Written by: Kishor Kumar Kalita and Mahesh Deka
Jagiroad: Nestled amid lush paddy fields, rolling green hillocks, and forests dotted with sonaru (golden shower) and krishnachura (flame trees), the villages near Jagiroad in Assam’s Morigaon district present a picture of rural tranquillity. For generations, indigenous communities—primarily the Tiwas, along with Nepali and Kaivarta (SC) families—have cultivated these lands, nurtured forests, and built their lives around agriculture.
Today, however, beneath this idyllic landscape lies a growing sense of uncertainty and fear. In villages such as Sindhisar, Naldhara, Bihita, Palashbari, and Rowmari, residents worry that the fields they cultivate and the forests they helped create may soon disappear under one of Assam’s most ambitious urban development projects.
The people here are no longer simply looking at the forests they nurtured; they are looking over their shoulders at a looming Rs 27,000-crore mega-project that they fear could erase their way of life.
The Assam government’s recent proposal to establish a sprawling “satellite city” to support the upcoming Tata Semiconductor Project at the site of the now-defunct Nagaon Paper Mill in Jagiroad has sparked fierce protests. For the Tiwa and other indigenous communities, this is not merely a story of urbanisation—it is a haunting echo of a history they have already lived through.
Echoes of the Past: The Noonmati Precedent
To understand the anxiety gripping Jagiroad today, one must look back to the 1950s, when Assam fought a historic battle over the location of an oil refinery following the discovery of crude oil in Naharkatia in 1953.
The Government of India initially planned to establish two public-sector refineries and selected Barauni in Bihar as one of the sites, overlooking Assam’s demand that its own crude oil be refined within the state. The decision triggered widespread protests. Led by the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and the All Assam Oil Refinery Action Committee, a mass movement swept across Assam, demanding that the refinery be established in the state.
After years of agitation and political pressure, the Centre relented. In 1957, Union Minister Sardar Swaran Singh announced that one of the two refineries would be set up in Assam. The Planning Commission subsequently approved Noonmati in Guwahati as the site. Construction began in 1960, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated the Guwahati Refinery on January 1, 1962.
While the refinery marked a major milestone in Assam’s industrialisation and Guwahati’s urban growth, it also triggered a process of displacement whose consequences continue to resonate decades later.
Alongside workers from outside the state, many Assamese people—predominantly from middle-class backgrounds—also found employment at the refinery.
But amid the celebration of progress, a crucial question remained unanswered: What happened to the tribal communities who had lived on that land for generations?
“When the Noonmati refinery was established, the urbanisation of Guwahati accelerated at a breakneck pace, but it came at a profound human cost,” said a professor at IIT Guwahati who requested anonymity.
“The indigenous tribal belts, which were historically protected agrarian spaces, were suddenly commodified. The original inhabitants—many of whom were deeply connected to the legacy of the erstwhile Tiwa kingdom and the Gobha King—found their traditional land rights unrecognised by the modern capitalist state. They were quietly pushed to the city’s peripheries and effectively rendered invisible in the metropolis built on their ancestral lands,” he said.
The answer lies in a poignant letter published in the Raijor Sithi (Letters to the Editor) column of Assamese daily Dainik Asam on August 27, 1966. Signed by displaced indigenous men including Bhada Ram Boro, Ratneswar Teron, and Hanhiram Mikir, the letter described how nearly 100 farming families evicted for the refinery and railway projects in Noonmati and Bamunimaidam were relocated to 800 bighas of land in the Sindhisar Reserve of Nagaon district.
“From the very beginning, the newly settled Mikir and Kachari farmers have been harassed by local cultivators. We, the plains tribals, were already devastated by being evicted once before. The root cause of these 100 families constantly being entangled in court cases and disputes is the apathy of the Nagaon district authorities,” the letter read.
“We had been permanent residents of Noonmati and Bamunimaidam for generations. Is it not the government’s duty to pay attention to our misery? Are we not permanent residents of Assam?”
Instead of finding peace, these displaced families became entangled in endless land disputes, harassment, and litigation. They had been uprooted from their ancestral homes and transformed into landless refugees within their own state.
Today, in a cruel twist of history, the descendants of many of those families resettled in Sindhisar are once again facing the prospect of displacement—this time for the proposed Jagiroad Integrated Satellite Township.
A “Satellite City” for Whom?
The proposed master plan for the new satellite city, prepared by a Singapore-based firm, spans nearly 2,000 acres. Another 1,500-acre satellite city has been proposed at Barduar under the Palashbari Assembly constituency.
The stated objective is to provide housing and urban infrastructure for employees expected to work at the Tata Semiconductor facility. Yet this raises a critical socio-economic question: Whose interests will this city ultimately serve?
The late Chief Minister Bishnuram Medhi’s concerns about local employment remain relevant even today. Will a highly specialised semiconductor project realistically generate jobs for displaced tribal farmers and their children? Or will indigenous communities once again be relegated to the margins, serving a new urban elite as domestic workers, security guards, and drivers?
