Finally, it was an uneven scrawl in the cryptic shorthand of a court stenographer that almost ruined Sudaram Nag’s monsoon crop. “Sudaram Nag, 50 yrs, Takraguda, Bastar. Section:107.116(b), 03-08-07.” it said; communicating to Sudaram Nag, a 50 year old rice farmer in the Bastar District of Chhattisgarh that he was hereby summoned to present himself at the Magistrate’s Court on 3 August 2007 to show cause as to why proceedings may not be initiated against him for a breach of peace under section 107.116(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) . Since early this year, more than 60 of Sudraman’s neighbours and fellow villagers have spent more time at the courts in Jagadalpur than tending to their fields and harvests. Their crime? Protesting against the blatant rigging of gram sabha hearings initiated to acquire 2161 hectares of fertile agricultural land for Tata Steel Limited’s greenfield steel plant in the district.

In an instance of truly Orwellian coincidence, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for Tata’s steel plant was signed on 4 June 2005; only two days after the formal launch of the State Government’s controversial Salwa Judum programme in the Bastar and Dantewara districts and marked, in the eyes of many, the point of coalescence of the state-industrial-military complex. The State Government also signed an MoU with Essar on the same day; and the entry of two of India’s biggest iron and steel companies was anointed by the simultaneous displacement of more than 50,000 (Government of Chhatissgarh figures) adivasis from state’s mineral rich forest lands.

While the national dailies welcomed Tata’s proposal with the enthusiasm and euphoria usually reserved for successful cricketing campaigns in the “Sports” pages; a controversy was brewing in Raipur, the state Capital. Soon after the deal was signed, the BJP-lead state government refused to share the details of deal, claiming that disclosure was specifically prohibited by one of the clauses in the MoU. Members of the Opposition were refused copies on the floor of the house, and the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency encompassing Lohandiguda –the area earmarked for the project – came on record stating that he had no information of the details of project. Copies of the MoU leaked over a period of months, and by the time the documents became easily available, a full-scale protest was underway in the ten villages earmarked for the project.

While the provisions of the MoU – made available to Frontline – do not seem to have any clauses that seem particularly exploitative in the context of a steel plant with a captive iron –ore mine; the protests have centred around acquisition of land for the plant. The documents suggest that the plant shall require approximately 2161 hectares of land, close to 90 per cent of which (1861 hectares) is adivasi-owned agricultural land and shall directly affect approximately 225 tribal families. The MoU contains no reference to rehabilitation and villagers says that they had to file under the Right to Information to receive a copy of Tata’s rehabilitation package.

“We are not against the project per se,” says H.R. Mandavi, Sarpanch of Takraguda – one of the affected villages, “However, we are firmly against the forcible acquisition for our land at paltry compensation rates.” According to Mandavi, the protests started in earnest with the district administration and company officials slowly ratcheting up the pressure on the villagers. On 27 May 20006, a coalition of representatives from the 10 villages, organized under the banner of the Prastavit Tata Steel Punarvasi Samiti, presented the district administration with a charter of 13 demands that sets the rates of compensation at Rs 5 lakh an acre for unirrigated land, and Rs 10 lakh per acre for irrigated land. They also insist on a permanent job for at least one member of each nuclear family, a transparent examination and rectification of the district’s notoriously unreliable land records, and the provision of free high quality primary and secondary education for all children from affected families.

The villagers waited in vain for a response till finally, after two months, the administration responded. On 20 July 2006, the Bastar administration imposed section 144 of the CrPC that prohibits the unlawful assembly of more than five persons, threw a heavy security cordon around the area and convened a gram sabha meeting of the tribal panchayat in the villages of Takraguda, Kumli, Dhuragaon, Chindgaon, Bhadeparoda and Dabpal. In a gathering charged with the coercive power of the state, the collector and officials from the Tata company appealed to the villagers to give their “consent” to the project. Section 144 was imposed once more on 3 August 2006, when gram sabhas were organized in the villages of Belar and Sirisguda.

Through the year, the area saw minor skirmishes between villagers and the police which invariably culminated with prominent anti-displacement leaders being charged with cases and held in detention for short periods of time. Relations between the villagers and the administration hit a nadir when on 24 February 2007, villagers in six villages held an gram sabha meeting independent of the collector and recorded their refusal to hand over “any land at any cost” in the meeting minutes.

For the next three days, the administration imposed a virtual martial law in the area. Villagers claim that hundreds of policemen from across the district were posted in these six villages. In period of police presence, a twenty year woman was raped in Takraguda and six others, included one 12 year old girl, were repeatedly molested. A NHRC complaint filed by the villagers, and made available to Frontline, records testimonies of the victims – each one holding uniformed policemen responsible for these horrifying acts. The Commission’s report is yet to be made public.

The administration’s brutal tactics could be explained by the fact that panchayats in Bastar, a designated tribal area, is governed by the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 (PESA). The clauses of PESA give tribal panchayats a fair degree of control over their land – requiring that all minor minerals and development projects obtain the expressed consent of the Panchayat. For major development works, and major minerals however, the terrain is more uncertain. State officials interviewed by Frontline explain that PESA merely requires that the gram panchayat merely needs to be “consulted” for major projects, villagers however refer to legal precedents that state that tribal lands cannot be acquired without expressed permission from gram sabhas. Since the incident in February, matters have reached an unstable status quo. Sudaram and his neighbours however, still have to visit the court every other month to mark their presence.

