By Nabamita Mitra
The stories of Nongthymmai Garo, an obscure village in Jirang constituency, and the 100-odd households there are long lost in the labyrinth of border politics and Machiavellian deception. But some like Phillip Sangma still hold the stories close to their hearts hoping that some day they will be told in their entirety.
The Garo village atop a hill is on the Assam-Meghalaya border. Like the rest of the state, the village and its adjacent localities bear no mark of the April 11 Lok Sabha election. The correspondent was told that she was the first journalist to visit the village. This not only gave the privilege to salvage the untold stories from years of happenings but also the responsibility to meticulously chronicle them.
Maikhuli, the nearest town, is officially in Meghalaya. Both the village and the town are under Umling block in Ri Bhoi district. But parts of Maikhuli are vanishing slowly and steadily from the map of the state thanks to its bullying neighbour, say locals with more frustration than bitterness.
From Maikhuli, a steep road goes up the hill to Nongthymmai Garo. A quarter of the 30-minute walk, punctuated by two minutes of rest every five minutes, was on a kuccha road of red soil and gravel. With incessant rain the day before, the stretch had turned into a nightmare. Thick layers of wet red mud stuck on the shoe soles make walking on the steep slope even more difficult. But villagers tread the path every day and night, come rain or shine, with practised movements.
The black-topped road starts after the muddy stretch and ends just before the village.
“The road will be complete by this year,” a middle-aged man, who had showed the way to the village, informed.
Later, headman Rongjan Momin informed that the pucca stretch was built by the villagers under the MGNREG scheme. “We decided to take up the challenge after years of pleading for a black-topped road before authorities and leaders were ignored. The road has been built over three years and the remaining stretch that you had to cross in the beginning will also be built,” said Dominic Sangma, a young man in his early thirties who was born and brought up in the village.
Along the slope of the hill, tufts of half-burned shrubs and charred wood cover patches of land. They were being cleared for cultivation. As the pucca road gets steeper, the vegetation on both sides of it gets denser. A few RCC houses with tin roof were seen among the humble bamboo and mud structures. Some women carrying water vessels in cane baskets pass by. Their hurried steps were enough to tell a stranger that much was remaining to do at home.
When enquired about where the women were going with the water vessels, Elbita Marak, a woman in her forties, said in Garo, “There is no water tap in the village and we have to go down the cliff to fetch water both for drinking and household chores.”
The path that goes to the nook and corner of the village is covered with red soil that had turned slushy after the rain. “This is what I have been seeing since my childhood,” said Dominic as he showed the way to his house while also introducing the village to the visitor.
No water
The Chidilma, which means big river, was once a major source of water for the Garo villagers but has turned into a trickling stream owing to the effluents from the illegal stone quarries inside the nearby forests. A pipeline, which is now invisible under foliage and red mud, was laid to supply water to the village households but that too has stopped.
Now, women have to trek down a hill to collect water. “When it rains we collect water but that can be used only for washing clothes and cleaning houses. For bathing and drinking, you have to go to the stream,” said Arelak Marak, who is in her fifties.
Marak added that while summer and winter are fine, monsoon becomes a problem as women have to walk with heavy vessels on the muddy and slippery path.
Zero healthcare, no school
Healthcare too is in a mess in this village. The village does not have any health centre, sub-centre or clinic. The nearest health centres are in Guwahati or Byrnihat (primary health centre). But villagers said the Byrnihat centre often refers them to Nongpoh, which is far. So they prefer to go to Guwahati.
There is no ambulance in the village because vehicles cannot come up the broken hilly road. In case of emergency people carry the patient down the hill on their back or makeshift stretcher. Pregnant women usually deliver at home. It is risky but easier than travelling such a long way, said the women sitting in the same village tea shop.
The only healthcare support that the villagers get is from the ASHA workers, said Leolin D Sangma.
Children of the village have to walk through the muck and water to reach school in Maikhuli. “Again, rainy season is a problem and our kids have to go up and down this way,” said Krittila Momin.
Women’s plight
Most of the women in the village sell vegetables at Basistha Chariali in Assam and sometimes in Nongpoh. They too carry the vegetables down the hill road and walk till Basistha Chariali, which is over 5 km from Maikhuli. The women said they are often harassed by Assam police but “we are used to it now as we have to earn our living”, said Momin.
“It has become a norm for them. They are so helpless that they have even forgotten about their rights as human being, especially as women,” observed Dominic.
But the women are conscious about their right to have a separate space in the village and so they want a community hall where women can hold meetings and have their freedom. “Next time a leader visits, we will demand this,” they said in unison.
This election season, no candidate had visited the village.
The road that villagers of Nongthymmai Garo are building; the slushy road in Maikhuli; and women in the village. (ST)
Sordid stories of land grabbing
Phillip Sangma, Dominic Sangma’s father, was in the village tea shop with a group of locals. The cane awning restricted sunlight from revealing much of the interior of the shop.
Sangma, even at 85, goes around the village and sometimes down the hill. He moves in short but hurried steps and it makes him look like a child trying to keep up with the world moving needlessly fast ahead. The octogenarian was eager to tell not only his stories but also of the village and about the transformation of Maikhuli, Pilangkata and the adjacent areas. No outsider had ever tried to find out what history lay buried in his old files.
