An Open Letter to Chief Minister,Orissa
To
Shri Naveen Pattnaik
Bhubaneswar
Dt: 21.07.09
Dear Chief Minister
Today the entire tribal heartland of the country is in turmoil and rather than
addressing the basic socio-economic factors behind this turmoil with utmost
dispatch, we are dispatching more para-military personnel with the belief that
violence can be quelled with more men equipped with superior fire-power. We
should understand that for far too long the tribal people have been robbed of
their rights to resources around them both in the name of development and
environment. Wily traders, moneylenders, contactors, liquor vendors and leaders
often rolled into one, have pushed the tribal people to the brink of a
precipice. Govt. servants, with some honorable exceptions, often sent to
ameliorate their situation have become additional adjuncts to the exploitative
machinery. Now that the tribal people have been dispossessed of everything and
there is very little that can be taken away from them, Govt. money meant for
their welfare is being siphoned off to fatten the same few who have retained
their vice like grip over the tribal people. All Govt. legislations protecting
their interest like prevention of alienation of tribal land, banning usury and
bonded labour or even ensuring minimum wages have been flauted with impunity.
Even the Forest Rights Act that provided some ray of hope got bogged down in
litigations. And we have made many promises to them only not to be kept, and
whenever some action was initiated that remained half- hearted and never taken
to the logical conclusion.
It is in such a situation they only silently suffered from the
pangs of hunger, deprivations, and all kinds of humiliations. When the guttural
groans became too loud, they silenced them with mango stones, carcasses, and
such other inedibles. While the majority of the tribal people chose to stay in
their place licking the wounds of poverty and hunger, the venturesome from
among them landed in city slums as flotsams and jetsams. Once freedom loving
and free roaming now they got cribbed and cabined in extremely unhygienic
conditions.
Ahimsa got a chance after Independence to ameliorate this
situation. Gandhiji’s and Vinobaji’s men and women tried to solve through
Bhoodan. If I remember correctly Koraput became the first district in the
country to declare Zilladan. Not much came out of it. Soon the excitement
evaporated. The exploitative machinery asserted with vengeance.
Ahimsa got a second chance when a series of radical legislations
abolishing bonded labour, usury and alienation of tribal land etc. were passed.
Air was filled with a lot of radical rhetoric and that also vanished. Tribal
people proved no match to the machinations and manipulations of the crafty
exploiters and their venal accomplices in bureaurocracy in thwarting the impact
of all the protective legislations.
And today situation has come to such a pass that anybody including
avowed Gandhians/ Sarvodaya Workers, NGO Workers who speak for them, and who
espouse their cause are picked up as Naxalites/ Maoists and put behind bars.
The most recent case in point is the arrest of a sarvoday worker Dr. Biswajit
Ray. Police of course is too blunt an instrument to be sensitive, sensible and
discerning.
The combined burden of cumulative injustice, deprivations and
despair has become too great to bear any longer and the material became highly
inflammable/ combustible. And when Gandhiji’s men failed, Mao’s men entered
just as when there is a fire, air from neighborhood rushes to fill up the gap.
And just as it is foolish to prevent air to come from the neighborhood instead
of dousing the fire, similarly it does not carry any sense to imprison/ kill
Naxalities/ Maoists instead of addressing the basic issues of exploitation and
in justice.
Dear Chief Minister, what has been our response to this? To induct
more Cobras, Greyhounds (and may be in future some battalions will be
christened as Wild Dogs) with a greater skill to kill. We have never seen even
a lanky constable protecting a tribal from a rapacious trader who almost
forcibly takes away the produce from the tribal at a price before he / she
could reach the weekly market. And we are prepared to induct any number of
paramilitary forces at any price to protect his exploiters!
May be we will succeed in quelling the tribal upsurge with superior
fire power and the Prime Minister and Home Minister at the Center, and here,
the D.G. Police, the Home Secretary and you will congratulate yourselves in
silencing the tribal land. But just as our Independence Movement was punctuated
by four to five years of silence after a series of repressive measures, but it
used to erupt again and again until Independence was achieved, similarly
ensuring silence for some time should not be a source of satisfactions for us.
(The Viceroy and his men who succeeded in putting down the Independence
Movement for sometimes must have congratulated themselves. Isn’t it?
Let us not underestimate the power of the meek and the subdued. Did
not that almost totally toothless man, that frail figure disposed of with utter
disdain as a half -naked fakir could not only shake hand with the Emperor of
the mighty British Empire, also freed the country from their clutches? Did not
Lech Waleshaw, a factory foreman free the country from the grip of a regime
supported by the mighty Soviet forces? And we always come across lowly grass
asserting its presence in the black – topped road. And the tiny seed of a
banyan plant can raze a huge building to the ground.
Dear Chief Minister, I humbly and honestly appeal to you to take
a) Measures forthwith to implement the laws already in the
statue book whether restoring the tribals land taken away through
fraud/fraudulent means, removing the legal hurdles in giving right over the
forest land, stopping usury, closing all liquor shops (they have become
bottomless holes) or ensuring implementation of PESA in letter & spirit and
abandon the present strategy of relying on brute force which will further
alienate our tribal people and which is antithetical to the basic tenets of
democracy and will never succeed to douse the flames of the fire of discontent
permanently. Further induction of large number of paramilitary personnel,
frequent combing operations may mean violation of dignity of girls and women,
other abuses and brutalization of the society and disruption of normal tribal
life and encounter deaths, which will be a sure recipe for further alienation.
b) Stop arresting/killing innocent tribal people and people who
are working for their welfare. Constitute a committee with members from various
segments to review every two months the progress made in stopping exploitation
and removing injustice and also to review all cases of imprisonment of people
declared as Maoists / Naxalites and fix non-negotiable timelines.
c) Take all possible steps to improve the quality of human
resources of the tribal people and ensure employability of the tribal
youth-both men & women.
d) Reorient the development strategy to make it more
participatory making tribal people’s interest paramount.
e) Take care of women and children of the victims of violence
committed both by the state & extremists.
In nutshell, give “ Ahimsa” one more chance. Should Ahimsa fail again, it would
be a tragedy indeed. May be a bloodier battle would follow and at last the
deceived and disposed would wrest what is due to them. At least that is the
lesson of Mahabharat.
Dear Chief Minister, please ponder over it and act.
Thanking you and with regards
Yours Sincerely
Radhamohan
Chairman
OSSA
