Konark Festival kicks off to a colourful start

• PRAFULLA DAS

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  American sand artist Sue McGrew with her sculpture on climate change at the International Sand Art Festival at Chandrabhaga beach (top) and artistes of Srjan presenting Vande Mataram on the first evening of the Konark Festival at Konark on Tuesday.– Photo: Prafulla Das

The annual Konark Festival kicked off against the backdrop of the historic Sun Temple with the presentation of Vande Mataram by a group of young Odishi dancers, while sand artists made sculptures on the theme of climate change at the International Sand Art Festival 2015 near here on Tuesday evening.

The performers danced to the Odishi rhythm with the music set to the national song written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee underlining respect for the motherland that held the audience in thrall. The artists of Bhubaneswar-based Srjan, founded by late Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, also presented Pallavi and Ardhanarishwar, marking the opening presentations of the five-day festival of classical dances of India. The second presentation on the first evening of the festival was Manipuri dance by artistes of Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy.

While hundreds of dance lovers and tourists enjoyed the festival with an illuminated Sun Temple standing tall at about 100 metres, about 200 visitors thronged the sand art festival.

The sand art festival, an equally unique event in Odisha that is being held simultaneously with the Konark Festival, has attracted as many as 49 participants, including four artists from other countries. Among the participants are two differently-abled persons and 12 women.

The first day’s theme coincided with the ongoing climate meet in Paris. The artists fashioned sand sculptures conveying different messages related to conservation of nature to fighting climate change.

“Warm the Earth, with Love,” was the message carved on a sand sculpture created by Sue McGrew, a professional sand artist from the US. Her sculpture depicted the face of a woman symbolising Mother Earth, making the message loud and clear.

“Climate change is a very important issue. Everyone should love nature and fight climate change,” the 30-year-old artist said.

The second day’s theme will be historic monuments, while the third, fourth and fifth days will feature Swachh Bharat, Diversity and World Peace respectively, according to Sudarsan Pattnaik, well-known sand artist and brand ambassador of the sand art festival.

The remaining four days of the dance festival will host performances of different dance forms , including Sattriya, Odishi, Kuchipudi, Bharatanatyam and Kathak.

Special Puja numbers of periodicals giving boost to literature in Odisha

• PRAFULLA DAS

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Durga Puja gives a boost to Odia literature every year and adds thousands of pages of printed words published in a month. When people celebrate Puja, it’s also time for publication and sale of the Puja numbers of the literary periodicals thriving in the State.

At least 79 special Puja numbers of different literary periodicals are already available in the market. A few more that faced delay in publication are about to hit the stalls soon. Contrary to the notion that print media is on the wane after the growth of television and social media, the number of literary periodicals in Odisha, particularly the Puja numbers, is increasing every year.

Over the last five years, Puja numbers of Odia literary periodicals are crossing the 100-mark, says Keshab Chandra Muduli, a magazine stall owner at the Old Bus Stand in the city.

Old Bus Stand, which has several shops selling magazines and periodicals, is witnessing brisk business with people queuing up to buy Puja specials. Similar is the scene at the magazine shops in the city and other parts of the State.

The Puja numbers of various periodicals are published regularly unlike other months of the year primarily because most of the advertisers release advertisements for these special issues. For the poets and writers of Odisha, it’s the best time of the year. They not only spend hours discussing the good poems and short stories by fellow writers, but also about the impressive Puja numbers of different periodicals.

This year the Dussehra special of Bartika , an Odia periodical published from Dasarathpur, a block headquarters town in Jajpur district, is the voluminous of all. It has 1,616 pages containing novels, novelettes, an autobiography, plays, short stories translated from other languages, and new short stories and poems by many old masters as well as new poets and writers. The other prominent periodicals that have made their presence felt in this year’s Puja special numbers include Paschima, Amrutayana, Kadambini, Nabalipi and Aaina.

Contemporary issues such as Nabakalebara of Lord Jagannath and self-styled babas have dominated many literary creations. The Puja numbers with substantial literary works with good paper and quality graphics is indeed a reassurance to the Odia readers and patrons, says writer Kedar Mishra.

Hunger in a land of plenty

Even as a controversy rages over whether there were starvation deaths, what is clear is that the plight of the people of Kashipur in Orissa has worsened over the years. Prafulla Das reports.

KASHIPUR BLOCK of Orissa's Rayagada district is a drive of nearly 500 km from Bhubaneswar across a region of idyllic green and brimming water bodies. But the picture-postcard surroundings hide a harsh reality. Hunger.

Even as a controversy rages over the alleged starvation deaths in the area, what is clear is that the plight of the people, mostly tribals, has only worsened over the years. The Government godowns are overflowing with grain but the people have no money to buy it. They have no money because they get no work. Health care facilities too are almost non-existent.

Since June-July this year, when the monsoon struck, the people have gone without work. The tribals supplemented their meagre rice supplies with mango kernels, ragi and tamarind seeds.

