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DASIARCHHARA: Nazrul Islam is an Indian living in an Indian village. But whichever direction he walks, he is in Bangladesh within minutes.
Dasiarchhara is an Indian enclave about 3 km inside Bangladesh. Almost 9,000 people live in the 1,743-acre (697-hectare) enclave, officially part of India's West Bengal state. And they are not happy.
"We live on food we grow but get no services or help from the Indian government," says Islam, the village headman. "Our children have no educational facilities and no access to medical help. "We feel like caged birds."
There are 111 such Indian enclaves in Bangladesh and 51 Bangladeshi enclaves in India, many the legacy of high stakes card games between two kings centuries ago.
The rulers of Cooch Behar and Rangpur - two fiefdoms in old Bengal state - used slivers of their estates as stakes when they ran out of cash, and came to acquire pockets of land in each other's territory.
When colonial India was partitioned in 1947, Cooch Behar went to India and Rangpur to East Pakistan, which then became Bangladesh in 1971. And the enclaves continued to exist.
People living in the enclaves can go their respective country's mainland by producing identity cards, but they have to first seek permission from border guards on both sides.
The two governments agreed in 1974 that they must exchange the enclaves or at least provide corridors to each other's territory, but precious little has happened since then.
"Several rounds of talks have been held between the two countries over integrating these enclaves and we are moving in that direction," a senior Indian Home Ministry official said in New Delhi. "But I agree that progress has been slow.
"It is not possible to give a timeframe on when we may have an agreement," he added, saying that talks were being held between the Boundary Working Groups of the two countries set up in 2001 to implement the 1974 agreement.
IN THE DARK: In Dasiarchhara, meanwhile, there is virtually no government - no schools, no police, no proper roads and no doctors. Conditions in other enclaves, on both sides of the border, are no better.
All Bangladeshi villages around Dasiarchhara have electricity but the enclave is dark at night, often stalked by thieves.
"They do beg us for a connection but, as the enclave belongs to India, we are not authorised to supply power there," an officer of the Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board said.
What keeps the village going are the ties with neighbouring villages, some through marriage.
"In an emergency, we mostly rely on friendly gestures from the Bangladeshi people surrounding us. We also manage to get some of our children admitted to elementary schools in Bangladesh villages," Islam said.
"Bangladeshi doctors often come into our enclave and offer health services like vaccinating children against polio."
Another resident, Abdur Razzak, said: "We sell rice we grow to people in nearby Bangladeshi villages to buy other provisions."
"We live in very poor conditions - virtually with no infrastructure, no police camps to maintain law and order," said another elderly man, Haji Mohammad Asgar Ali.
"We want to get rid of this suffocating situation," he pleaded. "We want no more neglect. The world should know how thousands of people are being deprived of human and basic rights and being neglected for decades."-Reuters
