Saving Our Neck

This narrow strip of territory in West Bengal is vulnerable to geopolitical strife that could give us nightmares.

Chicken, they say, can run around headless for up to an hour, even longer. India would be well advised not to check if that’s true, at least not by exposing its vulnerable ‘chicken’s neck’ corridor in West Bengal to any further danger. It’s half choked with trouble already. Also called the Dooars, this small strip of Indian territory—only 23-km wide at its narrowest point—offers mainland India its only link with the Northeast. It is a tenuous link, stretching from Darjeeling in the north to Jalpaiguri and Coochbehar districts further south; and is bounded by Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. It is unique not just for its geography, but opacity. What goes on under the cover of the thickets along the terrain is the stuff of national nightmares.

Kirti Rabha, a trucker, is familiar with some of these. His cargo run is just 25 km, carrying seasonal fruit from Kakkarbita in Nepal to Banglabanda in Bangladesh. The paperwork is backbreaking. But his bigger worries are the region’s criss-crossing conflicts. Rabha’s tribal kin at his native Kurmai village in Coochbehar’s Chilapathar reserve forest have been agitating for implementing the guarantees granted to them under the new Forest Rights Act. This, even as their Gorkha neighbours glower at them for opposing the proposed Gorkhaland state.

With the movement for a separate Gorkhaland state gaining momentum again, ethnic tensions—between Gorkhas, Adivasis and Bengali settlers—have reached a flash point. Any outbreak of violence between ethnic groups in the Dooars would not only imperil the security grid here, but also provide a fertile ground for mischief by various forces inimical to India. And then, there are tensions between assorted tribal groups—Rabhas, Mechis, Garos, Oraons, Mundas and others—that still simmer and threaten to erupt in violence at the first sign of a run-in. “The Dooars is a geopolitical problem,” says Jalpaiguri’s Congress legislator Debi Prosad Roy, “Our geographical vulnerability and social volatility combine to take it to the brink of an implosion.” Scuffles are routine for the 11-million people crowding this small area. Their poverty is acute, and they all know that the resources of the area are being stretched by the relentless influx of settlers from Nepal, Assam and Bangladesh.

Marauding elephants, pushed by their loss of natural habitat into raiding paddy fields for food, are another menace. Some 200 elephant attacks were reported in the year 2008, many of them resulting in lives being lost. It doesn’t help that train tracks cut through four of the six wildlife sanctuaries in the region.

The plight of the people there is no less a tale of sorrow. And poverty, sadly, brings with it forces that prey on it. Ask Kirti Rabha’s brother Mahesh, who turned jobless after his tea estate shut down in 2002, and then found himself thrown into the lockup for a fortnight. He was charged with ‘waging war against the State’ for attending, as he says, a meeting by an NGO that is fighting for the rights of tea garden workers.

The police says that the NGO is a front for the Maoists who are bent on stirring up strife in the region, by forging links with other outlawed militant groups such as the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation, which wants to carve out a state by that name for the indigenous Rajbongshis. Throw in Chinese activities here and Islamist radicalism, and it’s a region left ignored only at the country’s own peril.

The Indo-Bangla border is much too porous to prevent infiltration. Security agencies are tracking renewed attempts by Bangladesh-based Ulfa and Assam’s Bodo militants to set up camps in the jungles of southern Bhutan. The trail between Bangladesh and Bhutan, it turns out, is heavily footed. “The Dooars,” says Jeta Sankrityayan, an economist at University of North Bengal, “is an area of immense natural beauty, resources and potential. But the ground realities provide a stark contrast. And the host of issues that have cropped up of late make this an extremely volatile region. If the fruits of development don’t percolate immediately, the Dooars will erupt in violence.”

That echoes the assessment of the Indian Army. “The Dooars is of immense strategic importance,” says a senior officer at the Indian Army’s 33 Corps headquarters at Siliguri, “Any trouble like ethnic clashes would severely imperil our national security.” The 10,800 sq km territory has three mountain divisions of the Army, two fighter aircraft bases, some helicopter units and nearly 25,000 paramilitary personnel; apart from state police and countless other security and intelligence agents. “One look at the map,” the Army officer adds, would explain the armed presence. Of immediate concern are China’s designs on the region. The Dolma sector between Pedong in Sikkim and Jaldhaka in Darjeeling district has already seen incursions by the Chinese.

If it’s any consolation, China too would be wary of coveting a region that’s so utterly unmanageable. According to Abhijit Majumdar, economist and leader of the CPI-ML, “The three Es are the perils facing this area: ethnic conflicts, economic issues and environmental degradation.”In Majumdar’s view, tea and timber can no longer guarantee the local people livelihoods, and that’s a major cause of distress. Debi Prosad Roy adds: “The Dooars has been a victim of systematic neglect by the state and Union governments, and we don’t even have a long-term plan for securing the economy and security of this vital region.” For evidence, just look at how haphazardly India’s borders are guarded here. Border Security Force (BSF) mans the Indo-Bangla border, Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) guards the Indo-Nepal one, and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) the border with China. “We’ve been able to fence only 650 km of the 1,071 km border with Bangladesh in North Bengal,” admits a BSF officer, trying not to seem resigned to infiltrations—of men, contraband, weapons and worse.

If bizarre border controls are a legacy of the country’s tragic Partition, so are some current conflicts, according to Soumitra Ghosh, convenor of the National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers, and a long-time resident of Siliguri, the commercial hub of this region. He says that the drawing of international boundaries and the consequent creation of the corridor brought human beings in direct—and often bruising—conflict with one another and with the animals whose expansive habitat the Dooars was until just five decades ago. Sadly, there’s no coherent plan to redress these problems.

Agrees Sanchari Roy Mukherjee, an economist at the University of North Bengal, “This whole region—the Terai areas of eastern Nepal, Darjeeling and Bhutan, along with the Dooars and northern Bangladesh—was a contiguous area with an integrated economy. The redrawing of borders by the British severed economic, social and cultural ties between various people and communities here and brought along devastation.”

About The Author

Jaideep Mazumdar