Indigenes and interlopers

The 2005 Arunachal Pradesh Human Development Report narrates the story of one Jamir Ali to illustrate a remarkable economic phenomenon: a quiet agricultural revolution led by migrant sharecroppers. Ali had moved to Arunachal from adjacent Lakhimpur District of Assam, from which he and other migrants from the plains brought with them the technology of wet rice cultivation. The report says that their bullock-driven plough, the main tool for extending permanent cultivation, is symbolic of the strides that the state has made in agricultural modernisation. Huts of migrant sharecroppers can now be seen in many parts of Arunachal, signifying the expansion of the agricultural frontier.

Despite their pioneering role in the state's economy, the lives of migrant sharecroppers in Arunachal Pradesh are insecure. Ali, for instance, leases five acres of land on a sharecropping arrangement, and his family of seven lives in a thatched hut he built on that land. The family survives on Ali's share of the crop, coupled with earnings from seasonal labour, including his wages as a rickshaw-puller – though he gets to keep only a part of his wages, as another part goes to the rickshaw owner as rent. He cannot aspire to send his children to school because Jamir Ali does not have the legal right to live and work in Arunachal. Outsiders require the so-called Inner Line Permit (ie, permission to cross into restricted areas), and customary law governs access to most land. Migrant sharecroppers do not have such permits, and thus they lease land from indigenous landowners. But these leases are oral and short-term, and the threat of eviction remains ever-present. For a group of hardworking poor people officially heralded as agricultural modernisers, the insecurity of Jamir Ali and his peers has few parallels elsewhere in the world.