SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL DRIFT OF A PLANNED URBAN CENTRE: A STUDY OF , ORISSA

Rajkishor Meher

Rourkela is the first planned steel town to have been built by the Government of soon after independence to promote planned economic development with accent on rapid industrialisation. The planners conceived of Rourkela as a growth centre radiating impulses of economic development to different corners of the country and accordingly made provisions for the orderly growth of the town. The experience of the last four decades, however, suggests that social and economic forces generated by the establishment of the steel plant in Rourkela could not be contained by the neat land-use plans and plans for the provision of various facilities in the city. The planners could not anticipate the speed and direction of the growth of the informal sector under the impact of steel industry. Civic amenities and urban infrastructure that had been built could not cope with the huge inflows of migrants. Lacking adequate entitlements, the poor migrants squatted on public lands and slums sprang up even in the steel township which was the exclusive residential locality of the employees of the steel plant. Gross violations of master plans occurred as illegal constructions came up in both residential areas and industrial and business centres leading to overcrowding and congestion. Large-scale immigration into the town has created considerable social unrest. 'Outsiders' have come to occupy prominent jobs and positions in the city whereas the local tribals have been uprooted from their habitats owing to the construction of industrial units and to extensive mining in the area. The situation has given rise to feelings of acute deprivation among the tribals. They have now come under the influence of the Jharkhand movement which has been forcefully articulating the interests of the tribals in the area and has been opposing the incursions of 'outsiders' into the region (Sharma 1976). The migrants from the coastal regions of Orissa too have become politically active in the city; they have launched their own 'sons of the soil' movement demanding that only Oriyas be recruited to various posts in the steel plant and other public sector and government establishments. These movements have created considerable social tension in the city. This political discourse has pushed to the background the ecological crisis brewing in the area. There is a general apathy to environmental issues in the town; preoccupied with their daily

Rajkishor Meher is on the faculty of the Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development Studies, Bhubaneswar 751013, Orissa. SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN, 47 (1), March 1998 52 Sociological Bulletin struggle for existence, the poor accept their deteriorating living conditions and health as the unavoidable price they have to pay for their survival. This situation has, for a variety of reasons, made even the authorities of the public sector steel plant apathetic to issues of environmental protection. Further, the salience of social cleavages that have developed seems to have actually contributed to ecological decay and degradation by instilling in the residents feelings of acute insecurity making them reluctant to move out even from crowded localities. This paper attempts to delineate such interconnections between urbanisation, emerging social ecology, and the environmental drift of Rourkela.

I

Before independence, Rourkela was a small railway station on the Bombay-Howrah railway line in the Chota Nagpur plateau that extends into Orissa. It was a small hamlet in a densely forested area mainly populated by the Munda, Kharia and Oraon tribes. It was part of the district of Orissa. Following the construction of the railway line in the early 20th century, the economic penetration of the region began; several timber companies to exploit the forest resources came up and several limestone quarries were dug. In 1950, a private cement factory near Rourkela had also come up. Yet, it was the setting up of the steel plant in the early 1950s that triggered off rapid urbanisation and industrialisation resulting in extensive ecological degradation (Senapati 1975). The decision to exploit abundant natural resources of the region followed the findings of an expert committee set up by the Government of India soon after independence to select a location for the construction of a steel plant in the country. The committee recommended Rourkela as the ideal location. Besides straddling an important railway line, the region is well endowed with rich deposits of iron ore, manganese and limestone. Brahmani, the second largest river of Orissa passes through the region and the Hirakud dam, which was then being planned, would be close enough to supply the electricity needed for the project. The Government of India entered into a collaboration with two firms from the then Federal Republic of Germany to set up the steel plant at Rourkela and established a public sector corporation called the Hindustan Steel Limited (HSL) for the purpose. The Government of Orissa also played a critical role in facilitating the decision of the central government. Realising that the project would usher in rapid industrialisation and economic development of the State, it cleared more than 20,000 acres of land in and around Rourkela and offered it free to the HSL. Consequently, 2,500 families of the 30 villages were uprooted. It also brought out a notification in the Orissa Gazetteer on the 22nd of February, 1954 specifying that an area of about 200 sq. km will be acquired for the development of industries, establishment of a steel plant and allied and ancillary industries in the region (Misra 1958) Social and Ecological Drift of a Planned Urban Centre 53

