Abstract
Development process in Odisha (before 2011 Orissa) may have led to progress but has also resulted in large-scale dispossession of land, homesteads, forests and also denial of livelihood and human rights. In Odisha as the requirements of development increase, the arena of contestation between the state/corporate entities and the people has correspondingly multiplied because the paradigm of contemporary model of growth is not sustainable and leads to irreparable ecological/environmental costs. It has engendered many people’s movements. Struggles in rural Odisha have increasingly focused on proactively stopping of projects, mining, forcible land, forest and water acquisition fallouts from government/corporate sector. Contemporaneously, such people’s movements are happening in Kashipur, Kalinga Nagar, Jagatsinghpur, Lanjigarh, etc. They have not gained much success in achieving their objectives. However, the people’s movement of Baliapal in Odisha is acknowledged as a success. It stopped the central and state governments from bulldozing resistance to set up a National Missile Testing Range in an agriculturally rich area in the mid-1980s by displacing some lakhs of people of their land, homesteads, agricultural production, forests and entitlements. A sustained struggle for 12 years against the state by using Gandhian methods of peaceful civil disobedience movement ultimately won and the government was forced to abandon its project. As uneven growth strategies sharpen, the threats to people’s human rights, natural resources, ecology and subsistence are deepening. Peaceful and non-violent protest movements like Baliapal may be emulated in the years ahead.
Keywords
Introduction
Development processes in India have led to progress but have also led to large-scale dispossession of land, homes, forests, livelihoods and other subsistence entitlement essentials of the rural people of India. As a result, one visualises that rural and tribal people’s movements have cropped up in various parts of the country. One hears about the Narmada Bachao Andolan, Chipko, Appiko movement and Koodankulam struggle happening in different parts in India despite the claims that progress has been recorded by its efforts in post-independence India. The rural sector where more than three-fourths of Indian population live and gain sustenance is today in a flux. The globalisation paradigm with its West-inspired industrialisation strategy is creating unevenness by its strategies. Only when concentrated focus on issues and problems of rural India is made, we realise that these rural movements were given birth by the unequal development strategies employed by the state. The judiciary has stepped in at times and has had to perform the duty of preserving human rights relating to rural India. However, the courts do not step in unless and until damage has already been done and their power to give relief is thereby limited. Therefore, genuine struggles for the rights of the peasants and tribals are being fought by the civil society for safeguarding UN-recommended human rights over their air, water and environment which are as important as their fundamental rights under the Constitution of India. Of late, struggles in rural Odisha as in many parts of India have increasingly focused on safeguarding people’s human rights and have increasingly manifested in proactively wanting stoppage of projects, mining, forcible land/forest/water acquisitions and pollution/radiation fallouts from government/corporate sector. India indeed has had a tortured record of such human rights movements.
Despite having a plethora of laws on the subject, this right has been the most neglected. It has been left to the civil society movements to enforce the basic UN-mandated Right to Environment in all its dignity. We have a sordid record in the sense that some of the worst cases of denial of human rights have been and are still being fought endlessly without solutions in sight. The Narmada Bachao Andolan has been fought for more than three decades now. The same is the case of Bhopal Gas Pidit Andolan (Movement of Affected/Survivors of Bhopal Gas tragedy of 1984) where no solution is in sight for some three decades. The same is the case about people’s movements in Odisha where contemporaneously many such struggles are ensuing. However, there is a precedent of the Baliapal people’s movement there which was a success and is acknowledged as such not merely in Odisha but all over the world.
This article focuses on some contemporary people’s movements in Odisha in post-independent period. Some contemporary movements happening in this part of India are concerned with the rights of people to their land, homestead and environment. Odisha has witnessed many people’s movements of such nature in recent times. In Odisha, as the requirements of rural masses and the needs for development increase, the arena of contestation between the state/private corporate entities and the people has increased over the years largely because the paradigm of contemporary models of growth is not sustainable and leads to irreparable social and ecological/environmental costs. Contemporaneously, such people’s movements are happening such as in Kashipur, Kalinga Nagar, Jagatsinghpur and Lanjigarh. Analysts have to make an effort to study why such protests are happening. A major reason that can be put forward is the fact that development projects not only bring change in country’s economy but also alter the lives of millions of people in a major way by displacing them from their natural habitat. The governing logic of these development projects is that they prove to be boon for a few sections of society but spell disaster for most of displaced people. So naturally displaced people oppose or resist these development projects which affect them adversely. As a result, the protest movements against industrial projects are gaining momentum. This is not specific to Odisha—one finds that all over India industrial projects are facing resistance from displaced or potentially displaced people. The growing awareness among the communities who face displacement has given rise to a wide range of protest movements all over the country. They have found various levels of success so far.
