Murder At Pachuwara

The murder of activist-nun Sister Valsa John has a lot to say about India’s mining policy

Karu Tudu of Kolajuda village stands over his destroyed paddy field, covered in coal dust. Over 500 trucks carrying 2300 kilograms of coal each, travel pass his fields each day and are forced to dump some of the coal on the roadside by local villagers, who sell it on the black market.

This article appears in two parts in the Sunday Guardian on the 15th of January here and the 22nd of January 2011, here.

Everyday over 500 trucks travel the 35km stretch from Pachwara to Pakur in Jharkhand, carrying over 2300 kilograms of coal each. And everyday, hundreds of local adivasis and landless farmers stop the trucks, and unload a little coal onto the road for themselves to sell in the black market.

In the process, the paddy fields on the periphery of the roads are entirely covered in coal dust.

The police sometimes accompany the trucks carrying the coal and attempt to stop the locals from taking coal, and have often chased them away, beaten them, or arrested them. Yet the practice continues.

‘We make around 150 rupees a day, if a whole family sits to collect coal to sell it.’ Said one of the ‘scavengers’ on the roadside.

‘Why do you do it?’

Two brothers Badan and Darbo Soren who live in the village of Kulkipada have no choice. The coal dust has destroyed their produce, and it renders their crop unsellable.

‘We eat the black rice ourselves. No one will buy it.’ Said Badan, ‘Earlier we used to make some Rs.15,000 or Rs.20,000 per year.’

‘And there is no more mahua seeds, no more mango in the trees.’ Continued his brother.

The rains have failed in the last three years in a district where the rivers run with streaks of black coal. Families make a living out of the coal that travels their road every day, turning the entire stretch of the 35 kilometers into a black field, where children as young as six can be seen working to help their families.

The coal mining company Panem Coal Mines Limited, had also tried to acquire lands to build a railway line from Pachuwara to Pakur, but they faced stiff resistance from farmers like Badan Soren and his brother, who’d lose their farm land to the track.

Instead the dumper trucks travel everyday across a dusty road where both people have lost their lives to hit-and-run accidents, and in anger, the locals burn down the trucks, and an informal industry is born.

How The Free Market Murdered A Nun

Of the thousands of villagers who stop the dumper-trucks and collect coal on the 35 km stretch from Pachwara to Pakur, many are children under the age of ten.

The story of Pachuwara can be told by telling the story of the murder of Sister Valsa, a nun and an activist who fought for the rights of Santhal Adivasis, who would be a part of a compromise that would spell her own demise, when she was brutally axed to death in her adopted home in the village of Pachwara in Pakur district on the 15^th of November, 2011.

Within hours of her killing, the mainstream media was quick to report that she was murdered by the Maoists. The Maoists denied it, even as an initial note, claimed to be written by them, condemned the nun and the activist to be working for the coal mining company Panem, and not in the interests of the people.

A few days later the police would arrest seven individuals who were associated to Sister Valsa. Almost all of them were local villagers/contractors who’d get work from Panem. One of the accused, Pycil Hembrom was the son of the president of the Rajmahal Pahar Bachao Andolan that fought against the company and had a long history of working with Sister Valsa. And after the end of the agitation against the company and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on the 30^th of November 2006, he worked with them as an independent contractor.

Sister Valsa was living as a guest in the house of Pycil Hembrom and had only moved out eight days before her murder. A confrontation had taken place over the money that came from the mining company and Sister Valsa moved into the home of Sonaram Hembrom, who confirmed that Sister Valsa had confronted Pycil and others for embezzling money.

‘The MOU made a lot of promises, but the work only happened on their accord.’ Sonaram Hembrom said, who was present when over forty people had surrounded his house in the dead of night to look for Sister Valsa who was hiding in her room, and would eventually find her and axe her twice near her head and her neck.

‘They saw all that money and they got greedy.’ Said Sonaram’s neighbours, about Pycil and the other accused from Aalubera village adjacent to Pachwara.

‘Sometimes, the money we were supposed to get for one tree used to be Rs.50,000, but Sister would find out that we only got Rs.5,000. When we confronted them about this, they said it was a computer error.’ Continued Sonaram Hembrom. All the documents and registers that detailed all the financial dealings of the Project-Affected-Persons and the PANEM Coal Mining Company that Sister Valsa had kept, were appropriated by the police as evidence and are currently unavailable.

The History of An MOU

D. Marandi, once a farmer, now a miner at Panem Coal Mines Ltd at the rehabilitated site of Naya Kathaldih.

On the 19^th of April, 1984, very close to Pachuwara, and close to the collective memory of the elders of Pachuwara, the police had shot and bayoneted over 14 people as they were demanding their rights. Every year they gather in the thousands on the day of the incident to pay homage to their martyrs.

Years later, their rights were again usurped by the Panem Coal Mines Limited, who were given land by the administration, who used an infamous colonial era law, the Land Acquisition Act to acquire all the lands of Pachuwara and the nearby villages for coal mining. This has remained a story repeated across central India’s mining belt that gives birth to numerous protest movements and a direct confrontation with the state’s mining policy that has acquired lands by flouting laws, and violating tribal rights.

Almost all the mineral deposits in Central India are on Fifth Schedule land, which is protected by the constitution and has given local tribes authority over local resources. Yet the arbitrariness of the Land Acquisition Act allows the government to simply hand over lands to private companies, and the locals have always resisted, leading to brutal confrontations with the police and the administration.

But of the 104 MOUs in Jharkhand, Pachuwara is one of two where work has started, as there was a settlement between the villagers and the company, a settlement that many still feel has to be completely understood.

‘Our land cannot be sold, you people with a brave history can and must drive out this company!’ said Binej Hembrom, the parganaith (village headman) to the people of Pachuwara in a meeting long before the agreement, but would eventually be one of the signatories to the MOU along with the company director Bishwanath Dutta.

Today Binej Hembrom is a senile old man, half-deaf, seemingly unaware that his son is in jail for murdering a woman who they once fought the company with, and some say, had won.

‘People in Ranchi, in the social movement’s think we sold out.’ Said Father Tom Karvallo, who along with Sister Valsa John was close to the movement at the time of the signing of the MOU.

‘But there was a lot of repression.’

‘Our people were being divided by the company. There were police cases on Valsa and others like Joseph who’d eventually be killed in an accident. And when we lost in the High Court, we had gone to the Supreme Court to challenge the illegality of the land acquisition as this was a Fifth Schedule area. But the Courts are a gamble, it can really depend on the judge, or the climate of the time. And we were afraid, that if we lost, we’d set a dangerous precedent as there were so many other adivasi movements fighting for their land. And they would’ve all suffered if the Supreme Court had ordered in favour of the company.’

‘So we signed the MOU. And it was a good relief package, that we only got after such a strong struggle.’

The agreement was reached in Delhi on the 30^th of November, 2006, after ‘persuasion’ by a section of outsider activists, and one, including Shajimon Joseph, then Resident Editor of The Hindustan Times, who’d eventually be a signatory of the MOU as a witness, who confirms there was police repression in the form of cases on Sister Valsa and other adivasi leaders, but also mentions there was no dissatisfaction during the signing of the MOU.

The Memorandum of Understanding itself was unprecedented. Apart from offering schools, healthcare, employment, rehabilitation sites, there would be a yearly stipend for each acre the company appropriates, and that the work for the construction of rehabilitated sites would be given as per the MOU, to local contractors and Project-Affected-Persons.

The money that came from Panem company for such work, would go to Sister Valsa, who directed the young contractors like Pysil to work in the area.

Five years after the Memorandum of Understanding, the promised hospital is still under construction.

The village of Kathaldih was uprooted, and the company has resettled them in a newer colony called Naya Kathaldih, where farming as all but stopped and most of the young men work as miners in the coal mine, waiting for the company to finish mining their lands, and then return it to them, so they can commence farming again.

Living In Fear

A truck that was allegedly burnt down by the Maoists. Yet there have been many other times, when local villagers burnt down trucks in anger after numerous hit-and run incidents.

Rajan Marandi and Pradhan Murmu were two other contractors arrested for the murder of Sister Valsa who lived in the adjacent village of Aalubera that is soon to lose their land to the company.

Rajan has five cars for himself, while Pradhan has around seven cars and all their cars remain parked in the village in front of their houses. The village is a village in fear, as the police has been searching for others who may have been present when Sister Valsa was attacked. Two boys who refused to give their names say the police has been searching for them, and they are innocent.

They quickly disappear when they’re asked about the relief package.

There are no village elders, and there is no one who is willing to talk about the impending displacement and rehabilitation.

One young woman whose family lost her land years ago to the petrol pump that fills over 500 trucks claims their family doesn’t get the monthly stipend, but refuses to go on record, in fear of antagonizing the powers-to-be.

‘They’re all filling their own pockets,’ she said.

‘Isn’t there anyone who takes up these issues?’

‘There’s no one.’

‘Who speaks up against the company?’

‘No one.’

‘Over here,’ said another young boy Chappu Deheri in Pachwara who was asked the same question, ‘Only Sister Valsa and her samiti used to.’

Aalubera is also the home of Advin Murmu, a 20 year old boy who was arrested for the alleged rape of a young girl who lived in the house of Sonaram Hembrom along with Sister Valsa.

According to her father, Advin Murmu and three other boys had kidnapped the girl on the evening of the 7^th of November, and while the three boys had disappeared, Advin kept the girl all night in an empty home at Aalubera.

The girl was only let out in the morning and she had gone to her aunt’s house. The family along with Sister Valsa would take the case to the police on the 9^th of November, six days before her murder.

The Superintendent of Police, Mayur Patel claims that there was no rape, and that the girl and the boy knew each other, and the girl’s family is merely protesting the fact that the boy is a Christian and the girl’s family is Sarna.

The family however claims, that Pycil Hembrom and the contractors wanted them to drop the rape case, threatening that they’d lose all their lands and their home if they persist to fight them. The family especially indicted the local sub-inspector of police, Daroga, as someone who wanted to give the family Rs.50,000 to forget the so-called imaginary case.

The Inspector has since been suspended for dereliction of duty after the murder of Sister Valsa.

Advin Murmu has since been arrested and according to the Superintendent of Police, for both incidents. Advin Murmu’s brother, also a contractor, claims his brother is innocent while his bail application was rejected by the Courts.

Photography Post-Script

‘The blackened, unsellable rice of Badan Soren of the village of Kulkipada.

Badan Soren and his house, next to the 35km road where 500 trucks travel everyday carrying 2300 kilograms of coal.

The Last Of The Asbestos Miners Of Roro

Ex-miner Dansingh Bodra with the corroded helmet of his deceased neighbour Vijaysingh Sondi at the village of Roro, Jharkhand.

This article appears in Daily News & Analysis on the 8th of January, 2012.

When miner Dansingh Bodra was asked about the people from his village who he worked with, in the asbestos mines of Roro, who have all died before their time, he slowly starts counting, first to himself, and then loudly: ‘gyaara…. Pooliya Sondi……….. baara………Rohto Gop……..taira….Bagan Sondi…….. chowda….. Vijay Singh Sondi…….. pandra……Gono Sondi….. sola….. Harish Sondi….. sattra, Sukmon Sondi…… atthra….. Rahto Samadh.’

Dansingh himself suffers from cancer, a huge tumour grows out of his stomach.

It took him five minutes to remember the dead. A few seconds to denounce the company that laid them off one fine day when the mines shut down in 1983.

‘They gave us nothing, no healthcare, no pension, just these illnesses.’

‘I worked in the mines for 12 years, and from that day itself I used to cough, and slowly it started to get worse.’

A man with a lump growing out of his stomach remains a testament to the reality of internal colonization, of a company that currently earns aggregate revenues of over 800 crores, of industrial development and the idea that mining offers jobs.

Dansingh Bodra awaits death in a village where his three grandchildren sleep behind him suffering from fever.

The mines have long but closed down, but the dust and pollution that emanates from them, still spread across the fields.

