Commentary / Ashok Mitra

In Delhi, the North-East has all along occupied a much lower
order of priority than Kashmir

The cynicism is not confined to the passive response to the challenge of the Brahmaputra alone. Immaculate sylvan surroundings have been left undisturbed' hardly any railway network, few roads, sparse infrastructural activity of all kinds, a couple of oil refineries, a couple of mini-steel plants more as sops than as serious industrial ventures, handicrafts and sericulture and such like, adding up to a framework of low-level equilibrium.

Meanwhile, the population has grown, unemployed youth have swelled in numbers, the invocation of the theme of national integrity has received a derisive response from them. Once the season of breaking into expletives is over, they have drifted towards the insurgency road.

New Delhi has had other pre-occupations, the North-East has all along occupied a much lower order of priority than Kashmir. What, after all, was the problem? Has not the Planning Commission been asked to give the North-Eastern region the pride of place among the so-called Special Category States? Has not one-half or thereabouts of the commission's overall plan assistance been earmarked for it? But the issue has not been simply one of the quantum of funds dispensed.

Shady deals

The choice of personnel charged with the responsibility of actually dispensing these funds could not have been more disastrous. The deep calls to the deep; crooks discover a commonalty of interests with other crooks. The party ruling a long time at the Centre considered the the North-Eastern states as its private territory. Chieftains were picked who were keen, often over-keen, to serve the ruling party's cause.

On paper, per capita Plan and non-Plan allocations for the North-Eastern states were higher than for the non-Special Category States. It was a huge private racket though; most of the money disappeared in shady deals.

The reach of the Comptroller and Auditor General does not normally stretch beyond the reach of the state's accountant-general. Even as legislators were bought and sold in the excellent tradition of free market arrangements, ways and means were devised to bully into silence conscientious individuals still lurking in the nooks and corners of the administration.

Ruling politicians in New Delhi occasionally take a fancy to shuffle the intermediaries through whom to operate in the distant North-East. That ensured a somewhat even lubrication of spoils among the chieftains. But only among the chieftains.

As disturbing news of rising insurgency activity have reached New Delhi the standard riposte has been to despatch additional regiments of army and paramilitary forces. These contingents have generally behaved in the manner of a conquering army in a vanquished foreign land; every now and then raping a school girl, every now and then bayoneting a schoolboy, every now and then snatching the hooch an old woman was trying to sell to make a living.

The consequences have been predictable; more of the citizenry have had their allegiance shifted to the insurgents.

Whatever the fresh political process that might now be sought to bet set in motion there, Kashmir will, by and large, remain army occupied territory. The country's North-East will be no less so. The ranks of the rebels will multiply. Encouragement from outside, quite unlike in the case of Kashmir, is still only marginal.

This circumstance is also likely to change. The academic-minded may express wonder why the Rajya Sabha, set up as a Council of States, and with fair representations from all states, including from the North-East, has failed to articulate the state of mind in the region.

Insensitivity is as insensitivity does; the ruling party in New Delhi thought it was a great lark; the statutory provision that, in order to be elected a member of the Rajya Sabha from a particular state, one had to be a permanent resident of the state, thus enabling him or her to highlight the problems of the state, has been flouted with impunity.

Of the seven members currently elected by the Assam legislative assembly to the Rajya Sabha, at least two happen to the sturdy Singhs from the Indo-Gangetic valley. They belong, as per American terminology, to the species of carpetbaggers.

Far harder days are now ahead. At least in the past the Planning Commission could be goaded into making special allocations for the North-Eastern states: that these allocations were not adequate or horrendously misused is a different matter. We have now entered the era of full-scale economic liberalisation. The Planning Commission's role is henceforth expected to dwindle into insignificance; plan allocations for development are supposed to be phased out.

This, the zealots will say, is as it should be. Private initiative will now take over, and everything will be sorted out nicely. Just check with the statisticians how much private capital has flowed into the North-East since 1991 despite the most comprehensive tax holiday dispensation declared for such investments. Ten million rupees? Conceivably not even that. Private investors are not arm-chair academics. They know which side their bread is buttered.

'Liberalisation'

If, in the course of the next quarter of a century, the Seven Sisters get detached from India, part of the reason will, of course, be the excesses committed by the marauding military and paramilitary personnel. The other major reason will be the excesses of economic liberalisation, which have choked whatever possibilities that were there for public sector outlay and growth.