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Sunday, Apr 03, 2005

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National

Despair, anger stalk resettlement site

By Meena Menon

KRISHNAPURA (BARODA), APRIL 2. This resettlement site for the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) oustees is located in the middle of nowhere. The residents of Krishnapura have to contend not just with poor access through a kutcha road, but also drinking water scarcity, absence of medical facilities and flooding during the monsoon.

The SSP may claim to have the best rehabilitation package, but going by the testimonies of several affected persons at a meeting in Krishnapura last week, much of this is on paper.

Himmatbhai Tadvi, displaced from Gadher, has been living here for the past 16 years. "Gadher was once the leading village of Bharuch district, but we are now reduced to living here without proper roads, poor water and medical facilities. There are 109 families here and we have to share four handpumps. There is not a single well in the village. During the rains the entire village, which is low-lying, is flooded," he said.

Many displaced people from Gadher and other villages are resettled in Krishnapura, in Sankheda taluk of Baroda district since 1989. Farmers who owned 10 to 12 acres or more are now reduced to being daily wage labourers. The main issue is over the allotment of land to elder sons. The cut-off date for deciding the eligibility of elder sons to their share of land in Gujarat was 1987, when many were quite young.

"No land to till"

Kannubhai Tadvi, whose native village Vadgam was acquired for the dam site, now lives at Lunadra. The people of Vadgam are spread over 42 sites, he said. "We shifted in 1992 and we are five brothers. Then we were too young to get land. We owned 25 acres in Vadgam and my father got only five acres. Now we have no land to till," he rued.

Worse still is that the canal of the SSP passes through his land, cutting away two acres. "We are reduced to being daily labourers. The Government had promised a job to at least one person from each family. No one from Vadgam has got a job on the dam site. First our lands were submerged and now we suffer from a lack of drinking water. There are only four handpumps at Lunadra," he said.

Tadvi and others often go out to Ahmedabad, Surat or Surendranagar and even Uttar Pradesh to work in factories or fields. "We sacrificed our land for the Sardar Sarovar but what has that got us?" he asked. The youth are especially confronted with the problem of livelihood. Oustees said the police often prevented them from holding such meetings and threatened them with dire consequences if they supported the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). This meeting was also closely watched by the police, who insisted on accompanying NBA leader Medha Patkar while she was in Gujarat.

`Sleep on footpaths'

"If the Government has done great work, would we hold such meetings?" asked Tadvi. Vikram Raiji Tadvi from Gadher, who has been resettled at Kambhoikuva, also in Sankheda Taluka, said many families had returned to their native villages. "We sleep on footpaths in Surat when we go there for work," he said. Though much of Gadher is submerged, there is space for some families. "We cannot even send our children to school as we don't know in some cases where the next meal is coming from," he added.

Families who have gone back to Gadher now sell fish or firewood to earn a living or cultivate nearby forest areas. "Earlier, we had everything in our village. We do not want jobs as we are illiterate but the Government should have at least given us land," said Vikram. Kantaben Ratilal Tadvi shifted to the Parveta resettlement site in 1986. Three years back, she and her family went back to Gadher. "Work is not easy to get at Parveta, so we decided to go back and try to eke out a living back home," she said. "We do some farming in the old village and also go out looking for work. This way we manage to survive," she added.

"Our death"

Kantibhai Rumal spent several wretched years in the resettlement site at Ambavadi before the Government moved him to Savli in Narmada district. "The Sardar Sarovar is our death. In Savli even now there are no roads, no water and no lights. We are fighting but getting nothing," he said.

Nineteen villages are displaced by the SSP in Gujarat and at least 5,000 affected persons lodged complaints relating to land related problems with the Grievance Redressal Authority in Gujarat, said a GRA report.

Many resettlement sites are facing problems of water logging, salination and weeds, shortage of drinking water and lack of proper approach roads. Many affected persons who were promised land in the command area of the SSP are outside it, in violation of the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award, according to the NBA. There are over a hundred rehabilitation sites for the Gujarat families and land has also been allotted to people from Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

While Gujarat is proud of its rehabilitation package, it needs to address the grievances of these people instead of suppressing their problems.

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