Eviction And Development

Context: Encroachment and eviction in Assam have a long history due to various reasons.

Reasons of Encroachment and Eviction in Assam

• Physical Landscape: Assam regularly loses large swathes of land to riverbank erosion, which forces numerous people to be displaced and dispossessed from there.
  • Some of the displaced seek refuge in government lands, protected forests, or wildlife sanctuaries, while undocumented migration has been a historical problem in Assam.
• Demographic History: Assam and Northeast India have been a settlement frontier attracting massive immigration from the rest of the subcontinent over the years.
  • The colonial government considered Assam as a wasteland, initially encouraged immigration and settlement by peasants from deltaic eastern Bengal to raise revenue.
  • Line system demarcating areas were also introduced by them for immigrant’s settlement, but unable to defend the no-occupation areas due to the pressure of immigration, and this has continued since decolonisation.
  • Nowadays, internal factors like riverbank erosion and development-induced displacement have been the primary sources of demographic pressure on public lands.
• Political History: Evictions became an explosive political issue in the 1980s. One demand of the Assam movement (1979-85) was the eviction of non-tribals from the tribal belts.
  • One clause of the Assam Accord stipulated the prevention of encroachment and eviction of unauthorised encroachers from public lands and tribal belts and blocks, but the “unauthorised encroachers” included many Bodos and other tribals.
  • It alienated the Bodos from the ethnic Assamese political society and radicalised the Bodo movement.
  • Nowadays, the state government is focusing on identifying evictable encroached areas and targeting for development projects.
  • The development project is fast-tracked to start immediately after the physical eviction is completed. The state government had already identified a group of farmers to form part of a Multipurpose Agricultural Producer Organisation.

Conclusion: Development has been aptly called “a concept of monumental emptiness” since it can mean just about anything. There is more to the evictions in Assam than the demands of ‘development’.