Evicted from homes, Boginodi locals hope for resettlement

Guwahati: Over 100 indigenous families settled in the ‘big dam movement’—the Boginodi area of upper Assam’s Lakhimpur district bordering Arunachal Pradesh—are facing the government bulldozer for encroaching on government land.
Hit by erosion, these landless people are living in misery now although the BJP-led government in the state has formulated a policy to expedite granting of land rights to indigenous people.

Thekeraguri village in Boginodi was in the forefront of the movement against the currently stalled 2000 MW Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Project along the nearby Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border about a decade ago. Engaged in the stone crushing trade that flourished with the flow of the river, the villagers had feared that blocking the Subansiri would impact their livelihood. The villagers kept state politics on the boil for years after the anti-mega dam agitation kicked off from this place. But the locals are now sceptical of being made a ‘political scapegoat’ this Lok Sabha election.

Gagan Bora, who works in a stone quarry in Subansiri, said, “The village headman cautioned us that about 120 families in Thekeraguri may face the bulldozer. Houses belonging to 28 families were razed last week. Though temporarily stalled, we fear other houses will also be pulled down. When the homeless villagers started living under an open sky that the government halted the demolition. They perhaps thought, the action would have an adverse effect on the upcoming polls.” His family was evicted from Thekeraguri last week.

The indigenous communities, including the Ahom, Sonowal Kachari and Deuris, claim they settled in Thekeraguri 10-20 years ago and worked hard to turn the land into a cultivable one. “Not a single family is an illegal migrant. While some of them are victims of erosion caused by Subansiri, the rest are poor landless people. We demand the government drops the eviction drive and rehabilitates the evicted families,” said Deepak Hazarika, a leading activist from the peasant organization, Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) in Lakhimpur.

Though houses were not razed in the past two days, the evicted families living in temporary sheds or in the open are hopeful the Sarbananda Sonowal government would hear their pleas because the government had come to power on the commitment to safeguard Jati, Mati and Bheti (community, home and hearth) of the indigenous people of the state.

EOM