Genesis of People’s Movements in Odisha
Odisha is generally known to be a resource-rich state having great reserves of bauxite, iron ore, chromite, nickel, coal and diamond, among others. Despite having such a vast variety of minerals at its disposal, it is an anachronism that Odisha continues to remain one of the poorest states, with 32.59 per cent of the population below the poverty line. One-fourth of the coal deposits of the country are in the state, in addition to 98 and 63 per cent of chromite and bauxite deposits, respectively. To increase the state’s productivity and to tap this unutilised resource, the Government of Odisha signed Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) with various corporate entities to set up mineral-based industries in the post-neoliberal scenario to bring about economic development in tune with the Government of Odisha’s focus on massive programme of industrialisation. The state government had signed some MoUs with ninety-three players by 2014 with steel sector leading the pack at forty-eight. Other MoUs include twenty-eight in the power sector, three in aluminium, four each in cement and ports and the rest for creation of downstream units. ‘The MoU signed, players had committed investments of Rs Eight lakh crore of which Rs 2.15 lakh crore has already been grounded. Investments worth Rs 1.09 lakh crore have grounded in the steel sector alone’, said a state government official (Business Standard, 1 December 2014).
This was supposed to be the panacea for the low-growth regimes of the past. However, instead of achieving the desired aims, these have upset the rural hinterland and led to a resurgence against usurping of rural land and forestry by the government and also protests against the breakdown of homesteads and economic means of living followed by the people for ages. In fact, in the 2000–2015 period, the cumulative FDI equity inflow into the state stood at US$403 million which meant that much of the investment had taken place during the first two terms of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) government. That Odisha government’s FDI plans have not gone down well is evident from the manner in which the biggest FDI POSCO India Project has turned out into (Mohanty, 2016).
Across the state in various places such as Kalinga Nagar, Jagatsinghpur, Paradip, Kashipur and Lanjigarh, various people’s movements have sprung up against the Government of Odisha against the forced acquisition of land and homesteads for the establishment of projects, industries under the corporate industrial houses some of which are big MNCs both international and national such as Vedanta, POSCO, Sterlite, Tata Steel, among others, in recent years. Kalinga Nagar Protest Movement, the protest movement against Vedanta Aluminium Ltd. at Lanjigarh and POSCO steel plant at Paradip are examples where contemporary struggles are taking place among the rural people and the corporate sector and state. The People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) has strongly condemned the reign of violence that the Odisha government has been unleashing on people’s movements protesting against the forcible acquisition of their land and forests for big industry.
1
In a specific reference to the police firing in Kalinganagar, the PUDR maintains that
[t]he firing of January 2 (of 2006) and the police violence in May are symptomatic of the refusal of the Odisha government to engage in dialogue, in Kalinga Nagar and elsewhere in Odisha, with those who have been opposing industrial projects being thrust upon them. In a trend that has extremely grave consequences for democracy, the Odisha government is increasingly adamant in using police, special forces and the might of the state to push projects through against the stated wishes of the people. In December 2001, three protestors were killed in unwarranted police firing in Maikanch. For the last couple of years, the Odisha government has been hell-bent on pushing numerous projects through—be it UAIL, Hindalco, Vedanta Aluminium, POSCO, or the Tatas in Kalinganagar, among dozens of such industrial projects.
2
The people who have been at the forefront of the protest movements here have been the tribal people. Most of the land which is being forcibly occupied by the state of Odisha since the 1990s for corporate capitalisation belongs to tribal people. It is posited that the neoliberal focus of LPG (liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation) of the last some decades ever since the 1990s of the last century has led to massive human rights violation of right to life and livelihood of the tribal people of this state. The people’s movements that are being fought actually have tribals at the forefront, and not only are they being robbed of their lands, but their livelihoods following the traditional way of living are under threat. Also under threat is giving security to their well-defined rights on land and forest resources which have some legal sanctity. According to the Minorities and Backward Classes Department, Government of Odisha, Odisha has a high concentration of Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Scheduled Castes (SCs). As per the latest 2011 census, it is ranked third (numerically) in terms of ST population, whereas its position is eleventh (numerically) in terms of SC population in the country. The STs and SCs together constitute nearly 40 per cent of the state’s total population (STs 22.85 per cent and SCs 17.13 per cent) (Government of Odisha).
A recent paper (Padhi & Panigrahi, 2011) has noted that indeed such forced deprivation of tribal people by the state is regularly taking place since the time of the formation of Odisha as a separate state. Tribal people’s protest movements are an articulation of this contradiction—should tribals be dispossessed of their natural human rights for the sake of development which bypasses them most of the times or at best is illusory. Today, the tribals are up against some of the most well-entrenched and powerful corporate elite and industrial capital (both international and domestic) who have enormous clout and influence. Indeed,
[p]rotest movements by the tribal people of Orissa in different pockets have attracted the attention of policy makers, bureaucrats, academia and activists across the world. These movements have contributed to strengthening the sporadic articulations by tribal people to organised protests and have led to the recognition that there is need to review the approaches and strategies of development interventions of the state as well as streamline the development programmes. (ibid., p. 21. ii)
It goes on to note that ever since the first developmental work in the state started, the tribals have been targeted for dispossession. Then it was the state or the central government programmes/projects which created such dispossessions such as acquisition of land for the Hirakud dam or the Subarnarekha/Rengali projects which imposed land dispossession. Padhi and Panigrahi note that
the establishment of mega-projects in tribal regions has encroached on tribal people’s age-old lands and thereby displaced them. These projects have (had) an immense impact on their lives and livelihood. They include hydroelectric-cum-irrigation projects like Hirakud (1948), Balimela (1963), Machhkund (1949), Upper Kolab (1978), Indravati (1978), Mandira, Rengali (1973) and Subarnarekha; mineral-based industries like Rourkela Steel Plant (1950), National Aluminium Company at Angul (1985), Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (1962); the bauxite mining project at Koraput (1981) and projects on cement, iron, dolomite and limestone. A cursory calculation shows that, since Independence, Orissa has set up 190 such projects, which have deforested 24,124 hectares of forest land, the basic source of livelihood of the tribal people (Principal Conservator of Forest Office, Government of Orissa, 1999). (ibid., p. 21)
Victimisation and eviction of tribals from their land and homesteads has continued thereafter as well.
