Precious commodity Jindal Steel draws 35,400 cubic metres of water from Kelo every day |
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Agrawal denied that villagers are being stopped from using the river water. “It was on the orders of the CSIDC and sub-district magistrate that revenue department officials uprooted the villagers’ water pumps. We didn’t allow fishermen to catch fish because we were following police orders. The police wanted them to stay away from our power sub-station fearing violence.”
MEANWHILE, TROUBLE was brewing in Bonda Tikra village, Raigarh district. Shanti Bai and her husband Shauki Lal, both daily wagers, were living happily in Bonda Tikra, located on the banks of Kelo, a tributary of Mahanadi, until a check dam and intake well were constructed by Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL). “I didn’t know how precious water was until it was snatched from us,” says Bai.
| ‘Dozens of villages located downstream are now parched. What belonged to us for centuries is no longer available for us’ RAMORAM THAKUR, Villager, Mahmara |
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In 1996, JSPL tried to draw water from Kelo for its sponge iron factory and power plant. However, the government refused permission saying it would cause water shortage. JSPL mounted pressure and it soon erected a stop dam and began drawing 35,400 cubic metres of water every day.
The structures hampered irrigation in 14 villages downstream. “In summers, we usually dig the riverbed with our hands and draw water in plastic jugs. Now, the water pump sucks all the water while we struggle to get a drop,” says Bai.
To protest against JSPL’s dam and intake well, locals sat on a seven-day hunger strike in 1998. When the rest of the country was celebrating Republic Day, Satyabhama, an Adivasi woman, became the struggle’s first ‘martyr’. “Her death won’t go waste. Our resistance will continue,” vows Bai. “But our struggle’s success depends on whose side the government decides to take.”
Almost 13 years have passed since the fight to restore the river flow began. The intake well and the check dam still stand on the river Kelo protected by JSPL guards.
The success of Sheonath and Kelo spurred a series of private projects that saw villagers pitted against government and private firms. Private barrages and dams over many rivers have come up since then. Kurkut in Raigarh, Sabri in Dantewada, Kharun in Raipur, Hasdeo in Korba and Champa, and Maand in Janjgir-Champa have been handed over to private players.
Almost 60 km from Raigarh, Ghanau Ram Gariya, 62, along with dozens of tribals in Burbhona village, is waiting in line to collect subsidised rice not from a rice depot but from an official sitting inside a community dispensary. “This should tell you the state of affairs in our village,” says Gariya, a farmer-turned-casual labourer.
Till 2007, Gariya and other tribals grew melon and cucumber on Kurkut’s banks. Rabi farming was also done in April, May and June. However, a huge barrage and a dam that was built 35 km upstream at Rabo village soon choked the river flow. The water was being fed to 1,000 MW JSPL power plants at Tamnar. Soon, farmers living in 12 villages, including Jampali, Kikricholi, Dehjari, lost their water source.
“Since then, we have to migrate to other villages in the summer. Do you know how it feels when you don’t bathe or wash your face for weeks at a stretch?” asks Gariya. Last summer, a group of villagers headed for Rabo dam seeking immediate discharge of water from Kurkut. JSPL employees allegedly thrashed them with bamboo sticks. The distraught tribals and villagers wrote a letter to their MLA, Anand Kumar Patel, seeking immediate discharge of water. The MLA managed to get water released only once in 90 days of the harsh summer.
“That was the time when we cursed ourselves for not joining the agitation led by Rabo villagers. It taught us a lesson,” says Vedran Dhandsena, one of the village heads. He is referring to the agitation in which villagers of Rabo, where a dam and a barrage was built, had protested the construction of mega structures in the village and the agreement that allowed JSPL to draw 54 mcm of water every year from Kurkut and release only 7 mcm per year.
In 2004, when JSPL started acquisition of additional land in Rabo for its power project, residents of 15 villages started an agitation with tough resistance coming from Rabo village where the dam was to be built. The dam would submerge almost 350 hectares of forest land and affect thousands of hectares of irrigated land.