The Tata plant in Lohandiguda is not the only site of conflict in Chhattisgarh. A hundred kilometers to the south, in the Dhurli and Bhansi villages in Dantewara district, a similar battle is being played out between the administration and villagers protesting against land acquisition for a proposed steel plant owned by the Essar group. There are, at present, few reliable sources for information on just how many people have been displaced in Chhattisgarh over the last five years. As mentioned before, the Salwa Judum itself, is responsible for the displacement of more than 50,000 villagers from their homesteads to government run “camps”. Rumors, bolstered by a stray paragraph in a collector’s memo in Dantewara, suggest that these makeshift camps might soon be converted in permanent colonies, making land acquisition across the state much easier. In fact, a series of articles in the local press, and the British newspaper – The Guardian – suggest that the entire Salwa Judum is a conspiracy designed to alienate adivasis from their lands.

Compelling as the case for conspiracy seems, at present there is little supporting evidence. What seems more likely is that Naxal violence and the far-reaching powers of arrest and detention taken on by the State Government to combat it, have created a situation where all space for opposition is stifled by both: Naxal violence and state legislation. Frontline interviewed a number of public representatives from both, the ruling Bhartiya Janta Party and the Congress-led opposition and found a startling degree of consensus in their views on the shape, path and form of industrialization and development envisioned for Chhattisgarh.

“Legal instruments like the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 have been systematically used by the State government to silence all voices of dissent,” says Dr Ilina Sen, a human rights activist, and Professor of Women’s Studies at Mahamata Gandhi University at Wardha. Dr Sen’s husband, Dr Binayak Sen, a pediatrician by training and a profession, and human rights activist, has been detained since early May this year under the provisions of this act on charges of being a covert Naxal courier among others. Dr Ilina Sen believes that the reasons for his arrest and subsequent detention lie in the fact that he had spoken out against the excesses of the salwa judum and the state government’s land acquisition practices.

Activists say that Dr Binayak Sen isn’t the only one who has been persecuted for speaking his mind. A number of members and cadre of parties like the Communist Party of India (CPI) and several NGOs spoke of how anyone critiquing the State Government or its policies was promptly branded a Naxal and threatened with arrest. Advocate Inder Deo Nag’s story is one such case.

“With the Salwa Judum being extended to all districts, Special Police Officers are organizing themselves into paramilitary forces,” says Advocate Nag, an adivasi and worker’s rights lawyer based in Sarguja district in North Chhattisgarh. Nag has been fighting for the rights of displaced families and workers at Hindalco – a flagship company of the Aditya Birla Group. Nag explains that when Hindalco set up their open cast bauxite mine in Sarguja in 1996, the Company and the Government of Madhya Pradesh arrived at an agreement that promised permanent employment to the 100 odd families displaced by the mine. To date, only three persons have been offered permanent employment; the rest have been forced to find daily wage employment with sub-contractors working at the mine. Villagers who oppose the exploitative practices of contractors find their employment terminated immediately, and those who persist are often threatened with violence. Nag himself has been attacked and illegally detained by, who he believes, are thugs working on behalf of the contractors; the most recent incident was on 24 March 2007, when he was kidnapped at gunpoint by one Dheeraj Jaiswal – who happens to be a Special Police Officer under the Salwa Judum programme- and warned against interfering in the “company’s affairs”. Nag believes that by arming anyone ready to join the Salwa Judum, the State Government has actually created vigilante groups who hire themselves out to the highest bidder.

A review of Naxal attacks in Chhattisgarh over the last few months suggests that the revolutionary group is also striking out against the industrialization drive in the state. A series of statements released in March this year by the Central Committee the CPI(Maoist) called upon the “oppressed masses” to “turn every Special Economic Zone(SEZ) into a battle zone.” On 16 May 2007, on the 40^th anniversary of the Naxalbari uprising, a statement released in by the CPI(ML) New Democracy demanded the abandonment of the SEZ Act 2005 on the grounds that it was diverting fertile agricultural lands from farmer to large multinational firms. Further, the Naxal response has not been restricted to issuing statements alone; the months of May and June this year have seen attacks targeted specifically at the mining industry.

On 2 June 2007, the Naxals destroyed three high tension transmission towers in the Bastar district, resulting in an 11 day power blackout that, according to industry insiders, crippled the mining and movement of iron ore in the Bailadila mines. On 11 June 2007, a Naxal attack on the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) complex in Dantewara and burnt over 100 metres of conveyor belts – hampering operations for another 10 days. The summer of attacks culminated in a largely successful economic blockade on 26 and 27 June 2007 in Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand, orchestrated to protest against the economic policies followed by governments at the Centre and in the states.

Chhattisgarh today presents a microcosm of the choices that the Indian state shall increasingly have to make. While economy’s growing thirst for minerals and fuels will push mining companies deeper and deeper into lush, ecologically sensitive tribal-owned lands; the lack of rehabilitation policies and state insensitivity to those directly affected by mines can can only lead to impoverishment, alienation and ultimately, violence.

(First published in Frontline; http://www.frontline.in)