Salwa Judum and the Violence on Women in Dantewara,Chhattisgarh

Salwa Judum and Violence on Women in Dantewara, Chhattisgarh Report of a Fact-Finding by an All India Women’s team Committee Against Violence On Women CAVOW Salwa Judum and Violence on Women in Dantewara (Chhattisgarh) Report of a Fact-Finding by an All India Women’s team Published in December 2006 by Committee Against Violence On Women (CAVOW) Contribution Price : Rs. 20/- For Copies Shoma Sen, 8, Anusri Apartments, 184, Baji Prabhu Nagar NAGPUR-440033 E-mail: [email protected] Printed at Charitha Impressions Azamabad, HYDERABAD (AP), Ph: No:040-27678411 Contents Introduction . 5 Appendix 1 . 25 List of Team Members Appendix 2 . 25 List of People interviewed Appendix 3 . 26 Reported cases of violence against women Appendix 4 . 34 Childhood malnutrition in Salwa Judum camp Appendix 5 . 38 Health situation in Dantewara Appendix 6 . 41 Women's movement in Dandakaranya- Half of struggle and half of sky Appendix 7 . 44 Press Release Peoples' Union for Civil Liberties, Chhattisgarh Appendix 8 . 46 Names of camps in Dantewara district Appendix 9 . 47 Letters from the mothers of Dantewara Salwa Judum and Violence on Women in Dantewara (Chhattisgarh) Report of a Fact-Finding by an All India Women’s team Introduction the subject. Some members of the team Since the start of the Salwa Judum in also participated in a survey of the Dantewara district in June 2005 there have functioning of health programmes in the been several reports of violence on women villages and relief camps. This report is in the villages as well as in the Salwa based on the totality of the evidence Judum camps. Reports of human rights that has been gathered. groups have also corroborated many of the The Context cases. Concerned at this widespread Dantewara is the southernmost of the incidence and considering that no effort 16 districts of the six-year-old state of had been made so far to look into the Chhattisgarh. More than 90 per cent of the ground reality specifically from this angle, population lives in rural areas, and nearly the Committee Against Violence on 80 per cent consists of Adivasis. Formerly Women (CAVOW) decided to conduct an part of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh is investigation by an All-India team of rich in minerals and forests and has fertile women activists.1 An investigation into the alluvial plains as well Dantewara alone has conditions of violence on women, huge reserves of iron ore, tin and radio- security, and livelihood of Adivasi women active minerals. Mining has been the most in the background of continuing conflict visible modern economic industry in the and intense militarization in the region was area and has given rich royalties to carried out in two phases: 30 September - successive national governments through 2 October and 16-18 November 2006. lucrative export deals. The most well- During the course of these two visits, known of these, between the Japanese members of the team interviewed women government and the National Mineral in camps and outside, women under trials Development Corporation, has for the last in jail, met several representatives of civil three decades sent iron ore from the society in Dantewara, Jagdalpur and Bailadila mines in southern Dantewara to Raipur, and studied available literature on Japan through the Visakhapatnam 6 Salwa Judum and Violence on Women C A port, facilitated by a railway built with in the official discourse to link the V Japanese funding. More recently, the Essar formation of the state with the people’s O Steel Corporation has built a pipeline to demands for greater autonomy. The new W carry iron ore slurry from Dantewara to state was launched with much fanfare on Visakhapatnam. Proposals to grant new 1 November 2000. During the inaugural mining leases to major private sector ceremonies, the state’s first chief minister, giants, Tata Steel and Essar Corporation Ajit Jogi, declared Chhattisgarh to be the and to acquire land for proposed Steel richest state in the country, although its Plants in the last one year in a region people are among India’s poorest. where the people are pauperized has If there was any hope that the led to large scale rumblings of development vision of the new state would discontent. be rooted in any kind of indigenous However, despite the small island of perspective, however, this hope was ‘development’ around the Bailadila mines, quickly belied. It soon became clear that Dantewara District has remained both poor the new state had been born in the context and isolated from the rest of the state and of globalisation, and that the political the country. Communication infrastructure agenda behind the policy of power is poor. According to the census, literacy devolution was in fact the opening up of levels are low, dipping to just 29 and 14 third-world resource bases for first-world percent for rural men and women markets. There has been no change in this