By Sujeet Kumar
Raipur, Aug 19 (IANS) It’s a fit question for economists in India’s 60th year of independence: why is a land so rich in minerals as Chhattisgarh home to some of the country’s poorest people?
So poor are they that parents sell their children for just a few hundred rupees, minor girls are taken away only to be pushed into trafficking and parents in certain tribal pockets offer locally brewed liquor to newborn babes instead of milk.
Chhattisgarh’s northern region of Korba, Raigarh and Surguja house about 18 percent of the country’s coal deposits. Its southern region of Bastar, including Dantewada, has at least 20 percent of the country’s iron ore reserves. Parts of Raipur district bordering Orissa are even known to house diamond deposits.
But it is in these very areas that vast numbers of Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste people are virtually living in the primitive era sans education, health and other basic requirements.
A recent study conducted by an NGO, Vanvasi Chetana Ashram, said “about 600 villages in the interior areas of the Bastar region lack governance and all basic civic amenities”. The study reveals that in “nearly 200 forested villages, the government has failed to reach till date”.
Chhattisgarh’s population is 20.08 million.
Says Chief Minister Raman Singh: “Roughly 45 percent of people in Chhattisgarh are living below the poverty line, most of them in forested areas where the world’s best quality coal and iron ore is found.
“These minerals are not only driving India’s economy but also feeding Asia’s steel industry as Bastar’s Bailadilla iron ore has been exported to China and Japan for decades. But the life quality of the local masses is really miserable. I am doing the best to improve the lives of the decades-old marginalized population living on mineral rich soil.
“Their life quality is set to improve as the government has signed deals in June 2005 with Tata Steel to bring in Rs.100 billion in Bastar for a 5 MTA (five million tonnes per annum) steel plant, Essar Steel to invest Rs.70 billion for a 3.2 MTA steel unit in Dantewada and IFFCO is pouring in Rs.45 billion in Surguja district for a 1,000 MW power plant.”
But all the three mega-projects have been deadlocked as the local tribal population has refused to surrender land for them.
Officials say in the Bastar region, which covers five districts and is spread over about 40,000 sq km with a population about 2.7 million, 65-70 percent people are malnourished. The people are prone to diseases like tuberculosis and malaria.
“In the past six decades, India has made major progress in all sectors. It’s now poised to become a global economic power. Everything changed mainly in the past one decade but what has not changed is the fate of the masses of the mineral-rich regions,” said Mahendra Karma, a noted tribal face of Bastar and the leader of the opposition in the state assembly.
Karma was industry minister in the previous Congress government that ruled the state till December 2003 from November 2000, when the state came into existence.
Even in the areas of Devbhog in Raipur district close to the Orissa border, which are confirmed to have diamond deposits, the Bhunjia and Kamar tribal communities die of starvation.
With large chunks of the male and female population in Gariaband, Mainpur and Devbhog addicted to alcohol, newborns there are sometimes given locally brewed liquor to drink instead of milk.
“Who says India is developing? The country might be witnessing an economic revolution but not for people residing in the interiors,” ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator Chandulal Sahu, who represents Rajim segment, told IANS.
“Look at the plight of the innocent people living along the Chhattisgarh-Orissa border in Raipur district – they are probably born to die because of the lack of basic facilities.”