Talking about refugees in South Asia, the following crises instantly come to mind: Tamils from Sri Lanka and Tibetans from China in India and Nepal, the Rohingyas (Muslims) from Myanmar in Bangladesh, the Lhotsampas (Nepali-speaking people) from southern Bhutan in Nepal and Afghans in Pakistan. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, there are today an estimated 12 million refugees and about 20 million to 25 million internally displaced persons in the world (UNHCR: 1997 Statistical Review). South Asia alone constitutes nearly 12 per cent of the total global refugee population (U.S. Committee for Refugees. World Refugee Survey, 1998). In fact, South Asia has the fourth largest refugee population in the world.

Zeroing in on Assam, the term refugee is usually applied to the post-partition stream of people from the then East Pakistan who had fled to India fearing persecution. It is, therefore, not surprising that almost all those who arrived in Assam till the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 were non-Muslims. According to estimates, 600,000 Bengali Hindus, 100,000 Christian tribes people and an unspecified number of Buddhist Chakmas arrived in Assam during the period. The Indian political leaders of the time thought it was their moral responsibility to let the refugees, regarded as victims of partition, stay on in the country. Local authorities were told that laws such as the Expulsion of Undesirable Immigrants Act need not be applied to those who had fled East Pakistan.

Thirty years down the line, people in Assam talk about illegal migration from Bangladesh, about how the continued cross-border influx poses the danger of the indigenous people being overwhelmed by aliens. When one talks about refugees in Assam today, one refers to the thousands of internally-displaced people, in a contiguous stretch in the western part of the State, who are victims of a bloody ethnic conflict. Those who had arrived from across the border till 1971 have since assimilated with the locals and have been accepted as Indian citizens and people hardly talk about them anymore in the context of refugees.

I shall go into the reasons later, but violent ethnic riots between the majority Bodos and the Santhals (both tribal groups) in Assam's Bodo heartland of Kokrajhar and its adjoining districts in the summer of 1996 had displaced more than 300,000 people belonging to both communities. About 250 people were killed in the riots that began on May 15 and continued sporadically till the end of 1996. While thousands returned to their homes, an estimated 200,000 are still living sub-human lives in thatched or polythene roofed hutments in what pass for relief camps run by the State Government. There are 64 such so- called relief camps in Kokrajhar district (the adjoining districts of Bongaigaon and Dhubri have some more) housing an estimated 1.10 lakh Santhals, 70,000 Bodos and others. There is nothing called sanitation and hygiene and the inmates do not get two square meals a day. Both Santhal and Bodo refugee leaders says that since February, the Government has been providing them rations for just five days a month - three kg of rice per adult and about 50 grams of salt (600 and 400 grams of rice for each adult and child respectively a day). The district magistrate of Kokrajhar candidly admitted this. Lack of funds is cited by the Sate authorities for the poor relief. They say more than Rs. 100 crore has so far been spent on the upkeep of the refugees.

Now, how are the refugees surviving? Every morning, Lakhiram Mormu (50) and Domaram Kahar (27), both inmates of the Joypur relief camp, near Kokrajhar, and scores of others, go out to the jungles in the vicinity to look for wild tubers and roots. Others such as Phagu Lakr set out with axes and some other iron implements to dig out the stumps of trees, felled illegally in the past, and sell them to buyers along the highway. After all, every rupee is important. Eating a meal of mashed wild potatoes (which need to be soaked in water overnight), Birsa Kujur (60) recalled how his wife was stung by a snake one morning while she was hunting for wild tubers. Scores of these refugees have already started migrating to neighbouring Bhutan (no travel documents are required for Indians to travel to Bhutan) to work for daily wages. Life has been indeed difficult for these people.

The dimension of this refugee crisis in Assam is no less than some of those in sub-Saharan Africa. What is sadder here is that even the rest of India is unconcerned, not to speak of international agencies. No non-Government organisation, barring the Lutheran World Service, a Christian body, is working among the refugees in Kokrajhar. The task is gigantic and small efforts by organisations such as the LWS are simply not enough to provide succour to the hapless refugees and their innocent children. What the inmates at the refugee camps in Kokrajhar need today is aid, irrespective of who provides it.

The fight for territorial supremacy was one of the triggering factors for the Bodo-Santhal riots in 1996. Both communities had been living in peace in the area for decades. But, with the signing of the Bodo Accord in February 1993 between the All Bodo Students Union and the Centre came the new autonomous structure called the Bodoland Autonomous Council (BAC). Only those villages with 50 per cent Bodo population were to be included into the BAC. This provision is generally believed to have encouraged a section of Bodos, including armed militants of different hues, to attempt ethnic cleansing - driving out the non-Bodos and converting vast stretches into Bodo majority areas. The majority of the Bodo leaders may not subscribe to this suggestion. Of course, it would be much too simplistic to assume that internal or external forces were/are not at play in engineering the Bodo- Santhal feud. That is another story, but the divide today between the two communities is more than complete.

These refugees may have survived a violent past and are going through a miserable present, but the question is what does the future hold for them. Hundreds of children are just whiling away their time for lack of educational facilities. Disease and hunger have taken their toll on their health. What is the Government doing for their rehabilitation? This is the million-dollar question because a vast majority of the refugees had their homes in recognised forest villages or in encroachments inside reserve forests. There is a Supreme Court ban on encroachments or settlements in reserve forest areas and even without such a ban these refugees cannot now be resettled or rehabilitated in such restricted areas. Nevertheless, district officials at last submitted a rehabilitation plan to the Assam Government in mid- May.

But the most basic of requirements for any rehabilitation programme to succeed is funds. And this is what the Assam Government, which owes the Centre a staggering Rs. 7,000 crore as debt repayment, does not have. Existing rules calls for provision of Rs. 10,000 per family as rehabilitation grant. So far, not a penny has been paid to any of the displaced families (who have since returned to their villages) by way of rehabilitation grant. The Assam Government's financial bankruptcy is another story. But, the main problem is where to settle the refugees who had been encroachers in reserve forest areas. The Government has no answer even four years after the ethnic riots had uprooted these people from their settlements.

Assam's Bodo heartland continues to be an ethnic cauldron with the Bodo statehood uprising still on in full swing. Unless the hopes and aspirations of the Bodos are properly addressed by the Government, it may not be long before the area witnesses another bout of violence. This may mean another stream of refugees.