Sunrise in Darjeeling

Less than a month after assuming office, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that her administration has hammered out an agreement with the agitating Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) to solve the festering Gorkhaland problem. If negotiations end successfully, this will be a major breakthrough, solving a separatist problem that has laid waste picturesque north Bengal since the early 1980s. The initial agreement says that the Darjeeling area will get substantial autonomy.

This promise needs to be upheld sincerely unlike in 1988, when autonomy was promised, a Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) formed, but not allowed to function. The Left allowed the DGHC to become a fiefdom of Subhash Ghising, did not hold elections promised in 2004 and made Ghising the sole 'caretaker' of the council. The movement split, creating the powerful GJM, which now holds power in all three hill constituencies of Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong. Electoral participation and success will be major factors in normalising relations.

The Bodo Territorial Council of Assam, which has administrative, financial, legislative and executive powers in four districts of the state, and the nine other autonomous councils in the northeast serve as viable models for the new-improved DGHC. There are several things to be negotiated, among them the status of the forests and mountains in the area and what territories to include in the DGHC. Both sides should remember that Darjeeling's magnificent mountains, rolling tea estates and forests are its principal attractions (inspiring, for example, Satyajit Ray).

Mamata has promised to turn Darjeeling into the Switzerland of the East. To do that, it will require big investments, deployed efficiently. The state, not just the DGHC, should have a role in funding development and monitoring progress. The territorial question is trickier, with the GJM claiming Gurkha-majority tracts in the Terai region as well as the three hill constituencies. A committee with representatives from the government as well as of people from the hills and the Terai should draw this line.

                                                                                                      -10 Jun, 2011, 04.28AM IST,ET Bureau