respectively. Out of its 1220 villages, 214 agenda during the subsequent six years. do not even have a school. In 1161 Today the state officially prides itself villages, there is no medical facility either. on its new industrialising face. One of the For large sections of Dantewara’s first institutions to be established was the indigenous peoples, rain-fed agriculture Chhattisgarh Industrial Development and collection of forest produce are the Corporation, which immediately busied only livelihood options. Disturbances in itself with negotiating development loans the ecosystem have subsequently created from the Asian Development Bank and major crises of life and livelihood for the other international financial institutions. By region’s Adivasis. Deaths due to hunger 2005, new industrial growth centres were and blood dysentery have repeatedly established in the districts of Mahasamund, been reported from the area; the latest Surguja, Kawardha, Dhamtari and reports of hunger deaths appeared in Raigarh. The previous year, an industrial 2003-4.2 policy was formulated with the expressed The creation of Chhattisgarh brought objective of creating “an enabling the official agenda of development and environment for ensuring maximum governance much closer to the value-addition to the abundant, locally communities of Dantewara than at any available mineral and other forest-based time in the recent past. As in other new resources.” The policy also sought to states, in Chhattisgarh there was an attempt attract direct investments, including those Salwa Judum and Violence on Women 7 C to “the most backward tribe-dominated secretive that, as late as February 2006, a A areas”, and to woo investors (including BJP MLA in whose constituency the Tata V NRI and FDI) with a host of incentives and steel plant was proposed to be built O W tariff concessions. publicly admitted that he had no Current developments in Dantewara knowledge of the plans for need to be seen against this international industrialisation in the area. backdrop, including massive new Land for Tata’s steel plant and mining multinational-owned constructions, the activities is proposed to be acquired resistance of the local people and the around Lohandiguda; land for Essar’s urgency of the state government to re- installations will be in Dhurli and Bhansi. establish its control over the district. In late (Danthewara) In both areas, there is fierce 2005, two MOUs were signed by the state opposition to the land acquisition, and government with Essar and the Tata group, over the past six months multiple both of which assert the commitment of demonstrations have been held in the state to industrial growth through the Lohandiguda, Jagdalpur, Dantewara and agency of “industrial houses of repute”, other proposed acquisition sites. These and affirm its commitment to make areas are largely inhabited by tribals, and available required land, mining leases, covered under the Panchayats (Extension power and water. to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996, or PESA. Both MOUs also contain a In this Act is an implicit assumption that confidentiality clause that precludes the natural resources of a region belong disclosure of information on the terms and to the citizens of the area, and for any conditions of the MOU to any third party, exploitation of these resources the village in blatant violation of the Right to community (in the form of the Gram Information Act. This clause was the Sabha) must give its consent. However, source of a major fracas in the state in practice, the Gram Sabha registers legislature in early 2006, when the have been forged and tampered with, government refused to accede to the and this has been a major source of demand from the Congress party peoples’ anger and confrontation with the opposition that the MOU be made public. state. In June and once again in Indeed, the proceedings have been so September 2006, there were massive A sarpanch at Dornapal camp revealed that a meeting of all sarpanches of the block had been held by the administration in which they had been instructed to convene meetings in the villages to bring all the villagers to the camp by propagating that they would be attacked by Naxalites. An anganwadi worker from one of the camps visited told a team member that she and all other anganwadi teachers were brought to the camp directly from a block level meeting and were not given an opportunity to go home to collect their belongings. In this camp 13 schools are being run in three tin sheds. 8 Salwa Judum and Violence on Women C A rallies in Dantewara to protest against state government, the state unit of the V the way in which proper procedures Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the leader of O had not been followed in the the opposition in the state assembly, W acquisition of land for the Essar Steel sections of the Congress party, the state Plant at Dhurli.

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