The Cost Of Eviction That Assam Government Bore Previously

As bulldozers thunder across Assam’s contested landscapes — from Garukhuti to Kaziranga — they leave behind more than rubble. They leave behind broken families, scarred communities, and a haunting question: Who really pays for all this? The answer, rarely acknowledged in the cacophony of “development” rhetoric, is both simple and damning — the taxpayer.

Yes, you read that right. The state’s ongoing eviction juggernaut is not just a humanitarian disaster. It’s a financial one too. And you’re footing the bill.

Each so-called “cleansing” operation comes with a price tag. There are compensation packages, ex-gratia payments, resettlement plans, and, not to forget, the operational expenses of the entire administrative and police machinery deployed to execute these evictions. And all of it is paid for from the public exchequer. That means it’s your money — whether you’re buying a packet of salt or filling fuel in your bike.

On the economic and human costs of evictions, Land Rights activists Subrat Talukdar told Pratidin Time—“Evictions are aimed at polarization to satisfy the corporate lobbies.”

“The evictions also have the undertone of deviating public interest from the agitations of indigenous tribals of Assam”—he added.

The irony is staggering. The same government that displaces thousands — often the poorest, often the landless — turns around and writes cheques for the devastation it causes. Not out of benevolence or justice, but out of legal obligation. And still, the state wears its destruction as a badge of honour — as if razing homes can somehow be equated with reform.

Take the case of Garukhuti. In a closed-door government meeting on January 31, 2021, top bureaucrats, police officials, and representatives from minority organisations sat together to discuss the relocation of over 2,000 families from the Garukhuti area in Darrang district to Dalgaon. It was all done on paper: one bigha of land per family was to be allocated in Dalgaon Revenue Circle. A committee was even set up to oversee the process.

Everyone smiled for the files. Everyone knew what it meant — eviction, in the language of consent.

What those files didn’t show were the nights people spent under plastic sheets. The children who dropped out of school. The crops lost, the cattle sold off in distress. The quiet disintegration of once-rooted lives.

But Garukhuti was no beginning. This playbook was first drafted in places like Bandardubi, Palkhowa, and Deuchur Chang — villages on the edge of Kaziranga National Park. On September 19, 2016, the state stormed in, evicting 332 families from 2,413 bighas of land in a single day.

Two people died. Seventeen were injured. And what followed was not justice — it was damage control.

The government handed out Rs 10 lakh each to the families of the deceased. Rs 3.4 lakh was paid to the injured.

A massive Rs 14.71 crore was sanctioned as compensation for patta landholders. That’s nearly Rs 15 crore of public money, spent not to prevent harm, but to patch it up after the fact. The bulldozers rolled first. The cheques came later.

Subrat also alleged that Assam CM is trying to capture the emotion of the Assamese people, but he doesn’t have any interest to the plight of the commoners.

Back in May 2022, Batadrava, Nagaon. In the wake of a custodial death that sparked outrage, locals allegedly torched a police station. The state’s response? Bulldoze their homes.

In a suo motu PIL (Case No.: PIL(Suo Moto)/3/2022), the Gauhati High Court was informed that the government had paid Rs 30 lakh in compensation to five of the affected families. Two pucca homes were valued at Rs 10 lakh each; five kutcha houses at Rs 2.5 lakh each. The recipients were Inamul Haque, Hifjur Rahman, Mojibur Rahman, Rafiqul Islam, Akkas Ali, and the legal heir of the deceased Safiqul Islam.

There’s something deeply disturbing in this cycle: eviction, resistance, death, payout. Rinse. Repeat. And who pays? The very people being erased.

Because in India, even the poorest pay taxes. Every matchbox, every litre of kerosene, every cup of tea in a highway dhaba — there’s tax baked into the price. The landless who are labelled “encroachers” today have been feeding the state’s coffers for decades. Now, that money funds the destruction of their own homes.
State officials claim these evictions are necessary — for agriculture, for wildlife protection, for industrial projects.

But let’s call this what it is: misgovernance, dressed up as progress.

Where’s the data on how many families were truly rehabilitated after being evicted? Where’s the audit of the “one bigha per family” promises? How many of these plots have electricity, clean water, schools, hospitals? Where are the jobs for the displaced?

The truth is, most of these people end up in relocation camps, or worse — completely abandoned. For every bulldozed house, there’s a trail of broken promises and unfulfilled guarantees. And the government doesn’t even blink.

No minister stands in the Assembly to detail the economic cost of these drives. No white paper is released. No apology is made. The public memory is conveniently short, and the outrage flickers out like a candle in the wind.
But taxpayers of Assam deserve answers.

How many crores has the state spent on post-eviction compensation in the last decade? What percentage of evicted families have been successfully rehabilitated? What is the operational cost of each drive — the fuel, the manpower, the logistics? Why should public money be used to clean up a crisis created by the state itself?
This isn’t just a humanitarian issue. It’s a fundamental question of governance, justice, and economic sanity.

Assam cannot afford to bulldoze its way through poverty in the name of policy.

We must ask: Are we building a better future, or simply burying the inconvenient past under the weight of bulldozers and bureaucracy?

Because when a state chooses to displace its most vulnerable — and then charges them for the privilege — the question is no longer “Who pays the price?”

The question becomes: How long before we all do?

With large-scale evictions underway and the Assam Chief Minister now announcing compensation and relocation for the displaced, the question still looms large — who really pays for all of this?

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