Even today, as per law, especially as per section 22 of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981, all asbestos mines have to be closed but the Hyderabad Industry Limited of the CK Birla Group, did not close their mines at Roro village at Chaibasa, West Singhbhum, Jharkhand and the asbestos fibres that are blown into the wind, that seep into the fields and rivers, still exist 30 years after the mines shut down.

‘So many people died before they turned forty,’ Said Birsingh Sondi, who points to his neighbours house, ‘There lived Mangalsingh Sondi, who was 25 when he died and he never even worked in the mine, his father Sukmon worked there, and he died a few years ago too.’

Asbestos, whose use, manufacture and extraction is banned across the European Union, is still used widely across India and is part of a 4000 crore industry dominated by around 18 companies who justify the use of asbestos as a substitute for affordable roofing, who claim that chrysotile asbestos can be safely manufactured and used without risks.

The companies claim that the kind of asbestos used in India isn’t carcinogenic, even as all forms of asbestos are classified as carcinogenic by the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization, and the International Agency For Research On Cancer, who mention in a report that was published in 2010: ‘Epidemiological evidence has increasingly shown an association of all forms of asbestos (chrysotile, crocidolite, amosite, tremolite, actinolite, and anthophyllite) with an increased risk of lung cancer and mesothelioma.’ It would go on the mention that an estimated 125 million people are still exposed to asbestos in the workplace.

Yet the Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association, one of the main lobby groups for the continued production and use of asbestos, has repeatedly claimed, ‘Some five hundred other products and industrial processes are recognized as carcinogens, but this does not mean that we must prohibit their use.’

While the Lobby has often reiterated that chrysotile asbestos is safe, and that proper safety standards and use of asbestos, justifies the industry, the chairman of the Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association, Abhaya Shanker, is also the Managing Director of Hyderabad Industries Limited, who says they closed the Roro mine, and that the mountains of asbestos tailings from the mine are not carcinogenic.

‘Roro is a finished chapter, a closed mine 30 years back, what’s the point of Roro? I don’t understand.’ He exclaims in a telephonic interview.

‘That is all an old story and that was all, an old type of asbestos and that is all done.’

‘The mine is safely handed over, and closed, and handed over to the government of India, and there is no danger to the public. It’s all bullshit.’

‘According to the Supreme Court directives in the CERC case, you have to monitor the health of your workers? Do you also monitor the health of your workers from Roro?’ I asked.

‘You can look at our world class health monitoring system, for our workers, …., for several years we keep calling them, for check-ups, for studying them…’

‘Even the Roro workers?’

‘The Roro workers are all finished, we would have done them (the survey) for a couple of years……and it’s been 30 years now, nobody would be alive now.’

A History Of Trying To Close The Mountain

Roro Hills at Chaibasa were first mined for chromite in the early 1960’s by the Tatas, and those mines were sold to the CK Birla Group, as the Tatas moved onto mining chromite at Sukinda, in Odisha, which itself, according to international environmental group Blacksmith Institute, is one of the 10 most polluted places in the world, where approximately 70% of the surface water is contaminated by hexavalent chromium, with 24.7% of the population living around the mines to be suffering from pollution-induced diseases.

When I had visited the village of Suanla in Sukinda in 2010, an old man scoffed at the media’s ability to highlight the issue and improve the lives of the people of his village. He claimed that over 30 people have died in the past few months. Some called the deaths in Suanla an exaggeration, but in the house of Markand Hembram, four members of the household had died within a year.

Quoting the report by the Blacksmith Institute, the government itself had gone on to say: ‘It is unique, it is gigantic and it is beyond the means and purview of the [Orissa Pollution Control] Board to solve the problem.’

Back at Roro, there were vocal attempts to close the mountain and clean up. Way back in 2003, a public hearing was held where villagers from 14 villages around the mines has spoken up about working in the mines and the health issues in their villages. The hearing was organized by Jharkhand Organization For Human Rights, and was paneled by a group of prominent doctors and advocates.

The report of the hearing was taken to the District Collector and Chief Medical officer who were given representations for conducting medical camps, to monitor health of workers and non-workers, and to detail a scientific closure of mines and to hold Hyderabad Industries Limited accountable to pay for health and environmental damages.

Yet till date, there have never been any attempt by any official body – from the Pollution Control Board, the Directorate General of Mines Safety, the Mining Department, the company or the local administration to remediate and clean up the mine tailings or do a proper mine closure.

‘Everyone wants the mines cleaned up.’ Said Birsingh Sondi, whose own fields run aground with asbestos dust.

At Roro, only three miners who worked with the Birla Group are left alive. But not everyone worked directly under the company as independent contractors had also taken on the responsibility of disposing asbestos dust, who paid workers Rs.1.50 per day, for working from eight in the evening to eight in the morning to do the work without any protective clothing.

‘there was no izzat in mining, we should never have allowed them here.’ Continued Dansingh Bodra, who had even worked underground, mining asbestos without any protective clothing, and there were accidents: Turam Sondi, Jida Sondi and Dausar Sondi were killed in the mines in a few years before the lockout and the closing of the mines.

‘No one should ever have worked the way we did.’

Photography Post-Script

Where Individuality Means Waging War Against The State

The Curious Case Of Lingaram Kodopi

Testimonies from the burnings of the villages of Tadmetla, Morpalli and Timmapuram were also collected by Lingaram and can be found on youtube here.

This article first appears in abridged form in DNA on the 26th of September, 2011.

I got a call around midnight in the Delhi summer. It was Lingaram, the young Muria adivasi from Sameli village in Dantewada, then studying in Noida’s International Media Institute of India. Linga’s misfortunes never seem to end: first he was accused of helping the Maoists, then tortured in the police station toilet, forced to be a Special Police Officer, then released with the help of a habeas corpus petition. In a few months, he would be dealing with encounter killings in his village that left three dead, to only add to the targetting of his family members by the Chhattisgarh police, and then to be accused in a press conference by Senior Superintendent of Police Kalluri of being a mastermind of an attack on a Congress leader and the sucessor to Maoist leader Azad.

‘Javed bhai,’ He asked me that night in Delhi, ‘do you know where I can get a Che Guevara t-shirt?’

Silence.

‘Linga, you wear that T-shirt in Dantewada, you’d be the first man in jail.’

Lingaram chuckled uncontrollably.

Prankster.

A young man who is repeatedly targetted by the state of Chhattisgarh wants to wear a t-shirt with a face of a revolutionary while he traipses around the forests as a newly-trained video journalist, with the clearest of intentions of trying to help his people.

That alone, is his first crime against the state. Lingaram wants to help the adivasis, his own people, which means, to ensure them a fair stake in their forests, their lands, and their rights, which is completely against the policies of the state of Chhattisgarh. That alone, is a crime. That alone, makes him a Maoist sympathizer.

A simple idea, enshrined in the idea of the dignity of the human being: that he should not be shot, that she should not be raped, that they should not lose their children to war, that they should not lose their forests and their way of life to the profit margins of companies, and the idea of economic growth.

Lingaram was arrested again on the 9^th of September, 2011 from his village of Sameli in Dantewada, for allegedly facilitating Essar Steel’s payment of protection money to the Maoists.

He was arrested along with B.K Lala, a contractor.

That Essar Steel pays the Maoists is a fact that was well-known in Dantewada. In 2009, when the Maoists blasted the 267km pipeline that carried iron ore slurry to Vishakapatnam, one local journalist was quick to quip: ‘It’s collection time!’

Essar Steel pays local journalists too to keep their mouths shut. That also everyone knew. Local journalists need to collect their own advertising revenue and they get that from companies.

As for Essar Steel paying the Maoists, this is no new phenomena. Contractors and companies have paid the Maoists in almost all the districts where they have a ‘liberated zone’. You don’t cut a single beedi leaf or mine a single rock of ore without paying the Maoists.

Lingaram, would’ve been one of the rarest breeds of journalists in a district of Muria and Koya adivasis: he would be one who knew Gondi, who spoke the language of the people in the furthest hills, with the quietest whispers.

His story on the Tadmetla, Morpalli and Timmapuram burnings is available on youtube, and his story quotes adivasis who want justice, who want ‘karvai’, nor ‘kranti’, they want investigations, not anything else. It is there for everyone to see, called ‘Dantewada burning 1.mov’

Linga knew his district too and what his people would tell you. He would tell you that the development by the Essars and Tatas is not development for his people. He would tell you how even though the National Mineral Development Corporation and the Bailadila mines have been around since the 1960s, it has not brought any upliftment to the hundreds of adivasi villages around it.

But why is he really in jail?

The state of Chhattisgarh has an unwritten set of rules about how an adivasi is meant to behave. You don’t organize, you don’t agitate, you don’t protest human rights violations, you don’t protest against the state, and you certiainly don’t protest against industrial development, which the drafters of the new Land Acquisition bill will tell you in the introduction to the bill, that ‘urbanization is inevitable’….. and these adivasis better understand that.

Lingaram joins all the other adivasis who stood up for their rights and started to ask questions about the kind of development that was thrown onto them without a choice: Manish Kunjam, an ex-MLA was given death threats and has been living on borrowed time, Kartam Joga, Supreme Court petitioner against the Salwa Judum who is in jail on absurd charges, Kopa Kunjam, human rights activist who refused to be bought by the state.

They’re all guilty of trying to help their people.

The Maoists too, claim to help the Adivasis. And while some people would like to ensure that those two things, ‘the Maoists’ and the ‘adivasis’ are the same thing, there’s also another adivasi voice dissenting amidst the dissenters that says, ‘but they kill our own people.’ Lingaram, the so-called Maoist sympathizer, would last call me when he needed help to ensure his uncle could get treatment after the Maoists shot him in his leg.

Linga also had that voice, the voice to profess his complete independence: free of being called something. I still remember the one thing he said with most emphasis, the first time I met him: ‘I just want to be my own person.’

Individuality, according to the state of Chhattisgarh, is also called Waging War Against the State now. Individuality would mean, that a young boy who is being forced by two warring parties to come to their side, doesn’t need to choose his allegiances but can be his own person.

A Brief Note on Kuakonda Block: Lingaram’s Testimony

One day in Kuakonda block: a mother and her child look on as security forces who commandeered their vehicle return to base camp, about thirty minutes after an IED blast that injured three security personnel and led to the arbitrary detention of four adivasis, including a young boy. The incident took place on the 2nd of May, 2009.

Lingaram had given a testimony in the Independent People’s Tribunal in Delhi on the 9^th of April, 2010, three days after the Tadmetla killings that left 76 security personnel dead. The entire testimony is here:

“My name is Lingaram, from Sameli,  Dantewada.  I am a driver and my family has a car, in which I can ferry people.  We  have  some land on which we farm.  I am not very literate.

I was watching TV at home, around September last year.  Five  motorcycles came, with 10 people, who were holding AK 47s. They took me to Koukonda. They asked me questions such as “where did you get the bike from?  How do you go about in style?”  My family is fairly comfortably off, but they accused me of being a Naxalite.  They  tortured me and wanted me to become an SPO.

In the meanwile, my family members filed a writ of habeus corpus. I should have been released. But they kept threatening me that I would either be killed by them—in a fake encournter, or by the Naxalites.  Finally, I  agreed to be an Special Police Officer. They took me for the Court hearing and kept me in a fancy hotel—but before the judge, I said that although I have come here of my own will, I now wish to return to my family and village.  So the police had to let me go.

But on the way back, while I was being accompanied by my family and villagers in cars, the security forces stopped us again, and arrested me again and were trying to force me to go back to the police station.  However, I managed to flee, but my brother was taken by them instead.  A few days later, they again came for me. And have been threatening my father also.

I have been living in hiding since. The police are still looking for me.

Who is not grieved by the killings of 76 people? But I feel that even though the stated target of the police is the naxalites, the real target is somewhere else? Why are we (adivasis) being harassed by the police because of what the Naxalites do?  Why can’t we adivasis wear a good watch, drive a car without being picked up by the police?

