More than four decades of livestock loss, fighting for their lands and constant trauma of booming sounds characterizes the lives of the people of Dollungmukh. The Indian Air Force base located nearby has seven years left in its Fifty-year land lease signed in 1975 and the people of Dollungmukh are demanding that this agreement is annulled tomorrow, if not today. The villagers say that their ancestors were ‘innocent’ and had no idea about the consequences of having an Air Force Base (AIF) next to their village. The protest started in 1992 when Mr. Bini Tabom died during a live bombing. The protest took a renewed life when another bombing on the 5th of June led to the death of Mithuns followed by another bombing which hurt a local man on the 8th of June. Mithuns are an animal of great social and cultural importance in the tribal community with a price range of INR 50,000 and above. Any villager with one or more Mithun considers themselves quite secure in times of financial emergencies. The bombing on the 5th of June killed off three. The villagers have not received any compensation till date for all their loss. Despite continuous protests, any solution seems tangled up in an administrative mess far beyond the reach of the villagers.
Settled next to the Dollum river (from which it derives its name), these villages first saw human settlement in the early 70’s by the Peri clan of Nyishi tribe. “The Nyigom (officers/administrators) of Raga came on a tour program to our village and said that while our village (Digi-Lellen) is good and plentiful in harvest, we would all die if we fall sick as the terrain is too tough for medics to come…they advised us to look for a better land with easy access and so a couple of our people went ahead in search of better land along the banks of the Kamle river. Once they found this land, the rest of us made the journey” says Nido Yama. Yama’s late husband Nido Tutum was a signatory to the lease agreement in 1975 and her family is one of the earliest settlers of Dollungmukh. When asked her age, she tells that “I did not have my periods but knew how to do all the farm work when the earthquake came” (in 1950) which puts her above 75 years. Yama has lived most of her life in Dollungmukh working on her fields growing Tem (millet), Kuchu (yam), Aam (paddy) and getting used to the conflict of bombs as part of her normal.
“I don’t even want to remember those difficult times. We did not know which to be more afraid of the Soth (elephant) or the bombs…when they asked us to sign the lease, Temi (another villager who signed the lease) said that if we let them bomb for a few years the elephants would run from the bombing sounds and we would be safe. But the Air Force started chasing us away from our own lands. We were working on our Aam (Paddy) fields when they came and started tearing our homes. They started burning and tearing our houses and started chasing us away” recalls Yama thus begging the question whether the villagers understood that the lease would last fifty years.
The circle of Dollungmukh is made up of 19 villages with a population of 2944 (Census 2011). These villages are scattered across the river banks, some being upstream while the rest downstream. The 10 upstream villages have more administrative reach but the 9 downstream villages (Kolaptukar, Lumsi, Rigyo, Paro, Tanyo, Bomte, Kherbari, Midpu, and Rajali) are isolated from the rest of Arunachal Pradesh due to the transit via the state of Assam. The government facilities include one Public Health Centre, one secondary school, nine (middle and primary) schools, a defunct electrical line and no water line. The villagers continue to depend on ground, river, and rainwater for drinking and farming purposes. Further, their claim to this lands is challenged by the Assam Forest Department who believe they are encroaching on Assam forest lands.
The growing frustration of people was the reason that led to the creation of Kamle district in December 2017 from the erstwhile eastern and western part of Lower and Upper Subansiri Districts respectively for easy administration. Yet, the solution to the villager’s problems remains caught up in an administrative hula-hoop. The Assam government does not permit the tapping into their electrical lines and electrical lines brought from the hills of Arunachal Pradesh often breaks down during rainfalls (highly common here). Similarly, the discussion on bombing requires the presence and commitment of the Eastern Air Command (A.I.F.) based in Shillong, Meghalaya, the Deputy Commissioner of Demaji and North Lakhimpur districts (since the majority of the base lies in Assam), the DC of Kamle District, the Forest officials and policymakers from both the states. A very tall order of political will, if you ask me.
“We keep electing MLAs after MLAs with the hopes that one of them would help us. But no, the bombing continues, the threats from forest department continues” shares Yama. “We have lost count of the number of cows we have lost to the bombing” adds her daughter-in-law. Bini Noga, another resident, shared online that “the practice ground which is about 1 km from the villages have sessions day and night making the people unable to visit their fields during the day as well as go to sleep at night due to the heavy shivering just like an earthquake.”
The hundreds of villagers have since protested peacefully and submitted memorandums to all the authorities concerned for the complete removal of the Air Force from their vicinity. Nido Yama’s older son Bhupen Nido was part of the team that recently submitted a memorandum to the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, who met them to discuss the points in the memorandum. The memorandum brought into focus all the problems, related to the Air Force Base, which the villagers face. The frightening unnatural sounds of fighter jets and bursting bombs were innocently categorized under the sub-heading ‘sound pollution’. The Governor, Brig. (Dr.) B.D.Mishra (Retd.), conceded to some of their points regarding safety but told that “a holistic approach has to be found where people and their animals remain safe despite the continued presence of the base near the villages” thus leaving the villagers to place all their hopes in 2025 when the lease is up for renewal.
Since, the base has extreme strategic importance due to the proximity of the state to three international borders (Bhutan, China, and Myanmar) or in the name of national development, I think it very likely that the lease will be renewed again. Once again, making the 1656 men, women and children of the nine villages of Dollungmukh be the moral price of our 1.2 Billion nations safety.