Assam

The delimitation exercise in Assam has not only redrawn the boundaries of the constituencies but also political fault lines of the state. Hailed by a section as a step to safeguard the rights of indigenous communities and critiqued by another for ensuring skewed representation, the act may have multipronged impact on the state politics ahead of elections.

The appearance of the Assam Accord in the recent citizenship debates in India has a historical significance. Providing a critique of liberal citizenship, Assam’s journey shows how citizenship in a culturally diverse nation state like India evolved distinctively along with different identity questions. Assam, through a popular movement against “illegal” migrants, under the leadership of the educated (middle) class, asserted this identity question and tangled the Assamese nationality in the legal framework of Indian citizenship. The accord, which ended the protest, led to the first amendment of the Citizenship Act, 1955 in 1985, specifically addressing Assam’s case. Drawing from vernacular literature and archival records, this paper offers a fresh perspective on the political history of citizenship in Assam from pre-independence until the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985 and its immediate implementation.

Homeland Insecurities: Autonomy, Conflict and Migration in Assam by Sanjoy Barbora, Oxford University Press, pp 251, `1,495.

The Unquiet River: A Biography of the Brahmaputra by Arupjyoti Saikia, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019; pp xxxv + 583, `1,195 (hardcover).

The emergence of small tea growers is a relatively new phenomenon in Assam. Owners of small land plots mainly located in the eastern part of the state have taken to small tea cultivation in a big way in the last three–four decades. The nature of production of the sector is informal. The unemployed youth and farmers of other unprofitable crops, who have taken to small-scale tea cultivation, are likely to be exploited by agents and owners of tea factories who buy raw tea leaves. Primary survey data are collected from five districts of eastern and central Assam to investigate the monopsonistic exploitation of small tea growers by tea leaf buyers.