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By Rupa Chinai
Northeastern India is apparently on the move: everywhere there is hurtling traffic, gaudy and unplanned construction, new roads. But where exactly is Bodoland, which won a long battle for quasi-autonomous status recently, headed? Infant and maternal mortality rates for the Bodos are amongst the highest in the country, poverty and indebtedness dog the majority of the people, and there is a crisis of governance. This is the first in a special series on Bodoland
 As the intercity Manas-Rhino Express edges out of Guwahati -- a city trapped in the yellow haze of a swirling dust storm -- and launches me on my journey to Bongaigaon, the entry point to the Kokrajhar and Chirang districts of Bodoland, I wonder, with a sense of unease, about the changes I will see.
Even in the year-and-a-half since my last visit, northeast India has been on a fast track and the changed atmosphere is disturbingly evident. There is a pervasive sense of transition -- newly-paved roads of limited durability, unplanned and gaudy construction, hurtling traffic and environmental destruction. There is a sense of a region on the move.
But where is it headed? How have the winds of change affected groups like the Bodos -- the proud, nationalistic plains tribals of Assam whose seven-year-long violent agitation, from 1987 to 1993, for a separate Bodo identity and political state finally led to the setting up of the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) in 2003?
Staying under the umbrella of Assam, Bodoland is a ‘quasi autonomous’ area created under the 6th Schedule of the Constitution. With its government formed barely a year ago, Bodoland still depends on the Assam administration in crucial areas such as finance and the power to make appointments.
Constituting the four districts of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalguri, the BTC spreads across the north bank of the Brahmaputra river, along the foothills of Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh. Although the map of Bodoland attempts to form a contiguous unit, communication lines require travel through districts in Assam. Apart from the Bodos, Bodoland is home to other communities like the Santhals, Koch Rajbongshis, Nepalis, Hindu Assamese, Bengali Hindus and Muslims and adivasi groups that originally came here as tea garden labour.
The Bodos are one of the largest of the nine plains tribal people of the Brahmaputra and Barak valley districts. According to the 2001 Census, Assam’s plains tribal groups of Tibeto-Burmese origin make up 16% of the total population of 26 million. The Bodo population was estimated at 12,67,015, but Bodo leaders say the ‘Hinduisation’ of many of their people has led to their exclusion from the list of those recognised as Bodo.
The Bodo heartland in the spring season -- swathed in emerald green foliage, rich in fruits, flowers and birdsong -- looked as colourful as its people. Entry into Bodo-dominated areas is dramatically evident with the sight of women and girls in brightly-coloured dokhona (traditional Bodo dress) -- a riot of yellow, green, pink and orange, often embellished with zari, blending harmoniously into the landscape. The pervasive and powerful All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) has decreed that Bodo women must only wear hand-woven traditional attire.
Weaving is a skill known to 90% of Bodo women, but only 7% of them are full-time weavers, says Udalguri-based Pradeep Kumar Daimary, former vice-president of the ABSU who was also deputy chief of the Bodoland Autonomous Council, an interim body prior to the creation of the BTC.
Produce from the land, the people’s daily diet, is an indicator of their health, and Bodoland is rich in seasonal fruits and vegetables. Nevertheless, infant and maternal mortality rates in these parts (in 2000 the IMR was 75 per 1,000 live births [Sample Registration Survey]; MMR was 700 per 100,000 live births [World Health Report, 2005]) are among the highest in the country. The reasons for this include paucity of health services, poor nutrition knowledge, high morbidity caused by contaminated water and consequent diarrhoea, as also communicable diseases such as malaria. The underlying factors are poverty and landlessness.
Poverty affects 80% of Bodos, says Daimary. While 60% of Bodos do not have enough land, 90% are directly dependent on land for their subsistence. Most families that own land manage to grow a single crop a year, which barely provides them food security for half a year.
Meanwhile, the absence of other sources of livelihood has resulted in rampant unemployment. Literacy rates in Bodo areas are extremely low and years of agitation, that resulted in the closure of schools in Bodo areas, have taken their toll in terms of an alarming high school dropout rate. According to Daimary, thousands of children are sent out by their parents to earn a living as domestic help. Only 8% of Bodos hold service jobs; 2% are engaged in petty business and other commercial activities. Joint families, comprising around seven members on average, often depend on a single earning member, says Daimary.
