The Hindu Business Line : Promises to keep or break…

If one happens to be near the Karuna Hospital in the LIC Colony at around 5.30 in the morning, one can see large numbers of bats (Flying Fox) moving in to hang upside down on the branches of old mango, tamarind and other trees, after their night search for food.

They screech and shift on the branches before settling down while the early office-goers catch autos to the Borivili station to resume work on a fresh day. The bats silently fall out of dark, monsoon skies before clasping to the branches of trees; it is a daily morning show, which sometimes gets disrupted by the chase of raucous crows upset over the morning air traffic.

A few residents of the area do not like the noise the bats make and as redevelopment of the area takes place, the trees will go and with them the bats. One is reminded of the lines of William Blake: “The tree which moves some to tears of joy/is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way”. The poetry may well apply to the recent Supreme Court judgment clearing the steel and mining projects of Posco and Sterlite in Orissa by approving the diversion of 2,953 acres of forest land out of the needed 4,004 acres.

Seemingly, the Supreme Court has placed economic development of Orissa ahead of the forests and the tribals. Jobs will come, compensations will be doled out, bankers will offer cheap funds, Sensex will rise, dividends will be paid. The judges surely have a point and also many takers.

For business, Posco steel plant costing Rs 51,000 crore is the single largest foreign direct investment in India. But will the boom sequence bust? Business Line carried a letter by Girish Prahalad from Bangalore disagreeing with the court ruling and legitimately pleading for protecting the wildlife homes in the Niyamgiri Hills. He writs, “It is unfortunate that the same Supreme Court that rescued Kudremukh from being decimated by mining, has permitted sacrificing of precious forestland and its native fauna”.

Recent reports from Orissa suggest the tribals could challenge the verdict under the provisions of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, okayed by the Parliament and is today an Act. This Act “recognises and vests forest rights and occupation in forest land in forest dwelling scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers who have been residing in such forests for generations and whose rights could not be recorded”.

Forest dwellers will be granted rights to lands in the forests with the cut off date for occupation being December 13, 2005. The Centre has okayed a payment of Rs 10 lakh per family with contributions from State governments to resettle tribals in non-forest lands only after getting their consent.

Bill Aitken noting on his travels to Arunachal Pradesh remarks, “The specialists, whether anthropologists or naturalists, who bemoan the incoming of the tourist, overlook the bottomline of any democracy which is that elitist attitudes are more objectionable than the controlled development of a place.

“Arunachal is in the happy position of being able to learn from the destructive impact of tourism now faced by other Himalayan States. Hopefully, more eco-friendly policies will be pursued, but to expect Government servants to be imaginative is a bit like asking a celibate to expound on the joys of sex.”

There is something acutely insensitive in reseeding a US-style growth model on a country whose demographics cannot accommodate large disturbances to the lives of its poor. New Delhi despairs when the poor protest and is quietly dismissive of the honest individuals and groups backing them.

But can New Delhi take the same view when an IAS official, Anita Agnihotri asks — “Can a small group of people, by dint of their being close to the centre of economic and social power, determine the lives of so many people – without carrying out any of their own duties and responsibilities?”

She is a senior IAS officer and has close range experience of some of the poorest tribal areas of Orissa and east-central India. Her book of Bengali essays and a novella – Forest Interludes — has been translated into English by Kalpana Bardhan and shows up a rare IAS official with a spacious heart. Her essays on hydro-electric projects in Orissa are good journalism.

All the dams, she writes of, have displaced tribals with cynically thought out rehabs. They are thrown back deeper into the forests and as Anita admits at some point their forests will also go and they will trudge to live in slums in cities.

The IAS lady describes the reaction of a crowd of tribals knocked off by the Rengali dam.

An old Giribala tearfully exclaims: “Well, my children, if it is so much trouble for you, why don’t you just kill us off with a bit of poison? With no money even for food and clothing, why live any longer?” ….It is no use trying to understand the psychology of a village facing rehabilitation in terms of the usual theories of crowd control. …. The main thing is getting angry with them amounts to a major transgression of humanity. And is there any greater evidence than this of incompetence on the government’s part?... That’s why I begged their forgiveness, with my palms joined, taking all responsibility for the delayed rehabilitation efforts. Instantly the people calmed down.”

In the piece — Why does that girl trudge across? — she cannot forget the aged, Juang woman of Keonjhar who started learning to read in an evening class. She collects saal seeds and thought of buying kerosene with the collection provided Anita could get her a lantern for the class.

“The allotted money was not a lot and breaking the rule to purchase supplies would bring all sorts of criticism; so getting them a lantern is something I didn’t manage. I have had to hear much criticism just for getting them some books and chalk.

“Reproach from the minister down to the elderly district magistrate. That I was wasting thousands of rupees of the country’s money,” Anita admits.

Yet another Independence Day is on us; yet another promise will be made to clear off the broken backs of the poor; yet another promise will not be kept. For whom are the poor?

P. Devarajan

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