Sulfa Package or Poll Package? The ₹900-Crore Question in Assam’s Peace Politics

The central government’s recent ₹900-crore rehabilitation package for surrendered ULFA (Sulfa) members has been dressed in the language of peacebuilding. The official narrative paints it as the long-overdue economic arm of the ULFA peace accord — a healing gesture to bring decades of insurgency to an end. But in Assam’s volatile political theatre, every purse string is also a campaign string. And this, unmistakably, has the choreography of a pre-election performance.

The package is structured under the Union Home Ministry’s surrender-cum-rehabilitation scheme, offering each former cadre a ₹4 lakh fixed deposit, held for three years, plus small stipends and training opportunities. On paper, this is meant to be collateral for loans, seed money for self-employment, and a bridge to reintegration. In reality, the pattern is clear: ceremonial FD certificate distributions, photo opportunities with political leaders, and a public narrative of generosity just in time for the 2026 electoral clock.

What makes this intervention politically charged is its target group. It doesn’t just reward the cadres who signed the accord. It also reaches toward the “unfortunate cousins” — former ULFA members who, for reasons of bureaucracy, factional politics, or personal rivalries, were left off the original beneficiary list. Their numbers are not marginal; they form a large, neglected bloc with grievances still alive and allegiances still fluid. In a close election, their consolidation can tilt more than just a few constituencies.

More than ₹900 crore has already been channelled into this peace process — a sum larger than the annual budgets of several Assam government departments. Yet, as many critics note, the tangible social and economic outcomes are hard to see. The cooperative-driven economic revival that the Union Home Ministry often touts remains a “distant dream,” with little to show in terms of large-scale employment generation, industrial diversification, or market integration.

The hard questions remain unanswered:

Has this money produced anything permanent?

Has it reshaped Assam’s job market?

Has it bridged the economic isolation of former conflict zones?

The answers, so far, tilt toward “no.” Outside the ceremonial events, there is no visible shift in the structural realities of Assam’s economy. No large-scale industrial projects linked to the peace package. No surge of agricultural cooperatives breaking into new markets. No spike in skilled labour absorption.

Instead, what emerges is a pattern familiar to conflict economies worldwide — the monetisation of peace. Personal prosperity for some ex-combatants does not translate into collective upliftment. Those who can navigate political and bureaucratic channels secure their slice of the pie; those without such connections remain on the margins, still trapped in the socio-economic conditions that fed insurgency in the first place.

History offers a sobering reminder. The Assam of 1979, at the dawn of the Assam Movement, and the Assam of today share more economic similarities than leaders would like to admit. Conflict may have changed the political map, and peace accords may have rewritten the legal script, but the structural underdevelopment — poor infrastructure, fragile job markets, overdependence on extractive sectors — remains stubbornly intact.

War changes geography; peace money changes fortunes. But when fortunes change only for a few, the social contract remains brittle. The ₹900-crore Sulfa package, without a coherent strategy for permanent livelihoods, risks becoming yet another high-profile payout that buys short-term calm and long-term political loyalty, but not transformation.

If the government truly intends to turn the peace accord into an engine of economic renewal, the focus must shift from disbursement optics to structural change: land security, cooperative market access, vocational pipelines tied to real industries, and community-led development that survives the election cycle. Otherwise, the grand cheques of 2025 will be remembered less as instruments of peace and more as the most expensive campaign posters Assam has ever seen.