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By Aditya Malaviya Everywhere you go in Ganjam district of Orissa you meet people displaced from lands they had farmed for generations. With no land records in their possession they were displaced for development projects or forest protection. Decades later they continue to survive on forest produce, fishing and wage labour, battling the forest department every inch of the way
As the sun sets on the densely forested hills of Ganjam, Raghunath Behera lights a lantern and, sitting outside his mud hut, recounts his travails. Raghunath is the mukhiya (headman) of Luniya Pada village, Bhabarada panchayat, Polasara block in Orissa’s Ganjam district. Looking older than his 55 years, he says the fight has gone out of him. “Construction of a dam began near our village in 1962, which finished in 1965. That was when we had to leave and settle in this village.” He spreads his hands in that all-too-familiar gesture of supplication and helplessness. The dam he’s referring to is the 1,341-metre-long Dhanei earth dam built on the Dhanei river for irrigation. Raghunath, a dalit, has a large family. Besides his parents, he has four sisters and five brothers, though he lives with his wife, mother, two sons and two daughters. A sister also lives with him. “I have no land of my own. What I earn is only from manual labour and collecting forest produce,” he says. “All the children go to school,” he adds with obvious pride. “And I try and earn something everyday from fishing, farming or forest produce to pay for their studies.” “Even though my family has three earning members we are hard-pressed for food. The lucky few who received compensation (as part of the rehabilitation process) bought land and settled wherever they could. Some, though, didn’t receive any or got very little and were thus forced to settle where the land was not so fertile,” he says. But a fertile patch of land did not mean their troubles were over. Because they had to clear swathes of the surrounding forests to cultivate the land, the forest department registered several cases against them. Raghunath says: “Originally there were 60 families, mostly from other backward classes (OBC) or scheduled castes (SC), with about one-fourth of the population being tribal. Subsequently, many tribals moved to other villages; now only a few remain here. Originally agriculture was our main occupation, but now we fish because we are close to the dam. We earn between Rs 25 and Rs 50 a day, mostly by selling fish in and around our village. Depending on the season, we collect and sell forest produce or cultivate crops like brinjal.” Bansidhar Rathore retired from the Army Medical Corps (AMC) as honorary assistant in 1974. He belongs to Polsana. “I had to sell off my house to marry my daughter. I have settled here since 1974, and I survive only because of my meagre pension. My wife passed away a few years ago, and I have a son who studied till Class IX, after which he dropped out. He is not gainfully employed anywhere and has to look for work everyday. Most days of the month he is idle because there’s absolutely no work here,” he says. Rathore says that when he came to Luniya Pada he was moved by what the villagers had to endure. “So I approached the collector and submitted written memorandums. I even met the tehsildar for help. But all my efforts were in vain as officials do not even answer letters. It costs Rs 20 to send a single letter, and I have to choose between survival and throwing money down the drain,” says Rathore, adding that he stopped pursuing this particular line of action as the money simply ran out. Seventy-two-year-old Panthu Vishaya, sitting on the stoop of his mud house that has been freshly coated with a layer of cowdung, supports a 20-member family: three sons, their wives and their children. “I have lost one son, while another is always ill and stays at home. Another son keeps moving from place to place in search of work,” he says. “Today, the only earning member in my family is my son who has to go to Surat or Mumbai in search of work and sends money back to us.” “But,” continues Vishaya with sadness writ large on his lined countenance, “he is hardly able to save any money because of the advance he takes for the travel, his own expenses on food and medicines, and money lost due to ill health. All this leaves him with hardly anything. In fact, he is usually in debt when he comes back. The only money that we survive on is the handful of rupees from the advance that he has left behind for us. Why would I send him away? It is my helplessness, my poverty...” For the 105 families in Luniya Pada, no money means going hungry. If it rains there is no work, and thus no food. There is only one well in the village. Says 35-year-old Gopinath Des: “No doctor comes here and many die from curable diseases like malaria, diarrhoea, dysentery, arthritis (very common) and jaundice. The nearest hospital is 25 km away at Polsara. Many lives have been lost in medical emergencies, with family members unable to get the money together or find suitable transport.” Maheshwar Jani, a tribal, says: “Malnutrition is a major problem. Sometimes, to get medicines, we have to sell