Freedom in the air

As the deadline nears for the enclaves to cease, things are changing fast.

Everywhere you go, you will find schoolhouses being built hurriedly.  Bamboo poles are being put into the ground and tied together. Then the structure is enclosed in cheap corrugated tin sheets. But even before that a signboard of the 'proposed school' has been erected.

I counted eleven such structures.

Suddenly everybody in Dashiarchhara enclave is raring to rush to school.

“We want our own school. How long should our children walk miles to get education? Even then by faking our identity?” exclaimed Obaidul Islam, a resident here.

But that's not the whole story. This sudden rush is not all for education.

The government will nationalise at least nine schools in Dashiarchhara and there has been none. So everybody is trying to set up their own schools and claim the government fund.

Those with more crooked ideas are setting up schools in the hope that they will make some hefty business by appointing teachers for bribes. And these 'teachers' in some cases are paying for the constructions.

Then you see policemen. Dashiarchhara was beyond the reach of law because India could not police it as it was inside Bangladesh. Bangladesh police could not enter it because it belonged to India.

So Dashiarchhara remained beyond the territory of law.  It had its own Panchayet or people's administration.

“We had our elections. We had our own election commission and held voting to elect chairman and members of Panchayet,” said Obaidul. “We used to police ourselves and also solve conflicts.”

But now the Panchayet house, a small yellow derelict concrete structure, sits in a corner of a field.

And Bangladesh police walk through the village roads.

 And since there was no official law system, Dashiarchhara had turned into a haven for criminals and drug dealers.

If you enter through the bazaar and walk for about half a kilometre or so, you find yourself in a square surrounded by five or six small tin structures and two restaurants.

One evening as I was passing through here, strange men were sitting in each tin hut, glaring at me. They did not look like locals, they came from outside, I was told. Several bikes were parked haphazardly.

“Don't stop here. Don't even look at them,” Golam Mostafa, the secretary of the enclave coordination committee, nudged me on. “They have come here to take drugs. If they suspect you are a journalist, they might harm you.”

I stayed the night there at Mostafa's house, very close to that strange square and heard motorbikes arriving and leaving every few minutes.

In the absence of law, the criminals had made it a safe haven for drugs and illegal arms.

Yesterday, I wanted to visit this place again. It has a nice name – Rashmelar bazaar. Hindus used to hold Rashmela, a festival to celebrate Krishna and Radha's love, here a long time back.

The tin huts are still there and so are the restaurants. I sat in a restaurant and sipped tea as the villagers gathered around.

“The drug dealers are gone,” said Nurul Islam, a forty-year-old enclave dweller. “They were the ones who did not want the enclave problem to be solved because they found a safe zone here.”

But were not the people around here also involved with the drug trade?

“Some of us were involved,” Nurul said. “But most of us did not like it. They used to force us to store drugs in our house. We had no choice.”

Another new thing is happening in Dashiarchhara as the old Panchayet system will cease to be and so will the India-Bangladesh Enclave Exchange Coordination Committee, the body that fought for the resolution of the enclave problem.

Instead, political parties will go into action. Awami League being the ruling party is already working to set up its committee and that has triggered some tension among the old coordination committee members.

We saw AL symbol of boats being hoisted high up on poles at different points.

Soon, other parties will do the same and Dashiarchhara, once an isolated island will become part of the juggernaut.