According to the Assam Human Development Report 2003, published by the Assam government, the percentage of poor in the state is the highest amongst the seven northeastern states. Around 36% of the state’s population were below the poverty line in 1999-2000. The rural-urban divide is stark. While the literacy level in Assam in 2001 was 64%, marginally below the national average of 65%, its unemployment rate stood at 4.6% in 1999-2000, compared to the national average of 2.3%. The state’s per capita income in 1998-99 was 45% lower than the national average. Meanwhile, its per capita net state domestic product in 1998-99 was Rs 5,664, compared to Rs 9,647 for the rest of India.
In recent decades, paucity of land coupled with an increase in the Bodo population, influx of outsiders into tribal areas and encroachment and denudation of forest reserves have meant that people in Bodoland are engaged in a severe struggle for survival.
Corruption eats into entitlements
Dwimuguri (meaning ‘near the water’), a Bodo village in Kokrajhar district, situated on the fertile banks of the tempestuous river Aie (‘mother’), enjoys nature’s bounties when the river is calm. At the home of the local schoolteacher, one could count nine varieties of fruit trees in his garden. Juicy red pommelos are everywhere, so plentiful that young boys play football with it. Fish, rice, dal and a garnishing of vegetables form the staple diet. The villagers are sturdy and the power of naturally good health is still within their means.
Hard work and exercise are part of the Bodo lifestyle; the absence of roads here forces everyone in Dwimuguri to trek at least 6 km to get to a motorable road. Bicycles and scooters ply the narrow tracks, but the Aie river has to be forded at least twice and wading through its sandy banks is tough work.
Corruption is a major hurdle for the poor in villages here, and this complaint finds an echo all across Bodoland. Says Daimary: “Unless we stop the corruption that is becoming rampant, the same thing that’s happening in other northeastern states will happen here. Money is allocated for road construction, but most of it is eaten up by those who seek an easy lifestyle. Only 20% of the money is spent in actual development work, resulting in sub-standard and temporary constructions. This must stop.”
People in Dwimuguri say that allocation of contracts for jobs or development work such as roads, bridges or the building of individual homes under various government schemes is controlled by local units of the ABSU that take a cut every time money or material is allocated to them.
Locals claim, however, that the powerful student body is not the only villain. Extracting their share of kickbacks are equally powerful militant organisations, many of whose members are now running the Bodoland government, as also bureaucrats within the Assam government.
In Dwimuguri, for instance, villagers testified to how government housing grants given to individuals are subjected to unofficial cuts, with beneficiaries never receiving 100% of the grant. A villager who was allocated Rs 10,000 to build a house ended up receiving only 16 tin sheets costing Rs 4,000.
A lion’s share of the balance -- Rs 3,000 – villagers maintain, was pocketed by the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), a registered NGO set up in each district of India over a decade ago to ensure decentralised channeling of funds. Locals in Bodoland describe the agency, which handles crores of rupees, as the “worst scoundrels”. Another Rs 1,000 each was extracted by the Village Council Development Committee (VCDC) and the dominant militant group in the area.
The DRDA’s workings are subject to public audit only once in three years by a local auditor who is usually loathe to jeopardise his hefty commission of 0.25 to 0.5%.
Although constitutional stipulations under the 73rd Amendment authorise the zilla parishad or the block and district-level development committees to decide the disbursement of funds, this is not happening in Bodoland yet. Administrative officials such as the project director and the district commissioner make all the decisions.
The VCDC is equivalent to the village panchayat. Its nominated members are either teachers or ex-militants of the Bodoland Liberation Tigers. There is one representative for every 10,000 population, comprising around 30 villages. These members generally constitute the elite within village society, people who are also politically connected. The dominant militant group here, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, is described by the villagers as “a terrorist, extremist group currently operating under the cover of a ‘ceasefire’”.
One tailor says: “The public does not dare open its mouth. The leaders have power and strength and they will silence us. If I start asking questions they will stitch up my mouth. We have no unity amongst us in the village to stand up to this corruption. People are not aware about the government schemes, and how much is given. There is no transparency.”
ABSU president Rwn Gwra Narzary admits to the problem of local units of the student body exceeding their brief. “As a student body we are not involved in the contract system. Since the formation of the BTC we have said that the system must stabilise and people must be allowed to associate with it. We have given clear instructions that ABSU units should not get involved in contract allocations and should let the system work.”
