Talks recipe for militants

Northeast Echoes
PATRICIA MUKHIM
Arabinda Rajkhowa: Prospective politician?

Talks recipe for militants

The Tarun Gogoi government has decided to facilitate a seamless transition for Arabinda Rajkhowa, the erstwhile militant leader and chairman of Ulfa, into Arabinda Rajkhowa, a prospective politician.

With Assembly elections round the corner, it makes sense for the Congress in Assam to adopt a posture of openness to peace talks with the otherwise belligerent Ulfa and for a role reversal for its top leadership.

This will not be the first time that militant leaders have jumped onto the political bandwagon. Former Mizoram chief minister Laldenga was an insurgent leader of the Mizo National Front (MNF). He came overground in 1986, gave up arms and signed a peace accord with Rajiv Gandhi. The then Congress chief minister, Lalthanhawla, had to vacate his seat to accommodate Laldenga. Zoramthanga, who was the chief minister of Mizoram from 1998 to 2008, was also an MNF insurgent.

In Tripura, Bijoy Hrangkhawl, the leader of the militant Tripura National Volunteers (TNV), who shared jungle space with Laldenga and Zoramthanga in Bangladesh, also transitioned into a politician. He represents Kulai constituency as a legislator of the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT).

These insurgent leaders did not come over ground for nothing. They were sensible enough to realise that life in the jungles had a limited appeal and depended a lot on resources which would ultimately have to come from taxing their own people and for which they would face the public wrath. Mizoram and Tripura did not have the kind of industries and businesses that Assam has. Ulfa survived by extorting the well-endowed tea garden owners and industrialists.

In Nagaland, the only reason why people continue to pay money to the NSCN is because they consider the movement a “national” one and the workers in it as national volunteers who need to be supported as they are in pursuit of a shared destiny. But the big business honchos in Nagaland are complaining because they see that need has transcended into greed.

Coming to Manipur, people cringe each time they get an extortion note. Many complain that it has become a burden to pay so many insurgent outfits. Things get worse when percentages have to be carved out of development funds and road-building projects and the heads of particular departments are expected to hand over the funds to a designated collector. In every other institution, percentages to be paid to militants are deducted at source. How this whole collection system has been institutionalised and the money is deducted at source by someone within the organisation and handed over to someone in the militant outfit is something no one wants to talk about for it could mean a bullet through the head or the heart. Not even the dreaded police chief of Manipur, Joykumar Singh, has been able to control extortion in the state. His entire fraternity is paying a percentage to sundry outfits.

Unwilling base

People need a little window to resist extortion. That window unfortunately has not been provided by those who are entrusted with securing peoples’ lives. Militants also scrupulously guard their space and would demolish that window of opportunity the moment it threatens to open up. Without the ability to extort, militants will die of asphyxiation. It is a simple law of supply and demand of a different kind.

Prof. Gulshan Sachdeva, an economist from Jawaharlal Nehru University who has studied the underground economy, said in 2002-03, the amount was a staggering Rs 3,500 crore. But Sachdeva admits that the figure is on the conservative side. The underground economy could be much bigger. According to the Planning Commission, about Rs 80,000 crore is poured into the region annually through various central schemes and principally for power sector investments, and if a good percentage of that money is siphoned off to militants, then we can well imagine the amount that goes to their kitty.

It is, therefore, of no foreseeable advantage for society to continue to nurture their ethnic militant groups which have now morphed into leeches, sucking the blood of those who feed them. Our need to counter the Indian state and its regressive policies and our angst to protest undesirable policy approaches must transform into a more cogent action plan. Guns and bombs have been around for decades but we have not seen any perceptible change in the attitude of the Centre. On the contrary, there is a huge build-up of security forces and security-related paraphernalia in Manipur, Assam and Nagaland. The country is investing heavily in containing militancy. Spending on security is always bad economics since the very forces who are brought to secure our lives develop a vested interest in keeping alive the phobia of insecurity. What have we achieved in the last three decades with this huge gun-wielding manpower? Look at Manipur. Militant outfits are proliferating instead of decreasing. Manipur is in a perpetual state of emergency and this benefits the security forces as more funds are invested for their upkeep.

Ballot for bullet

After these three very violent decades, it is time for the region to take stock of the current situation. The more potent outfits are in ceasefire and in talking terms with the Centre through various interlocutors. The Ulfa chairman will soon be out on bail and his deputies may follow suit. They need an honourable exit, which the state is willing to provide. Now we hear talk of Ulfa bigwigs joining politics, which is perhaps the most sensible thing to do. After all, they have realised that the gun pays limited dividends and that they cannot direct the course of history with a remote control. They have to be part of that history and push through their popular agenda through the ballot box. People, too, will be more open to supporting these folk heroes if they shun the path of violence.

Union home minister P. Chidambaram has predicted that in 10 years peace will return to the Northeast.

One is unsure as to how he has arrived at this remarkable conclusion or whether he has read some counter-insurgency literature which theorises that militancy has a saturation point after all, which is what this writer had argued in one of several articles on the topic.

In this region, we are blighted by the fact that while social scientists have only analysed the problem ad nauseum, they have failed to come up with any kind of futuristic prediction about which trajectory insurgency is likely to take in the coming decade.

Perhaps the problem also is that scholars have not been able to sufficiently distance themselves from the situation.

In fact, some even concur with the ideology of insurgent outfits in their respective states. This makes them subjective participants instead of detached observers.

Missing link

I am reminded of Harry Eckstein’s observations in Internal War. He says, “When today’s social science has become intellectual history one question will certainly be asked about it (internal war): why did social science which has produced so many studies of so many subjects produce so few on violent political disorder — internal war? By any common sense reckoning the contemporary literature should be brimming over with such studies.”

Indeed we ask why? This is the tragedy of our times that historians will record the past and social scientists refuse to calculate the future of human behaviour based upon a sound analysis of the present.

Notwithstanding this predicament, we hope that PC’s predictions will turn out right and we can move forward on a new path of peace. Hope, after all, springs eternal in the human breast.

(The writer can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com)