The rehabilitation zone: Living with lemons and elephants in Assam

Abstract

Lemon farming promoted as rehabilitation programs in western Assam has generated income for villages that were deeply affected by ethnic conflict in the 1990s. Rehabilitation is tied to an economic logic linked with the market and a profit-driven measure of development. In the absence of an official reconciliation process on the ground, these economic initiatives have become an ambitious and attractive model for the Indian state to rebuild societies that have witnessed violent ethnic conflicts in Northeast India. Drawing from fieldwork carried out between 2016 and 2019 around Manas National Park, an area within the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts in western Assam, this article examines the experiences and impacts of lemon farming and focuses on practices of rehabilitation on the ground. The process of restoration includes communities living in the villages and the animals inside the park simultaneously. We show how communities are seeking to create connections with the land and their surroundings to overcome trauma and rebuild their lives. Specifically, we focus on lemon farming and the experiences of human–elephants relationships in Manas to highlight how these accounts produce an integrative account of rehabilitation in post-conflict societies. In the backdrop of militarization and structural violence, rehabilitating communities and animals is not a straightforward story. It entails proposing new theoretical frameworks to understand how reconstructing lives and the land is also about transforming relationships between humans and animals under circumstances that are often challenging. Ongoing lemon farming practices and living with elephants in Assam requires envisioning ways of belonging and living on the land and at the same time recognizing the boundaries.