The Warning from Sarjapur
One need not look far into the future to imagine how this story could unfold. Sarjapur, a peripheral town on the outskirts of Bengaluru, offers a sobering cautionary tale.
Once known for its muslin and Mughal-style textiles, Sarjapur was transformed by Bengaluru’s IT boom. Today, it is home to major technology campuses and luxury residential developments worth crores of rupees.
Yet beneath its gleaming skyline lies a fractured social landscape. Corporate employees live in gated communities largely disconnected from the local population. Many original residents who sold their agricultural lands decades ago now find themselves priced out of the economy built upon those very lands.
“When they first came to buy our lands, we thought our social and financial condition would become very strong and that our children would get good jobs,” a Sarjapur shopkeeper reportedly told a visiting journalist. “But nothing of the sort happened. Our lands, bought for a few thousand rupees, are now worth crores. Our children got no jobs. A city was imposed on our village. Now it is a different world, and we local people have no connection with it.”
“The peripheral satellite towns emerging across India often function as exclusionary spaces,” observed a Guwahati-based urban planner.
“Projects like the one proposed in Jagiroad frequently default to a gated-community model. They parachute high-income, ultra-modern infrastructure into fragile agrarian landscapes without meaningfully integrating local communities.
“The result is often a dual economy: a high-tech enclave for the affluent and a marginalised periphery where locals lose their land-based livelihoods and survive only through precarious informal work as security guards, cleaners, and drivers,” he said.
Custodians of the Forest: The Tongia Legacy
The potential displacement in Jagiroad is made even more tragic by the fact that the local Tiwa community helped create the very forests that now stand in the project’s path.
According to historical Forest Department records, including a letter dated October 1, 1967, from the Dharamtul Forest Range Officer, villagers were settled as Tongias. Under the colonial-era Tongia system, indigenous communities received small homestead and agricultural plots in exchange for planting and protecting forest reserves.
Between 1958 and 1967, residents of Sindhisar Tongia village planted saplings across approximately 10 acres annually. Despite their role in developing the Killing Valley Reserve Forest, they remained trapped in bureaucratic uncertainty and repeatedly petitioned authorities for additional land as their families expanded.
In 2010, after decades of struggle, many residents finally received legal recognition under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006. Yet legal recognition alone offers little assurance when confronted by large-scale development projects.
“The green hills you see around us were grown by the people of our village,” said Saibor Patar, 68, a resident of Sindhisar.
“When our ancestors were settled here as Tongias, we received agricultural land in exchange for planting saplings. Now, if we are driven away to accommodate outsiders, where will we go? We built these forests. Now they want to uproot us and destroy them. We will never allow that to happen.”
The Resistance Phase
The resistance has been swift and intense. Following strong opposition led by the All Tiwa Students’ Union (ATSU) and local residents, Morigaon District Commissioner Anamika Tewari recently cancelled a proposed land survey related to rehabilitation and resettlement.
An umbrella coalition of indigenous organisations—including the Tiwa Sahitya Sabha, Historic Tiwa Darbar, and the All Assam Gorkha Students’ Union—has submitted a memorandum to Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, warning of a mass movement if their demands are ignored.
Their key demands include:
a) A complete halt to the eviction of Sindhisar, Naldhara, Bihita, Palashbari, and Rowmari villages, and a ban on satellite-city projects within the 17 tribal belts and blocks under the Tiwa Autonomous Council.
b) Removal of illegal encroachers from tribal belts and blocks across Assam to facilitate the rehabilitation of protected indigenous communities.
c) Immediate issuance of legal land titles to indigenous families occupying PGR and VGR lands.
d) Immediate recognition and distribution of individual and community rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006.
e) If land originally donated by local residents for the Jagiroad Paper Mill is utilised for the Tata project, the government must guarantee 100 per cent employment for local indigenous youth.
“This land carries the blood, sweat, and history of our ancestors who lived proudly under the domain of the Gobha King,” said Pramod Sagra, General Secretary of ATSU.
“The government expects us to sacrifice our heritage and our forests so that outsiders can live in luxury apartments. We gave our land for the paper mill decades ago in the name of development, and when it shut down, we were left with nothing. If the administration attempts to impose this satellite city on the Gobha Tribal Belt, it will face a historic resistance. We will not become refugees on the land of the Gobha King. We will give blood, not land.”
For many young people, the issue extends beyond land rights—it is also about political trust.
“Most people in our area voted for the BJP in this election,” said Sanjeev Khorai, Assistant General Secretary of ATSU.
“The ruling party promised to protect the Jati, Mati, aru Bheti (race, land and homeland) of Assam’s indigenous people. Instead of protecting us, they are trying to take away the little land we still possess. We will protect our land and forests at all costs,” he said.
As the Assam government charts an ambitious industrial future, it faces a profound reckoning in the hills of Morigaon.
The resistance unfolding in Sindhisar and Barduar is not merely a local dispute over land acquisition. It raises a fundamental question about the cost of development—and whether India’s indigenous communities are destined to remain the collateral damage of urbanisation.