The situation in today’s context has been more exploitative. With the onset of neoliberalisation, the state of Odisha under the government of Navin Patnaik (BJD) has become more market savvy and pro-industrialisation. Resultantly, it is making available big tracts of land to corporate houses which originally and continuously belongs to tribals. As a result, the struggle between the dispossessed people and the government has become intense. It has been noted that in recent times, the state is witnessing repeated mistakes whereby poor tribal people protesting against state encroachment on their age-old land rights in the name of development have lost their lives. Incidents in Kalinga Nagar in Jajpur district, Maikanch in Raigada district, Mandrabaju in Kandhamal district and may be linked to the impact of globalisation on the poor tribal people of Odisha (ibid., p. 41). Various observers have underlined the state of unrest that is found in Odisha today and this is not merely limited to the tribals. Along with tribals, others, namely, common people and non-tribals, have been also protesting.
These protest movements are mainly directed against displacement of people and for protection of the local environment. The people complain against poor rate of compensation and gross inadequacies in matters of resettlement and rehabilitation. There are several instances in the past in which people have suffered heavily due to apathy of the state government wherever major projects were undertaken. (Mishra, 2007; Somayaji, 2008)
Recent People’s Movements in Odisha
Some significant people’s movements in various parts of Odisha have come to the forefront for some time now. These have incidentally been located in areas with a sizable tribal population. The protests have seen participation of non-tribals also as they also stand to lose substantially. Following are some of the most notable ones. 3
The Kalinga Nagar Industrial Complex
The Government of Odisha mooted the idea of developing a major industrial complex in the early 1990s of the 20th century in the mineral-rich region of Dangadi, Duburi and Sukinda located in the district of Jajpur. Therefore, the state decided to make Kalinga Nagar as the steel hub of Odisha. Now some twelve industrial complexes have been built in and around Kalinga Nagar and a few new companies are in the pipeline. Of the total land acquired by the Industrial Development Corporation of Orissa (IDCO; 13,000 acres), around 6,900 acres are privately owned (see Padhi & Panigrahi, 2011, p. 51).
This proposed complex is envisioned to have the capacity of producing 15 million tonnes of steel annually. The complex includes about thirteen mineral-based industries, such as iron and steel, stainless steel, and sponge iron and ferrochrome. Iron ore and chromite are the raw materials for these industries, which are available in plenty in the region.
The state government has already signed an MoU with nearly ten units spread over an area of 13,000 hectares. The major corporate houses, such as the Tatas, Visa, Jindal, Mesco and some others, have already started their projects, and a few of them are nearing completion. In pursuance of the MoU, the state government would grant mining lease to the concerned industrial units and provide them with land for setting up their industries.
Although the state government agreed to acquire land from the local residents and look after all matters relating to displacement, rehabilitation and resettlement, this has not taken place in all fairness. As Padhi and Panigrahi note:
[The] lack of legal entitlement over the land deprived many tribal people of compensation for the loss of their land. In addition, undervaluation of the land paid in the form of compensation to the landholders, and the role of Industrial Development Corporation of Odisha (IDCO) as an agent of the state in order to make a profit out of the transactions are issues to which the people affected have yet to receive an answer from the state. In a situation where the state government does not have a Resettlement and Rehabilitation policy of its own and manages the situation through ad hoc strategies, displacing poor people and expecting them to sacrifice their lives and livelihood seem to be the only means acceptable to the state in pursuing industrialisation. The affected/displaced people are still objecting to any form of displacement. They are promoting adoption of a land-for-land strategy, conferring absolute rights in the form of a share for tribal people in companies’ profits. (2011, p. 51)
Some violent clashes have taken place here. Since the attack on the ADM of Jajpur and some policemen on 9 May 2005, during the bhumipujan of Maharashtra Seamless Limited (MSL) over two dozen incidents of industrial violence have taken place and the MSL had to withdraw. The tribal people inhabiting the region have repeatedly expressed their dissatisfaction over the payment of compensation, which ultimately resulted in loss of life of thirteen persons who were from among the tribal community on 2 January 2006, in the encounter that ensued between the police and the displaced people. A policeman was killed and four policemen were seriously injured while the compound wall of the 155 billion steel plant of the Tata’s was under construction.
