Suresh Nautiyal
NINTH of November is very significant for the people of Uttarakhand, especially the Paharis. Twenty-four years ago in 2000, the state was carved out of the Hindi heartland, Uttar Pradesh. Invaluable sacrifices and non-violent struggles led to this victory which did not come easily. It was at the cost of rapes and martyrdom. So many women were raped, and so many men were killed during the movement for a separate state.
During the movement, the stakes were very high, the hopes were so high, and so were the expectations and aspirations. But all this was not to be!
The people today hang on the cliff of hopelessness. They feel disillusioned. They feel cheated. And ironically, they continue to vote for the so-called national parties – those ones who pushed them to the present situation. Every time the master magician comes in a different attire and the people think this time the master will not make fool of them.
As a journalist, I never felt that the state of Uttarakhand has progressed anywhere. The development that has been shown or described by the successive governments in the state is actually cosmetic. If you remove the upper layer, everything underneath is the same as it was before Uttarakhand got the statehood.
Now this debate has also become meaningless that why a person whose role in the Uttarakhand state movement was not even minimum was made the interim chief minister of the interim government in the interim capital of the state. And why the reins of the first elected government were handed over to a person who used to say that the state of Uttarakhand would be formed only over his dead body.
Like these questions in mind, many more issues have lost their aura over the period of twenty-four years. The list of expectations and demands has become thicker with the addition of new demands like the demand for implementation of – Article 371 of the Constitution in Uttarakhand, the Mool Niwas or the domicile policy, a land law in favour of the original inhabitants of the mountains of the state, and now the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution in the mountains of the state.
The first election to the 70-member state assembly was held in the year 2002, and the power was handed over to a party which, initially, did not allow the state to be formed. In the year 2007, the people again made another mistake. They discarded a snake for a cobra. As a result, the people of the state were not able to free themselves from the influence of these parties. Instead of raising questions, the public keeps handing over the power to these parties in turns. It is like a blind person distributing sweets to his own people only – knowingly but projecting it as unknowingly. In this case, blind are the public which vote for only the Congress and the BJP.
The questions that were there before the formation of the state and immediately after the creation of the state, remain in the same place, without any movement, without any progress. Yes, of course, some new issues have been added to the old list as mentioned above.
The solution to all these is not in sight – neither from the ruling political leadership nor from the meaningless bureaucracy. No one seems to be doing anything pragmatic and meaningful to achieve the goals.
And on top of that, politics has become a lucrative business for the people associated with major political parties and a large section of bureaucrats is already engaged in blood-sucking. Has any government in the state, till date, felt the need to conduct a social audit of the properties and assets of the former and present bureaucrats, and did it ever try to find out how the political leaders and workers of their parties live a high-profile life?
The condition of the common man and every village is the same as it was before the state was formed. In fact, a large section of the society has started thinking that if the state had not been formed, the situation would have been better. This section is thinking so in extreme despair and also because there is no change in the environment around the people.
While living in Uttar Pradesh, the neglect and indifference of the government and administration that the people had to face every day has not changed. Dehradun has become farther and more expensive than Lucknow earlier.
Apart from this, there is no major road left around which the land has not been bought by people from Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab. The state of Uttarakhand has become a mortgaged state. Lands are being occupied by outsiders as well as by people who call themselves sadhus, saints and Swami-Babas. The government is in debt to the World Bank and no one knows who else? The state has no rights over its water and its dams and no one knows on what else. When someone proves to be a bad son, even the parents say that it would have been better to be childless than to have such children. This feeling keeps coming in the mind of the mountain people of Uttarakhand in particular.
If change is visible, it is seen in the band of MLAs, ministers and their stooges, the workers of the so-called mainstream parties, and the contractors dependent on them. And the change is that people who used to travel in Maruti-800 cars earlier have now become owners of such big cars that you may not even know their names. Those who were nurtured by the liquor mafia and used to show off by riding noisy motorcycles are now caught partying inside obscene looking big cars covered with dark glasses.
The bureaucrats working in Uttarakhand have also become more resourceful than before. Those who felt ignored in Uttar Pradesh, have found influence and power in Uttarakhand. Their wives have opened various institutions in the name of public welfare and use these like Kamadhenu for their own convenience and benefits. It is surprising why the condition of the state remains the same despite the presence of thousands of institutions! Ministers, MLAs and their close relatives have opened colleges and institutions, and have ensured a good future for their generations to come. The wealth of senior leaders and many former and present MPs is much more vulgar.
