Wednesday’s incident of disallowing an IAF helicopter to land at the Advance Landing Ground (ALG) by the residents of Vijaynagar, the eastern most inhabited land of our country, also the remotest Circle of Changlang district in Arunachal has caught the attention of the pan India media. The reaction of the villagers, strange as it may seem apparently and as transpired from reports is an outburst to the capricious attitude displayed by the air force authorities when they denied to provide the much needed logistics support of carrying cardamom produced by the villagers to the nearest point of trade- Miao.

 

Earlier, the residents of villages near Vijaynagar had on January 20 cleaned the gathered grass and moss on the ALG runway which had accumulated due to non-operation by any fixed-wing aircraft since 2016.
The villagers, essentially uncomplicated and undiplomatic by nature did this on condition that the IAF choppers which return empty to Miao from Vijaynagar would carry cardamom produced by them. But sadly, the agreement was breached and hence this reaction. But before stepping into any review, critical or otherwise of the episode, a quick glance over the history of the geography and economics of this ‘far from the madding crowd’ place will not be inappropriate. Vijaynagar is enviably beautiful having a population of little over four thousand people with agriculture being the mainstay of livelihood. The day to day requirement of groceries is met by a few shops which bring the items from Dibrugarh by Air or from Miao on foot which is a perilous six day travel. Dream of having a road from Miao to Vijaynagar is still a far cry. Salt and sugar are sold at minimum Rs 200 per Kg. No telecommunication facilities, no basic water supply, no electricity and medical facilities limited to  availability from Assam Rifles Camp. So this is the story of a place enveloped in perennial underdevelopment and its people suffering from immeasurable hardships. After this brief insight, it would now be easier to gauge the gravity of the matter, hopefully.

The issue is underdevelopment and no pundit from the branches of social sciences is needed to explain this for us. The sordid story of Vijaynagar has once again brought to limelight the hard truth – we as a nation have failed miserably when it comes to ‘for the people’ part of the sacred line of our Constitution. The impoverished state of existence of Vijaynagar is true and symbolic of the many ‘Vijaynagars’ in our country with cache of anger and discontent brewing invisibly. May be, with any such similar apparently trifle incident a tale akin to Vijaynagar will unfurl. Now bestowing trust in the popular adage- every cloud has a silver lining we can only hope that these messages of the plight of our Vijaynagar brothers and sisters reach the right ears and are taken with earnest intent and not discarded as careless whispers.

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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