Whose agitation?

Indian Express, Aug 28, 2010
(Editorial)

Rahul Gandhi kept a two-year-old date with the inhabitants of Orissa’s Niyamgiri hills on Thursday. In what became a highly charged visit to Lanjigarh, site of Vedanta’s controversial refinery, he set out the timeline at a Congress-organised rally for tribal rights: “This is your victory. You saved your own land. Two years ago you had come to me saying the Niyamgiri hill is your god. I told you I would be your sipahi (soldier) in Delhi. I am happy that I have helped you in whatever way I could.” He did not get into details of Vedanta’s now cancelled bauxite mining project. The message was delivered in a disarming manner now associated with Rahul Gandhi — sentences scrubbed down to remove the stock, and therefore false-sounding, words from the rallyist’s phrasebook; a spontaneous connect with those gathered without fawning intermediaries. But the Niyamgiri visit does mark a change in his way of political mobilisation.
Rahul Gandhi is perhaps the most powerful general secretary in the Congress’s history. He is powerful in part for being seen to be his party’s future. As he has criss-crossed the country, connecting with the “aam aadmi”, it has been seen to be an effort at including various constituencies in a forward-looking way. So he has flummoxed his political opponents by casually taking a local train in Mumbai, having a meal in a Dalit household, chatting with university students — how do they counter the charisma of a man unhurriedly telling folks there’s a future to be built? Now, at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district he has taken responsibility for winging a government action a certain way — if not for the actual decision by the Union environment ministry against the bauxite project, at least for advocating a certain point of view. The decision came two days before Rahul Gandhi visited Orissa, when preparations for the visit had already been made.

The government is the right authority to take a call on the legitimacy of the bauxite project. But the message that the Congress’s mobilisation in opposition-ruled states is backed by the Centre’s actions has unsettling implications. Also, at Lanjigarh, the Congress appears to be unbundling the “aam aadmi” on a case-by-case basis. This carries the danger of it then having to balance different constituencies with competing agendas.
In U-turn, cops say ‘Maoist sympathiser’ on Rahul Niyamgiri stage ordinary tribal
Indian Express, Aug 28, 2010
A day after Orissa cops said a Dongaria Kondh tribal and anti-Vedanta activist who shared dais with Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi at the Lanjigarh rally was a Maoist sympathiser, Raygada SP Anup Krishna said he was just an “ordinary tribal” and not a “Maoist” and “the matter is all politics”.


Lado Sikaka, 41, on Thursday had told the assembled crowd how the police picked him up in Niyamgiri jungle in Kalahandi district police limits while he was on his way to Lanjigarh and then to Delhi to attend a seminar.

“Our men had picked him up on the assumption that he had links with Maoists. But later we found that he was a member of Green Kalahandi (a forum of locals to save Niyamgiri). So we released him,” said Krishna. “This is what we do normally in these areas. There is quite a heavy movement of Maoists in Lanjigarh area.”
But president of Green Kalahandi and advocate Siddharth Nayak, who was an eyewitness to Sikaka being forcibly taken by plainclothes armed men, said there were gaping holes in police version of the event. “In the afternoon on August 9, 15 members of Green Kalahandi including me and 10 Dongaria Kondhs were on our way to Lanjigarh when people wearing black masks suddenly stopped our vehicles in Niyamgiri jungle. They were speaking in Telugu and Hindi. They asked us why we were opposing Vedanta project and started beating the driver. They forcibly took our mobiles and vehicle keys. Then they bundled Lado and another tribal, Sana, into one of their Boleros and sped up. We remained mum as we thought they might be Maoists,” said Nayak.

Though Sana returned in an hour, Sikaka did not come back. The worried tribals started walking to the main road and called for help. “Hours later we reached Bhawanipatna (headquarter of Kalahandi) and lodged a complaint at the police station about Maoists possibly abducting him. I called local MP Bhakta Charan Das to inform about Lado’s abduction,” said Nayak, who went alone to Delhi to attend the seminar. Three days later, Lado was released near the block office of Kalyasinghpur under mysterious circumstances.

“If police indeed picked him up from the forest, why were they in plain clothes? It seems police are hand in gloves with company people to browbeat tribals,” alleged Nayak.
However, the Raygada SP said normally the cops moved in plain clothes in daytime. “Our men had actually picked him up on suspicion,” he added.
Kalahandi MP Bhakta Charan Das, who organised Thursday’s rally, said if Lado was a Maoist as police initially alleged, then they should also arrest him as he was the founder of Green Kalahandi. “The police in Orissa are unable to face the Maoists. But they are all eager to flex their muscles on a poor tribal as he is opposing a mining project that will affect his livelihood. This is a cheap attempt of the Orissa Police to defame a poor tribal,” said Das.