In 1995, the construction work of the steel plant and of the township to house the employees of the proposed plant was taken up on a war footing. The Master Plan of the steel township was conceived on the estimation of a total population of 100,000 for the fully industrialised Rourkela. The steel township was divided into 19 sectors and provision was made for the construction of 14,000 houses with the amenities of drainage, sewerage, potable piped water, and electricity. There were provisions for a number of primary and secondary schools in different sectors of the town, a Science College and an Engineering College. The latter, after its construction became prominent enough to be conferred the status of a Regional Engineering College. For training technical personnel at the supervisory level so as to meet the needs of the steel plant as it expanded, the plan envisaged the setting up of a full-fledged training institute. Provisions were made for a well-equipped modern hospital, health centres and dispensaries, shopping centres and recreation centres in various sectors. The Master Plan also provided adequate space for the location of the steel plant and its future expansion, for ancillary and small-scale industries and for various other urban conveniences and servicing institutions. The construction of the steel plant was completed in the early 1960s. With this, the original village of Rourkela shot to national prominence. The steel plant project triggered off massive immigration from various parts of the country. In the beginning, the attraction was the numerous employment opportunities due to construction of the plant; later, prospects of jobs in the steel plant and various other industries and commercial institutions provided the incentive. In 1951, the total population of the 30 villages in the project area was 15,562. The 1951 census counted the population of Rourkela village as about 2,500. The swirl of urbanisation generated by the construction of the steel plant and the township not only increased the population to 90,287 in 1961, but also swept away the distinct identities of the villages in the project area. The 1961 census conferred for the first time the status of a town on Rourkela. The census also noted that it had already become the largest town in the district of Sundargarh. Since 1961 Rourkela has been growing rapidly. The 1991 census (Table 1) counted Rourkela's population as over 3,99,000; it is now classified among the prominent cities of Orissa. Urbanisation of Rourkela has spilled beyond the confines of the steel township. The village of Rourkela, which lay outside the township, expanded into what is now known as the civil town which pushes against the boundary of the steel township. The civil town had a population of less than 4,000 in 1951; in 1961 it increased sharply to thirty five thousand. Located in the narrow wedge between the steel plant and the steel township, the growth of the civil township has meant that people and buildings had to squeeze into the narrow strip of land. To stop the resulting haphazard growth and reduce congestion in the immediate vicinity of the steel township, the Town Planning Organisation of the Government of Orissa formulated its own Master Plan in 1965 for the civil town. 54 Sociological Bulletin

Source: 1. District Census Handbook - Sundargarh (1951,1961, 1971, and 1981). 2. Census of India, 1991 Provisional Population Totals: Rural-Urban Distribution, Series I, India, Paper 2 of 1991.

The projected population for the civil town after all its different areas are fully developed was 80,000 by 1975. This Master Plan sought to develop residential plots in the covered area of old villages such as Bandomunda, Durgapur, Pradhanpali, Mohulpali and Raghunathpali and earmarked sites for educational institutions, government offices, green belts, parks, play grounds and shopping and community centres in various zones (Map. 1). As has been pointed out earlier, the population of both the steel township and the civil town soon exceeded projections of the Master Plans. More than 50,000 workers from different parts of the country were brought by various contractors to the project site to construct the steel plant and the township. After the steel plant was commissioned, HSL started recruiting workers and managers to operate the plant. Skilled and unskilled workers were recruited at the project site itself. Besides the local people who were displaced by the project, preference was given to the workers who were engaged in the construction of the steel plant and the township. A muster roll of construction workers was prepared for the purpose. Encouraged by the prospect of regular employment, most of the construction workers decided to stay on in Rourkela even after the expiry of their contract. Those who got regular jobs brought members of their family to settle down. ,To cater to the needs of the growing population, the informal sector expanded providing a variety of goods and services. Rourkela also started attracting a large number of poor and illiterate people from different parts of Orissa and from the neighbouring States of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. As regular jobs in the steel plant and its ancillary units were limited, the migrants crowded the informal sector eking out their livelihood as petty shopkeepers, vegetable vendors, milk suppliers, cycle rickshaw operators and casual labourers. Lacking adequate entitlements, they squatted wherever they could find some vacant space. As the two Master Plans had not anticipated these trends of immigration, the infrastructure and amenities of Rourkela could not cope with the pressure of increasing population. The planners failed to reduce congestion and the urban authorities could not enforce the planned land use by preventing encroachment of public land. The civil town bore the brunt of the

56 Sociological Bulletin

pressure; slums proliferated everywhere and haphazard constructions of buildings added to the congestion of both residential and business areas. The steel township too could not entirely escape the forces of urban degradation that swept the city.