Rabo villagers spearheaded the protest and blocked roads leading to the project site with tree trunks and rocks. They also patrolled the entrance to the village for several nights. And soon public outrage pushed the government to order a halt on the work at site on 4 November 2004.
“But with government officials’ patronage, Jindal resumed work within a week,” recalls Champi Bai, who became famous for grabbing a revenue official by his collar during the protest. She says the government didn’t hold any public hearing when JSPL got clearance in 1997 for the first phase of the power project in Tamnar. “From the beginning, the government has worked to benefit the company,” she says.
The government not only gave up on the ownership of the dam but also charged JSPL a paltry 90 paise for every 1,000 litres when other firms pay around Rs. 3 for the same.
“This is just another example of how the government ruined its resources, favoured a private company and harmed tribals of a dozen villages,” says Ramesh Agarwal, 55, an activist and founder of Jan Chetana, which monitors mining, water and industrial projects in Raigarh.
The agreement dated 14 January 2008 signed with the JSPL, a copy of which is in TEHELKA’S possession, reads, “The company shall pay to the government rates for water drawn by it from the said natural or government water source at the rates fixed by the WRD order No. 1819/7-A/WR/TS/IWS/02/D-4 Raipur dated 21.03.2006, which is 90 paise only per cubic metre.”
THE JSPL management says it owns the dam without which “we couldn’t get 70 percent of the money from banks as loan”. “Banks give a loan only when the structure is yours,” says Pradeep Tandon, senior vice-president, corporate affairs, JSPL. Last May, the government revised the rates and JSPL would be paying Rs. 2.80 per cubic metre, he says. Asked about the tussle between JSPL and villagers, he says the people’s anger should be directed against the government and not at the JSPL, because “we only work under government rules”.
There are other instances when companies have guzzled water without any proper agreement with the government. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report for the year ended 31 March 2009, National Thermal Power Corporation has been drawing water from a canal in the state for the past 11 years without any agreement. “The penalty charges for the unauthorised withdrawal amounts to Rs. 316.26 crore for the period between June 1998 to March 2009,” the report says.
| ‘Private pumps suck all the water while we don’t get any. I didn’t know how precious water was until it was snatched from us’ SHANTI BAI, Villager, Bonda Tikra |
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In its previous report, the CAG had lambasted the CSIDC for “causing a revenue loss of Rs. 22.09 crore due to the supply of water at lower rates, non-revision of usage charges and delay in execution of lease deeds” even as the report said that the Chhattisgarh government suffered a revenue loss of more than Rs. 185 crore during 2007-08 because of “undue benefits” provided to various companies such as “allotment of land and water at reduced rates”.
Despite the CAG’s adverse report and people’s protests, the government seems undeterred. In fact, it gave its nod last year to thermal power plants in Raigarh, Jangjir and Champa districts. In their project reports, most of them made it clear that they would be drawing water from the Mahanadi. It won’t be long before villagers living near the plants lose out on water.
In southern Chhattisgarh, a large portion of Sabri, which flows through Dantewada district, is under the operation of Essar Steel Chhattisgarh Ltd and Tata Steel. Both draw almost 100 mcm of water every year. Essar has a pipeline network from Dantewada to the port of Visakhapatnam. Essar sends iron-ore through this pipeline with the force of the water from Sabri.
According to the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Mahasabha (ABAM), an umbrella organisation of tribal groups in Bastar, people had raised the issue of water shortage in the villages of downstream Sabri at several public hearings, “but government officials never listened to our pleas”. However, Essar denies the accusation. “Our intake of water does not affect local availability in any manner,” says Parikshit Kaul, joint general manager, corporate affairs.
According to a WRD report, almost 2,600 mcm per year has been allotted to industry while the state offers only 2,000 mcm for agriculture and irrigation, pushing many to think that Chhattisgarh will soon have a distinctive status and its industrial water use will far outstrip that of agriculture.
“Industries are the priority of the state government. This is not a democratised development. If this continues, a large part of the population could start a new kind of resistance that will have far-reaching consequences,” warns activist Agarwal.
baba.umar@tehelka.com
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