Those who are wondering how Assam will be ten or twenty years from now must admit that the State’s future is rather bleak. This is because people who are looking at our government’s performance ever since the BJP came to power in Assam in the Assembly elections of 2016 have reasons to be greatly disappointed. There has been no dearth of promises that are not backed up by performance. This is not to suggest that anything notable had been achieved during the preceding 15 years when the Congress was in power. In fact, it was because nothing worthwhile was happening in the State by way of development during the 15-year rule of the Congress that the electorate decided to throw the party out of power in the Assembly elections of 2016 and to vote for a change. However, the sad part of the story is that the BJP-led NDA government of Assam has so far proved to be as inefficient as the Congress in terms of performance. The bulk of the work done by the State government comprises the observance of the numerous ‘days’ in the calendar, ceremonies to inaugurate one project or the other, felicitation of worthies and announcement of sums donated for projects that might not even take off. There has been very little to show by way of achievement without the customary fanfare backed up by expensive full-page advertisements in the local newspapers. And there seems to be a general impression that the government does not propose to do anything about tackling the major problems afflicting the State. It is high time to look at what could be going wrong.
No real development of any State can take place without well-conceived plans and without political leaders and bureaucrats committed to the tasks and implications of development. This calls for deep commitment to the responsibilities involved and the will to see every well-planned project to its efficient completion. Unfortunately, our political executive and bureaucrats have not got down even to the task of identifying the areas that deserve attention. There is the general impression that the infrastructure even for health services, education and communication seems to be missing. The kind and level of malnutrition in our villages is appalling, and no one in government seems even to be concerned. The government hospitals and health centres are often unmanned or too poorly manned to be of any use to our rural population. There are many health centres without doctors and nurses, and there quite a few cases of a doctor having to look after two health centres. Many health centres are very short of essential medicines, and it is common practice for suppliers to dump drugs beyond their expiry dates on government health centres. No one has heard of a single case of someone being punished for such a grievous offence against the people. As for education, we all know about the kind of education being imparted in our primary and secondary schools. Considering that education is expected to bring about desirable behavioural changes in the individual, quite the opposite seems to be happening due to half-baked and motivated education replacing true education. Perhaps the most outstanding outcome of education in our country is the plotting of strife among different communities. Original thinking among the educated population is missing because most teachers discourage it. We are left with people who can imitate the thinking and deeds of others around them.
The very lack of determination to do anything about the large-scale illegal migration of Bangladeshis to Assam is most intriguing. This should have got our government very deeply concerned and impelled it to take purposeful action to (a) prevent such unlawful immigration and (b) deport all such illegal migrants. None of this has happened. On the contrary, most of our politicians have spared no pains to get the names of such illegal migrants included in our electoral roll so that they can vote en masse for chosen candidates at general elections without looking at the credentials of the candidates. This is the greatest problem threatening our very existence and identity. But our elected governments have failed to do anything about tackling the problem. Even the education of our bureaucrats has been unavailing in their utter failure to deal with this problem with dedication and a sense of patriotism.
The fate of the updating exercise of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) should be a clear pointer to the inefficiency of the bureaucracy and its inability to counter the diabolic machinations of vested interests bending over backwards to ensure that most of the illegal migrants to Assam from Bangladesh get listed as Indian citizens. On Thursday, the Centre decided to extend the deadline for the updating of the NRC to 30 June 2019—for the sixth time. What should be very clear now is that despite all the half-page advertisements about “Our NRC, fair NRC” the NRC as updated so far still has a large number of the names of illegal migrants from Bangladesh included in it, and can only hope to be a fair NRC by time its sixth extension expires.
Then there is the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 which bids fair to enlarge the existing vote bank extensively and to provide candidates of the ruling party with an easy means of winning elections without any worthwhile performance. The Centre is hell-bent on pushing through this black piece of legislation that threatens the very existence of Assam and the Assamese people. The ruling party has taken a stand as though it could not care less about the people of Assam—all because it is looking for easy electoral gains. It has now become difficult to assess what the Constitution means to the ruling party if it can so completely jeopardize the identity of a few million Indians living in Assam merely for electoral gains.