Conspiracy of the State

A macabre drama is unfolding in the poverty-stricken Indian state of Orissa where a democratically-elected government has begun to crush over a dozen people’s peaceful resistance movements against their forceful eviction from their forest, farm, water bodies and source of livelihood to help giant multi-national corporations usurp mineral-rich forest and fertile agricultural land.

The recent police atrocities on the people of Kalinganagar and Jagatsinghpur may turn out to be a turning point in the state's people's non-violent agitations which have a long and distinguished history of successfully thwarting two nationally important mega projects - the national missile testing range of the defense ministry at Baliapal and the bauxite mining from the Gandhamardan hill by the public sector National Aluminum Corporation (NALCO).

People of Kalinganagar, touted as the steel hub of India, and Jagatsinghpur have been carrying out a non-violent agitation against their displacement to make way for Tata's six-million-ton integrated steel plant and Korean giant Posco's 12-million-ton steel plant respectively. In both the places, the Orissa government, with active collusion of armed goons hired by companies, has launched massive attacks indulging in firing, baton-charge and arson. The government had tried to forcibly evict the people from their villages in 2006 and 2007 too resulting in the death of 14 tribals in Kalinganagar and injuries to many in Jagatsinghpur.

In both Kalinganagar and Jagatsingpur, the government and the companies used agent provocateurs to give a violent-twist to the peaceful sit-in dharnas by the people so as to portray the police action as ‘legitimate’. Stories were planted by the government in a section of the media describing the police action as an inevitable measure to put down violence initiated by the non-violent satyagrahis.

In Kalinganagar, where the police and the hired goons of the company had opened fire injuring over 10 people, including women and, subsequently plundered the houses of non-violent resisters, the government put up a poster purportedly issued by Maoists in support of the people’s movement, a day before the police action on March 30.

The attempt to dub the non-violent resistance movement in Kalinganagar as ‘Maoist inspired’ is a sinister design of the government which follows the popular dictum – ‘To kill the dog, give it a bad name first.’

The government’s exasperation is understandable because the people of Orissa have so far succeeded in stalling not just Tata’s and Posco’s attempt to take possession of the allotted to them for setting up massive steel plants, but have also thwarted London-based Vedanta Resources Plc from carrying out mining from the Niyamgiri hills at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district.

The 8,000-strong Dongaria tribe residing in the foothills of the Niyamgiri hill in Kalahandi district have been carrying out a resistance movement against the mining of bauxite from the hill top on the ground that their tribal diety Niyamraja resides there and any mining activities would destroy the ecology of the region and deprive them of the their main source of livelihood, which is the forest. The ministry of environment is yet to give its clearance to Orissa Mining Corporation for carrying out mining of bauxite from the hill top. This has adversely impacted the alumina refinery of Vedanta at Lanjigarh.

Vedanta is also facing stiff resistance from the villagers to their proposed ‘world-class’ university on the Konarka-Puri coast on a massive 6,000 acres of land allotted to the company by the state government. The protesting villagers have not allowed Vedanta to take possession of the land. Lok Pal has ordered an inquiry into the alleged corruption in allocation of land from out of the land owned by the Jagannath Temple trust.

Arcelor Mittal’s proposed steel plant in Keonjhar district too has not been able to take off due to stiff opposition from the people who are likely to be displaced by the project. Though the Orissa government had committed to 8,000 acres in Keonjhar district for the proposed Arcelor Mittal steel plant at the time of signing the MoU in 2006, it has not yet been able to provide any land. The process has been delayed due to agitation by displaced families under the banner of Mittal Pratirodh Manch as most of the land is fertile agricultural land.

Agitations have also stalled allotment of land for setting up of a couple of thermal power plants, not on the grounds of displacement, but because these power plants would consume great amount of water at the cost of irrigation to cultivable land.

Police Atrocity Against Villagers In Orissa

Countercurrents.org

By Nachiketa Desai

In a massive armed assault using crude bombs, bullets and batons, the Orissa police cracked down on over 1,500 villagers staging a peaceful sit-in dharna since January last against their imminent displacement to make way for South Korean mega corp Posco’s 12 million ton Greenfield steel plant in the coastal district of Jagatsinghpur, Orissa state, India.

More than 100 people, five of them seriously, including women and children were injured in police action which began since the crack of the dawn on Saturday (May 15) with the arrest of CPI MP from Jagatsinghpur Bibhu Prasad Tarai while he was on his way to the core area of the proposed steel plant site to express solidarity with the agitating people of six villages whose 4004 acres of land has been acquired by the government for the Korean steel major.

