Ailing Orissa

PRAFULLA DAS
in Bhubaneswar

Contaminated water sources and the virtual absence of health care claim dozens of lives in the State, now in the grip of cholera.

COME monsoon and the backward regions of Orissa are in the grip of water-borne diseases. This year too has been no different. According to official figures, 150 people had died of cholera and diarrhoea in the State as on September 15. Unofficial reports put the toll at more than 250. The reasons for the recurring phenomenon are not far to seek: contaminated water sources and the virtual absence of health care. To make matters worse, a large number of posts of doctors and paramedical staff in government hospitals are lying vacant.

According to officials in the Health and Family Welfare Department, cholera deaths were reported from Rayagada, Kalahandi, Nuapada, Koraput, Nabarangpur, Malkangiri, Gajapati and Keonjhar districts. A sudden increase in the number of deaths was noticed in early July. The number has been growing steadily since then, with Rayagada being the worst hit. The official death toll in the district was 40 as of mid-September; unofficially it was 115. Significantly, 49 sanctioned posts of doctors in Rayagada are lying vacant. Many deaths in inaccessible areas in the affected districts have not been officially recorded.

A large number of those who are affected are tribal people who live in hamlets that have no approach roads. Safe drinking water is still a dream for thousands of families here who fetch water from forest streams and rivulets. The fact that there are scores of defunct tube wells in the interior areas of the State speaks volumes about the callousness of the administration. Even as water-borne diseases spread to new areas in the second week of September and deaths continued, the Naveen Patnaik government claimed that the situation was under control.

Even as Oriya television channels aired visuals of tribal people crying over the bodies of the dead and people carrying the sick to hospitals in distant places, Health Minister Prasanna Acharya paid a two-day visit to Rayagada district, on September 14 and 15, to take stock of the situation. On the first day of his visit, two more deaths were reported from Taladal village of Kashipur block in the district.

As in the past years, the State government woke up from its slumber only after the media started reporting diarrhoeal deaths from different parts of the State and the Regional Medical Research Centre in Bhubaneswar confirmed the incidence of cholera in Rayagada.

The government apparently paid little attention to the centre's advice on the measures required to avert an outbreak of cholera. The suggested measures included chlorinating drinking water sources in areas prone to contamination and providing drinking water closer to workplaces of the people, said a senior researcher at the centre.

The Chief Minister held a meeting to review the situation. Teams of doctors were sent to the worst-hit areas in the district. The government announced an incentive of Rs.200 to people who would bring cholera patients to hospitals at night.

Review meetings

Review meetings were held at various levels, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were urged to help in the process of providing medical attention to people. Efforts were also made to carry out an awareness campaign to make people adopt hygienic practices and draw water only from disinfected wells and tube wells.
But the government came under fire from the opposition parties as many tube wells still awaited repair in the worst-affected blocks of Rayagada district – Kashipur, Bissamcuttack and Kalyansinghpur – even after the Health Minister's visit.

The Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly, Bhupinder Singh, and other leaders of the Congress, who visited different areas in Rayagada, held the government responsible for the deaths from cholera and diarrhoea. It is apparent that non-availability of safe drinking water, lack of awareness about sanitation among the tribal people, and non-implementation of the total sanitation campaign are the main reasons for so many deaths.

Stock response

All the opposition parties blamed the State government for ignoring the problems of the tribal people in the interior areas. But even as hospitals, dispensaries and health camps remained crowded with patients and many were unable to reach hospitals owing to intermittent rains and the lack of roads, the government had the stock response that all possible measures were being taken to contain the spread of water-borne diseases.

Finally, the administration was forced to deploy the Orissa Disaster Rapid Action Force to transport patients to medical centres from inaccessible areas such as Madhuban in Gudari block of Rayagada. But the last-minute efforts seemed futile when news of deaths began to pour in from distant villages.

The administration did not even have the manpower to distribute bleaching powder, saline, halogen tablets and ORS (oral rehydration solution) packets in the worst-hit areas of Rayagada.

Significantly, the NGOs had not reached the cholera-hit villages even after the government's appeal to them to join medical teams. Some NGO leaders were busy soliciting help from various funding agencies even after the epidemic had claimed a large number of lives. It appeared as if they simply could not venture out of urban areas without ensuring the flow of funds. The same had happened in 2007, too.