Pattern of Immigration The fact that the urbanisation of Rourkela was externally induced left a strong imprint on the social composition of the city which in turn coloured social and political processes of the city. To implement the project speedily, the project authority chose to off-load different components of the project to reputed construction companies and contractors hailing from different parts of the country. The contracting companies in turn subcontracted some portions of their jobs to smaller companies and contractors. As Orissa had been neglected during the British period, the State had hardly any experience of industrialisation. Hence, there was no ready workforce and pool of technical and managerial personnel at hand to implement the project. To make up for the shortage, the contracting companies had to bring workers from outside the State using their social networks. Vacancies of technical and managerial personnel were advertised at the national level and were filled by qualified people coming from far off places. In the initial stages, several foreigners were also recruited as engineers and managers in the plant. Consequently, the new industrial town of Rourkela acquired a national and cosmopolitan character. It is seen from Table 2 that Rourkela had become a Class-I town in 1971. The percentage of migrant population in Rourkela was high, in comparison to other Class-I towns of Orissa. Non-migrant population in Rourkela formed only 29.14 per cent of the total population of the town, whereas in other Class-I towns of Orissa the figure ranged between 33 per cent to 62 per cent. Migrants to Rourkela hailed mainly from outside the district. The percentage of inter- district migrant population hailing from within the State of Orissa was 26.44, a figure which places the city next only to Bhubaneswar, the capital of the State. Rourkela, however, registered the highest percentage of inter-State migrant population in the State. The 1981 census data reveal the reinforcement of this growing trend of immigration. In 1981, Rourkela alone recorded 78 per cent of the total urban population in the district of Sundargarh. It is seen from Table 3 that in 1981 more than 50 per cent of the male population of the district consisted of those whose native places lay outside the district. In the urban areas of Sundargarh district, the percentage of ma le population hailing from outside the State was 26.64, and the figure for male migrants from the other districts of Orissa was 23.90. Among the inter-State migrants, the adjoining State of Bihar contributed the highest percentage (14.06). Contributions of other neighbouring States, viz., West Bengal (3.69) Uttar Pradesh (2.26), Madhya Pradesh (1.66), Andhra Pradesh (1.21), were much less, though significant. Similarly, in the category of migrants from other districts of Orissa namely Cuttack, Ganjam, Puri and Baleswar had a larger share as compared to the share of Sambalpur, Social and Ecological Drift of a Planned Urban Centre 57

Figures in brackets indicate percentages. Source: Census of India, 1971. Migration Tables, Part-II-D, Series 16, Orissa, Pp. 334-35. Kendujhar, Dhenkanal and Mayurbhanj—the districts adjacent to Sundergarh. Social links provide the corridors of urban migration in India. People rarely move without prior information. Rao, in his studies pointed out that social networks based on ties of kinship, caste, village and language provided the most effective channels of communication favouring decisions on migration (1974; 1976). Therefore, in order to grasp the pattern and dynamics of migration into Rourkela, the questionnaire for my doctoral research included a section on migration and the social background of migrants (Meher 1994).

Source: Census of India, 1981. Migration Tables Orissa, Series 16, Part-V-A & B 58 Sociological Bulletin

From a scientifically designed sample of 316 households in Rourkela, I found that, there are 127 (40.19 per cent) households of migrants coming outside Orissa. Among these households, 77 (24.37 per cent) have come from Bihar, 15 (4.75 per cent) from West Bengal, 13 (4.11 per cent) from Uttar Pradesh, 8 (2.53 per cent) from Madhya Pradesh, and 5 from Haryana, Maharashtra, Kerala and Nepal. Of the remaining 189 households belonging to Orissa, only 64 (20.25 per cent) households reported their place of origin from Sundargarh district. Among the households hailing from other districts of Orissa, 93 (29.43 per cent) are from the coastal districts of Cuttack and Ganjam. Table 4 below shows that the heads of only 27 (8.54 per cent) households were born in the city. The heads of as many as 90 (28.48 per cent) households came to Rourkela to work during the days of construction of the steel plant. The remaining migrants came after the steel plant was constructed.

It is found from Table 5, that only the heads of 105 households (36.33 per cent) reported that they had come to Rourkela of their own accord to work in the steel plant. Quite a few of these independent migrants were skilled workers, who had completed diploma and certificate courses in various technical fields. They began their careers as apprentice trainees in the steel plant. Heads of 95 Social and Ecological Drift of a Planned Urban Centre 59 households (32. 87 per cent) had received help and encouragement from close relatives already working in the city. The heads of another 73 households (25.26 per cent) were brought as members of work gangs collected by 'jamadars' or jobbers who belonged to the village or the region of the migrant. Nine heads of households were brought directly by the contractors to work under them and seven were helped by friends who were already working in Rourkela. Social and personal networks of the migrants and their urban contacts have strongly influenced the settlement pattern and occupational profile of the town (Patel 1963; ILO 1972).