Tension in the area has been mounting since yesterday with the arrival of 25 platoons of armed police to Balitutha, the entrance point to these villages where over 1500 villagers had set up a blockade and were on a sit-in dharna. That the police had arrived to launch an offensive was anticipated by all because only two days ago it had opened fire in Kalinganagar, killing one person and injuring many, to evacuate agitating villagers for Tata’s proposed steel plant there.

In both Kalinganagar and Jagatsinghpur, the villagers have been carrying out peaceful agitation against their displacement for the last five years. In order to create a division among the agitating people, the government and the companies had bought over a section of the local population to their side and shifted them to rehabilitation colonies.

It was with the help of these pro-project villagers that the police had carried out a raid in Kalinganagar on March 30 last, pillaging houses and burning stocks of foodgrain. Using a similar tactic, the police made the pro-Posco villagers to lob crude bombs made of kerosene and petrol to create panic and use it as a ruse to launch a massive offensive against the protesters sitting on dharna.

People of six villages, who have organized under the banner of Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti, had blocked the road at Balitutha, the key entrance point to these villages since January. On Saturday morning the district magistrate of Jagatsinghpur started issuing warning from a hand-held loudspeaker that the police would use force if the villagers did not lift the blockade and disperse.

According to the leaders of the Posco Pratiodh Sangram Samiti, police first fired teargas shells and set on fire the tent under which the protestors were sitting on dharna and then chased the people away from the dharna site at Balitutha. “More than 100 villagers were injured by the police who used batons fired rubber bullets. We shall continue our democratic mass resistance, come what may,” said Prasahant Paikray, spokesperson of PPSS.

The district administration has imposed prohibitory orders under Section 144 of CrPC to facilitate the government undertake survey of the land in these villages with a view to finally handing over these to the Posco. Police has also arrested Congress leaders Umesh Swain and Jayanta Biswal along with the CPI MP Bibhu Prasad Tarai. CPI has planned a protest rally to be addressed by senior party leader A B Bardhan on May 19.

Lessons from Chhattisgarh Peace March

A bunch of hooligans belonging to Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress representing the traders and contractors of Bastar succeeded in creating confusion among the newspaper reading, TV- watching urban middle class about a unique initiative of over 50 concerned citizens who took out a three-day peace march from Raipur to Dantewada in Chhattisgarh from May 6 to 8.

The peace march, whose participants included leading scientist Yash Pal, veteran Gandhian Narayan Desai, social activist Swami Agnivesh and academics Banwarilal Sharma and Ramji Singh, besides scores of social activists and independent journalists, was meant to convey the

message to the nation that 'dialogue and not gun' was needed to defuse the crisis caused by the civil war between the state and the Maoists in the mineral-rich forest areas of the tribal-dominated region of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Despite elaborate explanation by Prof Yash Pal, Agnivesh and other eminent citizens about the purpose of their peace march, the Raman Singh government of Chhattisgarh and Union home minister P Chidambaram managed to propagate through the media that the peace march was meant to thwart the 'Green Hunt' and to buy time for the Maoists to regroup themselves.

The media, controlled by the corporate world and the government through their patronage and threat, did their bit by conveying an impression that the peace march met with stiff opposition from the people of chhattisgarh though the vulgar and orchestrated demonstration against the march was only by a handful of hooligans who were seen back-slapping the state police officials.

Unwittingly, the peace marchers too fell into the trap laid by the government and the protesters by confining themselves to addressing a series of press conferences instead of holding one-to-one talk with the people of the towns they passed through. There was also a lack of preparation for the march which should have got placards, banners and pamphlets printed to convey the message of the marchers.

"It was futile to take out the peace march through cities and towns which fall into the 'black-market corridor'. The marchers should have crossed over to the 'red corridor' to establish communication with the adivasis who are caught in the crossfire between the state forces and the Maoists," says Rabi Das, a founder member of the CPI-ML. "The marchers would not have faced any violence, not even a whimper of protest from the Maoists and the adivasis in the 'red corridor' on the other side of the Indravati river," he adds.

Incidentally, Rabi Das and his comrade Nagbhushan Patnaik had renounced violence in the late 1970s after they had come in contact with Gandhian social worker, Malatidevi Choudhury and her husband Nabakrushna Choudhury, the former chief minister of Orissa. Rabi Das has been working in the starvation-prone Kalahandi district of Orissa for over two decades now.

Having met with nasty protest from traders of Jagdalpur and Dantewada, the peace marchers held a review meeting in which several participants stressed the need for crossing the Indravati river into the 'Red Corridor' to express solidarity with the Maoists' cause of giving the ownership rights to the adivasis over land, forest and water bodies, with the rider that taking up guns was not the solution.

Prominent among the peace marchers such as Prof Yash Pal, Thomas Kochery, Dr. Banwarilal Sharma had made it amply clear during their interaction with the press that the faulty development paradigm of the country was responsible for the widening schism between the rich and the poor and that the government was hand-in-glove with the mega corporations and multinational corporations in the plunder of the country's natural resources to the peril of the poor adivasis and the environment.