The Orissa Adivasi Mahasabha, affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), staged demonstrations to protest against the government's failure to contain the spread of cholera.

More than 2,000 people had died of diarrhoea in the State in the past five years, said Chambru Soren, its organising secretary. He said that when the government was making tall claims about tribal development, the death of so many people due to cholera was criminal.

This is not the first time that Orissa has seen so many deaths from cholera and diarrhoea. In 2007, the State government admitted to the death of at least 178 persons in Rayagada, Koraput, Kalahandi and Gajapati districts by September 4. Unofficial reports put the toll at over 300 that year.

Rayagada, which has been badly hit by diarrhoeal deaths in the past, was in the news in 2001 when many people died of malnutrition and hunger. People in the district eat mango kernel and other inedible items during the monsoon months when they face severe shortage of food. Life becomes miserable for them because there is no work in the season.

Rayagada is not the only district where food insecurity and lack of proper health care affect the lives of scores of people. This is a common feature in several other places, particularly the seven districts in the backward Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput region.

Significantly, it is not just that the administration at the district level has failed to implement various development projects in the interiors of Orissa; the State government has also failed to contain the Maoist menace in these regions. The government has apparently been busy processing the applications of big corporate entities in order to make recommendations to the Central government to grant them leases to mine bauxite, iron ore and coal.

Corporate leaders who were camping in the State had little concern for the suffering people whose land and hills they were planning to mine.

People's victory

PRAFULLA DAS
in Lanjigarh

Vedanta will not be able to mine the Niyamgiri hills for bauxite, and for the Dongria Kondhs the MoEF decision is a major victory.

THE August 24 decision of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) refusing to allow mining in the Niyamgiri hills jointly by the Orissa Mining Corporation and Sterlite Industries (India) Limited, a Vedanta Group company, has given a boost to the movements against displacement of people and illegal mining and land acquisition for various mineral-based industries in violation of land acquisition rules, mining laws, laws pertaining to protection of the environment, conservation of forests, safeguarding of wildlife and the rights of tribal and non-tribal populations living on forest land. Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district, where Vedanta Aluminium Limited has established an alumina refinery, has been the nerve point of these struggles. The Ministry withdrew the stage-II clearance it had granted for mining in the Niyamgiri hills.

Thousands of primitive Dongria Kondh tribal men and women living in and around the Niyamgiri hills in Lanjigarh are happy that the Vedanta group will not now mine the hills, which they worship as their living god, for bauxite. They are also determined to oppose any further attempt by the State government to help the company source bauxite from any other hills nearby to run its alumina refinery. They are demanding that the refinery be closed down to protect the area from environmental pollution.

The agitation by the Kondh tribal people started in 2003 after Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik laid the foundation stone for Vedanta's one-million-tonne-capacity refinery at Lanjigarh. Organisations such as the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti and the Green Kalahandi kept on questioning the blatant violation of laws by the company when it went ahead with the construction of its refinery. The construction of a conveyor belt from the refinery up to the hills at a time when no clearance for mining had been obtained was strongly opposed by the people and the organisations. The matter was also taken to court. However, the State government refused to lend an ear to the agitators.

Vedanta claimed it had not violated the Forest Conservation Act, the Environment Protection Act or the Forest Rights Act. The State government endorsed its stand whenever the matter was raised by Opposition parties or people's organisations. The company spent lavishly to sustain its campaign with the slogan that it was in Orissa to mine happiness for the people. Even when committees set up by the MoEF or the Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court pointed out irregularities and violations of laws, the company managed to keep up its own campaign. However, the decision of Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests, gave a severe jolt to its plans.

Incidentally, the State government had approved Vedanta's refinery expansion plans (from a capacity of one million tonnes per annum to six million tonnes) days before the MoEF decision, and that too when the company was yet to get clearances for mining bauxite for its refinery in the State and was running its plant with bauxite ore sourced from Jharkhand and other States.

Mining and politics

The ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has come out strongly in support of the company and denounced the MoEF decision as being “anti-Orissa”. Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi's visit to Lanjigarh two days after the MoEF decision has made the BJD angrier still.

