A jagged borderline

 

 

Saeedur Rehman claims he lives on an island. Except that the sea is nowhere in sight. Rehman, 49, is a farmer in a hamlet called Tukargram, half a mile from the Bangladesh border. He says his village feels like an island because, although they are a part of India, the connections are sparse, cut off as they are from the mainland by a river to the west and the south and the border on the east and the north. The only means of transport is a ferry service and that too operates for a limited number of hours everyday. This is the story of the Indian people living on the margin in the east, and I don’t mean just geographically.

As soon as I entered Karimganj, a district that shares a 92 km (51 km land border and 41 km demarcated by the Kushiara river) boundary with India’s youngest neighbour, the billboard from the Border Road Organisation (BRO) said ‘Thank You for your visit to India’. The billboard addresses the many visitors who come by road from the other side of the border. And every year, there are quite a few of them given that Sylet, one of Bangladesh’s largest cities is only about 40 miles from there. The road in question is the NH 151 that terminates at Sutarkandi, another six miles ahead of Karimganj. The highway is not just a route preferred for visitors but holds tremendous significance in the economy of the region as well. “It’s an economical trade route for coal that gets exported to Bangladesh from the mines of Meghalaya”, explains Deepak Das, the Inspector of Customs at the Sutarkandi post. The board that hangs beside Mr. Das puts the value of exports through this route at Rs. 50 crores for 2004 (the latest available figure). Things are imported into India as well—mostly processed food items like namkeens and juices that find prominent shelf space at most mom and pop retail stores in the entire region adjacent to Karimganj.

On a journey to any cartographic ‘edge’, the chance of catching a glimpse of the ‘other’ side beyond the ‘Zero Point’ is too enticing to resist. I approached border point 1360 at Sutarkandi with some amount of apprehension and anticipation. The BSF jawan (his name tag said R R Yadav) I spoke to smothered it with a casual explanation of what we were observing. He took me towards the fence and showed me the ‘Zero Point’ bridge, spanning 150 yards. The end of the bridge signalled the start of ‘their’ territory. Near the fence that ran on the sides of the Indian end of the bridge was Kunagram, a border village with a population of about 1,000 and our border guard was quick to point out that such small villages pepper the entire border which is in the process of being properly fenced. One of those villages is Tukargram. A village with nearly 600 registered voters among its 80 odd families. It is woefully short on infrastructure – no electricity, no clean drinking water and no telephones. Saeedur has a wistful look in his eyes as he laments about the apathy of the administration towards their predicament and how the recent floods have compounded the water problem with the heightened risk of water borne diseases. The waste that flows from the nearby Cachar Paper Mill through the river makes it only worse.

Almost all of Tukargram relies on farming as the source of sustenance since business (or trade) is impracticable, given that the only link to the nearest market – Karimganj’s Bhanga Bazar is the ferry that stops plying at 7:30 in the evening. And the future doesn’t look too bright either; children who finish primary education in the only school there find it difficult to diligently attend a school away in town. Their parents aren’t wealthy enough to send them away to a town where they can pursue higher studies. The vicious cycle continues. “The pleas to the administration have fallen on deaf ears”, says Saeedur, adding that they are only seen during elections. I went to five different border observation posts (BOPs) around Karimganj—Bhanga, Stramerghat, Aurangabda, Mubarakpur and Sutarkandi. Everywhere, the view might not have been scenic but the despondent and distinctly uncomfortable existence of the people along these BOPs is moving.

There are constant patrols and curfews are imposed in the evenings in the border villages. “Sometimes if I am a little late in closing my shop and am out on the street after 7:30 PM, the guards catch and question me,” says Shanto Das who owns a tea shop in Bhanga Bazar. He recounts how villagers often get into trouble because of the communication gap between the guards and the locals. “The people here are mostly poor and uneducated. Sometimes the guard might ask one question and the person might say something else, adding to the confusion,” adds Shanto. The guards, of course, cannot be careful enough in a region that is fettered both economically and socially by illegal movement across these borders – be it of illegal immigrants, terrorists or smuggled goods. The paranoia casts a pall of gloom over the normal lives of the people who live here. Why do you still choose to live here, I ask on a parting note. Everyone I spoke to either had been there from birth or was too poor to move to a better place. They live under impoverished conditions and the constant threat of the guards misbehaving with them at the slightest error. As I prepare to leave Tukargram, Saeedur sighed, “This border outpost is perhaps the most backward place in India.” I wonder if that’s a coincidence…