Land Question in Assam

Regrettably several errors had crept into my note on the ‘Land Question in Assam’ (August 12, 2006) owing to my clumsy handling of the computer and haste. In para 5, Rahmoria should be in Dibrugarh district and not Sivasagar. In para 4, the comma after “strictly distributed ploughland” alters the sense and should be dropped. In the same para, the first sentence got jumbled. What was meant was that various modes of production in pre-colonial/capitalist times were later all lumped under “feudalism”. In para 3, the tiered stacks of stored foodstuff could hardly rise with the floodwater level. But, as the waters rose, people had access to more edible stuff on higher ground. In para 2, tribes should be seen as living in forests for generations and not, as stated, “decades”.

I would now like to add a few other points. Tribal food-gatherers and shifting cultivators had a different conception of land, abolished by colonial brute force. Further, though neoliberal reforms are a new phase of imperialism, there is continuity between colonial, Nehruvian and contemporary trends.