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By Aparna Pallavi Five forest and revenue officials received letters of commendation for the ‘model’ rehabilitation of the village of Botezari. But what do the villagers think? They say they were made false promises and that most of their demands have been ignored
 The newly relocated village looks more like an army barrack or a Lego creation than a real village. Neat square houses painted ochre, covered with red tiles, line up uniformly along straight roads that cross each other at right angles. Everything is just so.
But behind the neat façade, things are disintegrating. Barely a year since their construction, almost every house has developed cracks in the floors and walls, some of them an inch wide. Roof rafters are rotting; the roof of one house collapsed forcing villagers to repair it at their own cost. The enormous, trench-like drains in front of the houses have not been cemented or covered up, posing a danger to children, old people and cattle that have fallen into them trying to negotiate the makeshift log bridges constructed by the villagers over the drains. “At the time of relocation we had said that we would build our own houses. But the officials said that the money available for housing was just Rs 36,000 each. Now they are telling us that the houses have been built at a cost of Rs 72,000 each. If they had given us the money directly, we would have made much better houses, more suited to our needs,” says Shripad Gurubua Shrirame. Welcome to Bhagwanpuri, ‘model’ rehabilitation site for Botezari village, which was shifted from inside the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve to the Keslaghat area, on the fringes of the reserve, between March and May 2007. Around 140 families from Botezari -- the entire population of the village -- and 48 households from Kolsa village, also located inside the reserve, were rehabilitated here. The village is named after Shri Bhagwan, the then Conservator of Forests, Chandrapur North Circle, who is known to have engineered the entire relocation process. The two wards created in the village are called Sanjeev Nagar and Arun Nagar, after former Collector of Chandrapur, Sanjeev Jaiswal, and Arun Tikhe, Range Forest Officer, Mul Range, secretary of the Chandrapur district rehabilitation committee. Five forest and revenue officials, including Jaiswal and Tikhe, received letters of commendation from State Minister of Environment and Forests Babanrao Pachpute for successfully carrying out the ‘model’ rehabilitation project. But even as the administration pats itself on the back, the people of Botezari feel trapped. “We had demanded three things as part of the relocation package,” says Rushi Soma Pendam. “Land, good agricultural facilities, and financial assistance to tide us over the transition period. We got nothing. In the name of financial assistance, we were handed Rs 1,000 per family and told that that was all that was left of the Rs 1 lakh relocation package.” While the official version of the Botezari relocation states that the move was voluntary, the villagers say that despite a two-year ‘facilitation’ exercise carried out jointly by Bhagwan, Jaiswal and the NGO Shodh, the relocation was far from voluntary. “We had insisted that we would not move unless an irrigation tank was constructed at a site selected by us,” says Shrihari Kannake. “But no one was listening to us. On March 14, 2007, out of the blue, a whole lot of officials arrived in the village with trucks, held a meeting, gave speeches, broke a coconut, and gave us our marching orders.” Rucha Ghate of Shodh confirms this. She says: “Government officials from every department were present, including the superintendent of police, in full uniform. Not a single villager was allowed to speak. We were invited to the meeting but did not know that the officials were planning to move the village that very day. The villagers resisted the move, but the officials had taken the police patil of the village, Shankar Gedam, into confidence. Once he started loading his goods onto a truck, the resistance crumbled.” Immediately after the last household had moved out, the forest department brought in bulldozers and levelled the houses and farm bunds, removing all traces of the village. “It was as if they wanted to make sure that the villagers could never ever return,” says Ghate. Officials are quick to point out positive aspects of the rehabilitation exercise. Tikhe says: “Each family received land. The landed got as much land as they had earlier, some even got more. Even the landless received two acres of land per family.” What Tikhe fails to mention, however, is that whereas villagers in Botezari, which was a revenue village, had proper ownership papers for their lands, the land in the new location is forest land. So, no ownership pattas have been issued to the people. Rucha Ghate explains: “At the time of the relocation, Shodh petitioned the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) to change the status of the land from forest land to revenue land. But we have not received a response yet. The land in Botezari will be converted into forest land, so the residents will have no proper ownership rights in either place.” What’s more, the land at the new site is unfit for cultivation. At the time of the relocation, the villagers demanded irrigation tanks. But the two tanks that were constructed for the residents of Botezari and Kolsa, respectively, are unsuitable for agriculture. The additional tanks -- officials promised the people they would get more land if they accepted non-irrigated land, and that tanks could easily be built later -– have not materialised. Officials are now hinting that it will not be possible to dig any more tanks. “When he last visited the area,” says Shende, “Bhagwan saheb said ‘from where should I steal Rs 20 lakh for your tank?’