Our village has 1800 people, the block has 30,000 people.

I fear that because of what has happened recently (the killing of 76 security forces), the entire town of Chintalnar will be razed.  Just because of coming here to testify, God knows what will happen to me.  But I have to die in any case, how long can I live in hiding?

There is news that some mineral has been discovered in the hills close to our village. And I think that is the real reason that the police is there, not because of the Naxalites.

We have a Gram Panchayat but it has no meaning.  It is full of Marwaris and non-tribals.  If we write and send them something, they bury it and make sure that it doesn’t reach any of the authorities.  We have no education, no health, nothing.  Calling us Naxalites is simply an excuse to terrorize us.

We have a school in our village upto the 5^th class.  The teachers come for only one day in a month, and collect a full month’s pay. We want real education.

The only time the politicians come is during the elections.  No one comes to our areas except the police force. We complained about the teachers—but to no avail.  We are told that till Maoists are there, we can’t get any relief. When we tell the Maoists we want education, they tell us that they aren’t here for us, adivasis, but for a ‘class war’.

There is no NREGA in our region. We were organized under an organization to collect forest produce, but were told that we are Naxalites. How is it that the Marwaris can come and steal our forest produce and make high profits, but when we, adivasis try to collect it, we are called Naxalites?

We get enough from our land to feed us.  What is development?  NMDC has operated in our area for 52 years but has only caused destruction. Naxalites don’t help us, but they don’t hurt us either.  If having a company nearby could give us development, then considering that Bailadila (NMDC mines) is 20 km from us and has been there before the Naxalites, then we should have had a lot of development. What is the reason that we still have no education and no hospital? Not one hospital in 52 years!  When our Adivasis go to Bailadila for treatment, they humiliate us and don’t admit us to their hospitals.”

The Migrating Forests of Warangal

A young child sleeps in the Internally Displaced Persons settlement of Mandaltove in Warangal District of Andhra Pradesh

Three year old Centi Madkam S/o Joga, died just a few weeks ago of ‘mirrgi’ in the IDP settlement of Mandaltove in Warangal District of Andhra Pradesh.

In a small settlement of 20 homes, there were another three cases of malaria and another of typhoid, and in a village of day labourers, access to healthcare did not mean access to healthcare, when it took a few days wages for travel to the clinic, along with expenditure for medicines.

Mandaltove’s residents have all escaped the Salwa Judum-Maoist conflict, hailing from Gadiras, Nakulnar, Edpal, Jarapalli, and from Pamed block in undivided Bastar district of Chhattisgarh. Deva Choddi s/o Adma had migrated from Tadmetla, the day after the police had burnt his village down on the 16^th of March 2011.

And it wasn’t suprising that Muria adivasis who had first settled in the forests of Khammam district were now living in neighbouring Warangal.

‘We’ve gone through great difficulties to get here.’ Said Idma Ram, who first lived in the IDP settlement of Rayenpenta in Aswapuram mandal of Khammam. Lack of land, lack of security and constant harassment by the Forest Department of Khammam has sent a few families to Warangal where the Forest Department of Warangal continues the same.

The nearby settlement of Jangalinsa had been burnt down by the Forest Department just a year ago. It was broken down at least three times in the last four years.

Mandaltove, unlike Jangalinsa, is a colony of landless labourers, while Jangalinsa has been secretly cultivating rice, sugarcane and cotton deep within the Reserve Forest, and has constantly incurred the wrath of the Forest Department.

Kavaram, another settlement in Tadvai Panchayat has existed even before the Salwa Judum had come into being. ‘The forest department only started to harass us three years ago when we started to cultivate in the forest.’ Said Bheemaiah Karam, originally from Mopepal in Chhattisgarh.

Before that, their existence was tolerated as they were only cheap labour.

The Numbers And The Reasons

The burnt remains of the house of Hemla Jogaya of Jangalinsa in Warangal district

The number of Internally Displaced Persons in Andhra Pradesh who’ve escaped the conflict in Chhattisgarh has always been a contentious issue. Activists would say 50,000 as a speculation, the central government ignores them completely, while others who do the hard work of surveying each settlement and each family, would count 213 settlements in Khammam District alone, and that itself, has a tendency to be a floating population that comes and goes, and has to often live through near starvation, or droughts.

In Warangal, a majority of the ‘mandals’ close to the Chhattisgarh border are yet to be surveyed, yet two mandals Etunagaram and Tadvai have around 39 settlements, each of around 15 to 20 families, who’ve been living in Warangal for years, or have just recently migrated.

Migrations are all family affairs – the first family of a settlement who migrated, may have migrated over 10 years ago, and would soon be joined by another ten of fifteen families, a rate of migration that was excarcebated by the Salwa Judum-Maoist conflict.

Fear of the Salwa Judum and the Maoists isn’t the only factor that drove the Muria into Andhra Pradesh, but also lack of land, as many Murias had small holdings of land in their villages in Dantewada or Bijapur.

Land itself, that is being diverted from agricultural purposes to industrial use by the state of Chhattisgarh.

Land again, that would be submerged by the Polavaram dam – over 276 villages in Khammam, East and West Godavari districts, would be submerged along with over 10,000 acres of reserve forest land.

Land again, that for decades has been encroached upon by non-tribals. The late civil servant J.M Girglani had documented the alienation of the tribals in Telengana, and his findings can be found here. Here are a few extracts from his findings, ‘The most shocking case is that of Mangapeta Mandal. Here 23 villages were excluded from the Schedule V notification under High Court orders because of some technical error. All the efforts of the State government and the States Human Rights Commission to have the rectification notification issued by the Central Government have failed during the previous and present regimes, because the powerful non-tribal occupants have been able to prevent action in New Delhi.’

‘In Kothaguda village, there are 21,000 acres worth not less than 110 crores at the minimal value of Rs.50,000/- per acre of Billa number lands, which are occupied by non-tribals. In 1993 the land was surveyed. In 2002 the extremists are said to have blasted the MRO’s Office and destroyed the survey records. To who’s advantage? Who really blasted, God knows. ’

‘Thousands of acres of government land is not being assigned to the tribals on the pretext of lack of surveyors to sub divide the land while non-tribals merrily continue to enjoy these lands, without any sub divisions.’

Land again, in Khammam, the district with the highest rejection rate for claims for patta (deeds) as per the Forest Rights Act : out of a total of 68,470 claims for 3,92,495 acres, just more than 50 per cent of these claims – 35,643  for 1,78,717 acres were rejected. In Warangal, out of a total of 33,997 claims, the Gram Sabha itself rejected 18,340 claims for 41,428 acres.

Land again, that is being slowly encroached upon by mining in the forests of Khammam. 1.37 lakh acres in Khammam and Warangal was leased to a private mining firm Rakshana Steels, whose Executive Director is the son-in-law of the late Chief Minister YSR Reddy. The opposition parties were quick to demand a cancellation.

Yet the Forest Department has been overtly vocal of their opposition to the Muria or Gotti Koya as they are known in Andhra Pradesh, often citing the ‘extensive’ damage done to the Forests by Gotti Koya cultivation.

But what other options do the Muria have?

Morally, one can say the Muria adivasis have a right to the forest, realistically, one can ask if there is enough forest for every adivasi family, and for community rights as per the Forest Rights Act? And ambivalently, a Koya adivasi who has been working for the Muria adivasis ever since they first started to settle in Andhra Pradesh has been saying that if the ‘Muria get the chance, they’d cut the entire forest down.’ While an old Muria adivasi man, once replied to the same question, ‘if we cut the entire forest down, where will we live?’

The War Dogma

This article appears in the July issue of Agenda/Infochange for the theme on the ‘Limits of Freedom’.

“So what is this in my contract? What does it really mean that I need to fulfil my role as a reporter?” I had asked my editor a week before I headed back to Dantewada, not as a freelancer anymore but as a reporter for The New Indian Express. “That you have to show some level of professionalism,” he replied curtly. “And that means?” I shuddered. The word ‘professionalism’ had strong leanings towards corporatism in my mind. “That you need to just write the truth,” he said. “Marry me,” I said, overjoyed. That’s all I wanted to do.

I left his office, went home, packed, took the first bus to the ‘jungle’, and wrote a story about the aftermath of a combing operation in the village of Gompad. The story would be printed a few days later as the lead story. The photograph showed Katam Suresh, an 18-month-old baby whose fingers had been cut off by members of the security forces. That was my first published story. It was November 15, 2009.

Dantewada 2009 was a very different place from Dantewada 2010. In 2009, Dantewada wasn’t yet the place where 76 jawans were killed, where a civilian bus was hit by an IED, where Arundhati Roy had gone walking with comrades, where the ‘army had to be sent in’, or where the media pundits had anything much to say about the place. In 2009, the emptying of 644 villages, the displacing of an estimated 60,000-200,000 people, the burning, the looting, murdering, raping of adivasis, the fratricidal violence of the Maoists and the Salwa Judum, and the daily anxiety of existing in a civil war for four years wasn’t news. That a young baby had been shot dead by the CRPF in Cherpal wasn’t national news even though the local press picked up the story.

It was January when I first reached Dantewada as a freelancer. Nineteen adivasis had been murdered at Singaram, a fair distance from the forest guest house where I was residing in Bijapur. It was news in the local newspapers, and in Andhra Pradesh’s Telegu media, and in Tehelka. That’s where it ended. Maoism and tribal issues were out of sight and out of mind for the blind and mindless mainstream media. Much later I would learn that a group of anthropologists and human rights workers had gone to Delhi to attend meetings with the editors of numerous media, on the realities of Dantewada and the atrocities of the Salwa Judum. Their response was silence.

I was hoping to take enough pictures to help bring the ‘truth’ to the public consciousness. But before I was allowed into the more sensitive areas of Bastar district, I was warned that I’d need a little ‘get-through-the-checkpoint’ press card. “Many cadres of the Maoist party are illiterate, and they don’t take kindly to strangers. But they have been taught to identify P-R-E-S-S,” said a local journalist. Large areas of the district were out of bounds for the general public and the press. However, in 2009, anyone with a press card could go almost anywhere. The truth was instantly available, provided one was willing to give it time and a good pair of boots.

I spent months in Dantewada running my boots into the ground.

I know there are no universal truths, no feeble ideologies, no nationalist dirges, development gospels, human rights, no individual glories. The one simple basis to hold the entire knife’s edge of ‘stepping into’ a war is a faint humanism that exists when you sit quietly and look at the woman whose face has been slashed with a knife, and wonder why. You end up sympathising with fathers who cut the necks of their adult sons after they’ve had too much to drink. You wonder if that’s the whole story. You know it’s not. You ask why a teacher who asks, ‘Why are you killing innocent people’ is stabbed by the Maoists. You ask why an orphan is now a feared soldier; you ask why his village is now desolate, unlived in and empty. You ask why the Maoists killed a young woman’s father…

The more I delved, the more I realised that nothing is what it seems. The black-and-white binary certainties are like landmines that naïve idealists and careerist apologists for the status-quo tend to tread. What certainties? That the Maoists are bad? Or the state is only driven by corporate interests? Or that the Maoists do good, and the government has never done any good in 60 years? Or that the Salwa Judum are just state-backed vigilantes whose sole purpose is to uproot the tribals from their lands?

To look at Dantewada clearly one has to look through a myriad shattered crystals.

A lot depends on where you stand. Are you standing between a crying mother and the barbed wire across which state officials are conducting an autopsy on her son whom they shot dead? Or across from a young boy whose leg was filled with shrapnel from a Maoist grenade? Or in a police van getting beaten up by the police for reporting on the burning of a village?

