Borderland Governance and Local Administration: Understanding the Challenges of Border Communities in Dhubri District of Assam
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31305/rrijm.2026.v11.n10.013Keywords:
Borderland governance, local administration, Dhubri, Assam, India–Bangladesh border, citizenship documentation, Panchayati Raj, char areas, border communitiesAbstract
Borders are usually imagined as lines on a map, yet for the people who live beside them they are an everyday administrative, economic and emotional reality. This paper examines how governance and local administration operate in Dhubri district of Assam, which lies on the India–Bangladesh frontier and is also bounded by West Bengal and Meghalaya. The district combines a riverine and char landscape shaped by the Brahmaputra, a dense and largely rural population, a history of migration and partition, and a heavy security presence. Using a qualitative, secondary-source design, the study draws on Census of India 2011 indicators, constitutional and statutory provisions, judicial pronouncements, government programme documents and the scholarly literature on borderlands. It argues that border communities in Dhubri face a layered set of problems: uncertainty over citizenship documentation, recurrent flood and erosion displacement, weak connectivity and service delivery, a policing-dominated state presence, and thin institutional capacity at the panchayat and municipal level. These problems reinforce one another, so that administrative fragility becomes a source of social vulnerability. The paper concludes that borderland governance in Dhubri needs to move from a purely security-centred logic towards a development-and-rights-centred model built on stronger local institutions, transparent documentation processes, disaster-sensitive planning and community participation.
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