The problem of indebtedness
Indebtedness is another huge problem amongst the poor. In Dwimuguri, people borrow money primarily because they have run short of food, when there is a crisis in the family, when illness strikes or when they have to pay a bribe to secure a job. In the absence of bank credit, the better-off villagers have set up a fund to loan money at 8% interest. “Many families survive on money earned from loans, without bothering about the consequences of such high interest rates for the poor,” says Sunil Kaul, a doctor and one of the founders of the Action Northeast Trust (the ANT), a CSO that supports livelihood and health projects amongst the Bodos. “It’s a telling story of the failure of the banking system in these parts. Everything is more expensive in the interior areas, and everything comes at a high cost for this segment that lives below the poverty line,” he says.
Those unable to pay back their loans have had to flee from the village or else they are at risk of losing their land as well. Meanwhile, families face penury when their livestock and household goods are seized under a traditional system of loan retrieval called kuruk. If that does not cover the loan amount the village then turns on the person who stood as ‘guarantor’ of the loan; he too is forced to flee the village and his family subjected to kuruk.
When the village decides to implement kuruk not even the police can help the hapless victims, says Rubushi Basumatary whose husband was a guarantor for his brother who borrowed Rs 1,600 from the village fund to buy 10 maunds of rice. With her husband now doing hajira (daily wage labour) somewhere in upper Assam, Rubushi’s young son Raju is left to clear the debt with an interest rate of 10% per month. In one year, it will increase to 120%, far exceeding the capital borrowed.
Raju says that his work with a CSO enabled him to go to Delhi and receive advanced training in the ‘theatre of the oppressed’. “I have now myself become oppressed and it is very difficult for me to follow all these ideas for myself. I have a few skills and I will use them, along with kheti on the six bighas of land we still own, to pay back my father’s debt,” he says. His land yields around 50 maunds of paddy and the family needs around 42 maunds for their food security.
Twenty-eight-year-old Deepa Brahma lost everything that was of value in her home -- a table, bench and handpump -- because of kuruk. As she fled the village she managed to take along the weaving loom, her only means of livelihood, thereby enabling the survival of her four small children.
Deepa’s husband had borrowed Rs 8,000 to pay the local ABSU unit for a contract -- to be renewed every year -- to ply a passenger boat. Things fell apart when his partners fled because they were unable to return their share of the loan. His business was ruined when the river changed course, resulting in passengers and traders travelling by another route. The students came, threatened them and beat up her husband. He had to flee for his life. Deepa has managed to pay back Rs 3,500 to the ABSU unit, through the items she weaves which are sold through ANT.
The villagers of Dwimuguri pay Rs 5 each time they take their cycles across a bamboo bridge on the Aie river. They have to pay Rs 2 just to walk across it. During the monsoon, when they have to make two river crossings by boat, they have to shell out Rs 10.
Deepa’s family owned two bighas of land, but the land was sold off in bits and pieces when they needed the money to pay Deepa’s father-in-law’s medical bills. Today, the family is left with just one bigha,on which the house stands. Their hand-to-mouth existence over the past two years has been miserable, Deepa says.
Asked whether the emergence of Bodoland has made her life better in any way, Deepa says yes, although roads have not yet reached their village they are seeing other parts of Bodoland where communication systems are improving. A lower primary school, even though irregularly run, is now a half-hour walk away, she says.
There is still no ration shop in Dwimuguri, and, even though Deepa’s family is below the poverty line like many others in the village, they don’t own a ration card. Sharing her father-in-law’s BPL card, Deepa says they pay Rs 4 for a kg of rice, which should cost Rs 3. Instead of receiving 35 kg, the two households share an allocation of 30 kg a month. Receiving only half of this total rice allocation, Deepa says her family somehow manages by eating little and supplementing their meals with fish caught from the river and local vegetables.
Assam’s BPL families in 1999-2000 constituted 36% of the population, according to a 2006 report by the Council for Social Development. Social activists working in tribal areas, however, allege that under-reporting of BPL families is common.
The plight of other communities living in Bodoland is not much better. An old couple belonging to the Koch Rajbangshi community, living in neighbouring Khuzurapguri village, speak of how they had to spend Rs 13,000 at a private hospital for treatment of their two-year-old grandson who suffers from bronchitis.
The old man says: “We have no hope that anything will improve for us. If you seek a grant from the Indira Awas Yojna to build a house, the allocation, after the bribes are deducted, is barely enough to build a verandah. We have not received any grant because the officers say, ‘Why do you want a house? You have no son, who will you leave it to?’ What will this country give us? Those who can pay a bribe can get everything from the government. If nothing is in our pocket we cannot get anything. The administration is filled with dacoits.”
(Rupa Chinai is an independent journalist based in Mumbai. She writes on public health and has been covering development in the north-east for several years)
InfoChange News & Features, June 2006
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