States should not allow border disputes to fester

Shillong was at its sparkling best: The cherry blossoms were in bloom, the sun was out, the sky a perfect blue, Ward’s Lake was clad in pink and white with tents, buntings and stalls welcoming visitors and participants to the Shillong Litfest, a three- day programme with well-known authors, preceding the Cherry Blossom festival of music and food to which an estimated 20,000 persons from across the Northeast and beyond were expected.

However, in less than 24 hours, everything was upended; the two festivals were cancelled and an all- too- familiar pall of tension, suspicion and anger enveloped the city. Earlier that day — the sequence of events is still unclear — Assam police allegedly fired on a group of villagers from a border village in Meghalaya after being surrounded. Within seconds, five villagers and an Assam forest guard lay bleeding and dead.

At the heart of the incident were two narratives: In the betterknown one, the police and forest guards were chasing a truck carrying illegally felled logs and were mobbed after capturing the vehicle. The other: A group of farmers from the Jaintia tribe were returning from harvesting their fields near a disputed border area when they were stopped by the Assam police patrol party. They got caught up in the chase and also called for help, following which the villagers rushed there.

Assam has major disputes with its neighbours — Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh — some of which have exploded into gunfire, killing both police and civilians in the recent past. The conflagration at Mukroh is only the latest in a long line of similar flare-ups at the border.

A senior local editor and I went to Mukroh near the firing incident. We visited the spot of the shooting, talked to Meghalaya police officials who asserted that the place is within state borders and walked some distance on the smooth highway there. Trees had been felled by villagers to block traffic from Assam and our vehicles could not pass. In the homes of the deceased, there was grief and somberness but no signs of anger. But what was visible were trucks brazenly carrying full loads of cut logs while fallen logs lay near the roadside, underlining the magnitude of the illegal timber economy.

Conditions were not helped by attacks on some Assam-registered vehicles in Meghalaya, even as a few Meghalaya drivers were roughed up in Guwahati, Assam’s capital and the business hub of the Northeast. As rumours proliferated, the government took recourse to a familiar step and shut down the internet. A candlelight procession to mourn the killings erupted into attacks on innocent passers-by, including a customs officer and unprecedented vandalism at a hospital — all this in full defiance of prohibitory orders and police presence.

Already, the public was feeling the fallout of the incident after both states closed their borders, concerned about attacks on each other’s people and vehicles. This decision triggered fears of petrol shortages and a panic buying spree that eased when

Assam announced the dispatch of a convoy of petrol tankers.

The incidents showed the fragility of peace in Shillong and how a distant event can trigger adverse reactions. That undercurrent of tension has crackled from time to time, coalescing into a suspicion of the “outsider”, whether a “local” or out-of-state visitor.

The fear of being a small minority in India has been exploited for decades by activists and politicians and is reflected in unreported incidents and slights felt almost every day by non-tribals, say people from other states who have made this city their home for decades. However, what is often not understood is that while members of the state’s main three tribes — Khasis, Jaintias and Garos — can buy real estate in Assam and other states, travel extensively, put their children through educational institutions and avail of its excellent health facilities, the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution does not permit non-tribals to buy land in Meghalaya.

To tackle this situation, governments need to be firm on several fronts. Authorities must crack down on those who abuse the law and harm fellow citizens (which few governments in Meghalaya have done). The Centre must push bordering states to resume dialogue to resolve outstanding border disputes — something that Assam and Meghalaya started earlier this year — so that these disagreements do not damage fragile peace and public safety. Governments and private entrepreneurs need to push for job generation as unemployment rates are high, fuelling public resentment.

But it is also important for those who lead agitations to understand that in the absence of industries and employment generation, such disruptions harm their people the most — the booming tourism industry and its tens of thousands of employees, the daily vegetable and fruit vendors, the restaurants, snack stores and local talent, many of these depend on patronage by “outsiders”. Should conditions in Meghalaya deteriorate, Assam could react by closing its neighbour’s sole lifeline, a highway that runs through both states and which carries fuel, freight, travellers, food and medicines.

There is an additional cost: At a time of instant news and social media, events are amplified many times over and travel across the world in an instant. The damage to a state’s image and perceptions of safety is incalculable. Chief minister Conrad Sangma’s dream of taking Meghalaya into India’s top 10 states will depend on how he addresses these issues.

Nations and states have little choice but to build good relations with their neighbours; it makes sound economic and political sense. Taking a vehicle registered in one state to the border and switching to a car registered in the neighbouring state is unsustainable. The governments must keep working towards building lasting peace on livewire border disputes and not allow rhetoric to derail these processes.