You report the details, caring little for abstract politics or the power struggles in the upper echelons of society that are so cut off from the realities of human suffering. Every time a politician opens his mouth, his statements reek of irrelevance when set against the bloodshed. And the war goes on; the unimaginable terror in central India does not fuel anti-war sentiment in anyone but a small minority of citizens. The mainstream media happily propagates war. A mention of the burning of villages to a senior sub-editor of a newspaper is met with citations of the Jnaneswari massacre or the killing of 76 jawans. Do atrocities justify atrocities? Is war the only solution to atrocity? The state and media do not allow you to humanise any aspect of conflict. War is a business, and business is devoid of sentiment. Dead jawans don’t appear on TV to say war is bad, yet we need war to avenge our dead jawans.

While state atrocities are overwhelming, the justifications for Maoist terror appear shallow especially when read in the context of the dynamics of power. Yes there is indeed structural violence, and the breakdown of democratic space contributes to the downward spiral of violence and counter-violence. But power is structural violence too.

The word ‘revolution’ is as casually used and as ambivalent as the term ‘democracy’. We notice quite easily that for millions of Indians neither has ever existed, for the country has never quite rid itself of its colonial past. All this is clearer in central India, and in the actions of the state against islands of popular resistance in places such as Narayanpatna, Lohandiguda, Kalinganagar, Kashipur, Jaitapur, Jagatsinghpur and Sompeta where police firing and arbitrary arrests have been and continue to be perpetrated with impunity.

A journalist has few choices. Write what the state wants you to write and stay alive, especially if you’re a local journalist who lives in the war zone. Write the truth, publish the report and believe that the government and the rest of the country will be sympathetic to the concerns of the people; after all, we are a democratic nation. Dissent, if voiced sharply enough, will draw in opposition parties, generate public debate, and lead to an eventual victory for the people. Or else the journalist believes that if there is no democracy then there is no such thing as journalism. Then the rulebooks become pointless and have to be thrown out.

In 2010, when the central government finally started to pay attention to what the state of Chhattisgarh was doing to its people in Dantewada, it initiated Operation Green Hunt — a consent-seeking name for the actions of the Chhattisgarh state over the past five years. All attempts to bring the truth to the public consciousness, and to the attention of the powers-that-be, culminated in a minister declaring that he’d wipe out the Naxalites and then bring development.

It’s done wonders for my career though. Thank you, Mr Chidambaram. After Operation Green Hunt I became one of the first English daily journalists working in the area.

After months of reporting on atrocity after atrocity committed by both sides, I have found myself witness to one of the greatest crimes in the country. Of course, I had always questioned the myth of conflict journalism — the belief that news of atrocities would lead somebody far away, in a position of power and motivated to stop them, to intervene, to help end the war. That is pure fantasy. The war continues…

After a point it’s not about writing the truth but living with it.

I have been documenting the end of an entire community in the name of profit, development and the big (fake) picture: the so-called greater good of superpower India. Human suffering is all too real and inevitable, but to go through life without realising that much of it is unnecessary is tragic.

The adivasis don’t have to lose their forests, and the soldiers don’t have to die.

As a journalist, you’re supposed to walk away, go home, chew on the fat of life, and call ‘it’ — death, war, destruction and bottles of beer — nothing but a job. That’s very convenient especially if you don’t want to challenge the status-quo. Is that what conflict journalism is supposed to do? Or are those the natural demands of the nature of truth?

Journalism’s only been around for a couple of hundred years or so. Truth and the demand for truth are older. They belong to the first time a caveman wondered why another caveman was stealing his food and calling it ‘development’. As for mainstream corporate journalism, prostitution has been around longer and is a more legitimate profession with more ethical constraints. What may we say of the ethics and norms enforced by the Time magazines of the world, who use the photograph of a girl with a severed nose to propagate a war? Are these the ethics required of journalists working in the ‘developing world’? The same ‘developing world’ that is trying to exist against the very forces whose wars they propagate? The photograph of a defaced Aisha Bibi, unsurprisingly, won the World Press Photo award for Photo of the Year even as photographs of children blown apart by predator drones don’t seem to win awards. An ethic to vie for.

To them, the Third World is a vicarious frenzy, the ultimate downer, humanity’s hellhole. Go to the Congo, go to Rwanda, write about a million rapes, murders, and every detail of bloody mayhem and unimaginable poverty. Fit all this into a narrative that says the Third World can never govern itself without the help of the West, the World Bank, the IMF, the UN, and foreign intervention. They’ve been saying that about the Middle East since the Balfour Declaration. Now, thanks to one street vendor who burnt himself on the streets of Tunisia, they are eating their words.

Our media hasn’t the maturity to think about whether adivasis can govern themselves or not, but they happily follow the inherited ethics of corporate journalism without much ado: neutrality, distance and objectivity. And that is a joke because they’re not neutral, they’re too distant from the ground, and they’re definitely not objective. Nowhere in the press are the causes of the insurgency ever spelled out to the world. Nowhere are the combatants on both sides (by both media) looked at as human beings.

I can’t live with the truth that journalism is a bullshit profession if truth has been transgressed. When war is the message of the messengers, in a world that is already stricken with terror and fear. And we are at love-war with ambivalent language — there are those who call murders encounters, pogroms riots, genocide development, and hatred patriotism; and there are those who call revolution social transformation. Truth is too often packaged as propaganda. One becomes only too aware that reports on atrocities are used by the ‘other’ side to propagate their war, and they call it a people’s war – this is the strangest contradiction of anti-war reporting.

Does a journalist only subsist within words and images? When we need not words but actions to ensure that a spade is called a spade, that a rose is a rose is a rose? In a world where acts of terror are far more vitriolic than words of love, is the message the only purpose of a journalist? To write, to protest, to write and keep writing?

Truth is, I don’t know.

Invisible Cities: Part Eight: Breaking The Homes Of Hungry People

Shabnam Zafar Sheikh with her eight month old baby Aisha. Shabnam hasn’t worked after the BMC demolished her home on the Deonar dumping grounds on the 25th of May.

If you destroy the homes of hungry people, the Planning Commission would say they aren’t poor even if they are hungry, and die of malnutrition.

Welcome to the republic of India, brought to you by the folks who worked with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank who want to set the new Poverty line to Rs.20 per day for the urban poor and Rs.15 per day for the rural poor.

On the 25^th of May, 2011, the Brihanmumbai Corporation demolised over a hundred homes of Rafiq Nagar 2, on the periphery of the dumping grounds of Deonar, where there have been over 25 malnutrition and malnutrioned-related deaths in the last two years.

Seventeen-month old Gulnaaz died of measles on the 24^th of March, 2011. And her neighbours homes were demolished the next day. Her father earns around Rs.70-Rs80 at the dumping ground. According to the Planning Commission, he would be above the poverty line. He is not poor. But even if he is below the poverty line, the government of Maharashtra is yet to provide him with a ration card, or recognize his home as a slum.

Shabnam Zafar Sheikh has an eight month old baby Aisha, and a three year old boy Farid who suffers from Grade 3 Malnutrition. Her home was broken down on the day of the demolition and she hasn’t worked since. She works as a ragpicker on the dumping grounds, and because she has to look after her children alone, she only manages around Rs.30 a day. Thus she is not poor, according to the Planning Commission.

The only people who are earning less than Rs.20 a day, or Rs.600 a month at Rafiq Nagar 2, are the people who’ve lost their homes and haven’t been able to work since the demolitions started.

Katija Asif’s husband has gone fifteen days without work. And when her husband gets work at the dumping ground he can earn around a daily sum of Rs.300 for collecting scrap. So he is not below the poverty line, provided the government doesn’t break his home.

Meanwhile, in Writ Petition (CIVIL) NO. 196 OF 2001, by the People’s Union For Civil Liberties, v/s the Union of India & ORS, regarding the Universal Public Distribution system, the Supreme Court ordered that, ‘We have no objection to Government of India providing universal food security. However, they must first ensure food security for more vulnerable sections of the society.’

‘Mr.Parasaran, learned Additional Solicitor General submits that as on 1st April, 2011 there are 44 million tonnes of stocks. Perhaps never before have food grains stocks been so high.’

‘Millions of tonnes of food grains are lying in open for years because of inadequate storage capacity. Admittedly, about fifty five thousand of tonnes of food grains rotted in Punjab and Haryana. A very large chunk of food grains were destroyed in recent Punjab fire because the food grains were lying in open.’

But not only do people lack ration cards at Rafiq Nagar, but the Maharashtra government has not given any commitment to the people, regarding a stay on demolitions or the Right To Housing.

‘Hum ne virodh kiya,’ (we protested), Said Hamida, regarding the day of the demolition. ‘But the BMC fellows said they’d only break 50 homes to build a canal around the dumping ground. So we let them.’

‘But once they got inside the basti, they broke some 100 homes.’

Earlier in February, the BMC had also broken down the homes bordering the dumping ground, some 400 metres away in Chikalwadi. ‘Why did the government let us stay here in the first place for so long?’ Asked an old man.

The plight of the people of Rafiq Nagar, like that of Chikalwadi is not a new one. There have been three demolitions in the last 10 years at Rafiq Nagar 2 and the government does not recognize the settlements as slums as per the Maharashtra Slum Act, 1971. Therefore, not only does the settlement have to deal with regular demolition drives, but the settlement is not eligible to basic amenities such as water or electricity. Water, that is universally regarded as a human right, is not one in Rafiq Nagar where, the people have to pay for it.

‘We have to buy water now for Rs.40 a drum,’ Said Katija, ‘What will we eat?’

Rafiq Nagar 2 in Mankhurd, comes under Ward M of Mumbai, where according to the Mumbai Human Development Report published in 2009 by the Ministry of Housing And Urban Poverty Alleviation, over 77% of the population as per the 2001 census lives in slums and it has the high child mortality rate of 66 per 1000 births.

Medha Patkar’s hunger strike at Golibar also concerned the fate of numerous slums at Mankhurd including Rafiq Nagar 2, Mandala and Annabhau Sathe Nagar who also lost their homes in the infamous demolition drive of 2005 where over 80,000 homes were broken down by the government. One of the demands of the hunger strike regarded that slums like Rafiq Nagar 2 would be declared as slums under Section 4 of the Maharashtra Slum Area Act and to be undertaken for improvement as per Section 5. At the same time, the government agreed for discussions on the implementation of Rajiv Awas Yojana in Mumbai.

Yet the fate of Rafiq Nagar is closely linked to that of United Phosphorus Limited who has a tender to privatize and close the Deonar dumping ground ensuring a loss of livelihood of every home at Rafiq Nagar, where either one or two family members work as ragpickers, sifting through the garbage of the city.

‘They said they will close the dumping ground,’ said Asif of Rafiq Nagar 2, regarding United Phosphorus, ‘And then give us work….’  ‘Will you live at his mercy?’ Interrupted his neighbour, Alamgir, ‘Do you trust them?’

Invisible Cities: Part Seven: Golibar Diary

Going back to Golibar after another demolition drive is like meeting a friend whose face was blown off. Every building that had survived the previous demolition drives was a expression of resistance. Yet this time, the bulldozers drove into the centre of the society, smashing through homes and littering rubble where the people had their meetings.

It was the 19^th of May when the MHADA and the police had come to demolish homes again. It was a time when people expected the builder be chargesheeted and prosecuted for fraud, as per the orders of the High Court, yet the police and the MHADA had come to demolish homes. It was a familiar story. On the 2^nd of February, the High Court asked for the police to chargesheet the chief promoters of the project but the MHADA and the police would still show up to demolish homes for the next two days.

This time, on the 19^th, the script was different: after a stone-pelting incident, the police arrested around 13 people, including an 80 year old woman, then broke down home after home as residents were helpless and activists tried to contact every official from the SRA chief to the Chief Minister who could stop the demolition. On the second day, the activists and residents would be detained at nearby Kherwadi police station. The demolitions would continue.

