"ULFA holds State to ransom, and Govt is helpless"

“In the last one year, we have also managed to expose some local bamboo craftpersons to improved production and finishing technique…we have sent young people on training for mushroom cultivation…twenty women are weaving a product range for outside markets…already their wages which they have fixed themselves are much higher than the amount they earn locally.”

“We would keep bumping into ULFA cadres all over the island since our areas of geographic focus were more or less the same although for different reasons. We were going into the most interior and remote hamlets looking for ways in which delivery systems could be built up in those areas and ULFA was using the same bases to hide out. Around the first of May, several posters appeared all over the island accusing us of perpetrating a culture of dependence, being imposters and destroying the local culture of Assam.”Sanjoy Ghose then details various ways in which ULFA rules by terror and the increasing difficulty of working in an atmosphere of tension and fear.“In the meantime while (the) State is held to ransom, the Government is a mute spectator.

Heavily armed cadres wander around in broad daylight, but there are no questions asked….Lower level police cadres from the area know very well who the militants are, and where they stay and hide. Yet there seems to be a baffling lack of intelligence. This could be because the police at lower levels are scared for their security, but another possible explanation is that they are well and truly infiltrated in the lower ranks.”“It is also clear that ULFA has no mass base among the tribals…Their notions of revolution and culture are narrow-minded and warped, more akin to fascism….Instead of engaging in an open, public debate, they have taken refuge in deceit and manipulation and have alienated themselves from the people even further.

If this kind of senseless opposition to people-led development continues, it will be the end of whatever little local support they have and people will feel compelled to speak against the injustice. Once that happens, nothing will be able to turn the tide. People are fed up of being pawns in this low-intensity civil war, that has denied many basic human rights of living with jobs and dignity. They are fed up of the bandhs and work stoppage and the extortion and the killings and the kidnappings. It needs just one more push.