Poverty-hit Kalahandi's cup of woes runneth over

Times of India, March 12, 2011
Sandeep Mishra

Kalahandi has been in the news for all the wrong reasons for decades now, and has attracted much aid and assistance from the centre. But the lot of the tribals here is as bad as ever. A TOI report

Kumuti Majhi is a disturbed man. Notwithstanding the flow of huge funds into his native Kalahandi district over the past few years, this tribal is worried about what the future holds for his brethren. "Tribals have not benefited in any way from the various so-called development initiatives of the government, " complains Majhi, who has been at the forefront of the agitation opposing the Orissa government and the Vedanta group's bid to mine bauxite from Niyamgiri Hills. Tribals constitute over 30 per cent of Kalahandi's estimated 15 lakh population. And primitive tribal groups like the Dongaria Kondhs, Kutia Kondhs and Jharania Kondhs are particularly oppressed and deprived.

"Corrupt government officers and touts misappropriate whatever money comes to the district for tribal welfare, " he says, pointing, as an example, to the Indravati irrigation project, credited for turning around the tribal-dominated region's agricultural fortunes since over a decade. "The majority of those displaced were tribals, but non-tribals gained. Tribals turned beggars, " rues Majhi, a Kutia Kondh living in the foothills of the Niyamgiri Hills in Lanjigarh block, where the Vedanta Aluminium Limited's controversial Rs 5000-crore refinery has been established despite many protests by locals.


Majhi's sentiments are shared by many in the south-western Orissa district. "Tribals have been the worst sufferers of the Indravati project, though the district surely benefited from it, " says Kalahandi MP Bhakta Charan Das.

The Congress leader adds: "Things have certainly improved since the 70s and 80s when starvation deaths and child sale made Kalahandi infamous. But the tribals continue to rot, exploited and left to the mercy of God."

In popular literature and media, the Kalahandi Syndrome is something that still means hunger deaths, acute poverty, and child sale. The area, forming part of KBK (Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput ), has over the decades enjoyed such an unenviable reputation that it's a favourite pitstop for VVIPs to pay visits and make grand promises. Last August, when Rahul Gandhi announced that he would be the sipahi (soldier) for Kalahandi's tribals in New Delhi at a public meeting in Lanjigarh, he was doing what his family elders had done before. Four years before 40-year-old Rahul was born, his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, toured Sinapalli (then part of Kalahandi district) during a drought. In 1984, Rajiv Gandhi toured Amlapalli village (now in Nuapada) with wife Sonia in tow in the wake of Phanus Punji, a tribal woman, selling away her sister-in-law Banita for Rs 40 and a saree to a blind man. Three years later, 200 people perished from starvation, forcing Rajiv to show up in Kashipur in Koraput district. Keeping with the family tradition, Rahul launched his Discovery of India journey in March 2008, from Nuapada district and visited Ijurpa, a Dongaria Kondh village. Chandra Sekhar, P V Narasimha Rao, H D Deve Gowda and A B Vajpayee, too, have made trips as prime ministers to KBK, promising help.


But despite such attention, the socio-economic status of tribals here has not changed much. "Be it education, healthcare, infrastructure or any other development indicator, tribals have got hardly anything. Governments, NGOs, and businessmen have looted Kalahandi and its tribals in every possible way, " says Siddhartha Nayak, chairman, Green Kalahandi, a socio-political outfit. "Most tribals are far away from whatever development has taken place, " says social activist Jagadish Pradhan. "VVIP trips have brought in lots of money, but development does not follow the flow of funds, " he points out, adding that the reason for this is an absence of political commitment.