Scheming Chinese Ghost,
Skimming Fund
A
couple of days after fresh aggression from China around Pangong Lake,
Ladakh, the Ministry of Home Affairs reportedly told a couple of mainstream
m edia that the government plans to train border populations at the
level of a paramilitary force and even give them arms training so that
in times of emergency they can be utilized. This news was carried in the
Times of India on its July 2 publication. Another surprising news
was publicized by the India Today group in its magazine and sister
concern "Daily Mail" wherein it again quoted MHA sources of
planning to allocate additional Rs 5000 crores for resettlement
along the border in Arunachal Pradesh and according to the same report,
Arunachalees have been pushed 50kms further inside from the
McMahon Line. (By the way, is MHA now referring to the last incursion
incident at Chagalam, Anjaw district? Eastern Sentinel reported and fed
the news to national dailies. At that point in time,MHA sources denied
such incursion.)
If
what is written in mainstream newspapers and magazines are true then
somebody need to justify such parochial posturing in the nuclear weapon
age, where wars are fought on economic front, battles are fought on
trade policies and manoeuvres are measured in terms of foreign policies.
Even to consider resettling people along the McMahon Line, to train
Arunachalee folks in weapon handling etc. is symptomatic of a regressive
mindset. Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Premier Chou En Lai are long
dead, even the Chinese have forgotten about "Long March" and
there's no Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist versus Mao's CCP. There's no
Stalin's Red Army or its agenda. Chinese no longer indulge in guerrilla
warfare.
Arunachal
Pradesh is not located near Waziristan. It's not a battle between two
ill-equipped war-lords. Today, China is a nuclear power. India too is a
nuclear power. Therefore, as inhabitants of the border state and as the
citizens of an emerging economic global power, one would agree with
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's principle of keeping friendly relations
with neighbours as equals and not inferiors. But to impart military
training to deal with a neighbour like China is laughable. It defies all
logic to find mention of "talk and thought of engineering reverse migration"
from urban areas to rural sectors. It's like flowing against time,
swimming against the tide.
It's
compelling to recollect my father narrating the necessity for him to
make his first trip in early 1930s from an interior village to the plains
of Assam to earn money. He was yet to wear even a piece of loin cloth,
so young he was but he made his journey across the Bahadur Hills, the
Bharamputra to Sadiya to work in a cane farm. Not that my father was
famished in the village. Not that my grand-father could ill afford the
bare minimums. But the key drive for my father was the huge urge to see
a different world, innate desire to be integrated with the new world
order. Perhaps, seeking out avenues in better places had been the best
decision, he ever made. Sociologists and Anthropologists would confirm
that the phenomenon of migration from deep rural areas to more safe and
secure urban pockets is an age old, predictable social evolution pattern.
As
"thought scoop", North and South block need to rethink on its
approach to consider Arunachalees as human
shields, with weapons.Instead of pushing for life-skill trainings
including industrial training, the very thought of government intending
to train people on any outdated skill-sets stink of scam in offing. For
the record, Prime Minister's Skill Development Programme has been a
black box, literally. If investigated many skeletons would tumble out.
It is just that many of us have self prescribed to the Ostrich syndrome.
For once, let's not be a "cry-baby" and appreciate that MHA,
year-on-year, has given enough funds running into Crores of rupee under
Border Area Development Programme
(BADP). However, keeping in tradition of being legendary skimmers of
schemes, all that Arunachalees produce out of Crores of rupee were all "fictional", almost
like "nude King's clothes"--invisible to all. That's power of
invisible hands, perhaps!
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