A step forward

Jul 12 2011: What’s in a name? Apparently nothing, or a lot. The draft memorandum of understanding, signed last week between the West Bengal government and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and thereon dispatched to the Centre, calls the new administrative body for the Darjeeling Hills the “Gorkhaland Territorial Administration”. Whether one chooses to pounce on the word present, “Gorkhaland”, or on the word absent, “Autonomous”, the nomenclature marks the give-and-take. Names are a matter of perspective and politics. And, sure enough, the GJM is selling the G-word in the hills even as the government is denying its significance. But the agreement is the distance traversed in an impressively short period of time. It solves for now the pressing problem of the governance vacuum in the hills since the dissolution of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council three years ago. 
The new administration will be able to collect the levy from tea gardens and recruit junior-level government staff. It cannot legislate or collect taxes, and its territorial jurisdiction has been referred to a joint verification committee. Additionally, the state government is setting up versions of several government bodies in the hills. Once the electoral procedure is sorted out, the new body and the Bengal government must embark on a comprehensive development programme, wherein infrastructure, such as roads, is upgraded and the problem of necessities, such as drinking water, is solved. A blueprint must be drawn up for revamping and expanding the economy of the hills, because governmental job drives alone will not do. The tea industry itself must be rescued, revived and modernised.  
All of this is apart from the question of Gorkhaland statehood, which the GJM is temporarily not emphasising but may foreground any day. Importantly, there is peace in the hills — so necessary for development. The intractable nature of the problem was partly cured by the approach of the new dispensation in Kolkata, which did not make the mistake of looking at the hills as enemy territory. It made the GJM climb down from its maximalism and become reciprocally flexible. Important barriers have been breached; but the work, however, has hardly begun.
 
-indian express