‘Take our houses, not the forest’

Seventy-year-old Nainammal of Thervoy Kandigai, Thiruvallur district, looks sad these days. The forest that fed her in times of drought by providing livelihood and water for her farms is under threat. Nearly 1,500 acres of meikkal poromboke land (wasteland), which is rich in herbs, fruits and wildlife and also serves as a catchment area in this village, has been given to SIPCOT by the Tamil Nadu government to develop into an SEZ.

“During drought,” says Nainammal, “when rice was expensive, we used to eat spinach and fruits that grow wildly in the forest land. For livelihood, we used to make brooms out of Thodappa sticks from the forest, sell it in nearby towns and use that money to buy food.” Anbhazhgan, a former panchayat president of Thervoy, echoes the sentiment: “Take our houses, not the forest. No one has got the right to destroy the forest.”

SIPCOT officials, on their part, speak matter-of-factly. They say ancillary units, particularly in the automobile industry, will initially come up in 500 acres. Right now, the forest is being cleared. Result: it has become a do-or-die struggle against the project for the 6,000 villagers of Thervoy, mostly Dalits. Most of them directly depend on the forest for their livelihood.

Water for irrigating more than 5,000 acres of land in the 13 villages around Thervoy is trapped in this forest during the rains and flows to the more than 10 ponds and tanks in this area. As the land is rocky, there’s no groundwater, so the villagers can farm only if water gets trapped in this forest.

“We kept watchmen to guard the forest from the time of our ancestors,”

reveals 45-year-old Kanthammal. “Since we couldn’t pay them salaries, every family used to give a quantity of paddy to the guards. Now the government wants to take over the forest. Where will the nearly 10,000 cattle graze? Where will we go? We only have to die.”

Most of our houses here have been built within 1,000 sq ft. “If we wanted,” explains Mahesh, member of the village struggle group that has been spearheading the movement against SEZ with the help of CRY and Tamil Nadu Sammakalvi Vaazhurimai Iyyakam, “we could have built bigger houses using the forest land. But we didn’t do that as we wanted to protect the forest.”

Ever since the project was made public in 2007, the villagers have been holding regular protests, meeting district officials and human rights organisations in a bid to stop this brutal destruction of their lives and livelihood. The protests accelerated after the state government announced last year that France-based tyre firm Michelin would set up a factory at Thervoy at a cost of Rs 4,000 crore.

“We don’t want the company to come here,” says 27-year-old Glory. “Effluents from the tyre firm will pollute our water and air, cause diseases like TB and we also won’t be able to practice farming.”

What about jobs that SEZs are supposed to create? “Thervoy has already two firms,” points out Gautam, a graduate. “Aro­und 30 of our boys worked there, but last year they were sacked. It’s a myth that SEZs create jobs for locals. Most of us are arts/science graduates and don’t have the technical skills required to work in companies.”

Some also see the SEZ as an act of aggression by upper-caste politicians on the largely Dalit population of Thervoy. “In the SIPCOT at Gummidipoondi, around 250 firms have been closed,” notes J Samson of Dalit Farmers Village Organisation. “So why don’t they open the new companies there, which have better infrastructure facilities and a national highway rather than build a SEZ in Thervoy, which doesn’t even boast of proper buses? The main reason is to

destroy Dalit villages.”

The anger of the villagers is palpable. One of them retorted when asked about the way forward, “I’ll cut the Chief Minister into pieces if SEZ comes here.”

“If the government still goes ahead with the SEZ,” threatens Kanthammal, “we will boycott the government itself by giving up ration cards, voter IDs, take our children out of government schools and accounts from the bank here.”