Ill

Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation has drastically changed the social composition of Rourkela and other villages in the project area. According to Roy Burman's study (1968), tribal households formed slightly over 67 per cent of all the households of the 30 villages constituting the project site. Scheduled Caste households formed about 8 per cent of all the households while about 11 per cent belonged to the lower castes and about 6 per cent belonged to the middle castes. The Muslim households constituted 1.7 per cent and the upper caste households formed about 3.5 per cent of all the households. Due to rapid industrialisation, in 1961 the proportion of tribal households came down to about 22 per cent and of Scheduled Castes to just over five per cent. In 1981, while the proportion of Scheduled Caste households went up slightly to over 8 per cent, the proportion of tribal households which had declined in 1971), rose to over 16 per cent. The subsequent rise of the proportion of tribal households is most probably due to the uprooting of tribals from the vicinity of Rourkela due to extensive mining. Extensive ecological degradation caused by mining, deprived the tribals living in the forests of their source of sustenance thereby forcing them to migrate. Most of these tribals have been reduced to the status of daily wage earners in the informal sector of Rourkela. Only those tribals who received compensation for their lands and forests when they were uprooted from the plant site were fortunate.

Distribution of Castes and Communities in Residential Areas As after the 1931 census population Indian censuses did not enumerate castes other than the Scheduled Castes, I had to resort to an indirect method for studying the social composition of the residential settlements in the city. I used the 1984 voters list of Rourkela Assembly Constituency that covered 56,661 households (nearly 86 per cent of the enumeration for Rourkela in the 1981 census) to identify the caste composition of different wards of the assembly constituency. I inferred the caste and community background of the voters from the names and surnames listed in the voters list. This is no foolproof method but in the absence of accurate data, would provide a rough social profile of the city. Of course, whenever I found particular surnames confusing or strange, I went to 60 Sociological Bulletin

the wards in which those names occurred frequently to enquire about the caste and community affiliations they signified. I could not, however, adopt this method in the case of Muslims because their Arabic names did not give me a clue to heir caste or regional background. Further, since the voters lists are prepared separately for different electoral blocks of the city and since these blocks invariably coincided with the broad divisions of localities in the city, I could use the lists to locate concentrations of particular castes and communities. In Table 6, I provide the broad distribution of castes and communities in the various localities of Rourkela. Table 6 shows that households of higher castes such as Brahmins, Karans and Kshatriyas constitute 25.50 per cent, households of middle castes including Khandayat, Chasa, Bania, Marwari and Agaria constitute 26.62 per cent and those of lower castes such as blacksmiths (Luthuras), potters (Kumbharas), weavers (Tantis), milkmen (Gaudas), goldsmiths (Sunaris) and gardeners (Malis) constitute 11.15 per cent of the constituency. Thus caste-Hindu households constitute more than 60 per cent of the voter households in the constituency. The share of Scheduled Caste households is only 12.08 per cent and despite their numerical majority in Sundargarh district, the share of tribal households in the city is merely 18.38 per cent. Muslim households comprise 4.59 per cent of the households in the constituency, the share of Christian households, including converted tribals, is 3.57 per cent, and of Sikhs is 1.40 per cent. The share of non-Oriya households, excluding the Muslim households, is 21.33 per cent. It can be inferred from Table 6 that some localities in the city are enclaves of particular castes and communities. In the Regional Engineering College (REC) campus, Fertilizer Township and sectors 3, 4, 5, 7, 13, 14, 19 and 21 of the steel township, higher caste households constitute more than 40 per cent of total number of households. These localities house professionals, executives, supervisors and highly skilled workers. Localities such as Resettlement Colony, Jhirpani Resettlement Colony and peripheral villages of Laukera, Tumkela, Hamirpur and Bhawanipur around the steel township mainly consist of tribals who eke out their subsistence in the informal sector. The Nala Road area accommodates mainly Muslims of both high and low-income categories. Certain localities such as Rourkela Market area, Bandomunda, Fertilizer Township, Sectors 7, 8, 13, 14, 20 and 21 of the steel township have a higher proportion of non-Oriya households as compared to their average representation (21.33 per cent) in the constituency. In these localities are found concentrations of executives and supervisory staff of the steel plant, railway employees or big traders and merchants of the city. Railway employees of different grades mainly reside in Bandomunda, trading castes and communities are concentrated in the Rourkela market area and fertiliser township, and higher level executives and professionals reside in the steel township.

Source: Government of Orissa(1984). Voters' List of Rourkela Assembly Constituency, Office of the Sub-Collector, Sub-Division, Rourkela. Social and Ecological Drift of a Planned Urban Centre 63

