Fight over Jobs Turns into Ethnic War in India

Fight over Jobs Turns into Ethnic War in India
Ranjit Devraj - IPS 11/20/03

NEW DELHI, Nov 20 (IPS) - A fight over coveted jobs in India's massive railway system has turned into an ugly ethnic conflagration, leading to the deaths of at least 30 Hindi-speaking settlers this week in the north-eastern Assam state, where the army has been out since Wednesday to stop the carnage.

The trouble began after candidates from the Hindi-speaking eastern state of Bihar, who arrived in Guwahati, capital of Assam state to appear for a railway recruitment examination on Nov. 9, were turned away by local students. Some of them roughed up.

The Indian Railways, built by the British during colonial times to move troops and raw material, has since independence turned into world's single biggest employer with a workforce of nearly 1.6 million people. Its importance is also reflected in the presence of a dedicated railway ministry that presents its own annual budget in Parliament.

Many regard the railway system, which moves 15 million people each day, as one of the great unifiers of this sprawling and diverse country of more than one billion people. But in the case of this week's violence, it is proving to be a great divider.

Once back home in Bihar, the rejected candidates retaliated by inciting mobs to attack trains carrying Assamese and other north-easterners on trunk railway routes that pass through their state to the rest of the country.

Several passengers were injured in the attacks, exacerbating existing ethnic tensions. On Nov. 12, a girl passenger from Nagaland, further east of Assam, was molested by hooligans in Bihar. This resulted in Naga students calling for all Biharis to quit their state.

According to news reports, the attacks on train passengers then encouraged the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), a militant group fighting for the secession of Assam that has lain dormant in recent times, to launch attacks on Hindi-speaking settlers concentrated in towns connected with oil industry, like Tinsukia, Bongaigaon and Duliajan.

Assam boasts the world's oldest continuously producing oilfield at Digboi. Petroleum was first discovered there as far back as 1867 by men engaged in laying down a railway track for British colonials, who were eager to exploit the resources of the remote state on the Burmese border.

Despite the existence of oil and several lucrative industries in Assam such as tea and timber, the state has languished. This has fuelled secessionist movements, led by the moderate All-Assam Students Union (AASU) and the militant ULFA, which holds that the state's wealth was being skimmed off by the central government with little benefit for the locals.

A single attack by ULFA gunmen in the refinery town of Bongaigaon on Wednesday resulted in the deaths of four Hindi speakers and serious injuries to three others. Twelve others were attacked and killed in other parts of the state in violence since Tuesday night.

A curfew was imposed on Bongaigaon on Wednesday night after Biharis, who dominate the town, retaliated by going on a rampage against local Assamese.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, alarmed by the spiralling ethnic violence, called the chief ministers of both Bihar and Assam and pledged extra contingents of central troops to ensure that the violence is contained rapidly.

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, who leads an opposition Congress party government in the state, has attributed this week's trouble to revised recruitment policies of the centrally-run railways that he says do not give enough weight to local candidates.

''I do not condone the violence but the lower-level jobs should be reserved for local candidates,'' Gogoi told journalists in Guwahati.

The fact that the federal Railway Minister Nitish Kumar happens to be from Bihar has only worsened suspicions in Assam that the jobs would go to Biharis.

Kumar has gone on record to say that he is helpless and is bound by Supreme Court orders that limit the total quantum of reservations for central government jobs to 50 percent, with quotas drawn up according to caste rather than to linguistic or ethnic categories.

India is a federation of 25 states and smaller territories marked out according to the language spoken by the majority of people within delineated boundaries.

Within states, fracture lines run along caste and religious lines among people who may speak the same language. Last year's communal riots in western Gujarat state, which resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 people, happened among speakers of the Gujarati language but who followed different faiths.

Disputes between states are known to break out over territories where the inhabitants are bilingual or over the sharing of natural resources such as rivers, and the conflicts often call for central government intervention.

But disputes, especially political ones, can occur between a state and the central government.

Gogoi's 'sons-of-the -soil' approach has found echo in recent demands made by the pro-Maratha Shiv Sena party in western Maharashtra state, nearly 3,000 kilometres to the west.

Earlier this week the Shiv Sena, a member of Vajpayee's ruling coalition, stopped railway recruitments and demanded that reservations be made for ethnic Marathas.

One reason why the present violence in Bihar and Assam has spiralled so rapidly is said to be because senior political leaders want to be seen on the side of their own people at a time when they seeking scarce employment and livelihoods.

Thus Laloo Prasad Yadav, who leads the ruling Rashtriya Janata Day party in Bihar, has for a change during the current crisis, taken sides with Nitish Kumar who belongs to the rival Samata Party in the state.

''The whole problem is due to growing unemployment and all parties should sit together and find a solution to this problem,'' said Yadav, a member of Parliament whose wife, Rabri Devi, is chief minister of Bihar.

Devi has written to Gogoi asking him to ensure that Biharis were not targeted in Assam and has taken steps to ensure armed protection for trains passing through her state.