The run-up to the 2021 Assam Assembly Elections appears to be hugely chaotic. Except for a few heavyweights in single digit, the vast majority of candidates, including a large number of BJP bigwigs brandishing awesome power, appear to be mere floaters – floating in a fathomless sea sans direction caused by electoral whirlpools, tornados and storms. Public bombardment due to the incumbency factor, marked by failures on all fronts, is turning into a surgical blitz.
The electoral terrain for the ruling Czars is not only bumpy but hugely hostile being littered with sharp crevices, deep gorges, massive craters & pits. With the political milieu seemingly turning into a suffocating one, many bigwigs appear to be running short of materials in respect of foolery & thuggery.
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With the landscape almost turning into a desert, several BJP heavyweights are perhaps seeing mirages and are also striving, for public consumption, to project mirages as the reality to emerge in saffron hands. The most prominent of these heavyweights is Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Wooing for another 5-year term for the BJP at Dispur, the minister announced that the saffron party government would make Assam flood-free, erosion-free & influx-free.
Well, jokes apart, the saying goes that absurdity, stupidity or buffoonery must be confined to proper limits in civilised societies. The need of the hour demands that some of the major promises made by the saffron party to the people of Assam in the last seven years be scrutinized.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha poll campaign, the BJP promised (a) that not an inch of land would be ceded to Bangladesh in settling border disputes; the outcome was that Assam became the biggest loser of land among the Northeast states: (b) that the Assam Accord would be implemented in letter & spirit; the outcome being gang-raped of the Accord by the BJP and its CAA: (c) that Bangladeshis would be deported lock, stock & barrel from Assam.
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The party also announced a date during the 2016 Assam Assembly elections campaign asking the Bangladeshi foreigners to pack up; the outcome being that the Bangladeshis were divided on communal line making only the Muslim Bangladeshis foreigners while CAA was enacted to grant citizenship, ‘mati & bheti’ to millions of Hindu Bangladeshi foreigners.
Indeed it could be a well-calculated game-plan of the saffron party to not only befool the people of Assam but also to lay down the roadmap to legalize the illegal entry of Hindu Bangladeshis to Assam.
The process of multiplying BJP’s Hindu vote bank could also be an integral part of the greater saffron master plan. By no stretch of the imagination could the people of Assam visualize around 2014 that such a nasty, loathsome, sinister & anti-Assam blueprint was in store in the saffron citadel.
As a cover-up, the Sikhs, Christians et al have been enlisted alongside the Hindus foreigners. The question arises as to how many Sikhs or Buddhists or Christians are present in Bangladesh). The CAA provides full protection to all foreigners save Muslims (Assam’s ground reality – all Hindu Bangladeshis) who entered Assam up to December 31, 2014. What about those who entered Assam w.e.f. 1st January 2015 till date or those to enter Assam after 5 years or 10 years henceforth?
Is this the last CAA or many more CAAs are in the pipeline in the years/decades to come? Again, the BJP promised umpteen times that immediately on receiving the report of the so-called high power committee on Clause 6 of the Assam Accord, the same would be implemented. Today, the said report is on the funeral pyre awaiting to be set ablaze after chanting Nagpur-Gujarat-Delhi mantras.
Now that the 2021 Assam elections are knocking at the door, BJP tycoon Amit Shah is plaguing the electoral milieu with wild, wanton, bizarre & outlandish promises. As is the BJP’s won’t, Shah made sky-shattering announcements that the saffron dispensation would make Assam flood-free, erosion-free & influx-free.
Well, well! One must differentiate between an electoral stage and a circus where clowns have a field day. Shah may be told that all previous governments, including the Vajpayee government and 7-years of Modi government, have done nothing worth its salt to tackle the menace of several flood waves annually and the accompanying soil erosion in Assam.
If the annual killer flood waves are to be foiled, blustering rhetoric from Nagpur, Dispur, Delhi, or Gandhinagar (Gujarat) may only prove to be insurmountable roadblocks. The need is for a thorough scientific survey/study with state-of-the-art technology of the Brahmaputra, even its upstream in Tibet.
The topography & terrain of the region, the geo-physical & geo-climatic and seismic aspects on both sides of the Indo-China border are of vital importance. A study of the tributaries of the Brahmaputra and the different terrains as they crisscross the state in the same light is equally important.
Another aspect of the survey/study may pertain to the flow of the river as it enters Bangladesh. The neighboring countries, upstream and downstream, may also have a word or two to state in respect of the third stage as their cooperation even in the matter of a scientific survey/study of the Brahmaputra outside India may be vital. Even if the survey/study chapter is to be taken up with fire-fighting urgency, the process alone may consume at least a decade, if not more.
The BJP manifesto makes reference to the dredging of the Brahmaputra. This process was undertaken about a couple of years ago by the Sonowal government sans the minimum commonsense approach. It was another flop showbiz of the incumbent government.
Unscientific & mindless dredging may only amount to digging up a massive ditch without an outlet. Once the ditch is full, both the banks, for miles & miles together, may turn into massive seas sans any shore – ushering doomsday & slaughter of lives in lakhs. The building of reservoirs to store excess water is idiotic. When the entire state turns into a massive reservoir during the flood, where lies the space to build a reservoir? Up on the hills?
In the matter of ‘zero influx’, what could more remote and communal than the truth. Through the highly communal CAA, the BJP has made it clear that ‘influx’ refers only to Muslim infiltrators. Illegal entry by members of all other religious communities, mainly Hindus in tens of millions, does not come within BJP’s definition of ‘influx’.
While the Congress is alleged to be encouraging Muslim influx since the days of Vajpayee rule with LK Advani as Deputy PM & Home Minister and 7 years of Modi rule at the Centre, the border fencing with Bangladesh continues to be a long chain of open gateways for the any-time influx.
Interestingly enough, there are quite a few areas along the Indo-Bangla border in the Northeast where Bangladeshi workers cross the border in the morning, work at construction sites, including the building security infrastructure, and depart for their homes in Bangladesh with the fall of dusk.
The people of Assam are not an idiotic lot to consume any stinking bullshit doled out by Delhi bigwigs. Rather these all-powerful demigods may take care that their fiendish images don’t get reflected in the public domain. Inflated, bombastic and fictitious hogwash emanate from fiefdoms of apparent losers seething in frustration.