The broad classification of the city localities that has been adopted, however, hides certain aspects of social life in the industrial city. For this, the analysis is required to be carried to the level of residential clusters and pockets in these localities. Thus, it is noticed that within certain localities, including even the steel township, the houses of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes cluster together. Bengali households are clustered in sectors 7, 13 and 14, the South Indian households in sectors 7 and 18, Hindi speaking employees reside in sectors 5, 16 and 20 and the Oriyas in sectors 1 and 2 of the steel township. The Modern India Labour Colony one of the big squatter localities of the city was set up by the HSL in the 1950s to accommodate construction workers of the steel plant. This colony is surrounded by the boundaries of the steel plant and of the fertiliser township. In one of its neighbourhoods Khandayats and other cultivating castes from Ganjam district reside and have established close community ties among themselves. Most of them are contract labourers in the steel plant while a few have become regular employees. The latter have opted not to move to the steel township even when they are entitled to accommodation there; they prefer the locality in spite of its squalor and congestion. In another portion of the colony Mundas from South Bihar have settled. In the Mahulpali squatter area, a majority of the migrant households belong to the Veniyata caste from a particular village in Parlakhemundi region of Ganjam district. They are all casual and contract labourers. Similarly, Goalas from Bihar, Bilaspuri workers, tribals of Chota Nagpur belt, migrant families of Sambalpur, Bolangir, Kalahandi and Sundargarh districts live in separate clusters. Such clustering is found among the Muslims who, as mentioned before, prefer to live in the congested Nala Road area even when some of them are rich enough to move out to better localities. Several Muslim workers in the steel plant reside in the plant township, but they have clustered in certain adjoining blocks of sector 15. The Sikhs have also preferred to retain their separate community identity by preferring to huddle together in localities such as the Mahatma Gandhi Road and Gurudwara Road of the Rourkela market area. This type of clustering reflects more the preferences of the residents rather an instance of segregation.

The City Ecology While caste and community solidarities seem to have strongly influenced the formation of residential neighbourhoods, the evolving land use pattern in the city has been structured by the location of the steel plant. The equivalent of the central business district of the city is on the northern edge of the steel plant comprising of the main market area, city railway station and the bus terminal. The zone of transition is formed by localities such as the Nala Road, Mahulipali, Oraon para, Plant Site Police Station area, Kumbharapara, Malgodam, Madhusudanpalli, Gopabandhupalli in the north; Modern India area comprising of localities such as Tarapur, Laltanki, Construction Colony, Modern India Labour Colony, in the southeast and of Captive Power Plant area, Phulbari, Champagarh Labour Colony in the northeast. In this zone industry, 64 Sociological Bulletin commerce and business intermingle with densely packed and subdivided dwelling units, which are often in an advanced state of disrepair and dilapidation sheltering mostly the poor workers. The main slum and squatter areas are found in this zone. The slums and low-income areas are located within a range of three kilometers from the boundary of the steel plant and the main market area. The third zone houses the working class and the fourth zone consists of white-collar employees and professionals living in superior quality houses. This zone includes of the steel township consisting of 17 sectors located to the north of the steel plant, the fertiliser township and the Udit Nagar and Basanti colony of the civil township. In the steel township Sectors 1 and 2 are for low level employees, sectors 6, 7, 8 and 18 are for the middle level supervisors and the executives occupy sectors 3, 4, 5 and 19. The fertiliser township, which adjoins the Modern India area is also a mixed residential area, providing accommodation to all the employees of the fertiliser plant, a subsidiary of the Rourkela Steel Plant. Similarly, the Udit Nagar and Basanti Colony area provide housing for the low, middle level and high level white-collar employees and professionals. The affluent and posh colonies are Areas No. 7 and 8 in the civil town west of the plant and Koel Nagar and Shakti Nagar near sector 20 of the steel township. This zone provides spacious accommodation away from the hustle bustle of city life (Map. 2). Recent unanticipated developments, however, are altering the land use pattern of the city. A new industrial estate for small and ancillary industries has been developed on the north west side of the steel plant. Beyond Panposh in the west and across the river Brahmani, a big industrial estate called Kalunga has come up. In the south, the city has expanded as far as Lathikata beyond the resettlement colony on the Rourkela-Bonai road. A refractory plant and a distillery have come up in Lathikata. Similarly in the east, the city has expanded up to Bandomunda where the diesel locomotive workshop of the Indian railways is being built. These localities are still growing, and it is too early to anticipate how they will develop and what will be their impact on the settlement pattern and the social structure of the city.

Growth of Slums For a variety of reasons, the town planning department of Rourkela could not foresee the proliferation of slums in the city. The growth of slums is usually regarded as a symptom of urban decay and degeneration, but it is also a sign of expanding economic opportunities in the city. In the formative years, a number of jobs were available for skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled labourers in the construction of the steel plant and other related industrial units and establishments. This attracted numerous poverty stricken people from the countryside. The steel plant and the other large and medium scale industries that came up, however, could absorb only a limited number of these immigrants. The others, who were not so fortunate stayed on in the hope of finding some suitable job in the future. To sustain themselves, they took up any work that

