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Africa and Tripura -- What a mix up !
Subir Bhaumik Former BBC Correspondant

PHOTO : Indian Ambassador to Sudan Deepak Vhora meets CM Manik Sarkar at secretariat. TIWN Pic

Former Indian diplomat Deepak Vohra flew into Tripura with bagful of praise for the state's handling of the ethnic conflict last week. Several African nations, he said, were keen to learn from Tripura's experience. Indian politicians love such praise when they arrive from unexpected quarters and Tripura left rulers cannot be faulted if they feel well over what Deepak Vohra ended up telling the local media.

I think the first thing that Mr Vohra has got messed up is whether Tripura is successful in handling ethnic conflict or the ethnic tribal insurgency . I have written atleast three major book chapters and monographs on Tripura's successful handling of tribal insurgency , the latest being a chapter in Ranabir Sammadar's volume 'Government of Peace' published by UK's Ashgate publishers. Prior to this, I have done a monograph on the subject for Calcutta Research Group and one book chapter for Sanjib's Baruah's highly acclaimed volume " Beyond Counter-Insurgency" (published by Oxford University Press).

There is no doubt that there are few parallels in India and Tripura's government and administration can claim credit for the way it crushed tribal insurgency . Its quite aggression of promoting covert operations across the border , its success with area domination , its use of rubber as a crop to create a class in tribal society that would prefer agriculture to insurgency for quick cash -- all this and more calls for praise.

But Tripura has not resolved its ethnic conflict. The non-tribal domination continues to upset tribals and the CPI(M)'s style of functioning does not help. Why can't the party, whose origins are in the hills of Tripura during the anti-royal movements and the post-indepedence armed struggle , have a single tribal leader in the party's all powerful politbureau ! Must it be full of students and youth leaders who have never worked with peasents and industrial labour, not to talk of the tribal areas and who flaunt their pseudo-intellect by prescribing all and sundry to read John Reed's " Ten Days that shook the world". A generation of Bengali comrades knew tribal society like the back of their palm -- Nripen Chakrabarty, Biren Dutta , Mohan Choudhury Ranjan Ray and countless others . The present generation of Bengali CPI(M) leadership are the SFI-DYFI types whose experience is limited to college politics and whose familiarity with tribal life and society is not worth breast-beating.

So when one seeks to build on the success of crushing tribal insurgency and take it to the next stage of resolving ethnic conflict, Bengali chauvinism in its worst form tend to surface in the party. I have been suggesting a roadmap of ethnic reconciliation at the heart of which is the proposal to decommission the Gumti hydel project and making its reclaimed land available for landless tribal farmers. Dear Comrades, please try to understand that alienation of tribal land is at the heart of the ethnic conflict in Tripura and there can be no resolution to the state's ethnic conflict without addressing the land question. It is because your comrades in West Bengal failed to understand the intensity of the land issue that they were thrown out of power over the Singur and Nandigram movements .

And if you get carried away by the praise from the likes of Deepak Vohra and mix up the two -- crushing of tribal insurgency and resolution of the ethnic conflict -- you will only leave the next generation in Tripura with the prospect of a revived insurgency , perhaps in a more virulent form. It only takes a change of regime in Bangladesh to create the right conditions for insurgency in the Northeast to thrive again.

Tripura's ethnic conflict, let us face facts, has not been resolved. Its Left rulers have merely crushed tribal insurgency. But will muster the courage to decommission the Gumti Dam to make available enough lands for landless tribals , will it take the initiativbe to reserve atleast 5-6 more assembly seats for tribals to ensure close to equal sharing of political power and will it do something within the party to set an example ! Will it ever muster the courage to promote another tribal chief minister . It may dismiss that as symbolism but in modern electoral politics, symbol and substance combine to ensure political success.

A successful implementation of a roadmap for ethnic reconciliation in Tripura can make the CPI(M) a fresh lease of life in national politics -- it can then lay claim to creative politics and promoting creative solutions which other parties only promise. Creative politics, that Sitaram Yechury promised after his elevation as CPI(M) general secretary, cannot just be created by efficient handling of social media . Only when the party has done something worthwhile can it be projected in social or traditional media . Or else you go the AAP way . That is the Bollywood genre of politics -- all promise and big talk, not delivery .

And Mr Vohra, Africa is so different from Tripura. Thankfully my homeland has not yet been drawn into the vortex of global rivalry over resources involving Big Powers and the Indian nation-state is stronger than those in the Dark Continent. Thankfully, we had a powerful left movement which did not completely ethnicise social consciousness as in Africa. But the left movement has to rise to new challenges and resolve Tripura's ethnic conflict. It cannot rest on the laurels of its police action and counter-insurgency success. The politicians must do their bit .

(Mr. Subir Bhaumik is a veteran journalist, former BBC correspondant and author of two well acclaimed books ‘Insurgent Crossfire’ and ‘Troubled Periphery’ )

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