TRIBALS – 2007 - Indian Social Institute

Jaipur: The leaders of Gujjar Sangharsh Samiti (GSS) have urged their legislators, belonging todifferent political parties, to resign from their posts en masse in order to build pressure on theState Government to recommend their demand for Schedule Tribe status to the Centre. Leaders,including GSS supremo Col Kirori Singh Bainsla and its convener Prahalad Gunjal, the expelledBJP MLA, on Friday took strong exception to the Government's decision to send the Chopracommittee report to the Centre without any recommendations. The State Government hadforwarded the near 300-page report of the Chopra committee to the Union Government onThursday evening. Clearly miffed with the decision of the State Government, GSS leaders alsosaid that a mahapanchayat of the community would be held at Bayana in Bharatpur on January13to announce the next phase of the Gujjar agitation. Gunjal, along with MLA Atar Singh Bhadana,was suspended from the BJP for openly supporting the Gujjar agitation. Later, Gunjal wasexpelled for defying the party on the issue. Bainsla said that after the Chopra committee report,which has disappointed the community, the Gujjar leadership was determined to fight for justicemore vigorously. He said the next agitation would be more extensive than the May-June stir,which had forced the Government to come to the negotiation table. Urging the Gujjar MLAs tolook beyond their respective parties, Gunjal said their next agitation would not only be against theState Government, but against the Centre to force it to amend criterions necessary for an STstatus. Pioneer 22/12/07)For millions, economic boom spells doom: report (6)New Delhi, December 19, 2007: So what if India is surging at a high economic growth rate? Insome of the richest states in the country this very fact, in terms of natural resources, has meantdoom for millions who are displaced from their homes, says a latest study. Released onWednesday by an international development agency ActionAid, India Social Institute and LAYA, avoluntary organisation in Andhra Pradesh working for tribal issues for the past 25 years, thereport "Resource Rich Tribal Poor" says that in the name of development a large number ofindigenous people are stripped of their basic identity and the right to live a fulfilling life. The studywas conducted in five districts of four resource-rich states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa andAndhra Pradesh. Joseph Marianus Kujur of the Indian Social Institute, who was the researchcoordinator for the study, said acceleration of economic reforms has led to exclusion of massesand has widened the gap between the rich and the poor. "This study looks at the latestgovernment data of the past 10 years in just these four states which unveils the fact that thenumber of people who have been displaced because of the various development projects is over1.6 million. "In the process of conducting the study, 92 percent of the respondents said that theyhave not received adequate compensation. All of this leads us to ask the question: Isdisplacement necessary for development?" Kujur told IANS. According to the report, 749,555people were displaced for various dam projects, 304,698 for industry, 539,351 for mining, 926people for electricity generation plants and 22,050 for defence establishments. Although landacquisition and displacement are two sides of the same coin, the report says that there are noresettlement and rehabilitation policies in place in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. In Orissa andAndhra Pradesh, many of those displaced don't have record of rights over the land that they havebeen using. Most of the displaced people haven't been rehabilitated despite records showingotherwise. However, those who have been, a majority being adivasis (tribal), are finding it difficultto cope with the new environment and usually tend to leave for forest cover. "Pushed to live in thepolluted slums, collective histories and indigenous knowledge about plants, medicine andecological symbiosis which the adivasis have are thus rendered useless. "Facing competitionfrom the educated lot in the metropolitan cities and towns, they fail to get any industrial job. Allthat they are left with is menial and unreliable labour under contractors," Kujur said. The reportrecords the sentiments of a 40-year-old man from Bandhaguda, Orissa, one on the villages underthreat from bauxite mining plans of Vedanta Plc., who said that he accepted cash compensationto leave his home under the threat from company touts. "We cannot eat money, and we know itwon't last long. We have lost our land and livelihood. While they make promises of better life forus, we are left only with problems," the report quoted him as saying. Some of those displacedwere not even aware of the rehabilitation policies. "What we found was that those who wererehabilitated couldn't have led a worse life. Plucked out of their homes, they don't have a job,can't cope with the sudden changes and to add to all of that, the resettlement sites lack basic