Agartala: Experts, academicians and professionals of Northeast India have diverse views on the pros and cons of the Inner Line Permit (ILP) regulation that regulates movement of outsiders and excludes the ILP-administered areas from the purview of the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
After violent protests in the Northeastern states, local and regional parties including BJP allies — Meghalaya’s ruling National People’s Party (NPP) and Mizoram’s ruling Mizo National Front (MNF) — the central government also exempted the Tribal Autonomous District Council (TADC)-governed areas besides the ILP-run areas from the purview of the CAA.
The ILP was in force in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram and was promulgated in Manipur on December 11, while the Meghalaya Assembly on December 19 cutting across party lines unanimously adopted a resolution requesting the Centre to promulgate the ILP in the hill state.
The Assembly resolution and the state gazette notification have already been communicated to the Union Home Ministry.
On whether the ILP would hamper tourism, trade, investment, free movement of people in five of the seven Northeastern states excluding only Assam and Tripura, experts, academicians and professionals are in varied observations and judgment.
Former Vice-Chancellor of Assam University Tapodhir Bhattacharjee said people of Barak Valley region in southern Assam would be sandwiched and blockaded due to the ILP regime in neighbouring Manipur, Mizoram and Meghalaya.
“To go to Guwahati or other parts of the country by road, people of Barak Valley comprising 40 lakh people have to go through Meghalaya. It would be very difficult to take ILP every time each people have to pass through Meghalaya state,” Bhattacharjee, a former legislator of the Assam assembly, told IANS.
Bhattacharjee’s views were echoed by Assam’s Citizen Rights Protection Committee’s secretary general Sadhan Purkayastha.
He said: “Hundreds of small traders from southern Assam have to go to neighbouring Mizoram and Manipur for doing business. Hundreds of workers are depended on the Meghalaya coal fields and various types of works in the neighbouring states for livelihood. These people would be put in a severe awkward position. Experience of ILP regime in Mizoram is not good. For a petty issue locals in Mizoram had imposed ‘curfew’ (unofficial embargo) against the outsiders.”
Purkayastha told IANS that the future of 40 lakh people of three districts of Barak Valley region in Southern Assam — Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi — is very uncertain.
According to Manipur University Professor and political observer Chinglen Maisnam, “the ILP is a ‘pain killer’ like measure as we have to wait and watch whether the step would actually protect and promote the life, culture and economy of the indigenous people of the region.”
“For the people of the Northeastern states, after an indepth study, special policies have to be formulated to deal with the economy, life, culture and traditions of the 4.5 crore people of the region,” he said and assumed that in the long term ILP might benefit the indigenous people of the region.
Assam Assembly’s Congress Chief Whip Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha said that imposition of the ILP in five of the seven Northeastern states is a conspiracy of the BJP-led central and state governments.
“Non-tribals of the region are in imminent danger. Traders, workers, travellers and people of all walks of life in Assam and Tripura would be in trouble due to ILP in most parts of the region. People of south Assam would face problems in travelling to different parts of the state as they will have to take the ILP to use Meghalaya or Mizoram territory during the transit,” Purkayastha said and added that he would raise the issue in the Assam Assembly in the next session in February.
Journalist and political analyst Samudra Gupta Kashyap said that while ILP has helped to protect the indigenous tribal communities of various states of the North East, several organisations in Assam have been also demanding introduction of ILP in Assam.
“I don’t think ILP will adversely affect tourism. Tourism has been doing well in Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh despite ILP. Tourism anyway has not picked up in the real sense in Manipur during the pre-ILP era. It is difficult to say about trade and commerce,” Kashyap, who has written several books on numerous subjects, told IANS.
Guwahati-based Rashtriya Gramin Vikas Nidhi’s (RGVN) executive director and noted economist Amiya Sharma said that in short term, ILP might affect but in long run it would be familiar to all, specially the outsiders. RGVN is a national level multi-state development and support organisation working in all Northeastern states and seven other states of the country.
“Indigenous and local people have to be equipped with the processing and better utilising the local resources, marketing and expansion of trade and business,” Sharma said.
Ashish Phookan, Managing Director of Jungle Travels India, a Guwahati-based leading tour operator, said that as per the Arunachal, Nagaland and Mizoram experience, the ILP in no way would affect the tourism in North East India.
“People from all parts of India including abroad every year took part in various traditional festivals in Arunachal and Nagaland including most famous ‘Hornbill’ carnival,” Phookan said.
Around 40,000 foreign tourists and 8 lakh domestic tourists visit the picturesque North East region, of which variety of characteristics remained unexplored to even most Indians.
Prominent tribal leader and former Tripura Forest and Tribal Welfare Minister Jitendra Chowdhury said that if the entire region is exempted from the CAA, all contentious, agitating and historical issues would be resolved automatically.
“Rulers in Delhi never intensely and genuinely studied the people, demography, history and political consequences of the region causing many problems to remain unsettled,” Chowdhury, also a former Lok Sabha member, said. (IANS)
