The tourist on the way to Mussoorie or Nainital, Uttar Pradesh's hill stations, passes the beautiful green, yellow and golden fields of the Himalayan foothills. But appearances are deceptive. In the Western U.P. tarai, violence has erupted again and again in recent years.
Uttar Pradesh's tarai is different from the old settled villages of the Gangetic plain further to the south. Most of the settlements here are of recent origin, results of colonisation of marshy lands and forests. Interestingly, the inequalities
spawned by these newly settled lands of "socialist" India are no less acute than which exists in traditional Indian village society. In fact, the inequality is even more glaring because the mansions of big farmers of the tarai are adjacent to the humblest of shanty colonies.
The virgin lands were opened up at great public expense in the 1950s, with the primary aim of resettling the Partition refugees from Pakistan. The state also provided land to demobilised defence service personnel and "political sufferers". The pioneers flourished: irrigation was abundant and land was cheap. Soon, opportunity seekers arrived from all over, buying up hundreds or thousands of formerly forest lands at throwaway prices. Slowly, a breed of gentlemen farmers grew out of the western tarai, which is the closest you come in the Sub-Continent to large country ranches in the style of the American Wild West. A new kind of "secular zamindari" was created.