Uttarakhand rhetoric fails to please

However, the hill people are not impressed. In fact, they seem to have lost interest in the issue. “We have been hearing plain rhetoric for almost 10 years now. But nobody seems to be really interested in solving the problem,” saysGovind Nautiyal, a trader in Jyolikot.

Earlier, during an election rally at Almora, the then prime minister, Gowda, had promised to grant separate statehood by March 31, 1997. Now, almost one year after the deadline, the hill people are a disillusioned lot.However, Professor B K Joshi, vice-chancellor of Kumaon University, differs. “They are not disappointed. Rather, they have realised that separate statehood is not the solution to all their problems,” he says. Stressing the need for education and employment in the region, he adds, “the terrain of the region does not allow much industrialisation and agriculture. Thus the only viable source of income remains government jobs.”

Earlier, the hills were set on fire when the then chief minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav, sought to introduce the statewide 27 per cent reservation for other backward classes (OBCs) in the Uttarakhand region also although there are only seven per cent OBCs here. The anti-quota movement was later converted into a separate statedemand after the firing on hill people at Muzaffarnagar on October 2, 1994.

In 1996, the Allahabad High Court stayed the implementation of the OBC quota in educational institutions in the hills. However, the state of education in the region remains pathetic.

New colleges are sanctioned in various parts of Uttarakhand without any efforts to strengthen the infrastructure in the existing colleges. Thus, there are only four teachers for 73 under-graduate students in the Sialda Government Degree College, which was started in Almora 10 years back.“I am not opposed to statehood to the region. But it should be accompanied by sound planning and developmental schemes,” says Prof Joshi. According to reports, government funds are being siphoned off by contractors, most of whom are gram pradhan or block pramukhs.

The absence of a strong leadership to the Uttarakhand movement has further weakened the demand for a separate State. In such a hazy scenario, almost all the political parties promise statehood on the eveof elections, only to forget their pledge once polls over.