Then deaths began to be reported from the region. Since the last week of July, over 20 people have died in Kashipur. While the State Government maintains food poisoning, fever, and dysentery were the causes, its critics blame it on food scarcity and the resultant starvation.

Why do the people in Kashipur eat mango kernels? The authorities claim it is part of the tribals' traditional diet. The tribals, however, are divided on the issue. While a section says it is a traditional food source, another says the food shortage forces people to boil mango kernels and drink the soup.

The District Collector of Rayagada, Mr. Bishnupada Sethi, maintains no one has died of starvation in Kashipur. ``By no stretch of imagination can these deaths be called starvation deaths.''

Of the 21 deaths that took place between July 27 and August 28, Mr. Sethi claims the first of the seven deaths in Panasguda village were due to food poisoning and the four deaths in Bilamal village were due to consumption of poisonous mushrooms. Four deaths in Pitajodi village were also due to food poisoning, and six in Badamaribhatta, Tikri-Jhadia, Upar Jhiri and Tala Jhiri villages were due to various diseases, he says.

Asked if people would eat mango kernels if they had enough food, Mr. Sethi says this was being consumed by the people in other parts of Rayagada and the neighbouring districts as well. About 64,000 of the one lakh-odd people of Kashipur were covered under various social security schemes, and food-for-work programmes had started in as many as 65 villages, claims Mr. Sethi, adding that there was no question of anyone dying of starvation in his district.

The Chief Minister, Mr. Naveen Patnaik, who visited Kashipur a few days ago, says that there was no shortage of food in the area and that PDS rice was readily available. He said that those who died in the region had collected their quota of PDS rice.

Maintaining that the deaths were due to food poisoning and diseases, Mr. Patnaik says the charges of starvation deaths were politically motivated. ``Truth will always come out,'' he says.

A medical team from the MKCG Medical College and Hospital in Berhampur, which visited Kashipur and investigated about 15 deaths, also concluded that the deaths were due to food poisoning, according to the State Government.

But the fact remains that Kashipur has only grown poorer over the years. Out of the 31,321 households in the block, the number of families living below the poverty line has increased from 15,662 in 1992 to 24,482 in 1997. The State Government has so far not been to issue BPL ration cards to the 8,000-odd families added to the BPL list in 1997. This is because the State-level list of 1997 is yet to be given a final shape.

It is said the authorities are delaying the implementation of the list due to shortage of funds. The State Government is already spending over Rs. 53 crores a year towards subsidy in providing BPL rice at a cheaper rate to the people in the tribal-dominated areas of the State.

But food insecurity looms. And the tribals of Kashipur, with little work in hand, are increasingly getting vulnerable. Their rugged terrain together with the near total absence of irrigation in the district have made the going worse.

The scantily-clad, ill-fed children scampering around the tiny hamlets are proof that little has changed for Kashipur's tribals though there has been a lot of hue and cry over their plight. Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister visited Kashipur in 1987 after reports of alleged starvation deaths in the area. His visit had led to the launch of the Orissa Tribal Development Project in Kashipur in 1988. Though a sum of Rs. 60 crores was spent, no perceptible improvement is visible.

The State Special Relief Commissioner (SRC), Mr. Hrushikesh Panda, says the project has failed to achieve its primary objective of increasing the income level of the people, particularly the tribals. The project, implemented during 1988- 97, had created a large number of contractors who made easy money with the help of some dishonest bureaucrats and engineers.

In many cases, it was found that the works had been executed without a tender and the contractors had been hand-picked by the project authorities. There was not a single tribal among the contractors. Only recently has the State Government asked the Vigilance Department to investigate the matter.

As charges and counter charges fly on the question of starvation deaths, the truth lies somewhere in between. Critics of the Government insist the tribals eat mango kernels out of compulsion. Others feel it is more a part of their traditional eating habits, developed over decades to cope with persistent food scarcities. Now the State Revenue Minister, Mr. Biswabhushan Harichandan, has announced that the tribals can exchange mango kernels for rice.

Mr. Panda says ``the eating of mango kernels is not the issue, because they are eaten by almost all families in this area.'' He says hygiene is poor in the Tribal hamlets and that appears to be the most likely reason for infection/food poisoning.

Significantly, the Congress leader and Rayagada Zilla Parishad president, Mr. Bijay Gamang, also feels that the recent deaths have nothing to do with starvation. ``The deaths may have occurred due to contamination of food.''

The tribals form 65 per cent of Kashipur's one lakh-odd population. Another 20 per cent are Scheduled Castes. There are quite a few rich households in Kashipur, but none of them are tribals. Many Government posts lie vacant. The block was without a BDO for five months. Many posts of doctors and health workers were vacant for long and were being filled up only now.

No one seems to have been able to grasp Kashipur's myriad problems in totality as yet. In the case of the Government, the policies have been more or less the same for the past few decades. Worse, the welfare programmes have been hampered by irregularities in their implementation.The less said about the politicians the better. Congressmen had always denied starvation deaths in the State in the past. They are now claiming that the recent deaths in Kashipur were due to starvation. Maybe those in the power now too are behaving like those in power in the past.

