Article - 56 Week 13 HIJACKING FROM A STRATEGIC VANTAGE POSITION

Article - 56 Week 13

HIJACKING FROM A STRATEGIC VANTAGE POSITION

Khyber Pass has been under the control of tribals for millenniums. Even today, the Americans have to pay their way through for the NATO supplies & logistics to Afghanistan. The terrain is such that you can be ambushed easily by the local people. The practice of ambushing and at times just blocking the pass has been highly profitable for the locals. All movements of cargo and humans have been held at ransom for a huge price.  Essentially a handful of people sitting on the vantage points on the pass  have forced billions of people on both sides of the pass to on their knees.

Nothing much has changed today, even in a progressive India. A handful of villagers have branded themselves as PAP (Project Affected People) and partially blocked JNP, the gateway of India's commerce for more compensation and stopping corporatising of a typically slow and inefficient JNP management. What good can possible happen to the local people, if JNP is not corporatised and inefficiency celebrated? How different are these people from the tribals in the Khyber Pass? 

India had a population of about 350 millions in 1950 and 2010 it would be far in excess of a billion. And it is going to grow. How can you possibly accommodate the needs and wants of such a huge population, if pockets of passages and infrastructures are hijacked by narrow interest groups? If the group of people inhabiting the strategic nodal points hijack the project like the tribals in the Khyber Pass, they would cause enormous pain to the rest of the people and their livelihoods. Sitting on railway tracks or blocking the port facilities are anti-people, anti-national, and should be condemned by all sections of the society.

At the same time, it is true that the legislations pertaining to acquisition of lands for government or private projects are both primitive and oppressive, with threads of law from the colonial era. The biggies in league with the political patrons have usurped lands for SEZs etc both from villagers and public for a pittance. This issue needs to be resolved fairly and quickly. The government's inability to legislate intelligent and fair laws, has given this destructive weapon in the hands of the so-called PAPs to take the nation on its knees. 

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Capt Rath

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