The Hindu Business Line : Only hunger knocks here

Orissa's Kashipur belt still struggles to keep starvation at bay... but the tribals are beginning to question the meaning and justification for `development'.

Revisiting Almey Majhi, five tough years later.

At Bilamala Village, about 70 km from Rayagada, Orissa, it is not difficult to find 65-year-old Almey Majhi who had lost her husband Sadho Majhi, two sons and a daughter-in-law in 2001, when this belt of villages in the Kashipur block of Rayagada district was devastated by hunger-related deaths. These had occurred after the family members consumed a watery gruel prepared by boiling millets with mango kernel, which was fungus-ridden and hence infectious.

Almey and her daughter-in-law Sulmey Majhi survived; Sulmey too was quite ill for some time but recovered mercifully despite the atrocious healthcare facilities here. The three men and one woman had struggled for life even as they were shunted from the ill-equipped primary health centre at nearby Tikiri, Kashipur and then Rayagada. As happens often in famine situations, the women must have consumed a lesser quantity of the gruel. Sulmey's three daughters — the youngest barely six months — also escaped the poisonous meal, and along with it the death it brought to their family.

Almey is squatting in her hut, skinning the tamarind that will be pounded and stored for the rainy season when work is scarce and so is food. One had returned to these villages after five years to find out if the `India shining' story had touched the lives of these poor and backward tribal villagers. Soon it becomes evident that nothing has changed during the past five years — including the potholes and craters that begin immediately after you cross the Andhra border to enter Rayagada district.

As they did in 2001, the first complaint that the tribal inhabitants of villages such as Bilamala and Panasaguda make pertains to their not receiving BPL cards, which will entitle them to a monthly bounty of 16 kg rice at Rs 4.75 a kg. The rainy season is barely a few months away, and this is the time tribals set about the task of organising some kind of food security.

So, do they have some rice stacked away for use in the rainy period? "Forget the rainy period; you can come and search our homes, you won't find a grain of rice," says Pylo Majhi, a tribal who had unsuccessfully contested the election for the sarpanch's post, adding, "once upon a time we were surplus in rice, but over generations our landholding has shrunk." Today millets have become the main crop and rice is grown in small patches on lands belonging to the villagers, along with vegetables. For water they depend on the rain gods... and their own ingenuity, with near-nil irrigation facilities.

No change

Five tough years have gone by, but Almey looks no different from the image captured on my camera five years ago. Of course, there are no tears now; but the expression in the eyes hasn't changed a wee bit... it's grim, sorrowful, and worst of all... reflects a sense of hopelessness. She recognises me, but without any joy, and acknowledges our 2001 meeting with just a half-smile, continuing to shell the pile of tamarind before her. Sulmey has gone to work in a nearby field and will bring home Rs 20; two of her daughters are in the house, hovering around the grandmother. The eldest has been sent to the nearest Ashram school — Government residential schools for tribal children — at Mariwatta, about 20 km from her village.

I show her a copy of the Business Line article carrying her picture, but it doesn't even bring a smile; her blank expression says it all... how is a media report going to change her life?

So did she receive adequate compensation for the loss of four lives in her family, something announced with such great fanfare five years ago?

"They said they would give me Rs 10,000 for every dead person; but finally I got only Rs 20,000; Rs 5,000 per person."

So what did she do with this money, one asks, knowing only too well the answer in a tribal region where the entire village has to be fed during occasions of joy as well as sorrow. "The money went on the funeral as well as feeding the entire village," she says quietly.

So is there rice in her home?

"Only 9 kg, and that too because I recently got some work in excavating a pond in a nearby place." Very soon this meagre amount will run out and the family will fall back upon watery gruel made with millets and a bit of tamarind pulp, and tamarind leaves. The tribals in this region enjoy the sour taste of a mango or tamarind, and dry and store the mango kernel, to be consumed more as a pickle than as staple food. But when there are no food grains in a home, and hunger stalks its inhabitants, naturally anything will be consumed... mango kernel, tamarind seeds, bamboo shoots and even wild grass.

One doesn't even feel like asking this female head of a five-member family about her dream for the future or whether she thinks they've been left behind in the progress of India. She has no access to a television set that will tell her how much India has developed. She knows her future is dependent on her two hands; as long as they can work, or more important, find work, she'll somehow survive.

Finally awareness

As one drives around the backward villages of the Kashipur belt, one finds at least one change. The younger tribal men are much more aware of how their land, and with it their livelihood, is being snatched away by the administration acquiring tribal land for "public purposes" such as mining. With the help of local NGOs and activists they are participating in protest marches. "Today the tribals are getting much more aware and fighting their own battles, and have a strong conviction about what they need and don't need. But when they protest they are being ruthlessly suppressed," says K. Bhanumathi, Director of Samata, an NGO working with tribal communities. Activists like her are certain that pushed against the wall and beyond a point of no return, as their land is taken away from them, more and more tribal people will join the Naxalites or Maoists. "It has been recorded that mining regions all over the world have much bigger crime rates," she adds.

So what is the solution?

"The Constitution has to be protected; the spirit of the Fifth Schedule (which says non-tribals cannot acquire tribal land) should be protected. Today every State Government is trying to find loopholes... if you and I want to buy land in a tribal area, it is considered a private purpose. But if a Jindal or a Birla want rights on the land (for mining), it becomes a public purpose. After all it is their business; so how is it a public purpose," she asks.

To the question that somewhere down the line industrial development has to come to backward regions such as this because the benefits would ultimately percolate down to the local people, Bhanumathi has this response: "How are economics presented and costing done? When you talk of GDP or inflation, from what angle are you looking at the statistics and who benefits? If the majority of indigenous people are forced to migrate to the cities, do not have food security, or basic education, then what development are we talking about? You might have brought in investment and maybe a minuscule section of society is benefiting. We don't say there should be a blanket ban on industrialisation or resources should not be tapped. But are we doing it in an environmentally viable and socially just way or for business houses, is the question."

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

Picture by the author

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