Then there would be a hunger strike. The government would relent, and the demands that were accepted by the government were: 1) Decision regarding declaration of settlements as slum under section 4 of Maharashtra Slum Area Act and to be undertaken for improvement as per section 5. 2) A joint meeting involving representatives of Government of Maharashtra, Government of India & Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao to discuss implementation of Rajiv Awas Yojana in Mumbai. 3) Activation of the existing High Powered Committee, chaired by Chief Secretary, appointed by Honourable HC in 2005 meant for reviewing the policies & recommend or suggest new policies related to slum housing to government of Maharashtra. 4) A four member committee chaired by Justice (Retd) H Suresh and Simpreet Singh, Sh. Satish Gawai & K P Bakshi as members to investigate and make recommendations related to Ganesh Krupa, Golibar Society by 15^th June to Government of Maharashtra. 5) A five member committee chaired by Justice (Retd) H Suresh and Sh Sudhakar Suradharkar (EX IPS Officer) Simpreet Singh, Sh. S S Zende & Swadhin Kshatriya as members to investigate into 15 SRA & 3K cases of fraud and forgery, including Shivalik Ventures Project, and submit a report by 30^th September to government of Maharashtra.

The reaction of the mainstream media has been expectedly deplorable. Most have gone on to mention that the Golibar slums are ‘illegal’, and have completely obviated from the fact that the builder has committed fraud.

Many have limited this to a ‘local’ issue, that this is a ‘right to  housing’ struggle. But a closer look brings us to realize, that it is a battle against the rot in the system, against the corruption in the system that is meant to protect the rights of the people. The changing of the battlefield is something that is entirely credited to the residents themselves and the help they got from Saint RTI, who helped to expose how the builder and the government conspired to cheat the people and even itself, by stealing public lands from other departments – Western Railways and the Defence Ministry. Without their contribution, it would’ve just been the people versus bulldozers, rather than the people, who have stripped the government bare, versus the bulldozers that have no right to be there.

The Law Of The Land Is The Law Of The Realtor

A short recap – the Slum Rehabilitation Act requires that a builder get consent from 70% of the residents before he can begin to develop the area. In this case, the builder Shivalik Ventures has papers to show that he has consent from 95% of the residents, which is nothing but a blatant forgery. In the case of Ganesh Krupa Society, the general body meeting where the residents ‘gave their consent’ has been a holy ghostly affair, as even the dead had come back to life, to give consent to the builder. An old lady Sulochna Pawar, who died on the 30^th of January 2005, learned to write in the four years she spent in the afterlife, to only come back to sign in English, in a meeting held by the builder on the 7^th of February 2009.

The people went to the police to lodge and FIR. The police refused. They complained to the Slum Rehabilation Authority who took no cognizance of their complaints. The people had gone to the Courts, and the Courts ordered the police to lodge an FIR, and police did so without mentioning the builder.

In an order passed by the High Court on the 2^nd of February, 2011, (during a demolition drive), the Court stated: ‘The first grievance made in this Petition is that the Investigating Officer has, for reasons best known to him, not mentioned the names of the Partners of M/s. Madhu Construction Company as accused inspite of being named by the Petitioner as involved in commission of alleged offence.’

(Partners of M/s Madhu Construction Company = Shivalik Ventures.)

‘The other grievance made before us is that although, more than three months have elapsed since passing of the order dated 15^th September, 2010 in Criminal Writ Petition No.2383 of 2010 which was filed by the Petitioner, the Investigating Officer has merely registered the FIR and done nothing more.’

‘We are also at a loss to know as to why Investigating Officer has not proceeded against the accused for last 90 days.’

The criminal court continued to pass orders that no one paid any attention to, but the response by the civil courts is one of the most shameless aspects of this case. The constitution literally be damned as we’re structurally adjusted to mass imbecility when the word ‘development’ is mentioned in closed whispers, or in the courts. Apparently, if you cheat people, commit fraud, steal public lands, forcefully break people’s homes down, threaten them with consequences if they spoke up, it’s all okay, to the High Court that had ruled the Civil case in favour of Shivalik Ventures, by stating, ‘We find that out of 320 tenements in the concerned slum, as many as 167 tenements have been demolished and occupants have already been shifted to temporary alternate accomodation. Therefore no useful purpose will be served by allowing the petitioners to raise any dispute about the meeting which was held on 7th February 2009.’ [Italics mine]

This High Court says no useful purpose will be served by taking cognizance of mass forgery. In other words, the High Court of 420 says, no useful purpose will be served by following laws.

It is this case that the people lost, that the MHADA officers and the police are very happy to cite, trying to justify demolition drives.

But what about the order on the 12^th of April, 2011, in the criminal case, Writ Petition 172 of 2011?

‘That this Hon’ble High Court be pleased to direct to issue a Writ of Mandamus or appropriate Writ Order in the nature of Mandamus directing the Respondents to include the names of the Partners of M/s. Madhu Construction Company, viz. Bhagwandas Gilda, Vasudev M. Gilda, Gangadevi M. Gilda as accused in the F.I.R.No.234/2010.’ [Italics mine]

So the High Court, also says, chargesheet the builder. But the police comes to demolish people’s homes instead, repeatedly stating ‘the matter is under investigation.’

And all of this was pointed out to Chief Secretary Ratnakar Gaekwad, the SRA chief S.S. Zende under whose purview, the Letter of Intent to the builder can be cancelled, as per SRA rules and regulations, if a criminal case were to be proved against the builder.

Yet none of them moved. It was only after a 9 day long hunger strike by a 57 year old activist that the government considers in setting up a committee. They won’t act on anything yet, just the committee. If the hunger strike would’ve asked for the builders to be put in jail, the government would’ve probably let Medha Patkar die.

The Media Is The Menace

Children playing at Ganesh Krupa Society

Most newspapers and middle-class attitudes seem to find slums as criminal and the slum-dwellers as cheats. That the media dehumanizes slums and designates them as devoid of any human sentiment is something explicitly evident in not just corporate policy but in the attitudes of the reporters themselves.

In Mid-day, a report titled ‘Want a house? Build a Shanty’, a reporter, mentions that: ‘While you struggle to buy a house with your hard-earned money, all slum dwellers in the city, irrespective of when they came to Mumbai, could get housing for a pittance, if activist Medha Patkar has her way.’

Who does not struggle to buy a house with their hard-earned money? Does a slum dweller have no right to demand a home for building the city that the rich live in? Does this reporter think that the working classes of the city don’t ‘struggle to build a home with their hard-earned’ money?

Apparently, the years of demolition, and the insecurity of an existence, the right to life, isn’t a concern to the reporter. The article reeks of class hatred and why wouldn’t anyone be surprised? The almighty journalists, the self-expropriated guardians of cynicism wouldn’t ever get their hands dirty with the aspirations of the people against a ruling class that sticks their fists up their behind. That they despise activists is not a secret, but that they despise them as they don’t have the guts to fight with the people, is something they should openly accept: it is their guilt over the starving millions that drives their hatred for the people who’d die for them.

The Hindustan Times and The Times of India have even quoted Shubhangi Shinde, ex-resident of Ganesh Krupa Society, who has been chargesheeted as an offender in the forgery case. That she is to be investigated by the police for her involvement in the forgery has not been mentioned in the Hindustan Times report that mentions  – “There is too much delay in our rehabilitation. Although the high court ordered the demolition in September, and the supreme court concurred with its decision, a few people in the society have been stopping it every time,” said Shubhangini Shinde, chief promoter of Ganeshkripa society.”

The double standards of the Hindustan times is absolutely blatant as it makes no mention of the High Court order calling for her to be arrested, or the builder to be chargesheeted and investigated.

As of now, the builder has started to fund rallies against Medha Patkar and the journalists are giving these pro-builder rallies full coverage. The builder himself is taking out hoardings of articles written in his favour and has hung then across the slum. The full outcome of a very calculated media strategy is one that is repeated across the country: of divide and rule. To get at least 10% of the people in favour of the builder and the media can easily manipulate it into a majority.

Previously, in February, the mainstream media had given full coverage to another pro-builder rally. The Times of India had headlined it as ‘Golibar Locals Protest Against Medha Patkar’, but when an anti-builder rally was held, not a single news organizations had given it coverage, besides Hindustan Times who had two small paragraphs.

A photograph from that rally is below.

Post script – Golibar Diary

The following are a group of un-published and published notes and articles from the last few months I’ve spent in Golibar. I live a mere ten minutes away from Golibar, and often after spending long periods in central India, I found myself surrounded by a din of bulldozers, slogans, and the crying of mothers silenced by the hammering down of walls and doors.

The first time, the demolitions had come during my involvement with the people was on the 24^th of November, 2010, and that day, the people had won. They chased the police and the demolition team away. The second time, I was in Kalinganagar investigating the death of a 12 year old girl, killed by the police as an alleged Maoist. In a bus in Raygada, I’d get updates from my friends in the basti about everything that happened. That time, there were beatings, arrests and a lathi-charge at Golibar and the MHADA managed to break down some 20 homes. The police also beat up a fourteen year old boy.

I had returned home, and to Golibar, ten days later to be lucky to watch a street play about the demolition put up by the young children of Golibar.

A few days later, there would be another demolition.

This time, I was there for every minute. An unpublished, incomplete article about it is included in this entry, along with a piece I had written for my ex-employers The New Indian Express :

THE RULES DON’T APPLY IN GOLIBAR

A policeman breaks down during a demolition drive at Ganesh Krupa Society on the 3rd of February, 2011

This article appears in The New Indian Express on the 13th of February, 2011.

The 2nd-3rd-4th of January have seen brutal demolition drives against the residents of Golibar’s Ganesh Krupa Society, starting with the20^th of January when the police lathi-charged and detained over 48 people, including Medha Patkar along with women and children. Yet on the 2^nd of February, 2011, the High Court ordered the police to arrest the chief promoters of the builder Shivalik Ventures, including the managing directors Ramakant Jadav and Kiran Jadav. Yet over the next two days, instead of arresting the chief promoters for fraud, the MHADA and the police still arrived at Ganesh Krupa Society, Golibar to demolish homes.

‘We have a High Court order to follow,’ Says Deputy Collecter Rokade to the people of Ganesh Krupa Society, as they tried to prevent their ‘pukka’ homes from being demolished on the 3^rd of February. The people attempted to get a stay order on the demolitions in lieu of the order by the High Court regarding the criminal case, yet their turn at the court never came up, as homes were slowly being broken down by the MHADA.

The Slum Rehabilitation Authority has complete authority to cancel the Letter Of Intent given to the builder if there is any evidence of fraud, yet it has not responded to any of the complaints of fraud or forgery made by the residents of Golibar against the builder.

As of the 8^th of February, the people don’t have a stay order, and the police are yet to arrest the chief promoters for fraud. Meanwhile, the residents of Golibar along with members of Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao, marched into the Adarsh building and symbolically started to take over apartments, which have to be demolished as well, as per an order by Minister of Environment and Forests.

‘The government tries it’s best to protect the homes of scamsters, but destroys the homes of the poor with great urgency.’ Said a resident of Ganesh Krupa Society.

At the same time, one of the biggest investors in the SRA project is Unitech Group, who is already under investigation in the 1.7 Lakh Crore 2G Spectrum Scam. In a public hearing/rally on the 6^th of February, where thousands of residents gathered on the road next to demolished homes, it was brought to light by members of Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao, that the Unitech group that is also responsible for the breaking of their homes, has close ties to Niira Radia, and had also received Rs. 750 crore from the infamous Lehmann Brothers.

In a Top Secret memo regarding Unitech Group, from the Office of the Director General of Income Tax (Investigation), that intercepted phone calls between Niira Radia and associates, it has been mentioned, ‘There is suspician that the group has taken bogus loan entries through entry operators. The entry operator, worried by the then recession, wanted to reverse the loan entries.’

‘There are conversations indicating Unitech’s worry when Lehmann Bros collapsed. There was concern regarding two more tranches of money which was due to come through Lehmann from “Third Party” investors. There are conversations of damage control and immediate bogus announcement of investments coming from Telecom Italia into the Telecom Venture.’

‘Investment into Telecom Venture finally came from Telenor Norway not Telecom Italia.’

‘Cheques given by Unitech to Tata Realty have “bounced” even through press briefings dictated by Ms Radia give out that “advance” has been cleared.’

