Gun Down Days

Today getting picked up and ill treated by the police is no longer Lalon8217;s worry alone. The government, which with the initiative of the Jalpaiguri district administration has chosen him along with 206 other surrendered militants of the Kamtapuri Liberation Organisation for rehabilitation under the Nava Disha self-employment scheme, too has reason to be worried since any estrangement with the 8216;8216;mainstreaming8217;8217; process can put them back on the secessionist route again.

FOR Atul Roy, a first batch KLO militant who got arms training in a ULFA-organised camp in Bhutan in 1995, the seeds of secession were planted early when as a class IX student he was abused as 8216;8216;Saala Behra8217;8217;, an invective reserved for people of the Dalit Rajbonshi community, when he parked his cycle before a shop belonging to a non-Rajbongshi.

8216;8216;It was a democratic movement initially,8217;8217; says Atul, who as member of All Kamtapur Students Union found their meetings regularly getting broken up the local administration. 8216;8216;We soon realised that only the gun can instill fear and bring us respect,8217;8217; he says.

Thus a seemingly democratic movement led by the Kamtapur People8217;s Party KPP, which demanded a separate state of Kamtapur to be carved out of north Bengal districts and recognition of the Rajbonshi language, among other things, took up arms after getting transformed as the militant KLO.

Since the killing in 2000 of Dilip Ray, a CPI M functionary at remote Ramsai in Jalpaiguri district, to the last officially recorded KLO strike on May 3, 2004, over two dozen CPI M and Left Front members have been killed. Countless others have been injured till the free run of the KLO was halted when the Bhutan government, under sustained pressure from the Indian government, ordered a crackdown on the KLO-ULFA training camps in the forests of the kingdom state in December 2003.

JYOTSNA Roy was a member of the Kamtapur Women8217;s Rights Force before she took up arms. She was in one of the KLO arms training camps when the Royal Bhutan Army moved in. Surrounded from three sides, with her newly-born child in her arms, Jyotsna remembers spending eight days in the forests without food. Surrendering was the only route left.

Today, she is an energetic Anganwadi worker with a monthly salary of Rs 1,000 in the Ramsai region of Jalpaiguri8217;s Maynaguri region, a turn of events afforded by the 8216;Rehabilitation of Socially Alienated Persons8217; scheme under the Rashtriya Sam Vikash Yojana project in Jalpaiguri. 8216;8216;The entire project was aimed at bringing them back to the mainstream and we gave them vocational training before assigning them individual roles according to their choice. We also organised cultural events and football matches involving the surrendered militants to bring in a sense of trust,8217;8217; says A. Subbiah, district magistrate of Jalpaiguri and one of the prime movers of the rehabilitation package.

TV and radio repairing, power tilling, driving moile medical units, horticulture, animal husbandry, pandal decoration, fertilizer dealership and carpentry were among some of the vocations opted for by surrendered KLO activists and about Rs 91, 63, 460 has been distributed to each beneficiary as RSVY support, with the state also arranging for easy availability of low-interest loans from banks and financial institutions for 207 members of the Nava Disha project.

8216;8216;Those who have received loans have to abide by the rules of the game and repay in three years, the stipulated time. But the tricky area is to find the right alternative for those who are salaried and whose term runs out in three years. But we have designed an entrepreneurial cycle for the beneficiaries and after three years if they are committed they should not find it difficult to sustain a viable economic life,8217;8217; says Rajeshwar Mishra, director of the Center for the Development of Human Initiatives, a Jalpaiguri-based NGO facilitating the project.

BUT even though the surrendered KLO activists have accepted the friendly overtures, discontent with the current political system continues to simmer below the surface. While a few people associated with the Kamtapur movement like Nirendranath Roy, Narayan Roy and Kanto Narayan Roy, have joined forces with the CPI M in the ongoing Assembly elections in West Bengal after the party assured them of providing relief from police raids and consequent harassment, in the interiors of Dhupguri and Maynaguri, the pockets of resistance to Communist tactics are still strong.

For both Annadev Roy and Chanchala Roy, the KPP continues to be the answer to their problems. 8216;8216;We are seeing corruption take place right in front of our eyes. Nobody knows where the funds meant for maintaining and repairing a road disappeared, influential people bagging houses meant for the poor under the Indira Awas Yojana and people with land and property getting BPL certificates. But we can no longer protest, even from a democratic forum, because if we do then the ruling party will send the police after us again,8217;8217; says Annadev.

But for now, the rehabilitation scheme and 8216;8216;the hint of social respect8217;8217; it has brought to their lives, is enough for most of them to disavow the gun.

8216;8216;This is the only way now and I don8217;t have a choice. I can8217;t help but be happy with the arrangement,8217;8217; says Amrit Roy, who plies a passenger vehicle in Dhupguri taken on a loan arranged by the Nava Disha scheme. Jyotsna says armed revolt is a chapter from her past, and while she waits for the release of her husband Bijoy Roy, a hardened and top-ranking KLO militant among the 55 still languishing in jail, she knows what she is going to teach her three-year-old son as he grows up. 8216;8216;And it will have nothing to do with all this liberation movement,8217;8217; she says.