Rahul Gandhi described the decision as a victory for the tribal people, in his address to a rally organised by the Orissa Pradesh Youth Congress to celebrate the day as Adivasi Adhikar Divas (tribal rights day) at Jagannathpur village in the foothills of Niyamgiri. Asserting that he was not against industries, he said that “genuine voices” of the common people should not go unheard. His Lanjigarh trip may have been a part of his party's larger strategy to reclaim the tribal vote bank, but it was certainly a big hit with the Dongria Kondhs. Indeed, during his visit to Lanjigarh in 2008, he had told the tribal people that he would be their “sepoy” in Delhi. This time he promised them that his work as their “sepoy” had just begun.

As Rahul Gandhi addressed the Dongria Kondhs in Lanjigarh, the BJD's youth wing staged a demonstration in Bhubaneswar alleging that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre was creating hurdles in the path of Orissa's industrialisation. The party also announced plans for a rally in Lanjigarh on September 3. Indeed, the MoEF decision on Vedanta is not the only cause of worry for the BJD and its government. The MoEF has also questioned the violation of the Forest Rights Act in the area earmarked for the proposed 12-million-tonne-capacity steel plant of Posco India Private Limited, the Indian arm of the Korean steel-maker Posco.

Members of Parliament of the BJD staged a demonstration in New Delhi alleging that the MoEF was out to show a favour to the Andhra Pradesh government in implementing the Polavaram (Indira Sagar) irrigation project on the Godavari. Although Jairam Ramesh had written to Naveen Patnaik stating that the clearance for diversion of forest land was subject to compliance of several conditions by the Andhra Pradesh government, several BJD MPs joined a demonstration organised by Oriya students in New Delhi against the Centre's “anti-Orissa” stance.

Why is the BJD so angry with the Centre? Apparently because Naveen Patnaik's government has been caught on the wrong foot, what with the violation of various laws by Vedanta and Posco India Private Limited and the growing opposition to many industrial projects in the State. After the MoEF's order against Vedanta, hundreds came out to oppose the State government's plans to hand over the Khandadhar mines in Sundargarh and Keonjhar districts to Posco. While Niyamgiri is the source of the Vanshadhara and Nagabali rivers, Khandadhar is the source for the majestic Brahmani.

Tribal and other populations opposing displacement have announced plans to challenge the alleged violation of various laws by projects such as the Tata steel project in Kalinganagar and the Posco project in Jagatsinghpur. Conservationists have come forward demanding action against government officials, particularly those in the Departments of Forest, Mines, and Revenue, who have been allegedly protecting the interests of various companies.

Orissa's industrialisation has run into trouble primarily because the State has not been equipped to cope with the large number of investment proposals in sectors such as alumina, steel, thermal power, ports and education. The proposed Vedanta University of the Anil Agarwal Foundation, promoted by Anil Agarwal, chairman of the Vedanta Group based in the United Kingdom, has faced stiff opposition from local residents near Puri. The foundation has been given the go-ahead to establish a world-class university over 3,200 hectares of land. A law to facilitate the university project has been passed in the State Assembly.

Land acquisition has become a major issue with the State government signing memoranda of understanding with various companies without consulting the people who will be displaced to make space for the proposed industries. The poor rehabilitation of the thousands of families displaced by both private and government-run industries in the past decades has added to the fears of those facing displacement.

The use of force to suppress anti-industry agitation and the branding of agitators as “Maoists” has also been a cause of concern for those trying to protect their land and homes. An attempt by the police to brand Lado Sikaka, a leader of the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, as a suspected Maoist in the wake of Rahul Gandhi's visit to Lanjigarh faced criticism from various quarters.

The State government's backing of plans for diversion of huge volumes of water from the State's rivers to run privately owned industries is facing opposition, too. There are not many takers for the Chief Minister's assurance that not a drop of water meant for agriculture will be diverted to industries. In the 10 years that Naveen Patnaik has been in power, his government has signed MoUs for 49 steel plants, 27 thermal power plants and several others for ports, alumina refineries and other industries. Those opposing displacement and violation of environment laws and the Forest Rights Act have demanded that the government set up a panel of experts to review the ongoing industrialisation process.