An Agitation For Home And Hearth In Assam
Over 2,000 people, representing about 1,486 Mising families from two villages in Dibru-Saikhowa National Park, have been demanding rehabilitation from the Assam government. Manoranjan Pegu 2021-01-13T07:28:46+05:30 An Agitation For Home And Hearth In Assam outlookindia.com 2021-01-13T15:39:48+05:30
Kusmita Morang and her husband Bishnu Morang were expecting their first child. The protest site, with makeshift camps in freezing cold, is not an ideal place for a seven-month pregnant woman.
However, when the fight is about their very survival, staying back is not much of an option. Kusmita and her husband joined the other families on December 25, 2020, resisting eviction from Dibru-Saikhowa National Park. The protest had entered its 5th day. By December 29, her health conditions began to decline. Those at the camps advised her to go back home and rest.
Protestors in Tinsukia. | Special arrangement.
For more than a week now, the entire populations of two Upper Assam villages – around 3,000 men, women, children, most of them belonging to the state’s Mising tribe – have been camping in Tinsukia town, next to the deputy collector’s office. They have vowed not to move till their demands are met: of being given new lives in a new place.
“It is biting cold and we have been living and eating like pigs, but we are not going anywhere because we don’t have anywhere to go,” said 65-year old Rajaram Pait, a resident of Dodhia, one of two villages. The other is Laika. “Maybe this is where our cursed existence will come to an end.”
About 2,500 people from two forest villages in upper Assam will be spending their New Year in makeshift camps near the Tinsukia DC’s office seeking permanent and proper rehabilitation.
Men, women and children are from Laika village in Tinsukia district and Dodhia village in Dibrugarh district, about 6km apart, have been living in these tarpaulin camps at Lezaihola Borguri near Tinsukia DC office, about 22km away from their homes, for the past ten days and have vowed to continue living and protesting this way till they are rehabilitated.
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This has been their stand a day after chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal met representatives of the villagers falling under the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park (DSNP) and directing the state forest department to “permanently rehabilitate” the affected families by January 31.