Protest against POSCO-India Steel Plant at Paradip
The people of Jagatsinghpur district in coastal Odisha have been actively engaged in a protest movement against POSCO, a South Korean MNC which is planning to set up a ₹510 billion steel plant since June 2005. The company also has a plan to open a new private port of its own in order to avail the facilities of special economic zone. The POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti, an organisation of the local people, has been spearheading the movement. The people living in twenty-two villages of three gram panchayats of Ersama block situated in the Ersama Assembly constituency are likely to be displaced after the work starts. The MoU with the South Korean major was signed on 22 June 2005 by the state government. It is proposed that the company would be given mining lease of 600 million tonnes of iron ore for which a separate MoU has to be signed, even to the extent of permitting the company to export iron ore. Further, the state government would acquire 435 acres of private land for the plant which involves displacement of 20,000–25,000 of people. Since then the villagers of three gram panchayats, such as Kujang, Dhinkia and Nuagaon, have been restive over the issue. The Samiti has raised a brigade of 1,200 people who are ready to fight for their movement. There have been violent clashes between the supporters of the proposed plant and the people, calling for police intervention.
Farmers’ Protest against the Vedanta Aluminium Limited at Lanjigarh
The Niyamgiri Hill of Kalahandi district has a bauxite deposit of 195 million tonnes. The district of Kalahandi is one of the least industrially developed parts of the country. In view of its special characteristics of backwardness, a special project of the central government called Kalahandi, Balangir and Koraput (KBK) covering three former backward districts of Odisha is under implementation. In the recent past, the district attracted a lot of attention of the media due to outbreak of famine conditions, drought and incidence of extreme poverty of the masses leading to sale of babies. The district has a sizable population of the SCs, STs and OBCs.
The Vedanta Aluminium Limited started its work for setting up a plant at Lanjigarh and mining of bauxite from the Niyamgiri Hill complex. Ipso facto, this has meant to tribals of the area that efforts are being made to change a predominantly rural economy and hilly area into a major industrial complex, something that the people for long have been strongly resisting, especially the work of mining of bauxite. A mass movement is going on since 2004. On 7 April 2004, the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, an organisation of 1,000 tribal people of the area, was formed to protect the forest, land and water of the area, giving the slogan, Vedanta Hatao (Remove Vendant). The people’s cause has been taken up by another organisation known as Green Kalahandi. The Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti has been formed by the people to resist leasing out of the hills to the company on the ground of protecting the environment. Niyamgiri has a number of perennial hill streams, which are useful for agriculture and for the purpose of drinking water of the tribal people living in the foothills. It is also the source of the river Bansadhara that flows through Andhra Pradesh. The hill is a place of worship of the people belonging to the Khond tribe. The people of two villages, namely Kinari and Bolbhatta, displaced and resettled in the foothill of Niyamgiri are resisting any change to their environment. The people have also protested against the overuse of ground water leading to its depletion by the company in a drought-prone area. For their cause, they have also sought the participation of political leaders of the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
Bauxite Mining in Kashipur
Kashipur in Rayagada district comprising 412 villages and having a population of 101,995 is largely tribal. The Paraja and the Kondhs are the two major tribal communities of the region. It has a largely agrarian economy, and the major agro-products of the region include ragi, paddy, millet, grams (chickpeas), maize and niger seed. Here barter system is the major mode of transaction in the region. Tribals are often forced to make distress sales of their produce, including their own labour. The area, an administrative bloc, was once full of natural forests and perennial springs.
The tribal people living therein terraced the land and made the region habitable. They maintain a symbolic relationship with nature and natural resources. They enjoy natural rights over the resources surrounding them. Intervention in the region started with various state laws basically designed to exploit the natural resources available in the region. The influx of non-tribal people suppressed the tribals. This has been reflected in the form of massive land alienation, resulting in landlessness and severe impoverishment. People’s poverty has become chronic as a result of money lending, bonded labour practices, the geographical inaccessibility of the region, exploitation by middlemen, contractors and petty traders, and the low bargaining power and lack of organisation of the people. (Padhi & Panigrahi, 2011, p. 48)
Systematic exploitation of the forest resources took place when J.K. Paper Mill, Rayagada, ruthlessly destroyed the ecological balance of the region and the people. Food security turned to food scarcity.
State intervention improved the socio-economic development of the region after 1980 in the form of twenty-point programmes, Indira Awaas Yojana, old-age pensions and drought relief, made the people realise the role of a welfare state.
In this process tribal people received a different image of the state, which they now considered indispensable to their welfare. They were told that welfare measures were not reaching them as a result of dishonesty in the delivery system. This notion became fixed in people’s minds following the continuous famine and resultant food crisis of the 1980s, which invited increasing intervention by outside agencies, including the state. This contributed to the creation of a dependency syndrome among the people. NGO intervention for the socio-economic development of the people over two decades has raised certain issues. Now people are challenging the government over their rights and opposing exploitative elements, reviving community strength and helping their communities to escape from the clutches of the money lender network. Utkal Aluminium International Ltd. (UAIL) and other companies have entered the region to mine its hills in the guise of developing the area. Deaths from starvation in Kashipur in 1987 brought it to the attention of the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who made an aerial view of the situation. The result was a new vision of development, which was later able to mobilise IFAD funding worth Rs 400 million. Given this situation, the people oppose all major projects (dams, mining, plants, and sanctuary and reserve forest areas). The villagers believe that such interventions have led tribal people to destitution. Although most of the land for acquisition is government land, in practice most of it has been under cultivation by the tribals for generations. Acquisition of this land deviates from the provision made in Regulation 2 of 1956, Section 3(1), as the tribal people have been made landless. In the course of their struggle local tribal people were able to see the true character of the state, which has essentially worked in favour of corporate bodies and federal interests and against the people of the region. (Padhi & Panigrahi, 2011, p. 49)
Analysis of Current Movements in Odisha
In this section, some recent people’s movements in Odisha have been listed. To put it in perspective, it needs to be said that Odisha has had a long history of people’s movements in which tribal people have had a numerical preponderance. As noted above, mega-projects in under-developed and tribal regions since independence encroached on their land and thereby displaced them. These projects have an immense impact on their life and livelihood. They include hydroelectric-cum-irrigation projects, such as Hirakud (1948), Balimela (1963), Machhkund (1949), Upper Kolab (1978), Indravati (1978), Mandira, Rengali (1973) and Subarnarekha river; mineral-based industries, such as Rourkela Steel Plant (1950), National Aluminium Company at Angul (1985) and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (1962); the bauxite mining project at Koraput (1981); and projects on cement, iron, dolomite and limestone. These projects had serious repercussions impacting on village economies, family life and village power structures, as has been documented through various empirical studies in the state (Behura & Nayak, 1993; Mohapatra, 1999; Panda & Panigrahi, 2004; Patnaik, 2000).
