The woes of Assam

Assam is a lovely place, developing now, and has a warmth, which makes it a home for us.

We feel proud of ourselves being Assamese, although there are many different people here; multilingual and muti cultured. Most of our people speak Assamese, but we have Boros, Kacharis, Tiwas, Ahoms, Bengalies and a host of other sects of people. There is no fixed definition of the word 'Assamese', but an Assamese is an Assamese! Hindus, Muslims and Christians live together peacefully and other religions also co-exist. There is a sense of brotherhood among us

. We have several Universities; the oldest and the most prestigious being Gauhati University; and several colleges, the most famous being Cotton College. Recently many other private institutions and colleges have come up, giving way to regular and job oriented courses.There are many good schools too to make our younger generation at par with the rest of India.

Tourism too, but much has to be said about this, and our wild life sanctuaries. And then Sibsagar, the base of the Ahom kings of yester years, and the remnants of their architecture. And the oil towns of upper Assam. Assam is also strategically important to India, being one hop away from China and Myanmar. And yes, we do not forget the continued decades of the Central Government funds that come in each year for development

! So much for the good part.

The famous historian H. Barpujari once wrote that the people of the Brahmaputra valley are lazy by nature; he continued saying that this could be because of the hot and humid climate.

We, the Assamese people, are by birth lazy, always shifting responsibility, and negative towards work and progress and duty consciousness.  We do not innovate, do not realise that there are plenty of resources in Assam, and we could utilise these resources to become a second Gujarat.

Good organisation, sincereity and awareness and dedication is required for this. Yes govt help is required; but all the infrastructure is there; yet nothing happens.

At Dispur only paper work is done most of the time , and then half hearted work using 'lubricants' and not otherwise. It is govt business and so nobody's business is the idiom of the day!

Go any day to any govt office and you will find that most officers are not present in their seats till 11.30am. Come 2pm and there is a break again supposedly for lunch. Around 5pm just before chutti the office becomes lively again, and you are told to come tomorrow.

And then there are excuses saying ' I have a meeting now, so please come later'! And so on and so forth. It is the clerks who are the bosses at Dispur. The officers do not take the trouble to read any particular application or file.

I don't think many of the officers (I.A.S or A.C.S) even understand what is written in a letter or application, and the consequences involved, and the line of action to be taken.

They simply mark the paper to the dealing assistant " Pl put up". And the clerk puts up the file to his own convenience in such a way that the officer concerned can either write 'yes' or 'no' to the remarks that the clerk has put up and not to what could be the real content of the letter involved. The officer never read the letter in the first place, remember?

If financial considerations are involved the file will return because the state finance dept people know their job. And if it is a complicated situation, so done by the original office official, then the finance people will play a merry go round with the file, not knowing or caring of the petitioner's discomfort.

And please, the petitioner could be a govt dept itself! So much for Assam's developmental vigour! Our people should wake up to this and move enmasse to remove this malaise and lubricant culture. Then only we can be proud of being Assamese.