Curse of 'dotion' culture

The Biswajit Rai faction of the AKRSU has issued a fiat to people of the Koch Rajbongshi community — participate in the agitation demanding Scheduled Tribe (ST) status for the community or pay ‘fines’ to his organisation regularly. These fines, or rather dotions, will begin upwards from Rs 500 to Rs 1 lakh. Rai is trying to defend the indefensible by saying that some well-off people from his community cannot be allowed to avail of ST benefits sitting at home, after others have won that status by agitating in the streets, ‘so fines will have to be imposed’. But the AKRSU-B chief has merely exposed the mindset of many students, youth and social organisations active in the State with various agitatiol agendas. Some of these organisations even point to the Congress party which received dotions from the people during the tiol struggle for freedom. But a look at the leadership of some of the agitating organisations in Assam is sufficient to show that after building up a sufficiently strong base with dotions received, many leaders do no productive work but run syndicates or jump into politics. It is this pernicious ‘dotion culture’ that has brought even PSUs like OIL, ONGC and GAIL in upper Assam to their knees, driven away prospective industrialists and hamstrung local entrepreneurs. And to call a spade a spade, there is no difference between such organisations seeking ‘dotions’ and militant outfits going around serving extortion notices on anybody who can cough up some money.