However, there is a difference between the earlier people’s movements and the current ones. Earlier, the protests sprang up as a reaction to some government acquisition of land and forests for the sake of some central government or state government projects with an avowed aim or greater good or national interest. Now it is perceived that the government at the state level is accommodating big corporate/MNC interests by displacing people. The four movements listed above in this section are a step forward than the earlier movements because they are impacting deleteriously on the life, livelihood and sustenance of large sections of the people of Odisha though scattered in various parts of the state, as never before. The level of oppression by the state is on a higher scale than ever before, and it affects women, children and the aged apart from the able bodied.
A study acknowledges this fact and notes that
while women have been in the forefront when it comes to facing the police, they have also suffered repression from the state and non-state forces in many other ways. For instance, people in the anti-POSCO struggle areas are totally in a siege now, not able to go out of their villages for possibility of being arrested. False cases are registered against all those who are participating in the struggle. In such a situation, women and children suffer most. We have witnessed the same situation of women in the struggle areas of Kalinganagar and Kashipur. Since 2006 people in the protesting villages of Kalinganagar are unable to access the public health centres for fear of being arrested. We know of some cases when pregnant women have visited the doctor secretly for check-ups. There are cases when women have gone to relatives in far-off villages for delivery as they cannot go to the nearby hospital. Even when seriously injured in police firing they haven’t got any treatment. Anganwadi centres have been closed in some of the villages. There was no immunisation of children since the struggle began. . . Women have also faced increased hardships when men are killed or arrested. It has become a common practice for the judiciary not to grant bail when people are arrested for their association with the struggles, particularly so when the alleged association is with the Maoists. People are kept in jail for years together. There are instances of men dying in jail before their trial began due to lack of proper medical care. Now there are allegations of rape by the security forces both in Kashipur and Niyamgiri areas. (Padhi & Pradhan, 2013)
Thus, it is clear from the above that the struggles of the people in Odisha for their human rights are long and arduous.
Baliapal People’s Movement (1984–1995)
As noted above, there have been many agitations in Odisha earlier, but it was Baliapal which was one among the many which is remembered in Odisha for its progressive reach and content in the folklore of people’s movements. It took place in the 1980s, but today Baliapal is cited the world over as an illustrious example of how to fight for human and environment rights of the common man in a context when the government is apparently insensitive to the pains and tribulations of the common man. Quite rarely civil society’s struggles have brought relief to affected people. One glorious exception is that of Baliapal People’s Movement in Baliapal and Bhograi blocks of Balasore district of Odisha. It is one of the most glorious examples of a successful people’s movement anywhere in the world that stopped the government from bulldozing the people to set up a National Missile Testing Range for Defence forces in an agriculturally rich and thriving environment by displacing a lakh of people of their land, homesteads, agricultural production, forests and entitlements. A sustained struggle for 12 years against the state was able to thwart the designs of government to take away the land, homesteads and scuttle their professions by using Gandhian methods of peaceful civil disobedience ultimately met with success when the Governments of India and that of Odisha were forced to abandon their project due to the unflinching and united movement of the rural people of Balasore.
It is an incredible success story by any yardstick because despite the possible threat to great dispossession, privation and loss to the people apart from threats to displace them with pitiable, illusory and ‘token’ compensation, the people fought back tremendously. This article analyses why and how the Baliapal movement succeeded and what lessons, if any, Odisha can teach in the context of today’s people’s movements elsewhere.
The Origin
In 1984, the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Government of India supported by the Odisha government, decided to set up the National Test Range (NTR), a missile test base for the research, production and launching of missiles in an agriculturally rich area in Balasore district in Odisha. This pertained to converting two blocks, namely, Baliapal and Bhograi, which are spread over 102 sq. km into an arid zone bereft of its population which was planned to be shunted out and the area was to be converted from a fertile to a barren land which was to be used for defence purposes MoD, Government of India, intended to displace the people in Baliapal–Bhograi, for Defence and Space applications. Both these blocks were densely populated. Baliapal had a population of 112 thousand and Bhograi had a population of 174 thousand. Out of this, inhabitants of fifty-five villages, approximately 50,000 people, faced forced eviction and relocation from their homes and lands to make way for the government’s National Testing Range—a site for the testing and launching of satellites, rockets and long-range missiles (HRD Online, 1988). According to a source in 1986, the Indian government initially decided to build the NTR at Baliapal in Odisha’s Balasore district and announced plans for a range covering 160 sq. km, necessitating the evacuation of nearly 100,000 villagers from 130 villages (Routledge, 1988). They had the Chandipur base which they wanted to expand to cover a major portion of surface area of the two blocks of Baliapal and Bhograi in a densely populated inhabited area with a thriving agricultural productivity supporting multiple crops including cash crops.
