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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  Young Facebook activists play key role in Indo-Bangla enclave swap
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Young Facebook activists play key role in Indo-Bangla enclave swap

In the enclaves of India and Bangladesh young activists are riding the digital bandwagon to change the course of a movement their forefathers launched

Two activists at Madhya Mashaldanga enclave inside India at the preparations for the celebrations slated for the midnight of 31 July and 1 August. The pictures will be posted on social media. Photo: Indranil Bhoumik/mint Premium
Two activists at Madhya Mashaldanga enclave inside India at the preparations for the celebrations slated for the midnight of 31 July and 1 August. The pictures will be posted on social media. Photo: Indranil Bhoumik/mint

Cooch Behar: There’s nothing new in the use of social media as a tool to foment a civil rights movement. It happened in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and in Dhaka’s Shahbag, establishing the smartphone as a powerful political weapon.

Now, in the enclaves of India and Bangladesh—tiny fragments of the two countries disjointed from their mainland—young activists in their early 20s are riding the digital bandwagon of Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube to change the course of a movement that their forefathers launched.

In a movement that draws its strength from consensus among people who have never met each other, smartphones have in the past year had a telling influence on lawmakers in both countries who have finally agreed to conclude a 41-year-old agreement to settle disputes over the enclaves.

Bharat-Bangladesh Enclave Exchange Co-ordination Committee, an organization that has led the agitation for the swapping of enclaves between the two countries (which is to happen on 1 August), has raised a brigade of educated youth to use their smartphones to communicate with the world and open a window into the plight of living in a stateless enclosure.

Active for a little over a year now, these youngsters have helped improve communication among the 55,000 enclave dwellers who do not know each other but have been fighting for a common cause through generations.

There’s at least one “Facebook Fighter"—as they are called—in each of the 162 enclaves that India and Bangladesh are about to exchange.

Better communication strengthened the movement, but more importantly, it helped change the focus of the debate over the exchange of enclaves from a “mere land swap to the human plight", says Diptiman Sengupta, assistant secretary of the coordination committee.

India is to lose around 10,000 acres of territory as a result of the swap, and this for decades has been a stumbling block. It was nationalist sentiment that overlooked the condition of the enclave dwellers, and key to overcoming this resistance was giving the movement a human face, says Sengupta.

The “Facebook Fighters" brought before the world the stories of the women in labour who could not seek hospital care, and of the children who falsified their fathers’ names to get admission to schools.

“Such stories abound in enclaves... we only needed smartphones to raise global awareness about living conditions in the enclaves," says Sengupta.

The “Facebook Fighters" got the attention they had asked for. But what didn’t get noticed, though, is the fact that on either side of the border, enclave dwellers being foreign nationals do not have access to power from the local grid.

These young activists have to trespass into India (or into Bangladesh on the other side of the border) to get their phones charged for a small fee. In India, it costs 2-5, depending on whether the power comes from the grid or a generator.

To be sure, they no longer get rounded up by the border guards for crossing the imaginary lines that separate the enclaves, but it is only recently that the authorities have become more lenient in both countries.

“Facebook Fighters" like Jainal Abedin—a final-year undergraduate student of political science—of Madhya Mashaldanga enclave do not mind paying the price. Buying a smartphone isn’t an issue either, says Abedin.

Enclave dwellers aren’t poor: they are landed and their estates are fertile enough to support several crops a year even without irrigation facilities, says Abedin.

“But phone calls are expensive," he says, adding that Facebook and WhatsApp have made communication with fellow ‘Fighters’ in Bangladesh affordable.

The entire movement is based on consensus between enclave dwellers on both sides of the border, and social media has provided the platform for exchange of ideas, according to Abedin.

This activism may have also helped the people deal with administrative excesses, which were rampant in enclaves on both sides, and with bargain hunters seeking to make a killing by evicting enclave dwellers.

“Isolated" attempts are still being made to usurp properties of people who could be intimidated into moving, but with information travelling fast between the two nations, responses can be calibrated to neutralise coercion, says Sengupta.

With the enclaves set to be exchanged, the “Facebook Fighters" have started to tweak their movement. They have learned the ropes and their tasks are cut out.

“We will continue to be in touch with our ‘Fighters’ in Bangladesh," says Roshan Sarkar, another social media activist from the Bhatrigachi enclave. “The challenge now is to put pressure on the local administration to deliver on its promises of development."

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Published: 30 Jul 2015, 01:15 AM IST
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