Date:01/12/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/12/01/stories/2005120106371100.htm

Opinion - News Analysis

Cash, not land, on offer for the displaced

Meena Menon

Despite Supreme Court orders to the contrary, Madhya Pradesh is offering cash and not land to those displaced by the Narmada project.

— Photo: Vivek Bendre

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR THEM? Children from the school set up by the Narmada Bachao Andolan welcome visitors to Bhadal village.

THE HIGH-PITCHED voices of schoolchildren shouting anti-dam slogans and the sound of drums welcome you to Jalsindhi, a village on the banks of the Narmada in Madhya Pradesh. Like Manibeli village in Maharashtra, Jalsindhi has a special place in the history of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). It is still holding out against displacement by the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP).

On a petition filed by the villagers of Jalsindhi, the Supreme Court delivered a landmark verdict in March reiterating the policy of giving land for land. The court noted that the rehabilitation orders had not been followed by the Madhya Pradesh Government and ordered land-based rehabilitation, which meant two acres of land to major sons and landholders.

However, the Madhya Pradesh Government is in a hurry to resettle all those affected at a dam height of 121.92 metres. The current height of the Sardar Sarovar dam is 110.64 metres. In June 2005 the Government released a special rehabilitation package, which stipulates cash compensation to those who do not demand land for land and will buy irrigated land themselves from the given amount. The NBA has opposed this proposal, saying it is a means of evicting people. In view of the rather impossible task before the Government and the refusal of the displaced to move until they are given land, the situation has reached a critical stage.

To add to the people's woes, the Government is asking them to sign an affidavit affirming that they do not want the agricultural land allotted to them. They are also being asked to give an undertaking that they do not want to opt for the land bank (set up by the Government) and that they want to buy their own land.

At a meeting in Jalsindhi on November 24, many villagers declared their intention to stay put until they got land. "Zamin nahin to bandh nahin (No land, no dam)," said Janakiben. "For 20 years we have been struggling but the Government is yet to rehabilitate us. We are proud of our village and we don't want money instead of land," she said.

A four-hour boat ride takes us to Bhadal village in Maharashtra, where Manglya Pavra tells us that the Government is clueless about the number of people to be rehabilitated. The nearest marketplace is a two-day walk and children are studying thanks to the NBA that has been running a school for four years.

"Sometimes they say 80 families are left and sometimes they say all the families have been rehabilitated. When the Deputy Collector came hererecently, he asked us how many families had been left behind. They did not even know that many homes have been submerged," Manglya points out. There are 124 families in the village. Of these, 46 have been declared as displaced. Though people from Bhadal have identified land at Kukawal, the Government is reluctant to buy it for them. It wants the families to resettle at Vadchhil in Maharashtra but all the 46 families cannot be accommodated there.

The Government claims that all those affected by the current dam height of 110.64 metres have been rehabilitated. One of the villagers in Bhadal, Namdeo, has been shown in the records as rehabilitated in Gujarat. "I have never left this village," maintains Namdeo.

On the opposite side of the riverbank is Kharya Bhadal, a village in Badwani district, where 500 families still live. Most of the agricultural land has been submerged and at a dam height of 121 metres the village is expected to go fully under water. According to Gokhru Mangal Solanki, the State Government is not ready to give land. "Stop the dam if you don't have land to give us," he says adding "the Government maintains that we are submerged ... they came and cut down our forests."

In the fertile Nimad region of Madhya Pradesh, villagers of Bhavariya, which has 250 houses, are determined not to move till the Government lays roads to access their fields once submergence sets in. Jagdish Patidar says all the houses will be submerged and the backwaters will cut off access to the fields. "We will not allow a survey till the Government builds these roads," he says. A site nearby has been selected for rehabilitation but that too was flooded last monsoon. Despite the apex court orders, there is neither any rehabilitation in place nor any time-frame for relocation, according to the NBA.

Though the mood is heady in Badwani district with many villages taking out torchlight and candlelight processions to music and dance, people are aware that submergence is a reality and the struggle now is for land. In Avalda for instance, 200 families are determined not to accept cash. In this Adivasi village where most people also have to work as agricultural labour, the Government is offering cash to the landless people and forcing them to move out.

The Madhya Pradesh Government was told at the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) meeting in September that it should complete the resettlement of all the families affected at a height of 121.92 metres by December 31, 2005. The Government told the NCA that out of 30,690 project-affected families in 177 villages up to a dam height of 121.92 metres, 17,288 had been resettled including 4,262 families in Gujarat. The remaining 13,402 families were yet to be resettled. These include a backlog of 13,233 families at the current height of the dam, which is 110.64 metres.