.” Because of these problems, there was no crop last year. “For the first time,” says Mahadev Marlu Kannake, “the entire village went hungry for a day. There was no food in any house. In Botezari, our granaries were always full of paddy.” With no paddy crop, the villagers also had no fodder for their animals. When questioned, Tikhe and R S Yadav, Conservator of Forests, North Circle, Chandrapur, said work on levelling the land and paddy-bunding was being carried out by the agriculture department and would be completed within a month. But the villagers remain sceptical. In the last one year, only 40 families have had their lands prepared in this manner. “The land is too hard, and digging up roots is not easy,” says Mahadeo Kumre. “It will be five years before anything at all can be cultivated on this land. By then, where will we be?” Another thorny issue is the 550 acres of Forest Development Corporation of Maharashtra (FDCM) forest that were destroyed to relocate the village. Although Tikhe says the forest was already degraded, the forest department’s own figures indicate that 1.45 lakh trees were cleared at the time of the relocation, and that the forest had a 0.7 density. A report by Deepsikha Mehra of Shodh, titled ‘Impact of Relocation on Forest-Dependent Communities: A Case of Protected Area Of Vidarbha Region’ also reveals that the forest was dense and in good shape. This is borne out by the large number of roots still left in the ground after, in Ghate’s words, “mountains of roots” were removed from the land at the time of the relocation. What is the rationale of relocation for conservation purposes if it is done by destroying thick forest cover? Forest officials insist that the people of Botezari chose this site themselves. The people say otherwise. “We wanted land close to the forests, not land cleared of forests,” says Kumre. “Not only are the roots causing problems with cultivation, but, by clearing the forests, the forest department has deprived us of income from forest produce and also grazing land.” The FDCM forest, originally a 1,100 acre stretch, was being used by four neighbouring villages for grazing and collection of non-timber forest produce (NTFP). With half the area cleared, and two new villages moving in, the pressure on the remaining forests has increased, leading to hostility between the communities. Kusum Karnik, veteran forest rights worker, has filed a submission regarding the Botezari case before the National Human Rights Commission. The first hearing was held on April 23, but because not a single forest official turned up for it, it had to be postponed. The date for the next hearing has yet to be decided. The villagers are also angry that in order to hustle them to relocate, officials promised them much more than government policy allows. Shrihari Kannake says: “We were told that, immediately on arrival, each family would get a pair of bullocks, a cow and goats, toilets in their houses, individual wells and motor pumps for irrigation. But now they are saying that these things will have to be applied for under various schemes; that they will take more time; and that everyone is not eligible for everything.” For instance, although the villagers were promised a pair of bullocks for each family, officials are now offering them a pair of bullocks for a collective of 10 families. Instead of wells, the agriculture department is offering to dig bodis (irrigation ditches). Toilets are only for below the poverty line (BPL) families. Cattle and goats too are not for everyone. “If the officials had not distorted the picture in this way, we would have known what to expect and would have been in a position to take an informed decision,” says Kannake. “Now we can’t even go back to our old village because it has been bulldozed out of existence.” The final blow came on March 4, 2008, when Babanrao Pachpute announced that the central government had raised compensation for 39 villages to be relocated out of Maharashtra’s three tiger reserves, to Rs 10 lakh per family. “If only the officials had allowed us to wait till now, we would have benefited from this package,” says a bitter Vilas Kannake, voicing the sentiments of all the villagers. As the story of Botezari slowly unravels, key officials involved in the relocation project are distancing themselves from it. Shri Bhagwan, now Chief Conservator of Forests, Thane, who was the project authority and chief engineer, claimed (over the phone) that he was not “very much involved” in it. He added that he could not even remember if he was present in Botezari on March 14, 2007, the day the relocation