The NTR was part of a wider integrated military system that was being planned within Odisha. Military sites such as an ‘Interim Test Range’, the Balasore Rocket Station and Proof and Experimental Establishment at Chandipur, a radar observation and ground control station at Nilgiri, air force bases at Charbatia and Rasgobinpur, naval bases at Chilka Lake and Gopalpur, an ammunition industry at Saintala and a MIG 4 fighter assembly plant at Sunabeda were already there. It was thought that by converting two blocks into an extended NTR India’s missile and nuclear capability would be augmented. ITR (Interim Test Range) has been in use since 1989, but unlike Sriharikota, it is not used for launching satellites. The rocket launching site at Balasore situated in Chandipur is located on the Bay of Bengal. The Integrated Test Range in Chandipur is responsible for carrying out tests for various missiles, such as Agni, Prithvi and Trishul.
It was conveniently forgotten that elsewhere in the world such Test ranges are built on uninhabited areas such as deserts or islands like Cape Canaveral in the USA or Ile du Lavant in France.
The Proposed Devastation—A Cultural Ethnocide
Balasore district is considered as the agriculturally rich ‘rice bowl’ of Odisha—its rich fertile land with natural irrigation sustains a variegated produce of cash crops, vineyards, betel, groundnut, cashew, cardamom, coconuts vegetables along with traditional crops such as paddy, etc., within Balasore, Baliapal and Bhograi top in agro-production. Apart from the rich economy, this coastal district boasts of a high level of literacy. On indices of employment, one member from every house is employed gainfully outside the state or the district and in some cases outside the country. Usually nomenclatured as the granary of Odisha, the Baliapal—Bhograi area’s fertile soil besides producing staple crops—supports a variety of cash crops such as coconut, groundnuts, oilseeds, cashew and paddy. ‘The betel leaf orchards play the most important economic role, however, since the richness of the soil enables both Jagannath and Banarasi varieties of betel to be grown and exported’. Proximity to the coast and the Subarnarekha River also enables people to earn a living through sea and inland fishing and gives rise to various cottage industries such as the manufacture of coil rope, bamboo baskets, mats and mattresses and haulier machinery as well as salt factories an oil extraction mills. According to a recent survey (Resistance Movement Against the National Testing Range 1986), the aforementioned activities, including orchards, homestead land and government land under cultivation, are valued at approximately ₹4.5 billion (US$360 million). Taken together, the total cost of the lands, properties, crops, cottage industries and temples that are threatened by the Testing Range amounted to ₹7.12 billion (US$548 million) according to then prices/evaluation. 5 This agriculturally rich ‘rice bowl’ contributed 15 per cent to Odisha’s GDP in the 1990s and continues to do so even now.
By establishing the defence base, the government wanted to take away not only the homes, land and the means of livelihood of the people and also by displacing them from their soil it intended to make them refugees on their own ancestral land. For the people of the Baliapal–Bhograi area, whose livelihood and culture are intimately bound to the land the rivers and the coastal waters, the severance of their working relationship with the natural environment and the community culture that has developed as a result of this relationship amounted to ‘cultural ethnocide’—a process that is occurring as a fallout of the development process as local culture is destroyed for the sake of development. 6
The People’s Struggle
The Government of Odisha and the MoD at the centre did not heed to the innumerable petitions, protests and media reports against the formation of the missile base. The people then launched on a unique form of protest which continued for twelve years. A fierce boycott of all government institutions, officials and vehicles was started with the overwhelming voluntary participation of the entire population of these two blocks. The non-payment of land revenues, other dues to the government, etc., ensued.
The Uttar Balasore Khepasastra Ghatti Pratirodha Committee (North Balasore Testing Range Resistance Committee) was formed. It comprised of local political party representatives from the Baliapal–Bhograi villages and cut across political and ideological lines. A peripheral front of communist and socialist political parties, trade unions, student groups and writers’ forums was also formed to lend support to the resistance movement. Various ‘landless’ groups (agricultural labourers, sharecroppers, tribals) along with the fisherfolk and some of the middle peasants formed their own resistance movement, aided by activists from the Unity Committee of Communist Revolutionaries of India (Marxist–Leninist) in Baliapal block, and activists from the Institute for the Motivation of Self-Employment in Bhograi block. It is to be noted that the tribals in this area also played a part. The SC population of the district constitute 18.84 per cent and the STs account for 11.28 per cent population of the area. 7 They were the most affected as they did not own much of the land holdings. They, however, made concerted attempts with the non-tribal general masses and provided a people’s front along with them. They constituted a unified core collective of a people’s movement that adopted a non-violent, non-cooperation approach drawing parallels from the area’s historical involvement in the non-cooperation, civil disobedience and Quit India movements in the pre-independence movement. This area indeed was the centre of heightened protest in that period and was known to be an opposition party stronghold in the post-independence period. Hence, anti-establishment ethos came naturally to the people of the area.
