Reviving hope for rehabilitation

Clarity in government policies is critical to their implementation. The Assam government's move to bring more clarity in its rehabilitation policy has raised new hopes for lakhs of erosion-affected families in the state. This newspaper has reported that drafting of the policy has been on and will be placed before Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and the State Cabinet for their approvals once it is completed. Placing the draft in the public domain and inviting suggestions on it before the approval is granted by the State Cabinet will ensure formulation of a comprehensive policy. By holding consultations with families affected by ravaging annual flood and erosion, the State government can rule out exclusion of important components of rehabilitation in the revised policy. While drafting the policy the government cannot lose sight of the fact that implementation of a comprehensive policy to rehabilitate the affected families will require huge funding from the Central government as the state's own resource will be scarce to meet the requirements. The previous Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government notified the "Chief Minister's Special scheme for Rehabilitation of Erosion Affected Families in Assam" in March 2015. However, when it replaced the Assam Relief Manual, 1976 with the Assam Disaster Management Manual, 2015 in June 2015 erosion was not included in list of items and norms of assistance from State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) and the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) in the new manual. This policy gap was resulted due to non-inclusion of erosion in the list of natural calamities in the Disaster Management Act, 2005 under which the new Assam manual was drawn up. Cyclone, drought, earthquake, fire, flood, tsunami, hailstorm, landslide, avalanche, cloudburst, pest attack, frost and cold waves are the disasters included under SDRF and NDRF. Hope for rehabilitation of erosion-affected families brightened when Sonowal announced in May that in response to a letter of his government, the 15th Finance Commission recognised river erosion as a natural calamity and recommended for adequate compensation including rehabilitation under SDRF and NDRF. The Central government too has asked the State government to submit a detailed report incorporating the details of the affected families. The Finance Commission recommended an allocation of Rs 300 crore from the National Disaster Mitigation Fund in 2020-21 to enable the State to undertake mitigation measures to prevent coastal and river erosion. The commission asked the Central and the State governments to develop a policy to deal with the "extensive displacement caused by coastal and river erosion" and recommended Rs 200 crore for the current financial year to address the issue of displacement at the State level to implement the policy. The State Government will have to build up a strong case to ensure that Assam gets a larger share of the allocations under both the heads. Compiling the list of displaced and affected families is a challenging task given the fact the erosion has left a huge number of families landless over the past six and half decades. Official data show that since 1954 the state has been losing land at the rate of an average 8000 hectares every year in 17 riverine districts. Linking of possession of land certificates of the erosion-affected families for funding assistance may lead to exclusion of many families as cadastral surveys have not been carried out in the state in most of the districts and land pattas also have not been distributed. Deprivation of genuine erosion-affected families will give rise to discontentment which the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government can least afford when it is looking at another term in 2021 Assembly polls. Discontentment over deficiencies in formulation of the policy, in compilation of the list and in measures taken up to rehabilitate the erosion-affected families will have the potential to snowball into a larger electoral issue. Holding wide public consultation on the new policy draft will ensure that the issue of rehabilitation of erosion-affected families is not derailed by any controversy over either exclusion of deserving families or any wrongful inclusion. Upward revision of rehabilitation grant for different categories of erosion-affected families will need special attention in course of drafting of the revised policy. Clarity in the policy in respect of categorization of erosion-affected families will be crucial to rule out an ambiguity in drawing up the list of families under different categories. The maximum amount for cash component for different categories such as families losing both homestead and agricultural lands, families losing only homestead land or only agricultural land fixed by the previous Gogoi government was too less – Rs 75,000 for construction of house and Rs 2 lakh to buy land in case government land is not available. Assessment of the cascading impact of the cumulative loss of these families caused by recurring waves of floods and erosion and multiple displacement needs to be considered for deciding the ceilings of assistance.