Kokrajhar/New Delhi, Apr 11 : The concept of autonomous councils — the olive branches extended to militants post peace talks and examples of the Centre’s “decentralisation” policy — is being questioned by the layman and the expert alike.
Even sections in the security establishment are beginning to question the concept.
Election time in Assam’s BTC shows the concept, after all, may not be as great as New Delhi and Dispur claim it to be.
There are 10 autonomous district councils including the BTC and others, in Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura and some are in question. However, as chief minister Tarun Gogoi promises more and more autonomous councils and the Centre talks of “more autonomy”, autonomous councils need re-examination.
The councils receive funds from the Centre through the state governments. Then an elected council decides how to spend these funds.
It is here that a nexus between state governments and councils are suspected, the way it was found in Dima Hasao, where Rs 1,000 crore were siphoned off a year ago. Investigation by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has revealed a politician-bureaucrat nexus, besides involvement of militant groups.
The modus operandi of these councils and the results, in terms of development, are varied. While the results are encouraging in some places, in others, there is little development.
Consider the scenario below.
Mitul Goyari (name changed), about 30 years old, and fellow villagers, both old and young, of Phulbari hamlet under Sidli Assembly constituency close to the India-Bhutan border in Chirang district of BTC, have been digging a well all by themselves. They haven’t struck water yet, but they will continue digging till a 70-foot bamboo pole submerges and water springs out.
They were given Rs 25,000 for the well, out of the sanctioned Rs 1 lakh.
As Mitul learnt of the actual sanctioned sum, he jumped up cursing, yanked up a boulder and hurled it into the well he was digging with fellow villagers. “We do not have food to eat, money to buy necessities or a job, and what are these politicians doing?” he shouted, stammering out in excitement in a mix of Bodo and broken Hindi.
In this backyard of the beyond of what the Centre and the Assam government show as “successful experiments”, fear rules.
At Phulbari, job cards for the Centre’s flagship scheme were signed and taken away by an elected village committee head, while a bank officer apparently took away villagers’ passbooks, apparently at behest of politicians. “Our school has not got the money, but the board is ready,” said Manikchandra Goyari, a government schoolteacher handling Class I and Class II children, all at one time, at the shanty they called a school. A painted board, meanwhile, showed money was released for 3,000 man-days.
The 70-odd km road from Samtaibari to Gelephu in Bhutan — incidentally, it is in Bhutan that daily wage earner’s jobs are found — is in a pitiable condition.
“The corruption here is four times that in Dima Hasao and the Congress is a mute spectator, as Mohilary is part of the state government,” said Rabiram Narzary, president of the Bodo People’s Progressive Front (BPPF), which had just two seats in the autonomous council and was virtually powerless.
When the BTC was formed with former Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) leaders at the helm, it was seen as a chance to showcase how militants could be brought back to the mainstream once again.
The first success was in Mizoram in 1980s when Rajiv Gandhi struck an agreement with Laldenga, who rose in militancy against an administration that failed the people after bamboo flowering pushed the hill state’s economy into doldrums.
What is different here? The BTC is not a state like Mizoram, but quite similar to the Dima Hasao autonomous council that was embroiled in the shocking scam.
“The autonomous council is exclusive and not inclusive. It is about ethnic capital and not about social capital,” Amar Yumnam, a social activist based in Imphal.
Allegations are being levelled at the Hagrama Mohiliary-led Bodo Peoples Front (BPF) that it is corrupt, charges that have been firmly denied by the incumbents. Narzary said even the Congress would not say anything because they are allies at Dispur.
But then again, the government has begun to realise the follies.
Recently, Union home minister P. Chidambaram dropped the idea of directly financing the councils in Mizoram. More and more of the 10 councils are demanding direct financing by the Centre.
Not only would that undermine the state’s integrity, as it is may, rightly or wrongly, happen in Bodoland, but also create fiefdoms where locally powerful overlords may simply siphon off development funds.
“The recent scam unearthed in the Dima Hasao autonomous council is an example of malfunctioning of the existing system owing to absence of an effective mechanism for accounting of monies received by the council,” remarked a ministry of home affairs document.
More than that, however, after burning its fingers in Telangana, the government is wary about autonomous councils demanding states. While the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha in Darjeeling see its future in a council-turned-state, those in Dima Hasao autonomous area are demanding a “state within a state” under Article 244A of the Constitution.