Friday, June 24, 2011

Another Black Friday

With the anti-corruption movement shaking the whole country, the Indian state Assam seems to be witnessing a lot more than that. Although corruption is a problem affecting the whole country, there are other serious problems (some of them are historic so to say) affecting North East India as well as Assam for a long time: sometimes due to the negligence of central government, sometimes due to the state government elected by our own people. Two days back there was a public protest led by Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) in the capital of Assam which turned violent claiming three lives including a minor. They were protesting the recent Assam government plan to evict thousands of Assamese people from hills and wetland areas around Guwahati. Surprisingly the government put up polling booths in all these areas during election. And after looting the public votes, now they are planning to turn them homeless. It should also be mentioned that the government has not taken any such steps so far to evict millions of illegal Bangladesh immigrants from various such government places including Kaziranga National Park.

Lots of public as well as private properties were destroyed, blame it on both the protesters as well as the government who did not take necessary measures. The role of police forces while those properties were destroyed also raises doubts in everyone's minds. They were just silent spectators and did not make any effort to stop it. Around 170 private vehicles were damaged and 2-3 city buses were put on fire in the incident. While KMSS has denied such destruction of public properties, the government is blaming the protesters, specially their leader as well as RTI activist Akhil Gogoi for this. But the role of police force while the properties were destroyed forces one to doubt whether this was a conspiracy by the government itself to put Akhil Gogoi behind bars. They tried to do it before the election also blaming Akhil Gogoi of violating election protocol, but had to release him within hours due to public protests. Today, the government has done the same mistake again by sending him to custody for three days. Already public protests have started at various places in Assam, specially Guwahati. People have blocked national highways, the streets have become deserted with shops, offices closing down. Hope this protest won't turn as violent as the one two days back. Assam might have witnesses hundreds of such black Fridays, but nothing has changed. Forget about such day or month long protests, even the six year long Assam agitation could not fulfill it's sole purpose and both the public as well as the government are responsible for this. Like we were betrayed by the government before, now also there is no good reason to expect something better, but hope the public will act in a matured manner this time onwards both in electing a government as well as raising voice against anything which threaten their existence and make them homeless in their own soil.

1 comment:

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