took place. This, despite the fact that every news item on the relocation mentions him being among those present. Assistant Conservator of Forests Vasisht, one of the recipients of the commendation letters, also denies his role in the relocation. The relocation of Botezari is crucial under the present circumstances, when, in Maharashtra alone, 60 villages face the prospect of relocation from various protected areas, 39 of them in the state’s three tiger reserves of Pench, Melghat and Tadoba. All are located in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. An additional 50 villages are to be relocated from the site of the proposed Mansinghdeo Sanctuary in Ramtek, also in Vidarbha. Is Botezari a sustainable ‘model’ for these villages to look to, as the administration claims it is? “This relocation is much better than things that have happened in the past,” says Tikhe. “Everyone has land, everyone has houses. During earlier relocations, people were thrown out without any compensation. The people should have patience. There are always problems in a new place.” That may be, but how long will the wait be? And under what circumstances? ‘All in good time’ may be the administration’s catchphrase, but the nitty-gritty of surviving under extremely difficult circumstances is left to the people of Botezari. Other villagers resolve to stay put “You are an educated city person. Tell me, do we have reason to be afraid if the collector threatens to bring bulldozers and raze our houses? Can he really do it?” This utterly stunning question comes from a resident of Jamni village, located inside the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR). The residents of this village, along with four others, namely Rantalodhi, Palasgaon, Navegaon and Kolsa, are experiencing mounting pressure from the forest and revenue departments to relocate. While officials insist that the relocation process is being carried out on an entirely voluntary basis, the villagers say they are being threatened and pressured in many ways to pack up and move out. Since 2000, all development work in the villages has ground to a halt. The issue of the relocation of six villages inside the TATR has been hanging fire since 1986 when the Andhari Wildlife Sanctuary was notified to form a buffer zone for the Tadoba National Park. In March 2007, Botezari became the first of the villages to be relocated. Around 45 landless families from Kolsa village were relocated in the same area, whereas Palasgaon, which was also relocated in the first phase, has refused to budge. Jamni village is living virtually on the edge. The forest department has not allowed the villagers to repair the embankment of their irrigation tank that broke during the last monsoons, and, in the last crop season very little crop was harvested. “God knows how we will manage this year,” says Maroti Uike. In Kolsa village too, residents speak of threats and coercion. This village is in a uniquely vulnerable position because 45 households from the village, mostly landless, have already been relocated along with Botezari village. Of all the villages in the reserve, therefore, the pressure to leave is the greatest on the remaining 100-odd households of this village. “At the time of Botezari’s relocation,” says panchayat member Kantabai Kudmethe, “forest and revenue officials repeatedly visited our village and the then collector Sanjeev Jaiswal told us that he would fill up our tank, cut off our electricity and raze our houses if we refused to move”. But after the villagers found out that they would not be getting ownership papers on the land they would be moved to (which is still officially forest land), they refused to relocate. The pressure continues to mount. On April 25, the villagers announced that they would commit collective suicide if forced to relocate before an irrigation tank is constructed according to their specifications. Surprisingly, the residents of all six villages say they knew for many years that they would eventually have to move, and are used to the idea. But the mishandling of the Botezari case has put them strongly on the defensive. “We had a vague idea that we would have to move, and that, once the time came, we would frame our demands and move only when these were met,” says Kailash Kumre, sarpanch of Rantalodhi village. “But after we saw the messy and coercive manner in which the Botezari rehabilitation was executed, we decided that, come what may, we would not move.” Rantalodhi village has declared itself a sovereign gram sabha and announced its intention to resist relocation. In retaliation, two months ago when the forest department repaired all roads in the reserve it left out the approach road to Rantalodhi. Undeterred, the villagers organised a one-day shramdaan and fixed the road by carrying five trucks of murum and stone chips to the road in headloads. The village has also been openly defying a ban on the collection of minor forest produce. Despite periodic threats from forest officials, villagers continue to harvest bamboo, mahua and other products that they need from the forest. (Aparna Pallavi is an independent journalist based in Nagpur) InfoChange News & Features, May 2008
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