66 Sociological Bulletin came by, be it that of a casual labourer, cycle rickshaw peddler, hawker, vegetable seller, domestic worker and the like. The government's decision to encourage labour intensive ancillary and small scale industries also gave rise to a vast informal sector in which a number of workers were absorbed. Further, the emergence of a distinct middle class constituted by the highly paid managerial and supervisory personnel and their households generated a huge demand for a large variety of consumer goods and services at their doorsteps. As a result, informal sector manufacturing and servicing activities such as carpentry, masonry, plumbing, electric wiring and servicing, pottery, manufacture of metal utensils and shoes, tailoring, retailing, vegetable vending, scavenging and sweeping, load lifting, cycle rickshaw peddling and the like flourished. The scarcity of capital, low level of technological development and above all abundance of unskilled manpower and country artisans combined to create a large and segmented labour force in the informal sector—an experience shared by several rapidly growing cities in the developing world (Gilbert and Gugler 1987). According to the 1981 census, the share of the informal sector in Rourkela is about 25 per cent (Meher 1994). In contrast, the share of the informal sector is 45 per cent in Bombay, Calcutta and Ahmedabad (Joshi and Joshi 1976 Breman 1977 and Papola 1981). The low share of the informal sector of Rourkela is indicative of the early stages of its industrialisation. Labour practices in the informal sector are reminiscent of pre-capitalist regimes. The dominance of middle men, a profusion of small and scattered workshops and business units which often cannot even be detected by government agencies make it difficult to regulate the units of the informal sector and impose any labour welfare regime on them. Consequently, the prevalent wage rates are often below even the minimum wage prescribed by the government. There is hardly any regulation about the maximum number of hours of daily work, which may often stretch to 10 hours. Often work has to be done in cramped, stuffy and badly ventilated buildings lacking in basic amenities. As such, working conditions adversely affect productivity and the workers face grim prospects of limited earnings which can barely meet their upkeep. Hence, they are compelled by their circumstances to encroach vacant public or private lands close to their places of work and live in jhonpris (huts) put together by using disposable materials they find in garbage dumps of the city. Such squatter localities and slums have come up around the steel plant and the main market area of the city, including some of the sectors of the steel township. There is no proper official record of the growth of slums in Rourkela. A survey conducted by the Town Planning Unit of Rourkela during 1986 identified 40 slum localities with a population of around 1,11,000 persons residing in 21,500 households. This gives an average household size of 5.17 persons in the slums as against the average size of 4.65 persons for the whole city, as worked out from the 1981 census. By using simple statistical techniques of intrapolation from the data presented in Table 1 for the years 1981 and 1991 Social and Ecological Drift of a Planned Urban Centre 67

Rourkela's total population works out to about 3,60,878 for the year 1986. Hence, it can be estimated that 30.75 per cent of the population of Rourkela lived in the slums in 1986; in all likelihood, this figure might have increased in recent years. My survey of slum localities in the city pointed to the preponderance of Muslims, tribal Christians, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes (Meher 1994). Of the 14,426 slum households in 27 localities detected by me, upper caste households constituted only 33.17 per cent, whereas, the proportions of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households respectively were 15.33 per cent and 29.88 per cent. The figures for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were much above their respective shares of 8.15 per cent and 16.40 per cent of the population of the city in 1981. further, even in the slums there is clustering of households based on caste, religion and region. In localities such as Gualapara, Old Labour Colony, Captive Power Plant area, Champagarh Labour Colony, Phulbari and Bricks Labour Colony, Balijodi, Hatibandha Labour Colony, Kansar, Old Jalda, Jharmunda, Kaintabasa, Langrabasa and Bijubandha Jhonpri there are concentrations of tribal households who together constitute more than 40 per cent of all the households. Similarly, in localities such as ITI and Industrial Estate Jhonpri, Gopabandhupalli, Tarapur, Deongaon and Quarry Area, Kalinga Auto Colony, Construction Colony, Balipoda, Modern India Labour Colony and Old Rourkela Labour Colony, the concentration of upper caste households is more than 40 per cent of the total number of households. The proportion of Muslims in the Nala Road area is 84.16 per cent. The fact that even the rich Muslims prefer to remain in this area rather than move to better localities of the city is evidenced by their palatial buildings which tower over ramshackle jhonpris and dilapidated buildings that surround them. Rich Sikhs too prefer to live amidst poorer members of their community in the Gurudwara Road and Gandhi Road area.

