Without hope in promised land

World Bank-affiliated Shodh, in their brief proposal mention that they, “Help the Bhagwanpur community to settle physically and mentally at the new place, and expose them to alternate income earning opportunities.” The Bhagwanpur community here refers to the Madia Gond Adivasis of Botezari, Chandrapur district. The tribe had lived in the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in eastern Maharashtra for as long as they could remember, but four years ago, got their packing orders in the name of wildlife conservation. They were rehabilitated 40 km away near the village of Toliwahi, Mul Panchayat, Chandrapur district, Maharashtra. Along with them were half the village of Kholsa and several OBCs. The process of displacement and rehabilitation was a long one, involving promises, the acceptance of demands, the complicity of an NGO, ‘awareness camps’, the village sarpanch and other prominent members of the village. Botezari even got a new name — Bhagwanpur after the Conservator of Forests Shree Bhagwan who would receive a letter of commendation for his work in relocating Botezari.

Unfortunately for the villagers, though, their new life offers few livelihood options. “Earlier we had no access to a road, now we have access to a road but no need for a road,’’ said Shripath Gurubua Shrirame.

“Earlier we had no electricity. Now we have electricity but we can’t pay our bills.”

“Earlier we used to cultivate rice, we used to collect tamarind, tendu patta, mahua fruits, and make bamboo baskets. Now we have nothing.”

A majority of the men don’t have jobs. Their children get their meals from state-run schools but for the adults, every day starts with a quest for wage labour or any kind of work for sustenance. There are many days when they go to sleep hungry.

“Today I have eaten, tomorrow I might not,” says Suryaban Kanake. He worked in the fields of Chiroli yesterday, but hasn’t got any work today.

Interestingly, for some of the villagers there is more land now than before. Yet for most, it is un-cultivatable, and there is no irrigation to speak of.

“It’s filled with stones and roots, we can’t cultivate anything on that land,” said Bhaorao Warlo Kanake, who had eight acres before, and now around 20 acres for his whole family. “We had asked for a tractor but they asked us for money which we didn’t have.”

“They had promised us seeds and fertilisers for five years but then they took money from us,’’ said Gangaram Mahagu Yireme.

Initially, the land was not even in their name but in the name of the Forest Department. Therefore they were not eligible to get pattas. Later, the land was de-notified and is now Revenue Land and the villagers are eligible for pattas.

All of this has contributed to that peculiar sight of a bunch of baby emus — a unique and profitable livelihood option. Only, the villagers have no trust for Shodh and Rucha Ghate who runs it.

“She, does her own independent business,’’ says one villager, dismissively. “She wants us to work with some ‘murgis’. Hum ko samaj mein hi nahi aata yeh sab ‘murgis’ key saath kya karna hai!” (We have no idea what we’re supposed to do with these chickens.)

Shodh is, in fact, just a stone’s throws away from the village of Bhagwanpur. And ‘murgis’ are, of course, the emus. “Their meat is sold to five-star hotels,” said one young man at the Shodh compound, adding that their eggs cost `2,500 each, and their meat is `800 per kg. Another young man from Botezari who works with Shodh says they sell each egg for “`2,700 to hotels in Goa.”

“They can lay eggs for 40 years,” he added.

Rucha Ghate of Shodh, meanwhile, understands the villager’s mistrust of her. “We were the intermediaries between the people and the government and the government made huge promises which they didn’t keep.”

About the emu farm, Rucha Ghate says, “This is a demonstration site. And all the light activities are chosen by the members of the youth club of Botezari. Earlier we had a poultry farm in the area but the chickens didn’t survive the heat. Emus can survive the heat.”

“Unfortunately, the older generation of Botezari only look at the past and what was, and I only work with the youth in the emu farm.”

“She used to come and sit with us and ask us about all of our problems, so we started to trust her,” said Bhaorao Warlo Kanake, around 38-years-old. Meanwhile, their houses have cracked and the roof is collapsing in at least one of the homes. The villagers claim the foundations of the houses are less than a foot and a half deep, and the houses themselves are much hotter than their homes of mud in Tadoba.

The villagers don’t have a gram sabha of their own either — just a building for it. When they asked for their own gram sabha, they were told there were too few in number to have one. Yet when they were in Tadoba, they had a gram sabha. Now ‘Bhagwanpur’ has 148 families of Botezari but also 48 of Kholsa, who were also shifted out of Tadoba with the villagers of Botezari but they are too few to have their own gram sabha. The assembly elections are less than a few days away, and half the villagers have chosen to boycott it.

In 2009, 17 villagers took a look at the condition of the land the government had given them and went back to Tadoba to try and rebuild their lives. By then, Botezari had been bulldozed and wiped out of the forest. And the 17 were arrested by the police on the behest of the Forest Department and sent to jail. One of them was a minor and there was no case booked against him and he was released soon after. Eight of the women were also to be released but they refused to leave their men, stating that “without them, we can’t work in those fields.”

“And in jail, we at least get two meals a day, at home, we don’t get anything.” Today, all of them have been released but they still need to make their court dates. Like the rest of the villagers, they spend their time in perpetual wait for the promises to be fulfilled in Bhagwanpur, for Botezari doesn’t exist anymore.

Meanwhile, there are five more villages — Kholsa, Rantalodhi, Palasgaon, Navegaon and Jamni, inside Tadoba Andhara Tiger Reserve that are being routinely ‘requested’ by the Forest Department to relocate. “We all have relations in those villages,” say the villagers of Botezari, “and they know what happened to us.”

— javed@expressbuzz.com