The tale of two flights

"Kaan paini ki mo jami chaddbi (why should I leave my land)" : said a Dongria Kondh girl Lindaja Samri after she welcomed Rahul Gandhi on his visit to Kalahandi yesterday, post the Vedanta licence cancellation episode. Very significant statement indeed. And very similar to the ones we have heard in different dialects over and over again for years together, but ignored in the name of development and public good. 

I was reading this wonderful book by Arundhati Roy "The algebra of infinite justice" and the human cost of "development" suddenly stuck me on my face like a tight slap. She has written about many hapless Adivasis who became landless labourers and came to live in shanties after their land were forcefully acquired in "public interest". One example is enough : In a village called Kothie in Gujrat, as a preqursor to the Sardar Sarovar Dam, the Government acquired 1600 acres of land from 950 Tadvi Adivasis in 1961. An aghast Mohan Bhai Tadvi watched 8 acres of his land with standing crop of jowar, toovar and cotton being levelled. Three years later he received his cash compensation of Rs.250 an acre in three separate instalments. One can well imagine what he must have gone through after being robbed of his land, livelihood and security, all at once. This was during Pandit Nehru's time. He had actually flown in to switch on the beginning of this massive destruction of the Narmada valley. 

Atleast, land used to be acquired then for large infrastructure projects, notwithstanding their viability or validity, that the powers genuinely believed in, would serve the common man. Over the years, and as the political parties have grown hungrier, we have seen land increasingly being acquired for private good. The most fertile land, the most fragile ecology, forests, you name it, land has been indiscriminately usurped to benefit the politician-bureaucrat-industrialist  nexus. People, mostly Adivasis and small farmers, have protested, pleaded, begged, been intimidated, taken bullets, been lathicharged, starved, died to protect their homes and hearth, but nobody listened.  Democracy, as we know it, strangely never got reflected in this particular case. Be it brutality on protesting farmers in UP or bullets for their brethren in Bengal, the nation has experienced the same insensitivity cutting accross political beliefs and spectrum. 

Till very recently, we were all deaf. To many of us urban brats, the likes of Medha Patkar were an irritant. They created unnecessary hassles in the path of development to serve their own tiny interests. To some of us more inclined to imaginary threats, they were agents of our unknown enemies, blocking our nation's progress. To the more fashionable elite, they looked unkempt and agrarian, therefore untrustworthy.

When hundreds of tribals worshipped Niyam Raja, the Hill God of Niyamgiri, and descended the slopes to reach Jagannathpur to celebrate getting back their land and their Lord yesterday, something had changed forever. Rahul Gandhi's flight to Kalahandi is different from his great grandfather's flight to Kothie in more ways than one. But the single fact that stands out is this : the earlier flight took away land from the people, the latest one gave it back. There is one more fact to be considered though. The land had always belonged to their rightful owners and no one is doing them a favour by not snatching it away. By restoring their rights, what perhaps we are beginning to give back our own selves are sensitivity, democratic thought process, nondiscriminatory behaviour and sense of justice, finally. But who knows if someone is waiting at another airport to catch another flight to try to destroy another habitat ? Only time and the strength of our democracy will tell.