POLITICS-INDIA: Tough Job Awaits Rulers of New Hill State

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 26 2000 (IPS) - The ‘addition’ of a new province to India on Nov. 1, to be carved out of the central Himalayan foothills in northern Uttar Pradesh state, will satisfy a decades-old demand of the hill folk in that region.

Uttaranchal will be one of the three new Indian states to be born on that day, which are being created out of three big states — Uttar Pradesh, its eastern neighbour Bihar and Madhya Pradesh to its south.

While the setting up of Uttaranchal, with a population of about eight million people, marks the success of a six-year-old mass campaign, a tough job awaits the rulers of the new state.

Their goal is to tackle a unique form of underdevelopment. Uttaranchal has one of India’s highest levels of adult literacy and education, but decades of neglect are blamed for the continuing downhill migration of residents from a region that still has a subsistence farming-based economy.

It was this feeling of being neglected by the federal government and the rulers of Uttar Pradesh based in the distant state capital Lucknow, that had fired the demand for a new state.

Its picturesque river valleys, flanked by snow topped mountains, make tourism a major source of income for the region, but not much has been done to develop this in ways to benefit the local economy.

Uttaranchal, with its major Himalayan rivers has tremendous potential to generate hydro-electricity, but this is not easy in the highly seismic and ecologically-fragile mountain region.

Fruit and flower cultivation also offer much scope for job and income generation. Uttaranchal continues to be a ‘money-order’ economy, where generations of male migrants have supported families back home with monthly postal remittances from the big cities in the plains of India.

The creation of the new state is expected to result in better attention to these priorities. But that will have to wait for the resolution of political problems that have cropped up even before Uttaranchal is born.

Many among those who agitated for a separate home for the hill people, are now complaining of serious flaws in the administrative shape of the new state. They are unhappy with the decision to make the major hill town of Dehradun, some 250 km north of the Indian capital, the ‘interim capital’ of Uttaranchal.

The problem has arisen because Uttaranchal is made up of the two culturally different sub-regions of Garhwal and Kumaon. Dehradun is part of the former. The relatively obscure, but strategically located town of Gairsen, which straddles the Garhwal and Kumaon areas, has long been suggested as a ‘compromise’ capital.

“There is too much uncertainty over vital issues,” says Harish Rawat of the Uttarakhand Sanyukt Sangharsh Samiti, one of the groups which campaigned for the new state.

There are fears that the kind of development promised by the politicians, may lead to further environmental damage to the hills. Studies have found that so-called development work in the area has only worsened environmental degradation, adding to women’s work, by making them walk longer to fetch fuel wood and water.

According to Sachidananda Bharati of the Dudhatoli Lok Vikas Sansthan, a people’s group working in Uttaranchal, the continuing neglect of the hills has hurt women the most. The migration of their men to the plains means not only loneliness for the women, but forces them to take up hard physical work on farms.

The creation of a new state is also expected to draw in more real estate developers from India’s big cities. In recent years, property developers from the Indian capital have bought up picturesque hill slopes from local farmers to build holiday homes for rich people from the plains.

“This racket is happening with the connivance of local level officials,” says Nathu Begum, the president of an elected village council in Dehradun district. Nobody is complaining too loudly because the racket is keeping land prices up, she adds.

Demands have been raised that the new state follow the example of other Himalayan states like adjoining Himachal Pradesh, which have strict laws, banning outsiders from buying local land.