Now, from 323 homes at Ganesh Krupa Society, only 143 remain. The people still live within their homes that have remained standing, or amidst the rubble, and have pledged to defend the rest of their homes against any other demolition drives.

 * * *

Notes From A Rally

‘Neem ka patta kadva hai! Shivalik builder bhadwa hai!’

‘Neem ka patta kadva hai! Shivalik builder bhadwa hai!’

There were three days of demolition. There will be more, they say.

The people had to bear it, non-violently, as their homes and the homes of their neighbours were broken down. Contrary to mainsteam media reports, there were no violent protests- no hands were raised, no violence was inflicted by the people onto anyone. For two days, they were made to sit down quietly by their own people.

‘We’re family people, we don’t want our women and children in jail again, let them break our homes, our families are more important.’ Said Sudesh Paware of Ganesh Krupa Society.

On the third day, they had had enough. They packed themselves within the little gullies leading to their homes. They promised to delay the state on it’s demolition drive.

But a non-violent movement does not mean the people can’t verbally abuse the police and the builder.

‘You come into my house with dandas (sticks)’, Screamed a mother to the policeman, ‘And I’ll stick a danda into your little house.’

A crowd of children and women jeer loudly across the field of rubble and debris where the police loiter, as target practice for a long session of innovative abuse. Nobody cares for PG-13.

‘Harami hai, harami hai, salle builder log harami hai.’ Sings Atique to a crowd of cheering old women and children, clapping their hands, singing along. After three days of demolition, it had put a smile on everyone’s face – those who were weeping, who were crying, and screaming were now laughing, dancing. It was five o’ clock, the demolitions had to stop, it was over, temporarirly.

Then there was a rally. The people left their homes and started a slow march towards the transit camps, where the builder is trying to coerce the people into opposing the resistance.

‘Galli galli mein shor hai, shivalik builder chorr hai.’

‘Galli galli mein shor hai, shivalik builder chorr hai.’

From hundreds, it became a rally of thousands. Residents opposing demolition went up to the transit camps and found their names on the doors of locked homes. Residents whose homes were long broken down who lived in the transit camps filled every window, looking at the crowd.

Women whose homes were broken down by the MHADA forcefully, spoke up against the builder as thousands stood to listen to the small handheld loudspeaker. The builder has failed to provide any of the residents of Golibar with a registered agreement, leaving people to rot in camps for months on end with zero gaurantee that they will ever get a home.

The rally then continues to the mosque. It was Isha namaaz time, and thus the speech outside the mosque was shorter.

It continues through little narrow passages deeper into the basti.

‘Neem ka patta kadva hai! Shivalik builder bhadwa hai!’

Yet a few teenage boys from the transit camps, around a hunded people behind, decided to reframe that slogan and screamed it out to their heart’s content.

‘Neem ka patta kadva hai! Shivalik ka lund thanda hai!’ (Un-translate-able)

‘Neem ka patta kadva hai! Shivalik ka lund thunda hai!’ (Un-translate-able)

‘She wanted to join the IAS.’ Said Parab bhai, ‘But after she saw how these IAS fellows behaved, she changed her mind.’

The young girl smiled shyly. There was no secret that the MHADA collectors who broke her father’s home were all IAS cadre.

* * *

The wrench that can be thrown into the machinery of the corporate state, is the slum.

Peddling POSCO

A policeman on guard at Noriya Sahi where the state of Orissa has begun land acquisition for the POSCO project

‘Yeh bhi jail gaya tha.’ (He also went to jail). – That’s how I was introduced to every other person in Govindpur and Dhinkia villages of Jagatsinghpur district, handed over to the Pohang Steel Company by the state of Orissa.

It is the 20^th of May, 2011 in Dhinkia, there is an uneasy calm. The Orissa government pledged to begin land acquisition on the 18^th of May after Jairam Ramesh’s infamous May 2^nd order giving clearance for the POSCO project.

So far the government hasn’t claimed any private land, and are only taking land from project supporters who are ‘willingly’ handing it over. They’re far away from Dhinkia and Govindpur, where they are aware, the opposition would be fierce. And both the state of Orissa and the Ministry of Forests and Environment would know about the opposition, even if they don’t follow their own laws that is meant to respect it.

As per the Forest Rights Act, the Palli Sabhas of Dhinkia and Govindpur had rejected POSCO, and the State of Orissa had called the Palli/Gram Sabhas dated 21.2.2011 and 23.2.2011, as ‘fraudulent’.

He said, he said, but the learned Minister of Environment believes the state of Orissa, that says both Palli Sabha resolutions were invalid, that there are no tribals in the project affected area, and no ‘other persons has established his/her claim regarding residing in the forest area for 75 years prior to 13.12.2005 or having credible dependence on the forest land for bonafide livelihood needs for 75 years.’

Mr.Jairam will not institute an independent enquiry into the claims and counter-claims, because ‘faith and trust in what the state government says is an essential pillar of cooperative federalism.’

To Mr. Ramesh, only 69 people have signed the Palli Sabha resolution of the 21^st of February, and only 64 have signed the Palli Sabha resolution of the 23^rd of February.

Some papers have allegedly gone missing. Probably those showing that there were 1632 people from Dhinkia who signed, or 1365 people from Govindpur who signed.

The POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti replied to Mr. Ramesh stating ‘hard copies of the full resolution – with more than 70% quorum in both Dhinkia and Gobindpur villages – were sent by registered post A/D to all Odisha government authorities and to the Ministry.’

‘We believe that the Odisha government has deliberately used the scanned electronic copies sent to you, whose covering letter explicitly stated that only the first page of signatures was being included. The hard copies are already with you, and the veracity of their statements can easily be checked.’

But no, the Forest Rights Act 2006, a law meant to give the forests back to forest-dwelling communities, to allow them access to livelihood, isn’t a priority of the Environment and Forests Ministry that probably finds hard copies a waste of trees, and would rather just believe in the scanned copy, which is also proof of the ‘fraudulent’ manner that the Sarpanch of Dhinkia, Sisir Mahapatra conducted the Palli Sabha. Jairam is asking for ‘stringent action’ against him for violating the Orissa Grama Sabha Act of 1964. (Note to all resisting movements: please scan and email all pages of the Gram Sabha resolutions kicking out the Tatas, the Poscos and the Birlas, irrespective of the thousands of signatures by the adivasis and vanvasis, and the amount of time it would take. If you only scan the first page and email it to the MOEF, you’d be asking for ‘stringent action.’)

‘I believe as a Minister my responsibility is not just to do the right thing but to do the thing right.’ Wrote Jairam Ramesh, in his MOEF order. Apparently, checking one’s mail isn’t a ‘thing’ that can be done right for a minister.

The Acquisition

A woman breaks down as land acquisition officers break down her betel cultivation vines. (photo credit: special arrangement)

Six fat bureaucrats sat in a circle, eating fruits near Noriya Sahi, a project -affected village. One works for the Industrial Corporation of Orissa (IDCO), another is the Block Development Officer; then sits the Additional Divisional Magistrate, two Resettlement & Rehabilitation Officers, and the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, who asked me if I knew what a ‘SDM’ was. These were the kind of people who’d be in serious trouble if they were ever surrounded by a gram sabha.  Thus they came with the police.

‘We should manage to acquire all the land in a month.’ Said the R& R Officer.

‘Are people from POSCO a part of the process?’ I asked.

‘Yes, they are there.’ Replied the IDCO man.

‘What do you do?’  I asked a young man accompanying the demolition team.

‘I work with POSCO.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘R.K. Rout.’ He said.

‘You can see it’s all very peaceful, there is no opposition to the land acquisition.’ Said the R & R officer.

Since the 18^th, all the acquisition that the government has done, is from Gadkujang Panchayat, where project supporters have willingly allowed their betel vine cultivation plots to be demolished, and others who’ve never had a voice haven’t been able to resist. The pro-POSCO United Action Committee had spoken up against the fact that none of their six-point demands for rehabilitation were met, and they’d oppose land acquisition. But they relented, leaving many people dissatisfied and betrayed.

A local journalist, on condition of anonymity, has confirmed that the consent to demolish isn’t entirely painless – wives cry while husbands take cheques.

Land acquisition is a destroyer of families. And platoons of armed policemen saunter across homes and villages, while children play and villagers who pledge ‘they’d rather die’ than give their land to the government are awaiting the day when the confrontations with them will begin.

Basu Behera is one such man in Noriya Sahi, who lives in a divided community – where there are project supporters and those like him.

‘I cultivate betel vines, kaju, about 50 quintals of rice yearly and I get coconuts, pineapples, mangoes. I get ‘compensation’ every week or every other month. POSCO will compensate us once.’ He says, ‘They can take my land over my dead body.’

I must have heard that a thousand times in three years. Self-sustaining communities may have the economics, the logic, the truth on their side, but industrial development has a mad virulent greed. And guns.

Back amongst the six bureaucrats, about to finish land acquisition for the day, I had brought up the issue of the Land Acquisition Act 1894 and why there is so much opposition to it, taking the recent confrontations in Bhatta Parsaul where 4 people were killed as an example.

‘The people in this area aren’t economically well off,’ Said Sangram Mahapatra of the IDCO, ‘In places like Bhatta Parsaul in U.P., farmers themselves are so rich, they would not even part with their land if you give them 1 crore.’

‘The people here are more economically deprived, that’s why the project is here.’ He continues.

‘We believe in maximum happiness for the maximum number of people.’ He would then speak about John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham and that the POSCO project follows the principles of Utilitarianism, which is the founding principle of modern democracy.

‘What about the opposition?’ I had asked.

‘In a democratic country, there will always be disagreement.’ Continued the R&R officer.

‘That’s why the government is there.’ Said the SDM.

‘A cross section of people always misguide the people.’

‘Kalinganagar was an aberration.’ Continued the IDCO man, who also works on Tata’s project there, ‘See, we are ground level workers, we know a lot of what happens.’

‘I was there a few days ago in Kalinganagar,’ I said, ‘To report on the little girl from the project affected village, who was killed as a Maoist.’

‘About that issue, you should spend the whole day with me and I shall tell you.’ Said the IDCO man.

‘In many places in Orissa, there is no opposition to land acquisition. There was none in Ongole, Dhenkanal, Baleshwar, or Bhubaneshwar.’

He did not speak about Kashipur. He did not speak about Gandhamardhan. He did not speak about Niyamgiri. He works in the ground, but did he even go across to the people?

Five minutes away in Noriya Sahi, Dibya Prakash Behera’s only betel vine plantation was broken down and she received 1.8 lakhs for it. Her entire family depends on betel vine for sustenance. How long is 1.8 lakh going to last her?

To most people, compensation is not just inadequate, but the very idea of compensation is inadequate.

The Prison

Dibya Prakash Behera of Noriya Sahi got 1.8 lakhs for her only betel cultivation plot.

While the state of Orissa and Environment Ministry does its utmost best to not care about the letter of law, it’s interesting to note the number of (false) cases against the people protesting against the project.

The land acquisition process involves the building of prisons of false cases upon everyone who has the voice to say: no. From Kashipur, Kalinganagar, Lohandiguda, to Jagatsinghpur, the police has acted with remarkable ingenuity when it comes to creating virtual prisons to cordon off the struggling people of the country.

‘I have 37 cases against me.’ Said Ranjan Swain of Govindpur village, ‘Apart from section 302, I think they’ve put everything on me.’

‘I was travelling to Paradip by motorcycle, accosted by pro-POSCO goondas, beaten up and sent to hospital. And from the hospital I was arrested.’ Said Prakash Jenna of Govindpur. He was released from jail after eight months.

‘They killed one of our people, and put the murder charge on me.’  Said Sisir Dalai, regarding a bomb-throwing incident on the 20^th of June, 2008, when pro-Posco goondas hurled bombs onto the PPSS members, leading to the death of Tapan Mandal, and injuries to at least 9 others. The project supporters were then taken ‘hostage’ by the PPSS members after they gherao-ed the building they escaped into, and were only rescued/arrested by the police from the angry PPSS mob, and then released after three months in jail.