A ‘Janata Curfew’ (people’s curfew) has been set up whereby government officials and representatives are prevented from entering the area. To enforce this, four checkposts have been set up barricading the approach roads to the Baliapal-Bhograi area with bamboo and trenches in order to stop government vehicles. At the Kaliapadra Naighati checkpost, for example, 500 villagers constantly form the barricade. Above the barricades a sign clearly states in Oriya, ‘Land is Ours, Sea is Ours. Government Officials Go Back.’ In order to warn the villages of approaching vehicles the people staffing the barricades blow conch shells and beat Thalis (metal plates), thereby quickly drawing thousands of villagers to the barricade to form human roadblocks. Indeed, a Maran Sena (Death or Suicide band) of 5,000 people comprised of women, children and men has been created to form these roadblocks in case of emergencies; their slogan is, ‘After killing me the range will be established on my corpse.’ The area has been effectively sealed off for 30 months. The villagers also refuse to pay taxes-according to revenue officers, only two-three per cent of the government dues were collected from Baliapal in 1986–1987—and hold people’s courts to settle area disputes, thus keeping any cases out of the regular revenue, civil or criminal courts. In concert with these forms of resistance, the movement has also held bandhs (strikes), printed posters, held mass public meetings, conducted demonstrations and painted wall slogans. 8
Thus, it was clear that the government’s writ did not run in the area during the movement.
Efforts to rehabilitate the people were made by the government to offset popular resistance to the location of the NTR. The government proposed an elaborate rehabilitation and compensation plan worth ₹1.27 billion (US$100 billion). Briefly, the plan intends to relocate the people of Baliapal into model villages up to 15 km away from their present homes, each family receiving a house costing ₹15,000 (US$1.140) and built on ten decimals of land (one-tenth of an acre). The model village was supposed to contain schools, hospitals, community centres and post offices. Nine industries (including oil, leather, spinning and tool manufacture) were proposed to be set up to provide direct and indirect job opportunities for one member of each displaced family, providing a total of 4,000 jobs; the range will provide another 470 jobs. All these proposed plans were ignored by the people. They suspected the intentions of the government.
There were several factors, which drew a question mark on the feasibility and supposed ‘good intent’ of the government scheme.
First, according to a government announcement on September 4,1986, 11,00 out of a total of 21,000 acres required for the range are considered government land that has been ‘encroached’ upon for many years by local farmers. Second the government has announced that it will evict all encroachers without compensation for the land and will only compensate for any structures on the land and for the standing crop; if evictions occur after harvesting there will, of course, be no standing crop to compensate for. Secondly, given the population density of Baleshwar district, it appears improbable that even the official estimate of 45,000 people can be resettled within 10–15 km of their present residences (unofficial—i.e., non-governmental-estimates of the number of evictees are closer to 100,000 people). 9
The people were politically aware that the past record of the Odisha government in implementation of rehabilitation and compensation was dismal. The Chief Minister of Odisha had stated in 1986 in the Odisha State Assembly that of the 30,000 people made homeless by the Rengali Dam project in 1975, 22,000 had not been rehabilitated. Also, the survivors of the village of Badakhanpur, which was washed away by a flash flood of the Subarnarekha River in October 1985, were not rehabilitated. Hence, there was total resistance to rehabilitation packages. There was not a single family which opted for compensation. They stayed put and did not vacate their lands.
It was their necessity as well.
For the people of the Baliapal-Bhograi area, whose livelihood and culture are intimately bound to the land the rivers and the coastal waters, the severance of their working relationship with the natural environment and the community culture that has developed as a result of this relationship amounts to cultural ethnocide—a process that is occurring throughout India as local culture is destroyed for the sake of development. 10
However, in 1995, the central government gave up on the idea of establishing the NTR. Rather, it decided to establish an extended base at nearby Wheeler Island, Chandipur and built a new test site there known as Launch Complex-IV. A hard sustained life-death struggle of lacs of citizens for more than a decade forced to take the decision—something which the government could have taken a long time ago without the tremendous social crises that it engendered for the people—people lost their cash crop businesses, had to sustain losses and economic uncertainty because business and agricultural production of cash crops stopped for a dozen years; they could not sell off their lands in times of emergencies and needs followed by decline in their incomes and levels of consumption; social stigma engendered saw to it that they could not marry off their daughters as outsiders were not prepared for marrying from displaced families—the list was endless.
Lessons from Baliapal Movement
In the context of contemporary movements of today like the ones discussed in the second section, it would be worthwhile to seek any lessons from the Baliapal movement and note whether it has any applicative use in today’s context, not merely in Odisha but anywhere else in India and the world.
