Mamta Kalia

In this new situation, Uttarakhand’s
enterprising and talented persons,
because of lack of encouragement, capital
and training could not have a share in
the new emerging economic processes
in the region and it was mostly the people
from outside who became dominant
within the new economy. At the same
time, with the expansion of transport
facilities in Uttarakhand it became very
easy to take out its physical and human
resources which gave rise to the feeling
among the discontented people that their
region had been reduced to a hinterland
of the country’s affluent classes and
regions, a kind of inner colony in popular
perception. This sentiment got a fillip
when there was a large scale drain of
the educational talent from Uttarakhand.
With opportunities for gainful
employment, the young and the adults
both educated and illiterate, from the
toiling castes and communities began
rushing to towns leaving their children
and women to face the rigours of life
without any security or protection
whatsoever.
If we ponder deeply over this entire
process we will find that despite its short
time span of four or five decades it
had brought about such basic changes
as had not been effected over several
centuries and which had totally
transformed Uttarakhand’s traditional
pattern. It was such an economic and
social earthquake that it had totally
destroyed the old and, cutting the people
away from their roots, had left them
42 :: April-June 2010
in a vacuum to face the buffeting winds.
The human cost of these changes cannot
be measured from statistics.
While this process of change had its
negative implications it also had the
potential of immense possibilities for
reconstruction and reinvigoration of this
region. How is it that the former came
to have the upper hand and not the
latter? It is in this imbalance and
distortion that the anger and discontent
which have enveloped Uttarakhand and
which certain aggressive elements are
taking into the wrong direction of
confrontation between localism and
nationalism, have their basic source. If
this confrontation has yet not taken a
violent from which has been witnessed
in some other parts of the country, the
credit is due to the national movement
and its legacy which had always adopted
the path of reconciliation between
nationalism and localism and had always
respected the expression of a healthy
localism. However, the process of nationbuilding
and development in the last
few decades has failed to give shape
to “an Uttarakhand of our dreams”. Not
only that, this process, instead of
narrowing the gulf between the ideals
and the reality, has been widening it
further. The growing tension between
localism and nationalism (i.e., the nation
state) clearly shows that howsoever
liberal and pro-people be the intentions
of the nation-state, the consequences
of some of its policies and practices
and (lack of relevant policy) have been