In spite of successful elections, it's too early to declare that the troubled state is on the road to recovery
There are signs that the Assam elections mark the beginning of a new phase in the state’s politics. The voter turnout rate of 76.03 percent was impressive and the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) did not call for a poll boycott. While the familiar controversy over the citizenship status featured in the campaign, especially in the BJP platform, it was not a defining element as it was in 2006, or arguably, in all state elections since the beginning of the Assam Movement of 1979-85.
Is this the end of Assam’s troubles and the inauguration of the politics of good governance and development? Unfortunately, such a reading would be premature, and it would be a triumph of hope over reality.
Politicians often respond to problems with words rather than deeds, or by symbolic rather than instrumental actions. That buys time, but ultimately, rhetoric cannot be a substitute to solutions. And the problems underlying Assam’s political troubles are neither minor, nor provincial. They raise fundamental questions about the Partition’s vision of two, and subsequently three, bounded nation-states, and whether it matches the subcontinent’s subsequent ground realities.
(This story appears in the 06 May, 2011 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)