our utensils. So we prefer to use herbal medicines that we can get in the nearby forests. Since we would have to spend Rs 100-200 on medicines for almost any ailment, we do so only if it is an emergency, like brain fever which is very common because of the thick vegetation, waterbodies and mosquitoes.” Jani claims that the forest department skims villagers for food, money, fruit and liquor. People who don’t oblige are threatened with the slapping of false cases against them. “They first order us to cut the forest for agriculture work, then to burn the trunks. If we do it the forest department slaps two cases against us -- one for cutting the forests, and another for burning wood!” he says with a sarcastic laugh. Rangavati Nayak, 70, has a son and a daughter. Her son works as a labourer to feed the family, since “no one calls her to work because of her age”. When her son is troubled by his stomach ulcer and does not go to work, she does, and makes about Rs 30 a day. The family survives on the old age pension of Rs 200 that she gets from the government every month. “The local raja had given eight acres to my husband as ‘puraskar (reward) land’, and we lived well once. But things got bad when her husband passed away 12 years ago and the moneylender took away most of the land. I don’t even own my own house. I live in a rented thatched hut.” Damayanti Seth, 43, has a patta for her land and lives with her son and daughter-in-law. “I am a TB patient and spend Rs 300 on medicines. My husband was a health worker who died four years ago. I get a pension of Rs 4,500 per month because he died on duty.” In the village of Madangi Kendrapada, Katagada panchayat, Kandhamahal district, 45-year-old Udeshwar Paraseth tells a similar story. He has a family of seven: the couple themselves, their four daughters and a son-in-law. When work is available, Udeshwar earns Rs 25 a day and three kilos of rice (wages are the same for men and women). When he has money, he goes to the village haat (market) and buys salt, oil and clothes. But when there is no money he cannot even go to see a doctor. “I lost a son, who was six years old, and a daughter who was 14, to illness,” he says matter-of-factly. Udeshwar does not own any land. In 2006, officials from the forest department beat him up so badly he had to be admitted to hospital. They ordered him to leave the village, and allegedly even paid the doctor not to issue him a medical certificate. His torment ended in 2007 when the officials were transferred. Udeshwar still suffers from the beatings he received more than a year ago, and has little strength left to work. His house caved in during the rains, and he is “just managing life somehow”. Vishwa Boliar Singh, 50, farms 4.13 acres of forest land because he too has no patta. “I barely make Rs 10,000 in a good year, to make ends meet.” The forest department filed three cases against him, because of which he had to serve time in jail for illegal felling and ‘making a house’! The couple has seven sons and a daughter; three sons study and the daughter, though older, cannot go to school and only does housework. “I am ill (sometimes I even vomit blood) and have a damaged house built under the Indira Awas Yojana. That is all I own,” says Vishwa, choking on his emotions. Digambar Patmanjhi, 35, lives with his parents, two sons and a daughter. He has studied till Class VIII and is proud that his son is studying in Class I. “My father worked as a labourer to make ends meet. So when my five brothers and two sisters were barely able to walk, they began helping the family to earn. We face very hard times everyday, even now.” But that did not deter Digambar from fighting for change. “I have no patta. So, in 1980-82, when I encroached on forest land, I was beaten up and thrown into jail. I wrote to the then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and then-Chief Minister of Orissa, Janaki Patanaik, to help me. The local MLA and DFO etc came to conduct an inquiry and we were very hopeful. But after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, nothing happened.” He smiles ruefully. In 2007, the villagers asked him to stand for panchayat elections. Digambar was elected sarpanch against four other candidates (of 2,800 votes polled he got 1,356, leading by 856 against his nearest rival). The wasted frames of landless adivasis are testimony to a once-proud people now reduced to subsistence agriculture, generating no marketable surplus from one season to the next, living in terror of expropriation by state governments operating land scams in the name of development. Tribals living in remote areas have had their land for generations without anyone demanding ownership rights or proper legal ownership documents. Now, suddenly, the state demands that they do. Even those with paperwork worry that they will be cheated by local government and bank officials, as frequently happens in these parts. Meanwhile, the government responds by announcing the creation of committee after committee. We all know they are unlikely to achieve much. (Aditya Malaviya is a Bhopal-based journalist and researcher) InfoChange News & Features, August 2008
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