Urban Social Structure My study revealed that many unskilled and semi-skilled workers came to Rourkela from Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, North Bihar and West Bengal. The local tribals work either as contract labourers in the steel plant or as casual labourers in the construction sites and small-scale industries of the city (Meher 1994). This finding further confirms Vithal Babu's observation on the social impact of the construction of steel plants in Rourkela and Durgapur. In Rourkela, Babu estimates that out of 5,973 able-bodied displaced persons in the late 1950s, only 161 were provided with regular employment in the steel plant. Another 223 joined as work-charged employees and 630 as muster roll workers. The others remained idle and unemployed, living from day to day on the money paid as compensation by the steel project authorities. He reports that skilled, semi- skilled and even unskilled workers were brought by the contractors from different parts of the country, mainly from outside the State (1959: 237). 68 Sociological Bulletin

An earlier study of contract labour in the Rourkela Steel Plant estimated that in the 1980s, the plant was employing around 11,656 persons as contract labourers (Sengupta 1983). Most of them were tribals and members of Scheduled Castes and other low castes hailing from Sundargarh, Sambalpur, Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj beside the tribals of Singhbhum and Gumla. They were mostly engaged in hazardous low status work that regular employees shun. The members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (who constitute more than 70 per cent of the State's population), could only get a small proportion of the regular jobs in the steel plant because they lacked technical education and proper socio-political networks. They were less mobile because in the 1950s and 1960s the transport and communication system of the State had not yet developed. Most of the unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in the steel plant have been monopolised by the high and middle castes such as Brahmin, Karana and Khandayat hailing from the advanced districts of coastal Orissa, viz. , Cuttack, Puri, Baleswar and Ganjam. It is found that even among the more successful migrants from the coastal districts of Orissa there was disproportionate representation of those belonging to some particular villages. This is mainly because the contractors associated with construction work in Rourkela belonged to the coastal districts and they brought people from their own village or its neighbouring villages to work at the plant site. Villages such as the Polosora, Netinga, Gahama and Origad in Ganjam district, Editala in Baleswar district and Beruna in Cuttack district are prominently represented in the workforce in the steel plant. From my informal conversations, I discovered that more than 500 workers belonged to village Editala and its neighbouring villages in Baleswar district. Thirty to forty workers came from village Origad, 30 to 40 from village Polosora and another 30 to 40 workers from village Beruna. In contrast, Brahmanitarang, a small village located in the west at a distance of 8 km from the Rourkela Steel Plant has hardly 10 regular plant employees. Residents of villages on the periphery of the steel plant and low caste immigrants from Ranchi, Gumla and Singhbhum districts in Bihar and Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Sambalpur, Bolangir and Kalahandi districts in Orissa, are engaged in operating cycle rickshaws, coolie work, construction work, hawking, selling of vegetables and the like. This is true even of the natives of Sundargarh district who have migrated to the city in recent years. Extensive deforestation, partly due to widespread mining in the area and partly due to the growth of population, has pushed many of them out of their natal regions. Social clustering based on ties of kinship, caste, regional background and religion may be noted in certain trades and occupations. Thus, the moulders in the foundry workshops of Rourkela are from Pipli area of Puri district in Orissa or from Chakulia area of West Bengal; the natives of these areas were traditional foundry craftsmen and have acquired a reputation for their skill. In the informa l sector, a large section of construction workers and handcart pullers hail from the Chhatisgarh region of Madhya Pradesh. Contract labourers of the Social and Ecological Drift of a Planned Urban Centre 69 steel plant are from Sundargarh, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, and from Ranchi, Gumla and Singhbhum of south Bihar. Similarly, most of the cycle rickshaw peddlers and hand cart pullers are members of lower castes from Sambalpur, Bolangir and Kalahandi districts, coolies are from Parelakhemundi region, vegetable vendors are from Jajpur region and panwalas are from Baleswar and Cuttack districts of Orissa. Trading and business communities which dominate organised trade, commerce and entrepreneurship of small-scale industries in Rourkela are from Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and West Bengal. Petty trade is cornered by the Muslims of Gaya, Ranchi and Mungher districts of Bihar. It is evident from the above description that urbanisation of Rourkela is typical of the urban processes in other parts of India. The social ecology of the city has been strongly influenced by particularistic ties of kinship, caste, region and religion. These ties have facilitated and shaped the process of industrialisation in Rourkela. Even the social profile of occupations has been strongly affected by these ties. Such social clustering confirms the findings of earlier studies by Breman (1979), Holmstrom (1985), Klass Vander Veen (1979) and Sheth (1968).

