CC_India

Women in Anti POSCO Struggle.
Photo Credit: http://odishaconcerns.net
WOMEN — THE FIRST LINE OF
DEFENCE AGAINST PREDATORY
DEVELOPMENT
Women have been at the centre of this sustained resistance
against the imposition of a development model
that they denounce as anti people. Abha Bhaiya and
Bishakha Bhanja’s field based study “Voices of women
from the centre stage of the anti POSCO movement”
(Annexure 1) brings a feminist perspective in documenting
the experiences of women in the politics of resistance.
While celebrating their courage, commitment
and creativity, the study also critically interrogates the
subordination of women’s rights and the instrumentalisation
of women and children in the interest of realising
the community’s goals. The CC based study seeks to
develop a gendered narrative of women in the politics
of resistance and displacement.
The narratives draw attention to women’s alertness to
the everyday signs that warn of a devastation approaching
and how they spontaneously banded together in
opposition even before the CPI leader Abhay Sahoo
(Babu) came to spearhead the struggle in 2005. “The
day the POSCO company came and floated the huge balloons
in our sky and a hole was bored in the ground near
our village Patana, water levels in all our nearby ponds
and wells rose alarmingly. All the women of Patana village
approached the local Sarpanch — Basant Nayak
who told them about a foreign entity called POSCO setting
up a steel plant and that there villages would be
affected.” Several like Santi Das had first hand experience
of the impoverishing impact of big development
projects which evicted the villagers leaving them with
no livelihood options. The women were selflessly committed
to saving land and livelihood and safeguarding
the future of their children. As Geetanjali Dash emphatically
said, “POSCO people might give me some money
and I might live with that for rest of my life but what
will happen to my children and their children?”
Moreover, several women expressed concerns about the
gender consequences of the influx of ‘outsiders’:
“Women are going to face the most serious consequence
if the plant comes up. We will never allow it
in our life time. These are outsiders. They can never
have respect for our girls and women. There will be
a free flow of liquor. Whatever step you take, it is
not possible to prevent these abuses as human being
always get lured. The company will pollute the
water bodies including the sea” — Chabita Swain
Women constituted the front line of the blockade. At
the signal of a threatened incursion by the POSCO men
backed by armed police and state officials, the women
would leave everything and for months on end camp
out, living in tents constituting along with the children
a human blockade braving lathi charges, brutal assaults
and rubber bullets. Seemingly over these years, the
women have overcome the fear of physical violence.
The armed police have not hesitated to brutally assault
women as they formed a human barricade blocking the
entry of POSCO men and the armed police.
16 UNEQUAL CITIZENS: Women’s Narratives of Resistance, Militarisation, Corruption and Security