless? If they were Indian, why didn’t they have free access to mainland India? Why didn’t they have voters’ identity cards, which could certify their national identities?  The India-Bangladesh border in this fenced area follows a zigzag path, often following the course of the river Matabhanga, a tributary of the Padma river. For this reason, the villages lie much closer to the international boundary. The fences are erected 150 metres from the actual international border, because of a ban on constructions closer to the border. The actual international border is marked by small concrete pillars at intervals of 200-500 yards, with an imaginary ‘zero line’ connecting the pillars. These have existed since 1947. There are no fences erected on the Bangladesh side of the border. In the regions we visited (Shikarpur, South Bengal II), there are about 63 km of international border, approximately 60% of which is now fenced, and electrified in some places as a trial project.
The effect of the fencing is that a long strip of land falls in between the fence and the international border, creating a ‘no man’s land’, officially still part of Indian territory but completely restricted in terms of access. There are gates in the fencing at approximately 1 km intervals, which are opened only from 6-8 am, 11 am-1 pm and 3-5 pm every day. People may cross through these gates to go to work, to the marketplace or to school or hospital on the other side by showing identification documents issued by the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Election Commission. Unfortunately, very few inhabitants of Phoolbari possess any identification, and as a result the BSF does not allow them regular access across the fence.  A few metres away from the pillar demarcating the international boundary line stood Bangladeshi farmers, watching this alien-looking group of visitors but unable to cross over to join us. We were told that people have families across the border whom they visit on occasions of marriage or other family functions. Some villagers from Phoolbari wanted to speak with the BSF officers who accompanied us. But since no Bengali officers are posted in this region, as part of India’s policy, language difficulties do not allow easy interaction between the villagers and the BSF.
Some villagers explained that they did not mind having the international border in place, but complained about the artificial fencing that restricted their movements into mainland India. We met a 16-year-old girl called Parveen who was preparing to appear for her board exams. She doubted whether she would be able to sit for the exams given the limitations on crossing the fencing every day. Phoolbari is indeed a ‘no man’s land’, both literally and metaphorically. On the one hand, it is difficult to mark its political affiliation to India though the government clearly identifies it as part of this nation. On the other, like most places around the world where refugees or displaced people live, the population consists largely of women and children. Most of the men have started living across the fencing to find employment; all the farmlands in the ‘no man’s land’ are cultivated by women. In spite of being considered part of the Indian state, Phoolbari’s inhabitants are not afforded basic citizenship rights. The place has no electricity, no medical centre, no market, no school. The villagers live in abject poverty and impoverishment. Those who cross through the gate during the day must return early in the evening or be shut out from their own homes. It’s surprising how the government did not think of these people whilst formulating plans to build the fence. The population in this border region is multi-ethnic: some areas are Muslim-dominated, some Hindu-dominated. There are approximately 900 people per square kilometre.  Many villages like Phoolbari that are located across the line of the newly-built fencing are in a similar state. Because of the high population density, whole villages could not effectively be shifted into mainland India. The reason why most of the inhabitants of this ‘no man’s land’ haven’t opted to shift across the border is because the government will not compensate them adequately for the cultivable land they will be forced to give up.
But the state will uproot them sooner or later, and has already earmarked some land for them where the villagers will have to reconstruct their homes. The concern here is similar to those of all displaced populations that are promised compensation by the state: the land offered as compensation is either inadequately quantified, or their cultivability poor. Moreover, with no previous ownership of land their compensation packages also get highly skewed; some will not even get land as compensation.  There have been reports of violence on both sides of the border. However, BSF officers R K Saxena and R K Meena attempted to explain to us that there is no real conflict in the area and that the officers on both sides of the border enjoy cordial relations. There is a curfew around the fence from 6 pm to 6 am. If someone is spotted around the fence during that time, s/he is considered to be there with ill intentions. The villagers told us about incidents where even children have been gunned down by the security forces on both sides, especially shepherd-boys who go out after dark in search of lost goats or sheep. According to BSF sources, however, firing is only allowed in self-defence and officers are always asked to exercise the minimum force necessary to stop offenders.
 Our visit to Phoolbari didn’t last more than 45 minutes, as once the villagers started getting friendly and telling us about their problems with this state of ‘incarceration’, the BSF wanted us to leave. The villagers were not allowed on the other side of the fencing; the huge iron gates were shut on their faces. We tried to continue talking to some of them from across the barbed wire, but were asked to board our jeeps. As our jeeps whizzed off, we saw a stream of women from Phoolbari standing on the other side of the fencing, waving goodbye.
(The authors wish to thank the Calcutta Research Group (CRG) for organising the trip to Phoolbari as part of the Second Winter Course on Forced Migration, Racism, Immigration and Xenophobia. Special thanks also to Marnie Lloyd for her inputs) (Oishik Sircar is a human rights lawyer and researcher. Maria Ahlqvist pursues development studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland) InfoChange News & Features, May 2006
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