At the outset it needs to be pointed out that every people’s movement is different and has some unique features and certainly may not be comparable to ones elsewhere. Be that as it may, it cannot however be ignored that the most significant reason why people’s movements are being engendered today is due to some basic issues of entitlements, human rights and cultural practices which have come under threat due to the governing logic of globalisation/neoliberalisation and/or the policies of the state. Indeed, as the process of development has become intensified under the new scenario, the arena of contestation between the state/private corporate entities and the people has increased over the years largely because the paradigm of contemporary models of growth is not sustainable and leads to irreparable ecological/environmental as also social costs of deprivation and immiserisation. Thus, there are some common grounds regarding the growth of the movements in Kalinga Nagar, Niyamgiri, Paradip, etc., and Baliapal. They have the commonality that local people all over Odisha are being deprived of their human rights of entitlements to their land, forests, homesteads and cultural/professional/work-business cultural modalities because of projects impinging on them and their soil. Therefore, these people’s movements currently on in Odisha as also movements elsewhere being fought in India and in the world are comparable to Baliapal, in large measure.
Baliapal movement succeeded in stopping the government from taking over the land, homesteads and disrupting agricultural practices of the people. It is an incredible success anywhere in the world because the government went on the backfoot because of the determined and united struggle of the people. We may highlight some of its strengths.
The strengths of Baliapal were the following.
They started very early: government could not beat them in terms of their delayed initiative. People got the first initiative to mobilise against the government fairly decisively and for a protracted period of time.
Strong apolitical leadership constituted of local people at the forefront—constituting of Uttar Balasore Khepenetra Ghatti Pratirodha Committee (North Balasore Testing Range Resistance Committee) gave committed leadership. Local leadership of Gadhadhar Giri, Brundaban Chandra Raj and Sasadhar Pradhan was single-mindedly devoted to the cause.
Well mobilised, united solidarity of village dwellers, protracted dedicated struggle for more than a decade;
Emotive content—Bheetamati, one’s land, homesteads, threat of displacement;
Innovative sustainable mode of protest, use of Gandhian techniques of peaceful agitation, strategic stalling, complete boycott/non-entry of government officials, vehicles, etc.
Are there any lessons to be learnt from the Baliapal people’s movement? Seemingly yes. It is to be learnt that although it is not easy, there should be collective articulation problems emerging from the leit motif of divergences in development paradigm that not only the government imposes but as of now is even being imposed by the big corporate houses/MNCs aided and abetted by the state in search of quick fix industrialisation (as seen in the POSCO, Vedanta and other cases in Odisha).
In Baliapal all the segments of the population of the affected project area converged as their common tragedy brought them together. The tribals, as noted above, in sizable numbers were also affected and they fought unitedly under the Uttar Balasore Khepenetra Ghatti Pratirodha Committee (North Balasore Testing Range Resistance Committee). The contemporary movements in Odisha like elsewhere, for example, the Narmada Bachao Andolan, have led to lasting struggles for the enforcement of the idea that people should have access to their natural human rights and indigenous people along with intelligentsia have reiterated the importance of following indigenous lifestyles with free access to their forests, homesteads, lands and water resources without being displaced. If such independence is not ensured it would lead to cultural ethnocide.
It could be argued that Baliapal movement was effective because it was spread out on a larger arena of struggle and involved large numbers of people which the government found it unmanageable to control. Compared to it, the four movements discussed in the second section have involved relatively smaller numbers of people and the size of their geographical arena is also smaller. As noted the Baliapal–Bhograi belt was a centre of prosperous agriculture and its rich sections were well educated. It used to draw migrant labour because the highest wages were paid in the region and about three lakh migrant workers were found here. 11 Therefore, the impact factor of closure of businesses, cash crops and agriculture production was substantial and therefore the protest bulwark started early and was organised much better. The modalities of the struggle were ingenious and indigenous.
Conclusion
This article presents the view that inalienable human rights of people in general and rural folk in particular of Odisha are some rights that are not included in the Constitution. Out of these, the right to live in one’s setting and environment is perhaps the most significant of them all. It is for these social and cultural human rights that innumerable protests in Odisha are being waged today. Almost similar struggles currently going on elsewhere in Lanjigarh, Kalinganagar and Paradip in Odisha are continuing without any resolution as yet. In the perspective of the people such rights are as important, if not more important, as the fundamental rights ordained in the Constitution of India. We have noted that Odisha has a long history of struggles for such rights. The sovereign will of the people needs to be respected because when a collective begins sacrificing almost everything and comes to protest for its entitlements, it symbolises that the external agencies, be it the corporate/MNC combine or the state, are meting injustice out to the people—a situation which cannot be rectified through the ordinary medium and channels of democratic mechanisms.
Most of the people’s movements in the past in Odisha were either not well organised or the voices of protest were enfeebled by some or the other reason and government’s apathy to their demands. However, in Odisha, we have a precedent of the Baliapal People’s movement in the 1980s which was successful in fighting for people’s aspirations and rights. On the other hand, Baliapal shows the way as to how the integrated might of the powerful state can be stopped in its tracks by single-minded dedication to a cause by united mobilisation. In India, therefore, to give effect to human rights of rural people which are very basic there is no alternative to unending struggle.
In addition to movements elsewhere learning from the state of people’s movements in the state of Odisha, it should also be the subject of study for others as well. Administrators, policymakers and planners should rethink seriously why is there an upsurge in India on such a wide scale. Surely, it raises questions that the constitutional and legal frameworks are falling woefully short of people’s expectations and/or there are huge lacunae in them. Creative and original implementation of the rules that are in abundance with grit and determination by the concerned officials can go a long way in mitigating the hardships that people in general and rural people in particular are facing regarding their entitlements.