The attempt by pressure groups under the umbrella of the Coordination Committee on International Borders (CCIB) to stay the fencing of the Indo-Bangladesh border is indeed strange. On the one hand this same group has been proclaiming to be the avant-garde of the society and wants an Inner Line Permit (ILP) to be imposed to prevent easy access to people from the rest of India into Meghalaya. On the other hand the same group resists the idea of border fencing on the plea that the Deputy Commissioner had not consulted the locals before allowing the agencies such as BMC and NBCC to conduct surveys to determine the actual boundary lines along which the fence will be put up. The fencing of the Indo-Bangla border is the mandate of the Central Government. Meghalaya shares over 400 sq kilometers of boundary with Bangladesh, most of which is porous and easy to and fro access. Infiltration from Bangladesh is a pernicious problem that states like Assam have been clamouring about. As a result, today, fencing along the Assam-Bangladesh border is going on in right earnest. So why are the pressure groups in Meghalaya against the fencing of an equally porous border? The international boundary is a well established one and claims and counter-claims that large parts of Khasi and Jaintia Hills now lie in Bangladesh is an issue that has to be taken up bilaterally by India and Bangladesh. But until such time the borders cannot remain open.
It is also a fact that unofficial border trade is a lucrative business and people from both sides of the border have been beneficiaries of such trade with little revenue accruing to the state. The coal and limestone lobby has a big stake in the unofficial transactions happening along unguarded and porous borders. Hence they have a vested interest in keeping the borders unfenced and unpoliced, if they have their way. Such vested interests don’t care about the larger implications of infiltration from across the border. But that groups which ostensibly profess to care about the demographic profile of Meghalaya and want its borders with the larger Indian state to be policed but argue that the fencing along the Bangladesh border be kept on hold, appears both ambivalent and suspicious. Whose interests do these groups really represent? And should the State Government continue to expose its soft underbelly and keep this important task on hold indefinitely?
