Facing the crunch

The BJP has yet again won with a two-third majority in the 2022 assembly elections. The people have voted it back to power despite the dismal performance of its government on all fronts. In fact, both national parties — the BJP and the Congress — have ruled the state by completely ignoring the fundamentals of governance of a border and hilly state. Except during the five years of ND Tewari government, the state has not achieved much after its creation. The people of Uttarakhand are intelligent, hard-working and nationalist to the core; yet are gullible enough and, hence, time and again ignore the fallacies and incompetence of their rulers. They have contributed immensely in protecting national borders, as every 6th soldier of Indian army and paramilitary forces is from Uttarakhand. The leaders from Uttarakhand in the past had significant presence in the national politics. The people who fought and died for the creation of Uttarakhand must be tearing up in their graves as to what type of leaders the state has been producing since November 2001, after creation of the separate state.

Uttarakhand has produced selfish and corrupt politicians in thousands these days but rarely a leader with vision who could provide honest leadership to the people to bring them development, happiness and a sense of belonging to a vibrant hill state where gods live in the heart and mind of people. For 21 years since the creation of Uttarakhand, intelligent and educated people are realising that the leadership of two national parties that have ruled the state for 21 years, treat this state as a tool to perpetuate incompetence, compounded by corruption of highest order by its politicians and bureaucrats. Bureaucrats are smart people who know it very well that they can befool the incompetent leaders and feed them well and then rule and exploit. The national parties want to promote incompetent people to be in charge for grinding their own axe. In spite of this, the people have again given mandate to the BJP, considering the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is heading a nationalist government, and has been liberally giving funds for roads and other infrastructure — but ignoring the problem of lacking vision among state leaders.

Ecologically also, the carrying capacity of hills has reached its peak at several locations. The very existence of the people, cultural integrity and the ecology of the region will be seriously threatened if no action is taken by the society. According to a survey carried out by SDC Foundation, there has been a whopping 30 per cent increase in electorates during the previous decade. However, in plain districts, the increase was almost 43 per cent. The increase in other states was much less, like Goa (13 per cent), Manipur (14 per cent), UP (18 per cent), and Punjab (21 per cent). Let us discuss some of the immediate issues that require action by the new government.

i) Being a border state, Uttarakhand is very sensitive from the security point of view. Massive settlement of outsiders is going on in a systematic manner to change the demographic pattern of the hills, especially in border areas. Religious structures are coming up, people are being lured for conversion and, gradually, an attempt is being made to create communal tension. Several cases of elopement of girls have come to the notice and it is feared that it is being done deliberately by settling people in small marketplaces. There is a need for a detailed inquiry on this.

ii) Second-most important issue is the need for enactment of an Act to prohibit transfer of property and land rights so that the cultural identity and protection of ecology of Uttarakhand is ensured by preventing indiscriminate buying of land and property by the outsiders. Only people having domicile of hills in 1950 should be allowed to buy land and personal property in hills. In other areas, the cut-off date should be the year 2001 when Uttarakhand was carved out from Uttar Pradesh.

iii) As per the Constitution, delimitation of Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies is to be carried out periodically based on the population. The delimitation of Assembly seats is of fundamental importance to retaining the identity of hill people. Hence, the delimitation process should have the additional criteria of geography and terrain in hills, apart from the population, so that the numbers of seats in hill districts are not reduced in future. This should have been done at the time of reorganisation of UP and creation of Uttarakhand. Till such time the Act is amended, the delimitation process should be frozen indefinitely.

iv) There is a tendency to deprive the unemployed youths of the state by not making recruitments in various government departments, and instead engaging contractors for providing the manpower in different departments. Most of the contractors are from outside the state and, consequentially, a large number of the people employed by them are outsiders. Further, the whole system of manpower engagement is flawed, as many under-qualified people are engaged and the system is promoting middlemen who take a big chunk of salary away from the employees. Because of this lopsided policy, the youths are migrating to other states, which is building up resentment among the unemployed youths. It is also breeding corruption.

v) The industrial policy of Uttarakhand is flawed as it does not have any preference for employing the local youths. Uttarakhand needs to reserve 70 per cent of lower-rank jobs in all industries for the locals. Special efforts should be made to develop and conserve local unique resources (for example medicinal plants, fruits, agricultural crops, eco-tourism and unique animal/bio-resources etc. for employment generation and preventing the migration of people.

vi) Uttarakhand is under the grip of Drug mafia and the local administration is either incompetent or hand in glove with them. Recently, people were seen drinking and taking drugs openly in Mussoorie when the tourists came to see the snowfall. Drugs are openly available all over Dehradun and the local mafia leaders are busy minting money for them and their cronies.

The writer is Chairman of the Centre for Resource Management and Environment. Views expressed are personal