Given such a stand, the peace marchers could have easily established rapport with the adivasis in the 'Red Corridor' as well as the Maoists fighting for their rights. They could have also tried to convince the Maoists of the efficacy of non-violent direct action by pointing out the success of the people's movements in Baliapal and Gadhamardan in Orissa which were able to stop the proposed national missile testing range and the bauxite mining respectively.

In fact, it is because the people's movement in Orissa has remained peaceful and non-violent that it has been difficult for the government and the mega corporation to push ahead several mega projects in the state. Local villagers in Orissa have been resisting setting up of mega steel plants by the Tatas and the Korean gian Posco for more than five years now as a result of which these companies have not been able to take possession of the land.

The government and the companies, on the other hand, have tried many times to provoke the people by resorting to violence as in Kalinganagar. There have also been attempts by the government to brand these peaceful movements as Naxalite movements so that the state repression can be justified.

Battle for Bastar

Bastar (Chhattisgarh): A fierce battle is raging along the Indrawati river in Central India. On one side of the river are deployed the para military forces of the Indian state. On the other side, in dense forest, are the Maoist guerrillas.

The Indian militia calls the battle, operation ‘Green Hunt’, which is aimed at flushing out the Maoists from the mineral rich forest land so that Indian and multinational corporations can fatten their bottom line by exploiting iron ore, coal and bauxite. The Maoists are fighting to protect the 40,000 square kilometers of dense forest land known as Dandakaranya from these marauding companies.

The Indian militia has deployed at the front a private army of teenaged adivasis raised under the banner of ‘Salwa Judum’ to provide local support to the Central Reserve Police force (CRPF). The police of Chhattisgarh operate from the safety of police stations, far away from the battle field. In the battle for the control of Dandakaranya, mostly the adivasis and the CRPF men drawn largely from the poor and socially backward class families from across the country die. Rarely do the senior officers of the police, the bureaucracy or the top executives of the MNCs get killed.

Maoists have ‘liberated’ the mineral-rich region where governments have existed only in the form of greedy contractors and corrupt policemen and forest officials, leaving the mass of tribals to suffer in poverty, disease and illiteracy while outsiders strip away Bastar's minerals.

“The country is on a boil. In the last 60 years, we have made the rich more rich and the poor more poor. The condition of over 60 crore people of our country is deteriorating day by day. If such a scenario continues, there would be great trouble, what kind of trouble is unpredictable,” says Professor Yash Pal, leading space scientist and former chairman of University Grants commission.

“Today, millions of people, mostly tribals, are migrating from their ancestral land to far off places like Mumbai, Delhi, Punjab and Gujarat to toil as labourers. There must be something terribly wrong with our development policy which is making this happen,” points out Prof. Yash Pal. “In the name of development, we are mining for minerals which we export to China, Japan and other countries. We dig land, we dig forest, we uproot people living in this land for the so-called development and progress,” he adds.

“Having uprooted the adivasis, we set up highly polluting industries and destroy the most-beautiful and green forest land of our country. We are destroying the soil of India, we are destroying the people of India.”

Prof. Yash Pal was addressing a press conference in Raipur, the state capital of Chhattisgarh, on the eve of a peace march to Dantewada calling for talks and national debate to find an end to the civil war in the tribal-dominated mineral-rich forest-covered areas of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Prof. Yash Pal was among the group of over 50 concerned citizens who participated in the peace march from Raipur to Dantewada from May 6 to 8. Among the other participants were Swami Agnivesh of Bandhua Mazdoor Mukti Sangathan, Prof. Banwarilal Sharma of Azadi Bachao Andolan, veteran Gandhian Narayan Desai, chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith, Thomas Kochery of World Fisherfolk Forum and Radha Bhatt, chairperson of Gandhi Peace Foundation.

There was a consensus among the participants of the peace march that faulty development model of the country, which marginalized the vast majority of rural poor, the indigenous dwellers of the forest, was responsible for the civil war-like situation in not just the forested areas of central India but also in the North-eastern states and Kashmir.

There was also a consensus among them over the means of restoring peace in the country. “Gun versus gun is not the solution. Violence only would breed more violence. If the government thinks that it would be able to eliminate the Maoists by bullets, it is greatly mistaken. Look, what happened in Vietnam,” points out Prof Yash Pal.

“Are we going to annihilate the entire population of Adivasis, just like the Americans did with the Red Indians, to push forward development and progress?” asked Radha Bhatt of the Gandhi Peace Foundation.

