ST Status 

and its demand in Assam

It will probably be no overstatement to say that the law and order situation in Assam is just like the weather condition during rainy season in the region. In other words, just as forecasting weather during a summer month is a tall order, foretelling what will be or what propositions Assam’s political equation will assume in the up-coming days is also an equally uphill job.

One casual visitor may raise the question as to what is the reason or what is it because of which the prediction of State’s law and order is challenging. There is no iota of doubt that the much sought after peace in Assam that was as near elusive as essential commodities of daily consumption had been in the recent worst-ever flooding in Jammu and Kashmir rendering thousands of people, if not more, marooned and homeless for days together, is now palpably limping back to the trouble-torn state following a turnaround in the situation due to the recent arrest of some cadres of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) including its Assam unit chief Sujina Begum.

Has the time come for ending this raging controversy for the demand of Scheduled Tribe status to the six communities of Assam when 13% of the toal reservation metted out is still not alloted to anybody. The six ethnic groups have been agitating since 1968 for being recognized as Scheduled Tribe

Candidly, essentially a multi-cultural, multi-lingual society with too many and diverse communities living here, the state is a house of contradiction. Why has it been reduced to such a state? The reasons are fundamental and obvious: a host of long-standing socio-political-economic problems the people in the state have been facing for so long, the incumbent Congress government has hardly been able to resolve even some of them that too, in spite of the same party establishment having been in power at the Centre till the formation of the Narendra Modi-led BJP government in May.

Dwaipayan Das Gupta

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