Monday Musing
[ Bengia Ajum ]
Recently a bitter land dispute turned violent, resulting in gun-firing and an attack with machetes in Neomi in Tali circle of Kra Daadi district. Eight people suffered serious injuries in the incident and had to be evacuated by helicopter. The report of the dispute and the violence that followed shocked the whole state. It became a topic of interest and discussion. People in Arunachal often think that the state is big and therefore there is land available for every citizen.
But the ground reality is different. The bitter fight witnessed in Tali is a warning sign of things to come in the coming days. Today, a large number of landless indigenous tribal Arunachalis are emerging. They are the people who have mostly sold their traditional ancestral lands and now are becoming landless. The situation is especially precarious in the Itanagar Capital Region (ICR) and in the district headquarters, where there is huge demand for land. Many of the indigenous citizens of the ICR and even the district headquarters have become landless after recklessly selling their land. Some are even staying in rented accommodations. A section of super-rich people owns the maximum land in the state. The poor often sell their land to them. These rich people often entice the poor to sell them their land.
Due to this, a landless group is emerging now, which is a new trend. All of them once owned land and as they become landless for whatever reason, restlessness is growing. The government needs to look into this issue seriously. This is a social as well as environmental issue. It is a social issue because these landless tribal people will struggle to live with the tag of being landless. They will go to any extent to look for land and this is when societal tension arises. People will end up having brutal fights to capture land and we will witness more fights like the one recently seen in Tali.
The landless people are going to any extent to own land. Some are going back to the deep forests in the region where their ancestors once used to live. Because of this, huge destruction of forests is happening. The rampant destruction of forests to claim land is causing immense damage to the environment. With the rate at which forests are being destroyed, the state will witness a severe water crisis in the future. The streams are drying up and in some cases even rivers are on the verge of drying up.
The rich will keep buying land and also capture more land. The state is already witnessing a massive gap between the haves and the haves not. This is an issue that will deeply impact the state in the future if not taken care of properly.
