Goodbye, bandhs; perform & achieve is New Year mantra

The New Year has begun with a good omen for Assam. A 1000-hour bandh by an organisation...

The New Year has begun with a good omen for Assam. A 1000-hour bandh by an organisation demanding Scheduled Tribe status for its community, scheduled to begin from the stroke of midnight of December 31, was called off at the last moment. And, looking ahead, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has said his Government will not only take stern steps against those calling bandhs, but will also compel such organisations to compensate for losses caused to the people.

Gogoi took the cue from a large turnout of voters in six Upper Assam districts during panchayat elections held on the last day of 2007, defying a bandh called by organisations claiming to represent six communities that have been demanding recognition as STs. “People are fed up. Bandhs not only affect the economy, but also violate human rights,” the Chief Minister said. But what is more significant is that the anti-bandh campaign has found a strong supporter in the All-Assam Students’ Union (AASU), an organisation which was once synonymous with ‘bandh’. While AASU has not resorted to bandhs for a long time, its present set of leaders also do not hesitate to describe bandhs as an outdated concept.

“Assam is passing through an interesting phase, with the mindset of the people, especially of the younger generations, getting positive,” says AASU president Sankar Prasad Roy. AASU in fact has launched a new annual event called “Ashar Asam”— a year-ender colloquium that gets eminent people from various spheres to speak on positive developments that the state and the people have witnessed in the year gone by.

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Last weekend, the student body thus got half-a-dozen eminent people, including educationist Dinesh Baishya, journalist Pabitra Gogoi, and professors Rani Mudiyar Deka, Bibhash Choudhury, and vaishnavite scholar Mallika Kandali to talk about positive things that had occurred to Assam in 2007. And the positive developments that the people talked about included opening of over 100 professional courses by Gauhati University, NASSCOM promising over 35,000 jobs to young people from the region in the next five years, Guwahati hosting the 33rd National Games in the most successful way by overcoming—again a bandh—hurdles created by ULFA, and so on.

“The average young Assamese of today is a different person. He or she is not just into crying and complaining about deprivation by the Centre. He or she wants to perform, and achieve. The average Assamese youth is probably an example of what our former President A P J Abdul Kalam wants to be,” says leading economist Amiya Sharma, who heads the Rashtriya Grameen Vikash Nidhi, an organisation working wonders in the area of micro-credit and helping usher in new hopes in the rural economy of the region.

Sharma and Suresh Ranjan Goduka, editor of Jivan, a popular magazine for the youth, have already launched a project to bring out a compilation of 100 positive things about Assam. “Who says the youth of Assam are lazy and backward? An asteroid has been named after a young Assamese scholar. What else do you expect?” asks Goduka. “Don’t just talk about what had happened at Beltola in Guwahati where a helpless Adivasi girl was allegedly molested and stripped naked. There are lot of good things happening too,” he adds.