A long forgotten promise

In 1955, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had addressed an All India Conference of Tribes in Jagdalpur, Bastar district of Chhattisgarh (then Madhya Pradesh) and had said: “Wherever you live, you should live in your own way.”

Despite his assurance, rights guaranteed to the tribals by the Constitution, embodied in the PESA (Panchayat (Extension to Schedule Areas) Act), are flouted routinely today. PESA is covered by the Constitution’s Fifth Schedule, which enables adivasis to govern themselves through gram sabhas.

“They asked us to hold gram sabhas and there were police everywhere,” said one of the village-leaders of Sirisguda (in Lohandiguda), in a meeting with Express a few days ago. Despite the obvious intimidation, they said no to Tata Steel’s offer.

Nevertheless, the next day, all the local newspapers were reporting that the villagers had accepted Tata’s plan for acquisition. This is simply the repetition of a pattern that has become common in the last four or five years.

A public hearing is held, villagers say no, but the local press prints their assent.

“We always say no! And you write yes!,” they screamed at the press at Lohandiguda. Even today, the discrepancies in numerous gram sabha resolutions and public hearings held in Chhattisgarh rarely find any echo in the Chhattisgarh press, or the national press, but they do in a citizen-run initiative called CGNet Swara.

A recent study by the Institute of Rural Management, commissioned by the panchayat raj ministry, on the functioning of Panchayat Raj highlighted the violations in PESA. To quote:

“The central Land Acquisition Act of 1894 has till date not been amended to bring it in line with the provisions of PESA and to recognise the gram sabha, while a newer bill meant to replace it is yet to be tabled in Parliament. At the moment, this colonial-era law is being widely misused on the ground to forcibly acquire individual and community land for private industry.

“In several cases, the practice of the state government is to sign high profile MOUs with corporate houses (Government of Jharkhand 2008 and IANS, 2010), and then proceed to deploy the Acquisition Act to ostensibly acquire the land for the state industrial corporation. This body then simply leases the land to the private corporation — which is a complete travesty of the term ‘acquisition for a public purpose’, as sanctioned by the Act.

“In some cases, administrations run through the motions of a PESA consultation, but in no instance has the opposition expressed by tribal communities to acquisition resulted in a plan for industry being halted, suggesting the disempowerment of the gram sabha.”

There was no surprise that the chapter, aptly titled, ‘PESA, Left-Wing Extremism and Governance: Concerns and Challenges in India’s Tribal Districts’ was entirely taken out of the final report released by the government, for it is a damning indictment of the state’s pro-industrial policies. The report even goes on to mention that the growing strength of the Maoist movement in central India is inextricably linked to the government’s “exclusionary” policies: 

“Some analysts read the resurgence and spread of left-wing extremism as a phenomenon of tribal self-assertion. They point to the coincidence in the rise of economic reforms and the deepening of the Maoist movement in India’s polity, the latter being a retort to the exclusionary nature of these policies.” According to one senior politician, “If the state is neglectful and oppressive, as it  has been, it provides the water in which the guerrilla fish swim.”

A senior politician seconded, “PESA has not yet been honestly implemented in a single district. If it is, we will solve the Naxal problem.”

Lohandiguda also finds mention in the censored chapter of the PESA report.

“Resident Mahangu Madiya has `55 lakh in his account, but does not even own a mobile phone. He has no use for most such material possessions. Or even this significant sum of money, which he has not touched since it landed in a bank account this January as ‘compensation’ given by the state, in return for acquiring his 35-acre farm for a proposed steel plant. ‘I am concerned with farming. My land is important to me. What will I do with this money?’ asked the middle-aged farmer.”

Eventually, resistance to the land grab began to grow, as did the repression by the police. The Communist Party of India had no influence in Lohandiguda before Tata showed up. They only found a footing as they’re openly anti-displacement and anti-land grab. Both the BJP and Congress have supported Tata’s project. Today, only CPI party workers, or those explicitly against displacement, work in Lohandiguda.

Yet even the CPI has not been able to hold off the Tata project, and there is a

severe sense of frustration among the villagers of Lohandiguda.

The meeting

Lohandiguda is far from the theatre of war at first sight. Yet there’s a perceptible tension that everything could blow up. On May 11, the naib tehsildar of Lohandiguda, PR Marghya, had began a bhoomi puja near the proposed project site for Tata’s steel plant, at Dhuragaon village. A few villagers of Lohandiguda beat him up, mistakenly believing that he was commencing with the Tata project on their land.

The next day the administration decided to talk to ward members and sarpanches of all the villages of Lohandiguda.

The villagers at Tarkeguda weren’t interesting in attending the meeting. They were busy with a family dispute. A 40-year-old woman was being screamed at by her husband and her 20-year-old son, as some 20 other villagers sat around them.

Hidmo Ram Mandavi, one of the leaders of Tarkaguda, was almost dismissive of the meeting with the government.

Yet the meeting commenced at five in the evening. The superintendent of police, the collector and members of the local press arrived to meet villagers who had been waiting for two hours. Machine-gun-carrying policemen surrounded the villagers.

The meeting commenced with upper collector Fulsingh Netaam standing up and speaking politely to the villagers.

He started by speaking about everything the administration had done for the people and how much more it would be doing. No one in the audience appeared to be even remotely interested.

“We will give you land for land,” he finally said.

“Where is that land?,” asked one villager loudly, “Show us the land.’

“It’s there. Don’t worry.”

The meeting only lasted some two minutes after that. One man screamed, “nahi denge zameen” (we won’t give our land) and the villagers got up raising their fists, screaming at every official. An old woman with a baby tied to her chest, stood before all the officials, screamed vociferously, gestured violently and then walked away.

The police videographed every loud protestor, every violent gesture.

Meanwhile, the local administration claims that out of the 1,707 affected families, 1,163 have accepted compensation. The collector says, “we are ready to give land, but they don’t come to us.”

Many villagers still allege deceit, corruption, intimidation and arrests of village leaders who opposed the Tata project. Some said they were forced to sign blank sheets of paper. The most effective tactic employed was, however, distrust — turning family member against family member, villager against villager.

“Whoever took Tata’s money should be thrown out of the villages.” said an elder from Sirisguda.

Yet many people in Lohandiguda have refused to withdraw the money that was put into their bank accounts. And no one knows who withdrew their money, and who didn’t. Each suspects the other.

“Some people went and took Tata’s money, and spent it, and now they’re back,” said the village elder. “It’s because of them that things are like this.”

— javed@expressbuzz.com