Everyone knows how pointed the problem of corruption and indifferent bureaucracy is. If explorers like Pandit Nain Singh Rawat, who explored Tibet and mapped it for the first time, were alive today, they would not have been able to assess these points or angles correctly. Corruption and bureaucracy in the state are like the blood brothers.
In such a scenario, the condition of the common man has gone worse from bad. The mountain people still have to struggle as much for their livelihood as they had to while living in the domain of Uttar Pradesh or before the Independence of the country. Yes, roads have definitely reached closer to the villages but through these roads, all kinds of distortions and tools of corruption have reached the villages.
These scripts of corruption have made real efforts to destroy the creative activism of the society. This is the reason that even though development may not have reached the villages, distortions have definitely reached there. These distortions have made a large number of people so incapable that they do not care about their rights and expectations.
It seems that the government wants such a situation so that the public can quietly bear its pain and remain silent. In such a situation, the leaders are getting false applause as a result of their eloquence and good relations with a section of the press. They are taking advantage of this applause to keep themselves in power and save themselves. And by the time something is known, the next election is round the corner. The business of fulfilling one’s own selfish interests is in full swing. This work has been going on with complete ruthlessness since the year 2000.
There is no difference left between the Congress and the BJP. These parties are two sides of the same coin. Their approach is somewhat different but their ulterior motives are the same. Many leaders of these parties have enjoyed or are enjoying ministerial positions in the governments led by both the parties.
The regional parties, like the UKD, working to make the public aware are also getting tired. The public is also finding the path of MNREGA more beneficial than the path of struggle. Their understanding about struggle is becoming dull and the edge of it has been blunted.
Today, there is a greater need for people to be aware and think about alternative politics other than the old parties, but perhaps their patience has worn out. They think that they don’t need to expect anything more from those smaller parties that have not changed their image and political fortunes in the last so many years.
So, the voice of the small and regional parties has become a voice in the wilderness. The smaller parties’ efforts are negligible or insignificant in comparison to the power and aura of the big parties.
The burning issues that were at the time of the formation of the state are now on the backburner. Uttarakhand also suffered a setback in the matter of apportionment of assets with Uttar Pradesh. The public thought that Yogi being from Uttarakhand, would also take care of the interests of the state in the apportionment of assets with Uttar Pradesh, but this did not happen. Within Uttarakhand, the sign-boards of the assets of the irrigation department of the Uttar Pradesh government in Haridwar, etc, are seen mocking the people of Uttarakhand. The ruling party is shamelessly trying to sell its failures by showcasing it as a success.
People from neighbouring states have taken over the resources of Uttarakhand. The Uttar Pradesh government is also sitting on the assets and resources of Uttarakhand. Recently, Kashi Singh Airy, a top leader of the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal, told this correspondent in New Delhi that the Uttar Pradesh government was sitting on the assets and resources of our state worth more than Rs two-lakh-crore. Silence prevails because the same party is in power in both the states.
The issue of capital in Gairsain remains unresolved. By building some buildings in Bhararisain, an illusion has been created that if not today, then tomorrow, the state capital will definitely reach there. But in reality, the government is more concerned about the private companies and corporations, who are bent upon occupying the water, forests and land of the state. There are many examples of the shameless way in which natural resources belonging to the people were looted by the capitalists in collusion with the bureaucracy, from Veerpur-Lachhi to Nanisar and Pokhra, and beyond.
Even the necessary public hearings for hydroelectric projects are not being conducted. One glaring example of this is the Pancheshwar hydroelectric project. Wherever the so-called public hearing was conducted regarding this, the public and the enlightened people were not allowed to speak. From senior journalist Rajivlochan Sah to senior UKD leader Kashi Singh Airy, everyone was mistreated. Lately, the government has ignored the suggestions made by the activists like Atul Sati in Joshimath. So the new issue of land subsidence in Joshimath also remains on the backburner.
But should we accept defeat? What is needed is to gear up to change the political, social and economic conditions of Uttarakhand? Getting dejected will not help. What if today is 24 years of darkness, tomorrow the golden morning will surely dawn!