“In the name of dam construction and mining, millions of people are getting displaced,” points out Thomas Kochery. “They are getting displaced from their land, forest and water”, he adds. This is the first kind of violence the poor people are facing, this is the first form of terrorism in the country.
“The second form of violence is by Naxalites who take up arms to retaliate the first form of violence. And the third form of violence is when the army and the para military forces use guns to put down the second form of violence,” he points out. “We are here to say that peace can be achieved by removing all the three kinds of violence from the country.”

“A long-lasting peace can be achieved only by holding talks amongst all concerned to find out a sustainable people-centric development paradigm,” says veteran Gandhian Narayan Desai.

Despite having spelled out the objective of their peace march from Raipur to Dantewada, the marchers faced ugly demonstration from a handful of supporters of both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Congress as well as from some representatives of trade, commerce and industry bodies.

The first to react was Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh who ridiculed the peace initiative by mocking at them and obliquely referring to them as the sympathizers of the Maoists. “Why do these intellectuals wake up only when the government starts operations against the Maoists and keep quiet when the members of our security forces get killed,” he said.

Taking a cue from the chief minister’s statement, a handful of workers of the BJP, the Congress and the local chamber of commerce and industry held demonstrations in Raipur, Jagdalpur and Dantewada, shouting, “Naxal supporters go back, go back.”

None of these demonstrators was local adivasi and only represented the trading community of the district towns of Jagdalpur and Dantewada which has been exploiting the adivasis over the last several centuries and which thrives on the ongoing war against the Maoists.

“The traders of Jagdalpur and Dantewada are the main suppliers of foodgrain, grocery and other essential commodities to the security forces. Their total turnover of supplies to the security forces is in the range of Rs2000 crore yearly,” points out a resident of Jagdalpur who was a student union leader of the local college about a decade ago.

The state government and members of both the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress, with active participation of the police and local goons have been preventing independent journalists, lawyers and human rights activists from visiting Dantewada by organizing violent attacks against them.

Anyone trying to find out what is happening in Bastar on both sides of the Indrawati river is promptly branded by the Establishment as ‘Supporter of Maoists’.

A Gandhian worker, Himanshu Kumar, who has been running ‘Vanvasi Chetana Ashram’ for the last 17 years, was dubbed as ‘Maoist sympathiser’ and his Ashram razed to the ground by the authorities after he raised the issue of mindless killing of innocent adivasis by the police-backed Salwa Judum private militia.

A couple of journalists have been detained by the police after they tried to cross the Indrawati river to find out what was happing in the deep forest.

Fascism in Bastar

A mob of about 100 slogan shouting supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party barged into the public meeting of eminent citizens, including space scientist Yash Pal, veteran Gandhian Narayan Desai and former UGC chairman Ramji Singh, a day before they embarked upon a peace march from Raipur to Dantewada in Chhattisgarh.

A group of over 50 leading citizens had converged in Raipur on May 5 to take out what they call 'March for dialogue on peace and justice', calling for end to a civil-war like situation in the predominantly tribal state of Chhattisgarh. These citizens comprising academics, scientists, social activists and Gandhian workers, want a 'ceasefire' between the state forces and Maoists to begin a nation-wide discussion on model of development that the country should follow to ensure a sustainable, just and people-oriented economy and polity.

At a press conference, held before the public meeting, Prof Yash Pal said he was greatly pained at the plight of the tribals, farmers and the indigenous people in the last 60 years of Independence for which the powers that be and the middle-class in general were responsible. "Do we want to annihilate the entire race of aboriginal people, like America had done in the name of development?" he asked.

Interestingly, the Press Club of Raipur allowed to hold the press conference of the leading citizens as an exception to their earlier resolution not to allow any press conference of human rights activists. The press conference lasted for more than an hour during which journalists asked leading questions like 'How can you advocate ceasefire when Naxalites are out to wage a war against the constitutionally-formed government?"

Swami Agnivesh, Prof Yash Pal and Narayan Desai explained the limited scope of the peace march saying the foremost thing was to stop violence from both the sides - from the state and the Left extremists - to facilitate a nation-wide dialogue on ways and means to have a sustainable and just development of the country in which people were at the centre.

Later, while the marchers held a public meeting at the town hall, near the district collector's office, a mob of over 100 people, stormed into the hall shouting slogans, "Naxal sympathisers go back", "Naxal sympathisers, shame, shame." The trouble-makers disrupted the meeting several times during which the speakers stopped addressing the gathering.

State director general of police Vishwa Ranjan said the trouble-makers belonged to both the BJP and the Congress party. "Tempers are running high in Chhattisgarh over the wanton killings of tribals by the Maoists. Anyone advocating dialogue with them is perceived as the sympathiser of the Maoists," he added. The top cop directed concerned police offers of Jagdalpur and Dantewada to provide adequate security to the peace marchers.