None of the project-affected persons who are openly anti-POSCO are free people. None of them would leave their villages as the risk of re-arrest is understandably high. Abhay Sahoo, the leader of the agitation had spent 10 months in jail. There are a total of 173 cases put on the people protesting the project, according to Prashant Paikray, Spokesperson of the PPSS.

‘The confrontation will come, when they start coming to Govindpur.’ Said Prakash Jenna, ‘And we’re not afraid.’

On the 28th of May, the confrontation did begin when a police jeep had come into Dhinkia. The people quickly responded and drove the police away, who left, promising retribution.

Update: The Confrontation of the 10th of June.

After days of anxious wait, the administration and the policemen tried to enter the stronghold of the PPSS – Govindpur and Dhinkia on the 10th of June. A human barricade of women and children prevented the policemen from entering the area, even after the administration announced Section 144, making it ‘unlawful’ for so many people to be gathered in one area. The police eventually retreated after four hours, according to the spokesperson of the PPSS.

Meanwhile, the Writ Petition against POSCO in the High Court, filed by the villagers, has been repeatedly delayed.

‘We have no faith in the courts.’ Said Ranjan Swain. ‘Today was a small victory,’ he continued, referring to the human-wall of women and children who stopped the police and the administration, who stopped POSCO, who stopped displacement, who stopped dispossession.

Is that what it comes to? Women and children and not courts and laws? Women and children and not the Prime Minister? Women and children and not the Ministry of Environment and Forests?

But the courts, the laws, the Prime Minister and the Environment Ministry will not face bullets tomorrow. Women and Children will.

The Non-Nation

The Non-Nation

And A Short Story Of Racism

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
-Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French economist

‘But are the tribals doing anything with that land?’

‘We need the steel, the adivasis need to be compensated for their land properly. And in my experience, I have seen the companies pay handsomely but the money is lost in the lower levels of governance.’

‘How much money would be enough for your land?’

‘The tribals are the ones responsible for destroying the forests.’

The above statements are some of the most common observations/insights made by non-tribals about tribals and the ‘largest land grab since Columbus.’ But before we get to them, I’d like to write about another story of murder in Dantewada.

On the 23^rd of January, 2011, a Special Police Officer Ismael Khan was shot dead in Dantewada, as he watched a murgga fight at the market. It was not a gunfight, it was a targeted assassination by all accounts. And while it was nothing new to Kalluri’s Dantewada, there was something that troubled me about this one particular SPO’s demise. I knew his name, I knew something else about him.

There is a story untold: the story of Ismael Khan is the story of Kottacheru, and the story of Kovasi Dhoole, and the story of Dantewada and the adivasis of Bastar – the danger of a single narrative is the danger of the constant narrative – of violence,  and counter-violence. Yet the single narrative needs to be repeated as a vain elegy for every passing statistic that shall appear at the end of the year by the Home Ministry, about the Maoists killed, or those the Maoists have killed, or the Security forces killed in ambushes or assassinated, on the great canvas of the gaping divide between the rich and the poor, the fat and the dispossessed.

But what is the story of Kovasi Dhule and Kottacheru?

‘‘Nine of our people were killed in our village,’ Said Maala (name changed), another IDP from Kottacheru. But when I asked him for the names of the killed, he only gave me five names – the five people who were killed by the Salwa Judum. Then another woman, reservedly gave me the name of ‘Kovasi Dhoole,’ a young woman who was coming home to Kottacheru. And she wasn’t clear about how she died.

‘Did she die when the Salwa Judum raided the village?’ I had asked.

‘No.’

‘Did the Maoists kill her?’

She was quiet.

Eventually, over the course of six months, after interviewing over 14 villagers of Kottacheru in three different locations in Khammam district, including Kovasi Dhoole’s sister, I managed to piece together the story of Kovasi Dhoole and the story of Kottacheru.

In 2007, Kovasi Dhoole was a young woman on her way from Nagaras to her village of Kottacheru. She was stopped at Errabor police station and allegedly detained against her will. She only reappeared two months later, as a SPO, married to another SPO, a ‘turrka’ or Muslim, according to the rest of the villagers of Kottacheru. They also alleged that she was forced to become a SPO, and there was no ‘consent’ in the marriage.

A while later, on the 9^th of July, 2007, a combing operation was ambushed near the village of Gaganpalli by the Maoists. 25 security personnel were killed via the use of IEDs placed in the trees and small arms fire. The security personnel retreated out of the jungle and it would take them three whole days to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades. Kovasi Dhoole was one of the injured who was abandoned to the Maoists who found her bullet-ridden body. She was still conscious and breathing. Yet there was no mercy killing. For some reason, the Maoists took her injured body and left it at the road, hoping someone would take her to the hospital.

No one did.

Kovasi Dhoole from the village of Kottacheru, bled to death.’

The SPO, or ‘turrka’ who had married her was Ismael Khan. Before Salwa Judum, he was a dukaandaar at Errabor.

Death comes a full circle.

Every story without heroes ends simply with the death of the antagonists.

Yet why do I write about just another story of a dead soldier and a dead adivasi in Dantewada and what does this have to do with racism?

The story of Ismael Khan, is a manifestation of a cultural hegemony when it is armed – ‘join us,’ at the point of the gun. That the Salwa Judum is populated by young men, tribal and non-tribal with a state-as-god-given right to power is not a myth.

War has now become a way of life for a group of men living together in society. And they have created for themselves, over the course of the last few years a legal system that doesn’t need to work, and a media without any moral code but empty nationalism that glorifies their actions.

And when everyone from the Collector to the dukaandaar is an amateur anthropologist who knows what the tribals need and how they should live, one needs to wonder when it is openly evident that Operation Green Hunt, in its many forms, was a long way coming.

And why? Let us go back a bit and put things into context.

The furthest, darkest heart of central India is not where civilization or development hasn’t completely trickled down, it’s the place where the post-colonialist face of India is still stark-naked, where the mass delirium of India’s token democracy has not brainwashed people who’ve been very conveniently erased from national consensus.

The administration, when it functions, can only acted as an anodyne for a superstructure that is almost entirely exploitative.

One of the most apologetic analysis of the situation in the jungle is that the people need ‘development’ or an administration that functions. Apparently if every village had electricity, a handpump, functioning ration shops and NREGA schemes devoid of corruption, there’d be no insurgency in the first place. Yet one thing that is missing in the entire narrative, is the explicit racism of the majority of the mainstream Indian population when dealing with the ‘other’ – a fascinating metanarrative of the mainstream believing that the adivasis don’t see democracy, or their rights, or their ‘development’ as ‘we’ do, just as the West believes about the East.

Firstly, both schemes, NREGA and the PDS, indirectly imply that the people cannot get work nor feed themselves. Yet why does that situation exist in the first place?

In the jungles, the state itself has been oppressive for decades. In many areas, the only face of the state visible to the tribal is the Forest Department that has routinely exploited, beaten, arrested and robbed the tribals of their land and forests not just for the last few years but for decades. The tribals would be happy as ever if such civilization never reached them. The Forest Department is a part of this same bureaucracy – IAS, IPS, IFS, all of the same crop of the most brilliant, brightest, minds or worst nightmares of the indigenous tribals of India – a  ‘collector’, a word that denotes a collector of taxes, a post-colonial colloquism, but more importantly, a part of that same super-structure that has kept the adivasis away from their forests.

Recently, a survey by the Hong Kong-based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy put India’s bureaucracy as ‘the worst in Asia.’ What a surprise. But are our bureaucrats really such special beings or are they merely a manifestation of the culture and society that they are coming from?

This is what one of the members of the Constituent Assembly, Professor Shibban Lal Saksena had to say about the tribals in 1949, during the Constituent Assembly Debates,

‘That these brethren of ours are still in such a sub-human state of existence is something for which we should be ashamed…..I only want that these scheduled tribes and scheduled areas should be developed so quickly that they may become indistinguishable from the rest of the Indian population.’

That apparently, was a much common point of view during the debates of the Constituent Assembly that was elected to write the Constitution – the tribes were ‘sub-human’ and they had to be like everyone else. In other terms, that is called cultural genocide.

Even today the non-tribals will happily go to the Schedule Areas to cheat, manipulate and exploit tribals. I still remember a non-tribal contractor happily telling me that ‘you just come to Dantewada to make money in whatever way possible,’ and in the very next breath, he mentions how, ‘everything this Manish Kunjam is doing is all futile.’ Fighting for tribal rights, is apparently futile. And when half his party workers are in jail, and their hartals in jail are met with beatings, the state is doing its best to tell him it is futile.

A prominent journalist working in Dantewada who has often written about fake encounters and state atrocities had another interesting observation about industrial development: after spending his entire day with villagers from Lohandiguda, who spoke about false cases and state repression, who openly said they had no desire for the 35 or 50 lakhs of rupees for their fertile lands; he would turn to a foreign correspondent and tell him that this district needs Tata’s steel plant and development: so mining is okay if you don’t shoot the tribals?

‘What development?’ I had asked surprisingly, ‘how would Tata’s plant benefit the tribals here?’

‘That it won’t.’ He responded effortlessly.

Let’s not forget that Mr.Chidambaram had once accused a social activist fighting for tribal rights, for wanting to keep tribals as ‘hunters and gatherers.’ The intellectual bankruptcy in that statement alone is enough proof of Mr.Chidambaram’s utmost condescension of over 80-90 million people of the country. Adivasis are farmers, Mr.Chidambaram, and if they are hunting and gathering to survive, it’s because the Forest Department has kicked them out of the forests and built plantations over the land they cultivated.

But there is more, ‘Yes, we can allow the minerals to remain in the ground for another 10,000 years, but will that bring development to these people? We can respect the fact that they worship the Niyamgiri hill, but will that put shoes on their feet or their children in school?’ – Thus Spake Chidambaram.

‘Will that solve the fact that they are severely malnutritioned and have no access to health care?’

Apparently the massive exploitation and the dispossession of their forests doesn’t have anything to do with a tribal’s inability to feed his/her family. On the 22^nd of March this year, over 64 tribals and Dalits from Bolangir, one of the hungry KBK districts (Koraput-Bolangir-Kalahandi) of Orissa, were rescued from virtual bonded labour at a brick kiln in Hyderabad. They had been working without pay for over five months and faced regular beatings by their contractors.

There are an estimated 600 brick kilns (2005 figures) populated with tribals and Dalits from Orissa in Andhra Pradesh, and there is an endemic debt-trap, brought on by advance payments by ‘sardars’ or middlemen – and the worker and his family has no choice but to work in the brick kiln until he can pay off the advance, and often faces abuse in an almost un-regulated industry thriving in the universe of unequal power.

On the 28^th of March, 2011, 44 adivasis and Dalits from Bolangir and Nuapada had to be rescued from a brick kiln at Pattancheru Mandal after one of the contractor’s relatives tried to rape a tribal woman.

Apart from that, almost all the workers complained of meagre weekly wages, threats and beatings. The incident of attempted rape was merely the breaking point. The muslim husband-wife contractor-duo responded by calling it all lies, and that the adivasis were all just drunk.

The adivasis wanted go back home. The contractors wanted them to continue working.

After the perpetrator was taken away by the police, every conversation with the mistrys and contractors attempting to bring better working conditions for the people were met with responses like, ‘these people are all cheaters.’

‘they lie like this all the time.’

‘they don’t understand reason.’

Nearby contractors who also ran a brick kiln sat on the sidelines gave their wholehearted support to the Muslim contractor and his family. And class, the great equalizer plays its role.

One Matang couple who live in a village in Nandurbar in Maharastra without land of their own, and work in Brahmin fields for Rs.50 a day during the harvest season, had quite easily filled his shoes as a contractor-exploiter for the adivasis at brick kilns in Andhra Pradesh.

