Dear Editor,
Jagan village under Pongchau Circle in Longding District is one of the terminal villages before entering Myanmar. There is an untold truth about this village. The village was partitioned as an independent village from Khasa village. They were bestowed with eight divisions of annual agricultural land, forests, river, etc. by the mother village. The village was self-sufficient in land and resources. The people had their own forest to hunt in, river to fish and shared a traditional boundary with Kamkah village of Myanmar.
It was around 1970-71 that a sea change occurred for the village. The India-Myanmar border pillar-158 was erected within the village settlement. This brought a complete change in the traditional boundary of the village. The land of the village was divided into two, and the saddest part is that about 80 % of the village territory was demarcated as foreign land (Myanmar), including seven divisions of annual agricultural land. The village had no alternative but to leave the hard won ancestral land which was from then on named foreign. In the year 1980-81 the village shifted to the present location (near Khasa village). Jagan today owns only one annual agricultural land called PAANYU-PAM. The entire village (110 households) depend on this land for their survival. Life is difficult for the hill farmers who till the same plot all the year round, continuous cultivation drain off the fertility of the soil resulting in less productivity. They also face congestion in obtaining other essential commodities like timber, firewood, etc as the land is limited. People sometimes called the village landless which is hurts our sentiments. But it was not so 50 years back, the village had a glorious past. It was in respect of the International Border that the village sacrifice the ancestral land and resources. So Jagan is one of the worst affected villages by the border. The village stands in need of government help through programmes like Border Area Development Project (BADP) to cope with the fast advancing world.
Yours,
A concerned citizen