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“Things are not what they used to be,” laments an old man in one of Raigarh district’s 290 villages in North Chhattisgarh. Here, land issues have been central to the lives of the people who live off the land -- mainly farmers and indigenous people. The state of Chhattisgarh was carved out of the state of Madhya Pradesh in 2000.
Seventy-nine per cent of Chhattisgarh’
Forests, rivers, and fertile farmland have been taken over by flourishing industries backed by an unjust state. For several years, thousands have been displaced despite violent activism by the oppressed. Rivers have been bought and diverted leaving hundreds of villages thirsty and acres of farmland parched. Tribal people, who have roamed these mineral-rich forests for centuries, have been forced to seek employment and adapt to a different way of life as industries continue to encroach upon their lifestyle. Protected forest land has been sold to greedy miners who exploit its riches without considering the disastrous effect of industrialisation on the flora and fauna.
The state has been the first in the country to go to the extent of selling rivers such as the Sheonath and Kelo to a private owner who will use it to supply water to industries. This is just the beginning. Industrialists are lining up to pour money into Chhattisgarh in return for extracting a great deal more from it and, in the absence of just legislation and regulation, destroying both its people and the environment.
With the state government itching to meet an investment target of US $ 3 trillion by 2010, indiscriminate industrialisation is inevitable. Crucially, access to, use of, and control over, water resources, is becoming an issue in Chhattisgarh and has led to the emergence of people’s movements against government policies on water issues.
The movement started in 1998 in Boda Tikra village in Raigarh district. A tribal woman lost her life after fasting to death. A decade later, the Kelo river she fought to save has been lost too.
Elsewhere, villagers of Rabo and Danot have sold their land, some after holding out for a considerably long time. Many have run through whatever money they received in compensation and regret their decision to sell.
Another centre of resistance is Gare village where villagers are resisting the sale of their land by enduring bullets, baton-wielding policemen and intimidation by industrialists.
Over a decade ago, Satyabhama’s simple protest fast to oppose the privatisation of the Kelo river, on which 10 other villages depended, ended in her death from starvation. A decade later, her son, Ram bhoi (30), a labourer, remembers his mother, “Many people want to know what happened that day but nobody does anything for us. My parents were simple labourers, and my mother went to fight for water for the villagers alone.”
Ram bhoi, who has five siblings, alleges foul play: “She was taken to a hospital after 10 days of fasting. My father was with her. She wasn’t in a serious condition when admitted. She was 40 at the time of her death in 1998.”
Satyabhama was fighting on behalf of 10 villages which would be affected by a plant belonging to Jindal Steel and Power Ltd. In 1996, JSPL was denied permission to draw water from the Kelo river for industrial purposes as the District Water Utilisation Council felt that the river's waters would be inadequate to meet both industrial and drinking water needs of Raigarh town.
However, in 1997, the company managed to secure permission from a state-level committee to construct a check-dam across the river and sink wells to draw more than 35,000 cubic metres of water daily. Nearly 250 families dependent on river fishing saw their catches plummet after the construction of JSPL's check-dam.
Satyabhama’s sacrifice has been forgotten, though what she feared has come to pass. These days the residents of Boda Tikra cannot manage with the borewells – their major source of water supply now that the river has been depleted -- as they dry up in summer. Every January 26, the day of her death, her family prays at her memorial which they erected in the village. “The villagers don’t join us even though she died for them. The protest stopped the day after she died. People were bribed in the village. Nobody raised a voice,” says Kritya, Satyabhama’s eldest daughter.
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Infochange News & Features, January 2010
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