‘They were such nice people,’ She said, about the contractor-duo and their alleged rapist-relative, ‘these Orissa people had to ruin everything.’

Even their own workers caught up with me and told me that they weren’t treated well by them either. And while they went back to work, the 44 men, women and children from Bolangir and Nuapada were taken away by the government’s labour department and put on a train back to home – Bolangir, where droughts and hunger deaths had put the district in a spotlight, where all the recently-rescued said that they had no land, or if they did, there was no irrigation facility to help make it productive.

There are no figures on how many adivasis from the KBK districts migrate to work under adverse conditions at brick kilns in Andhra Pradesh. There are independent estimates in thousands while they’re almost invisible to the government.

And funny how the starvation deaths in Kalahandi, were used as arguments by Vedanta’s lawyers to justify the mining of Niyamgiri.

And yet ‘they’ – the ‘rulers of the country’, want an Adivasi battalion formed for the Dantewadas and Lalgarhs – like there hasn’t been enough fratricidal violence in the Red Corridor.

Instead of starving them, let them kill each other while we mine their mountains.

The state is not just oppressive, but the people have been for decades. The adivasis are seldom treated as equals by non-tribals and it’s not just ‘development’ or a corruption-free administration that the tribals need to rescue them (and themselves) from insurgencies.

There is more.

Insurgencies are symptomatic of the very idea of a nation-states. The fantasies of nationalism, these post-colonial hangovers, along with a bunch of elitist clowns with delusions of grandeur have drawn imaginary lines across communities where the majority literally drives minorities into the hole, and there will be identity-driven self-assertions of rights. A thousand times over, I’ve heard adivasis call themselves Muria, not Maoists, Kondhs, not Maoists, Muria, not ‘Indians’, Kondh, not ‘Indians.’ The Maoists from Andhra Pradesh in Dantewada had managed to build a base because they spoke Muria, they spoke Koya, they let the tribals remain tribals (to an extent) + (apart from entirely militarizing their society).

Now, has the Indian mainstream ever allowed minorities to be minorities? Have they allowed the tribals to at least decide their own fate?

Yes, we have. The Indian Constitution has one of the most progressive laws in the world – PESA or Panchayat (Extension to Schedule Areas) Act, where the tribals are allowed to govern themselves with their own Gram Sabhas. The Supreme Court would not have the right to veto a decision of the Gram Sabha if it said it didn’t want Tata or Jindal or Essar to build on their land. And yet, these Gram Sabha resolutions have been violated by the administration repeatedly across the Fifth Schedule, with complete impunity, often in the favour of big business, as well as the upper caste landlords, thekedaars and non-tribals.

So now as I brought it up, I must ask, why is our administration routinely flouting PESA resolutions?

This is what one of the Collectors of Bastar, J.P. Vyas had to say to Anthropologist Nandini Sundar, in 1992 about a proposed Steel Plant being set up in Bastar and the displacement it would cause.

‘If the people were consulted beforehand and asked for permission, inherent in this, is the possibility that they might refuse. And then where would the government be?’

He had gone on to tell her that the people were ignorant and once the experts decided where the project would be, there was nothing more to be said – (from her book on Bastar, Subalterns and Sovereigns).

Today, there are state-organized public hearings, where the representatives of big companies often tell the tribals, ‘there are other things here that are too technical to understand.’

Another brilliant expert, I had encountered, worked in the ITDA (Integrated Tribal Development Authority) Badrachalam, who didn’t know who the Murias were, and he requested that I tell the tribals to leave the jungles and come and live closer to the road so the government welfare programmes can reach them.

All of it pretty much summing up that the ‘tribals don’t know any better,’ that they ‘need to do something with their land’, or that land, life and livelihood can be equated with money.

I wonder where that idea comes from.

What becomes only too evident, is that we have a social apartheid, where we have an invisible, un-written set of value-judgements upon an entire class of people who live out of sight and out of mind, and we’re aping the West who’ve colonized, butchered, enslaved, and murdered indigenous societies for centuries, and we are too far from evolving into a democracy they have never been, and could possibly never be – one that is egalitarian, just and equal, impassioned yet restrained, and where the words ‘development’ would belong to the people, and not politicians and their wanker-overlords.

To be a nation that is simply accepting of diversity, not just by shallow pretence but by substance. But we are just another half-democracy, half-republic and half-nation that needs to cannibalize itself to survive.

Dantewada: Days of Rage

No, Minister

On the 2^nd of April, the chief minister, Raman Singh, the governor Shekar Datt and the DGP Vishwaranjan had visited Tadmetla village which was burned down on the 16^th of March, 2011. They did not visit Morpalli village which was burnt down on the 11^th of March, and where Madvi Sulla was killed in cold blood and two women were sexually assaulted, or Timmapuram which was burnt down on the 13^th of March, where Barse Bhima from Phulanpad was killed with an axe.

‘Six or seven helicopters had flown down,’ Said Madvi Mukka of Tadmetla who met the delegation. Eventually, the security forces started to find whoever they could as many had simply run away on sight of the security forces.

The government also distributed relief to the villagers of Tadmetla, while they had given nothing to the villages of Morpalli and Timmapuram. Yet even the people of Tadmetla aren’t impressed.

‘They gave us 17 quintals of rice,’ Said the former sarpanch Gondse Deva, ‘and that’s not going to last even a week.’

‘Every other house that they burnt down had that much rice.’

There are 185 families in Tadmetla and 207 buildings were burnt down and the government had given 105 sheets of tarpaulin. They had given 200 saris for the women, and nothing for the men. They had also given about 10 quintals of potatoes and 7 quintals of onions, 5.5 quintals of pulses, along with spices.

‘They gave us tea but no sugar.’ Joked a villager.

And it doesn’t end there. The chief minister’s delegation had also distributed volleyballs to the adivasis of Tadmetla, which no one seems to be very thrilled about.

And the villagers of Tadmetla allege, that while the chief minister was taking their testimonies and distributing ration, a group of SPOs who were part of their escort were stealing food at the periphery of the village.

Gondse Deva, the former sarpanch was told by Raman Singh that he’d be made a permanent teacher, while another SPO would threaten him later.

‘They said, they’d re-open the markets, but we told them to shut down the Salwa Judum first.’ Said Bhima Madvi (65), whose home was burnt down, along with all of his grain, his clothes, his vessels and even his patta (deed).

‘Yeh kiska sarkar hai joh ration le ke aata hai?’ aur yeh kiska sarkar hai joh gaon jalata hai?’ (whose government is it that gives us ration and whose is it that burns our villages?) said Madvi Mukka in his broken hindi – Madvi Mukka’s house was burnt down with over 15 quintals of rice. The above question was directed to Raman Singh, chief minister of Chhattisgarh, who apparently had no answer.

Other villagers also brought up the matter of the two men – Madvi Handa s/o Kosa, and Madvi Aita, who were taken away by the police.

‘Handa was sleeping on the cot,’ says his mother Pojje, ‘when the forces came and beat him up and took him away.’

‘They took us all away from our homes, and behind us, some other forces came and burnt our homes down.’

The families of the people who were taken away by the police had eventually gone to the police station to help release their loved ones. ‘It was holi, many of them were drunk,’ Said Hidme, Handa’s wife, ‘And they said they’d release them tomorrow, but the next day they sent them to Dornapal, and then later, to Dantewada jail.’

The chief minister apparently promised that they would be released in a few days. But four days after the visit, none of them have been released.  And the people are not surprised. Pojje’s husband, and Handa’s father Madvi Kosa had been taken away by the forces in similar circumstances five years ago, and had only come back after four years.

Hunger but no starvation

Madkam Nande w/o Bandi or Morpalli gave birth to a baby boy on the 3rd of April in a house without a roof. Her home was burnt down with all of her produce and her husband is in Andhra Pradesh working as a day labourer.

The Chief Minister has denied all allegations that there have been starvation deaths in Tadmetla even though local news reports and those from BBC Hindi had claimed that those reports had come from the village of Morpalli. The chief minister is half-right. There were no starvation deaths due to arson and the widespread burning of a self-sustaining communities food supply. But three people over the age of 65, Nupe Rajalu, Madavi Joga and Madkam Bhime  from the village of Morpalli had died of hunger/starvation/dehydration after they got lost in the jungle trying to escape the approaching security forces.

Their bodies were found on the 14^th, 15^th and 16^th of March by villagers who buried them at the outskirts of the village.

The people of Morpalli have had to share whatever food they had managed to save from the burning of their homes and are aware that their supply might run out.

And this is not even the first time their village was burnt down by the security forces. The security forces had even burnt their village down along with all of their produce in April 2007.

It took them around fifty-sixty days to rebuild their homes.

The Perpetrators

Madkam Nande of Morpalli village with her children before the remnants of her home.

The state of Chhattisgarh has repeatedly told the Supreme Court that the Salwa Judum had been shut down and that they aren’t allowed on combing operations anymore.

Yet Bodke Mara s/o Lacha from the village of Morpalli had only become a SPO two or three months ago. The villagers of Morpalli, alleged that he only became an SPO after the Maoists threatened him with dire consequences.

‘He used to misbehave with girls in our village, and he even stole rice from some adivasis in Lachapur in Andhra,’ Said his ex-neighbours.

He would eventually lead the police to the village of Morpalli where one man would be killed and two women would be raped.

The villagers were also able to identify other SPOs who were leading the attack on their villages, including Madkam Bhima of Junagoda village in Penta Panchayat, who used to be known as Comrade Ramesh when he was with the Maoists. There was also Vanjam Deva from Sirpanguda, near Timmapuram who also used to be a Maoist.

Two more SPOs came from Timmapuram which was burnt down – Madvi Chona s/o Mandgroo and a female SPO Payke Barse who allegedly acted as the guide for the security forces.

The people of Tadmetla also identified the above mentioned SPOs along with the following – Ramlal Barse from Budgill village, Telam Nanda s/o Konda from Lakhapal, Telam Kosab, Aimla Mukesh s/o Deva from Nagaram, Aimla Manu s/o Deva, Karti Singha, Dasaru Sodi from Milampalli, Oyam Kapil from Gaganpalli who used to be a teacher, and Kiche Nanda from Dornapal, Surya from Misma – both who have warrants for their arrests, and have been declared as ‘absconding’, for what is known to be the Samsetti rape case.

A few weeks ago, Surya also allegedly led a group of SPOs who stopped trucks taking relief to the affected villages, even though the relief was sent by the collector of Dantewada.

Post-Script: A Case Against Forgetfulness

One year after 76 security personnel were killed in the Chintalnar area, with allegations of rape being used as a weapon of war soon after by the state, the latest attack on the adivasis of Bastar during a five-day long carnage has led to break the silence on atrocities that have been committed for over six years now, across the undivided Bastar region.

Last year in November, the security forces had burnt down Tatemargu and Pallodi village. Pallodi which was on route to Tadmetla has now rebuilt itself. There was no relief given to the people, there was no suo moto case filed by the National Human Rights Commission and there was no visit by the chief minister. There are at least 644 villages that lie empty and at least 300 of them had been burnt down at least once.

And for three of the villages that were attacked recently, this was not the first time.

Sodi Nanda s/o Adma  of Tadmetla was killed by the security forces in 2007. Two houses were burnt down that day.

Barse Lakma s/o Bhima of Morpalli was going for ration at Chintalnar market when he was picked up by the security forces last year.

Madkam Nanga s/o Aita was going to the sell his produce in Chintalnar when he was also picked up by the police and sent to jail over three years ago. None of them have been released.

From Phulanpad village where Barse Bhima and Manu Yadav were killed in the recent operation, around three years ago, Aimla Sukka (20) s/o Chola and Aimla Joga (20) s/o Choma were killed when their village was raided by security forces.

There are many people from Phulanpad who live in Andhra Pradesh as Internally Displaced Persons, as a part of the estimated 16,000 to 40,000 adivasis who have been completely forgotten by the state of Chhattisgarh.