Paying Up At Gunpoint

INSURGENCY is big business in the North-east. It’s an industry with a turnover of over Rs 600 crore per annum. The rebels levy annual ‘taxes’ on big business houses and traders, and collect monthly taxes from government servants, offi-cials, doctors and engineers. "Insurgency ended 20 years ago," says former Meghalaya chief minister B.B. Lyngdoh. "There are only extortionists and robbers now in the garb of insurgents." With the police nowhere in the picture, it’s all as official as it can get. On pay day, representatives of the rebel groups station themselves in government offi-ces and deduct the tax (between 1 and 10 per cent of the basic salary) at source.

Private individuals receive notices, complete with the official seal, to pay up or else. All payments are acknowledged. Admits Nagaland Chief Minister S.C. Jamir: "Militants are taxing people from all walks of life heavily, government servants included." Intelligence sources say tea companies in Assam shell out Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh every year by way of subscription to the ‘Rebel Fund for Revolution’.

Bigtime contractors cough up to Rs 2 lakh, professionals Rs 50,000. Abductors demanded Rs 20 lakh from an engineer in Manipur in January.

Although big companies fight shy of admitting they pay protection money, Goodricke was bold enough to acknowledge it in one of its annual reports. "Insurgency offers easy money for frustrated youth seeking quick bucks," says Bolin Bordoloi, a Tata Tea executive who was abducted by the Bodo Security Force.

With no visible economic activity around, extortion has also become the only source of income for disgruntled, unemployed youth. Different sections of National Highway 39 which passes through Nagaland and Manipur are controlled by different groups. Vehicles passing through have to pay each group.

Petrol and oil tankers are a special target. Result: Indian Airlines flights to Delhi from Imphal are regularly cancelled because planes cannot be refuelled. Petrol is rationed for vehicle-owners.

In most states, vehicles now move twice a day in convoys, escorted by the Army to steer clear of extortionists. As a result, it will take 13 hours to traverse 250 km from Dharmanagar and Agartala on NH 44.

With Bangladesh freezing bank accounts of insurgent groups, the rebels, who earlier targeted big business, have turned their attention on the common man. In Manipur, where even Chief Minister Rishang Keishing’s staff pays protection money, several doctors have sold their Marutis and opted for two-wheelers. Access to huge sums of money enables the militants to purchase modern weaponry and travel abroad unhindered. Although the stated aim of North-east insurgents is to expiate the ills affecting tribal societies by exterminating non-trib-als , they are having a problem hiding their growing prosperity.

The police found a lap-top computer on a militant nabbed in Guwahati; a top NSCN leader, the arrested militant revealed that he kept financial records on it. Elsewhere, 800 pairs of Lotto shoes were found in a ULFA hideout—part of the boys’ ‘uniform’.

As seven-time Rajat Kamal winner Bhabendranath Saikia, whose next film deals with insurgency, says: "The worst part of the movement has been that people have joined it only for their good; people who wanted to make money without reasonable hard work."