Environmental Impact The steel plant and other industries have increased pollution of the city. Exhaust from the LD furnace in the steel plant contains high levels of carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide which are inimical to health. The LD converters also release huge quantities of brown coloured iron dust into the atmosphere several times a day. Blast furnace slag has created a major disposal problem and pollutes the river during the rainy season. Coke ovens and the sintering plant also contribute to the atmospheric pollution. The steel plant authorities invested a large amount of money to install precipitators and dust catchers, but they have not been maintained properly. Effluents from the steel plant are discharged into the Guradinala by the sedimentation process; this process cannot, however, check the flow of coal tar, benzene, oil, and other acids into the water. The captive thermal power plant in Rourkela produces huge dumps of fly ash and releases large quantities of sulphur dioxide, arsenic and other poisonous gases into the atmosphere posing a major health hazard. The nitric acid plant emits nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere and the ammonia plant emits hydrogen sulphide into the river turning its water into a milky coffee colour. The release of waste steam cooling water and of hot liquid steam from the fertiliser plants add to water and soil pollution. The cement plant near Rourkela has increased the amount of cement dust in the atmosphere. Environmental pollution is quite palpable in Rourkela. There is a pall of dust hanging over the city most of the day and iron particles in the dust cling to the bodies of those who venture anywhere near the steel plant. Some of the congested parts of the city have experienced acid rain. The water of Brahmani river is highly polluted; it is bereft of fish and prawn for which it was once 70 Sociological Bulletin famous. The release of sewerage of the city has polluted the river Koel which, like the river Brahmani has shrunk in size over the years. The sewage treatment plant has not been working properly but the municipal authorities have not bothered about its upkeep. Thanks to the numerous industrial units that have come up in the Rourkela region, mining activities have been intensified. Mining for iron ore, coal and manganese, and limestone and dolomite quarrying have caused extensive deforestation. The forest cover in has declined from over 54 per cent of the total area in the 1950s to around 38 per cent in 1988. Meteorological records of the district reveal that the average precipitation has declined steeply in the last three decades. The habitat of the local tribals who practised shifting cultivation has been subverted to such a n extent that they migrate to the city in search of employment. Several of them also work as casual labourers in the mines. Environmental pollution has affected the general health of the city population. Incidence of asthma, paralysis, tuberculosis, neurological disorders, cataract, hypertension and rheumatic diseases has increased considerably. The city, especially the civil town lacks basic amenities like clean water, sanitation, drainage and proper roads. The poor in the city are huddled in cramped jhonpris, living next to stagnant bodies of polluted and contaminated water.

Social Effects The urbanisation of Rourkela has generated intense social stresses in the city. Prominent social cleavages have emerged generating considerable social tension. The local tribals resent the fact that 'outsiders'—a term they use to refer mainly to the caste Hindus of the coastal Orissa and those from outside the State—have captured all the plum jobs in the city. This resentment has become more bitter in the recent years as second generation tribals who are educated, now find that their opportunities of being recruited to the more important managerial posts are blocked by these 'outsiders'. These tribal youth find the ideology of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha appealing because it seeks to set right the injustices suffered by the tribal communities at the hands of the 'outsiders'. Thus, when the Orissa Co-operative Milk Producers Federation Ltd (OMFED) set up a milk dairy in Rourkela in the 1980s, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha mobilised local tribals to agitate demanding that all the available vacancies in the dairy project be reserved for them. The agitation even issued threats of killing any 'outsider' who joined the co-operative. To defend themselves, the upper caste migrants from coastal Orissa have formed themselves into an umbrella organisation called Nila Chakra. This organisation ostensibly stands for the protection of the interests of all Oriyas, including the tribals of Orissa, but is dominated by the dominant castes of coastal Orissa. Under pressure from Nila Chakra, the Government of Orissa has made a residential certificate compulsory for registration in the Employment Exchange of Rourkela. This decision rendered several second generation job seekers born and brought up in Social and Ecological Drift of a Planned Urban Centre 71

Rourkela ineligible for jobs in Rourkela because their parents did not possess the residential certificate, notwithstanding their stay in the city for more than two decades. Politics of 'insiders' versus the 'outsiders' dominates the social discourse in the city. Although this charged situation has so far been contained, it may become explosive if the recent rising trends of unemployment and immigration are not effectively checked. The charged social atmosphere of the city has diverted public attention from the environmental crisis that is brewing in the region in spite of the fact that several non-governmental organisations and journalists have prominently highlighted the issue in the local newspapers and magazines. The social crisis has in some respects deepened the ecological degradation of the city; a feeling of insecurity confines the minorities to huddle together in congested areas. The authorities of the municipality, ministers of the State and even the managers of the steel plant and other public sector units in the Rourkela region are indifferent to the environmental issues. Locked in a grim struggle for livelihoods, the poor who are more directly affected by the pollution in the city, prefer to ignore the environmental problems. Many of them are even afraid that if environmental issues are raised, several industrial units may have to be closed which may deprive them of jobs. This study of Rourkela highlights some of the dilemmas of planned urbanisation and development. It is clear that meticulous plans for urban growth are subverted by the social contradictions generated in their implementation. Universal models of development can no longer afford to ignore the costs imposed on the local groups and communities in terms of displacement and deteriorating economic situation on the one hand and environmental degradation, on the other.

NOTES

This paper is extracted from my Ph.D Thesis Industrialization and the Urban Social Structure: A Sociological Study of the Interrelationships Between Industry, Ecology and Society in Rourkela, submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1994. I thank my supervisor Professor M. N. Panini who has also taken the trouble of meticulously editing my earlier draft. I also thank the anonymous referee for her perceptive comments. REFERENCES