Both photographs by me. Sunday, 17 March 2006, Dantewada district, en route from Dantewada city to Bhairamgarh Block. On the trail for this story.
From a year-old story on Salwa Judum:
In truth, though, Bastar is a starved chicken’s neck pincered at the tri-junction of Orissa, Andhra and Maharashtra. Its many treasures have been reaped and carted away for profit by a line of coloniser-contractors. Its ecology has been scratched and smashed by cynical hunters of fortune — leopard skin, deer meat, iron ore, bauxite, they’ve scavenged it to the bare bone.
The natives of the land have been left to eke out their inhuman indices — literacy is as low as 21 percent; nearly 700 of the 1,220 villages have no schools (where there are schools, they are mostly shut); only 59 have primary health centres, if only in name — death due to disease and malnutrition is rampant. Eighty-four percent of the tribals remain marginal agricultural workers, often having to migrate in search of daily wages. Most of Bastar still lives an essentially pre-modern existence. The roads are excellent and there is surplus power but that only deepens ironies. Both have been used by the outsider to exploit and extract Bastar’s riches, both have limited uses for the tribal. The state mostly slept on its slogans and promises. It filled the legislative bodies with the minimum required by quotas and it painted more slogans. [Sankarshan Thakur, May 2006]
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
This reminds me of the north east…the region has great potential for hydel power but most of it is used outside the state, the companies make money by selling power from the region to other states. DONER plans to spend Rs 20,000 crore in the course of the next five years but the ministry is apprehensive as to whether the whole amount could be gainfully employed for the region.
The earlier north east industrial policy proved to be a boon for Uttaranchal and not the north east.
Just another thought, do not know whether its quite relevant but on the one hand we have Bastar, a region still living the ‘pre modern existence’ in poverty and illiteracy with complete political apathy…and on the other we have Nandigram, which belongs to one of the most prosperous districts in Bengal -Midnapore.
In a recent survey quoted in The Economic Times, the district of east Midnapore was one of the largest markets for certain consumer products in the country.
And for all its prosperity, Nandigram could not be saved only to be included the ‘august list’ of places like Keshpur, Morichjhapi and others which will forever bear the stamp of the Left and the political violence in Bengal.
Where does one go?
LikeLike
Probably the picture signifies the aesthetic aspect of poverty, thats why we, middle class people, seek a consolation in ourselves when we take this kind of photograph. Perhaps we want to get beyond the human suffering by clicking a machine brazenly and making a life and the whole class to tell its story by itself.
LikeLike
The irony of the whole setting makes me wonder if this is not something of a trophy shoot!
LikeLike