Evicted but not gone: Assam’s displaced are resettling quietly across India

Guwahati, July 19: Large-scale evictions, mostly from forest areas in the last four years, raised a few questions. The first and foremost question is: Where did the evicted persons go? The next major question is: How the encroachments took place under the nose of the forest department?

More than one lakh bighas of land were cleared of encroachers in the last four years, and the evicted persons just cannot vanish into thin air. The question is whether such evicted persons have encroached on government land in other areas.

Official sources told The Assam Tribune that it is not possible to keep track of each and every evicted person. But according to records available, some persons have moved out to the chars where they stayed before coming into the mainland to encroach on forest areas. Some have lands elsewhere, and they moved to their own land. For example, when evictions took place in Darrang district, a large number of evicted people moved to Morigaon.

Sources said that a large number of people belonging to a particular community have moved out to work in the coffee belt in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The people who moved from Assam are willing to work at a cheaper rate than the local population, and that is why the planters are keen on engaging such persons, sources said.

Sources added that some other evicted people fanned out to different parts of the country to work as daily wage labourers.

Interestingly, whenever an eviction drive is announced, around 80 to 90 per cent of the people move out on their own and go back to the char areas and other places where they already have lands and only around 10 per cent strongly resist and indulge in violence.

Official sources admitted that the duty of the forest department is to protect the forest land, but some employees of the department did not carry out their work properly, which resulted in encroachments. Sources pointed out that all the encroachment of the forest land did not take place in one day, and the forest department personnel could have easily resisted when the encroachments started. There were also instances when a few unscrupulous officers allowed timber smugglers to cut down trees and later allowed encroachers to move in.

There were also instances of political patronage, which resulted in encroachments. Encroachments near the national highways in Kaziranga could not have been possible without political patronage, sources admitted. Sources also expressed the view that a thorough probe would bring out the names of the persons responsible for encroachment of forest land.

Several other questions on the issue remained unanswered. How did the encroachers of forest land get electricity connections? Taking electricity lines into notified forest areas is illegal. Who allowed the construction of roads inside forests? No one has the answer to these questions.