Sangma took out a sheaf of papers and put it on the table. He ran a pre-primary school, St Michael’s School, at Pilangkata that started in 1981. It catered to the children of the village as well as of Maikhuli and Pilangkata.
However, in 1987, suspected members of the ULFA came to the school and threatened Sangma to close it down. The reason, they wanted the land. Sangma was offered money but he refused “because father never wanted to sell the land to residents of Assam or someone from outside the state as he wanted the land to be part of Meghalaya”, said Sangma’s elder son Martin Sangma, adding that people called him “foolish” for being so adamant.
It had been 15 years that Meghalaya attained statehood. The Congress led by William A Sangma was in power in the state. In neighbouring Assam, AGP’s Prafulla Kumar Mahanta was the chief minister.
Sangma, who was also the chairman of Pilangkata Government Higher Secondary School, had to pay the price for his “foolishness”. One fine day, he was kidnapped by a group of miscreants and then he was given a document written in Assamese. He was asked to sign the document at gunpoint. Thirteen people had already started living on the plot before Sangma lost his 1,33,056 sq ft land in a matter of hours.
Now, temporary quarters of the Assam police department stand on the land.
“Our forefathers settled here first and got that plot of land. That belonged to Meghalaya but it was taken away jointly by the AGP and the ULFA. After the construction of the national highway (through Khanapara), more land started vanishing. They were sold at throwaway prices to outsiders. Even our arable land was gone and people lost their source of sustenance,” Sangma said in Garo and broken Hindi.
He glanced through the papers and brought out a document written in Assamese with his signature on it. He also showed the official documents of the school and the land which he once owned.
Sangma took up the matter with government authorities but no action was taken. He also approached the bureaucrats, including the then deputy commissioner, with the appeal to save the land that belonged to the Syiem of Mylliem. But nobody on this side of the border seemed to be keen to save it “for reasons best known to them”.
He was not the only victim of the powerful encroachers. Around 20 households in Maikhuli lost their land to Assam. “Their modus operandi was that they would build three to four temporary bamboo structures overnight on our land. The next morning we would go and find that our land had just slipped out of our hands,” said a 39-year-old resident of Maikhuli who works in Shillong.
The Garo community in Maikhuli had a graveyard on a hillock. That too was gradually taken over by the Assam police in 2001-02. There is an outpost of Patharkuchi police on the encroached land. Locals wonder why an outpost of Assam police would be in Meghalaya.
A case on the graveyard land is still pending in the Supreme Court. There is a stay order and every time there is a death in the locality, the bereaved family has to inform the police first.
A document from February 1979 — the minutes of a meeting between the deputy commissioners of East Khasi Hills and Kamrup, a copy of which is with Sangma — shows it was decided then that “status quo in relation to the boundary would be maintained and no official action by either side would be taken giving rise to situation likely to adversely affect tranquility in the border”. The status quo has been violated time and again.
Still making inroads
Assam, said locals, is not directly encroaching on their land. It is following the development way. With the Meghalaya government least interested in bringing development to Makhuli, Nogthymmai Garo and other adjacent areas, Assam is offering good living conditions to the locals there. The town road is worse than the village path. The muck and slush not only make walking difficult but also hinder movement of vehicles. The overflowing drain along the road adds to the woes, especially during and after rain. But for years, people have been patient and are still waiting for “our government” to act.
Assam wants to build the town road and start a city bus and Maikhuli locals have been opposing this as they do not want to be part of Assam. “But how long will people resist? Do you see the road (Maikhuli-Pilangkata road)? People may change their mind and decide to accept Assam’s offer,” said a resident of Maikhuli.
“The Meghalaya government had tried to build a road from inside Maikhuli because it falls under its jurisdiction but it was stopped. In the past, Rs 80,000 was sanctioned for road but no one knows where the money went,” said Momin, the headman.
The villagers of Nongthymmai Garo said most of the households there were saved from Assam’s greed because the village is on a hilltop. But it won’t be long when outsiders would buy out land even on the hilltop and “some dealers are already eyeing land here”, informed Dominic as he showed a nearby hill that was bought by “someone” in Assam and there is plan to start rubber plantation.
Who to blame
The villagers no more feel bitter about years of backwardness, neglect, land encroachment and lack of basic facilities. This is because they know now that nothing will be done, at least not by the state government.
The locals said JD Rymbai was the MLA of Jirang for 25 years but he did not do anything and hardly visited the place. The state government could have taken a stern stand on land encroachment but it chose to stay silent.
“Had the state government brought in development, Assam would not have encroached on our land. But the state seems absolutely reluctant to help its own citizens. It is neither interested in solving the land dispute nor developing the place,” said Dominic, who has succeeded in breaking away from the place and making a name for himself as a filmmaker.
He said he wants to develop the place as an eco-tourism zone. It is still an inchoate idea.
But what till his plan becomes a reality? No one in the tea shop bothered to reply to that because the answer was too obvious.
~ Nabamita Mitra