Fortress Orissa
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Image: Goutam Roy for Forbes India
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WRITING ON THE WALL: A memorial erected by local tribals for people killed in police firing in 2006 in Kalinagar
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hat will you gain from knowing about the struggle? asks Rabindra Jarika. The 31-year-old farmer looks ill. “Had gone out to the fields and got wet in the rains,” he explains as he walks past a stubby hay-filled silo and settles into a small and dimly-lit room. There are a couple of cots. Behind the cots are spades and pickaxes. A dank smell hangs in the air.
Jarika is a youth leader of the Ho tribe from Chandiya village in the mineral-rich state of Orissa. He has masters in sociology degree and was teaching when he decided to come back to the village to “help my people”. He now spends most of his time leading a protest against a steel plant that threatens to displace his tribe and their traditional way of life.
Chandiya flanks the industrial hub of Kalinganagar and is one of the six villages that are holding out against Tata Steel’s plans to set up a Rs. 30,000-crore plant. The plant will come up on land that has sustained a self-sufficient economy for countless generations of local people.
Kalinganagar is not alone. There is Kalahandi and there is Dhinkia. All are divided houses. Divided between industrialisation and agriculture; divided between tribals and heartless urban bureaucrats; divided between ambitious global companies and tribals who are suspicious of such ambitions. Tribals living in these parts find, much to their consternation, that their fertile land has vast reserves of iron ore and bauxite. Companies want to mine them. The Orissa government wants the economic activity spurred by these projects. But invariably, it would mean the tribals would lose their land, livelihood and culture.
The people don’t want that to happen. They are happy farming. The outcome of this three-way joust will decide the fate of investment worth Rs. 3 lakh crore from companies such as Tata Steel, South Korean steel giant Posco and metals major Vedanta. Such a large number makes no sense to Jarika though.
“Our families have been living here for generations. We will not move and will continue our agitation,” he says.
Those are brave words. Outside Jarika’s house is a narrow lane that leads to a patch of green. On the horizon, grey smoke spews out of a phalanx of steel plants that have come up in the region in the last few years. Don Quixote tilted at windmills, Jarika is fencing with steel plants.
State of Contradictions
The dilemma of industrialisation in Orissa is decades old. The state has two things in enormous measure: Poverty and minerals. It has 60 percent of India’s bauxite reserves, 25 percent of coal, 28 percent of iron ore, 92 percent of nickel and 28 percent of manganese reserves. Orissa’s tribals account for more than a fifth of its total population, the highest proportion for any state. The state government wants industry to create jobs, increase tax revenue and take the region out of poverty. Nothing that other states have not done, but in Orissa, the route to industrialisation cuts through the mineral-rich lands inhabited by the tribals.
People would have welcomed the transformation if only Orissa’s track record had been better. Past regimes have brought in projects unmindful of the impact on local people, or any sympathy for the displacement they caused. The past decade alone saw two million people being affected by the influx of plants. Half a million people were sent out of their homes. Three out of four displaced persons were tribals.
The memory of 1955 still rankles. Nicholas Barla, a Catholic priest and social activist says, “The tryst of Orissa people with industrialisation is not new but began from the very first two mega projects — Rourkela Steel Plant in 1955 and the Hirakud Dam that was built a year later over the Mahanadi river. Even today, many among those displaced by these two projects are living homeless.” Industry experts, however, point out that the Rourkela Steel Plant, one of the three mega plants operated by the state-owned Steel Authority of India, provided direct employment to almost 40,000 people. And it was the demand for another mega steel plant in Orissa, where unemployment rate is a high 8 percent, which led the late Biju Patnaik to plan the Kalinganagar industrial complex in 1992.
Today, his son Naveen Patnaik is stepping up the presence of industry. Naturally, it is the mining and metal companies that are vying for a piece of rich mineral wealth of his state. The recent elections to the state Assembly took place in the ominous backdrop of intense protests. But if the results are any indication, Naveen Patnaik’s industry drive has got the vindication it needed. His Biju Janata Dal (BJD) won 103 of 147 seats. It even won in some pockets where protests were the strongest. For instance, it won seven seats in Jaipur district where Kalinganagar is located.
The tribals are disconcerted. “I don’t know how that happened,” says a rueful Jarika. “May be it was BJD’s scheme of Rs. 2 per kg of rice, or its pre-election alliance with Left parties,” says Jarika. Whatever may be the cause, Patnaik can push ahead with the projects now. The government is now underplaying the seriousness of the protests. “Wherever big projects come up, there will be opposition. These things are common,” says Raghunath Mohanty, the state minister for steel, mines and industries.
The reality is much more bitter. Some people have had to pay with their lives to sustain the protests. In January 2006, a protest against the Tata Steel plant turned violent and police opened fire. As many as 14 tribals were killed. Jarika lost two of his friends. “Ever since steel plants came up in 1990s people in Kalinganagar have only suffered,” says Jarika. “After the firing we totally lost our trust in the government and the companies.”
Standing testimony to the bloody chapter is a memorial complex at the centre of the village. Pillars resembling Stonehenge have been erected to salute their martyrdom.
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apart from giving jobs, it has raised the standard of living in this area, and several other small business has come up with it.So i think industrialization is necessary and more in case of orissa due to its poverty.