Some of the voluntary agencies, right now trying to generate funds in the name of the hapless tribals by attracting international donor agencies, too may take it easy once the money starts flowing in and the heat dies down. How the money is spent will largely remain under wraps.

Accountability is the key to solving Kashipur's woes. The one thing that could save Kashipur is that the Government officers posted in the area should be made answerable to the people and there should be social audit of the Government's work at regular intervals. For, why should anyone in the country go hungry?

``We will leave no stone unturned to solve the problems of the poor tribals,'' says Mr. Patnaik. Let us hope the promises will be kept this time at least.

(This was published in The Hindu on Sunday, September 09, 2001)

A success story written by diverting water

• PRAFULLA DAS

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  Maheswar Pujari working in his fields.- Photos: Special Arrangement & Prafulla Das
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  Dandapani Raita working in his fields.- Photos: Special Arrangement & Prafulla Das

How diversion-based irrigation system changed the lives of this Odisha village?

The residents of this tiny village tucked into the forested hills of the Eastern Ghats range in R. Udayagiri Block of tribal-dominated Gajapati district are a happy lot.

Even as the sceptre of drought looms large over several regions of the State, they are able to irrigate their land on the hill slopes by using water from the perennial streams originating from the hill adjacent to their hamlet.

For decades together, the 37 tribal families of Sinising used to grow maize and ragi totally dependent upon rainfall. But their lives have changed for the better since water from the perennial hill stream originating in the upper slopes has been brought to their land through the diversion-based irrigation system (DBIS).

Seventy-two-year-old Maheswar Pujari of Sinising has not only been able to grow different crops in his fields since the initiative was implemented in their village by voluntary organisation Institute of Social Action and Research Activities (ISARA) three years ago with support from Mennonite Central Committee, a development agency. Pujari has also added more cultivable area by levelling his land that was lying unused on the hill slopes. Apart from maize and ragi, he now grows paddy, groundnut, turmeric, sweet potato, brinjal, beans, cauliflower and many other vegetables.

All families of Sinising are now cultivating their own land throughout the year and also selling their excess produce in the local markets to meet their other expenses. The smile of their faces tell a story of success and achievement because they contributed the labour for the construction of the tank at the hill where water from the stream is collected and laying the pipelines that brings water to their village.

Similar is the contentment among the residents of Anagha, a hamlet with 40 tribal families located a few kilometres away. Water from the perennial stream in Bhaliabada hill is flowing into the fields surrounding their hamlet.

“The use of water from the hill stream has changed our lives,” says Dandapani Raita of Anagha. He along with many fellow villagers is engaged in cultivating a variety of crops.

Other villages in R. Udayagiri Block where similar structures have been put up and hundreds of acres are being irrigated with the water from the perennial streams are Abarsing, Patrabasa, Kharipada, Munigadiha and Dambadiha. Earlier, water from the perennial streams was going waste by flowing in other directions and sinking into the ground. That’s not all. Rabindranath Patra of ISARA and members of his team have already identified more villages in the area to replicate DBIS. But the same could be replicated in a big way if the State government takes note of the venture to ensure that the tribals take to multi-crop farming instead of migrating to far off places to work as daily wage labourers.

Scholar, politician par excellence

• PRAFULLA DAS

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Janaki Ballav Patnaik passed away at Tirupati on Tuesday on the occasion of Akshaya Tritiya, a very important festival linked to Jagannath culture and the farmers of Odisha.

Mr. Patnaik, who was three-time Chief Minister of the State, was known for his political skill, organising capacity and statesmanship. Mr. Patnaik, who passed away at the age of 89, dominated Odisha politics for more than three decades beginning from the Seventies till he went on to become the Governor of Assam in 2009.

Educationally and otherwise, Mr. Patnaik was the most qualified Chief Minister Odisha had so far. He was a Sanskrit scholar who got his post-graduate degree from Banaras Hindu University in 1949. Even during his undergraduate days in Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, Mr. Patnaik became famous by unfurling the national tri-colour by bringing down the Union Jack from his hostel building. He started his career as a journalist with the erstwhile English daily The Eastern Times and Odia daily Prajatantra soon after completing his studies, and went on to become the Editor of both the newspapers by 1953.

Mr. Patnaik, who was the son of a primary school teacher, came from a very humble background. After achieving success as an Editor, he took to active politics in 1967 when he unsuccessfully contested the Assembly elections as an Independent candidate. Once out of job and after suffering electoral defeat, Mr. Patnaik started a monthly cultural magazine called Paurusha which became very successful within two years.

When the Congress faced a split at the national level in 1969 and the then Congress strongman Biju Patnaik floated his own party Utkal Congress in Odisha, the Congress became short of leaders. It was then that J. B. Patnaik joined the Congress party, then led by Jagjivan Ram. Popularly known as J.B., Mr. Patnaik went on to become a Lok Sabha Member from Cuttack in 1971 and joined the Union Ministry of Indira Gandhi in 1973 as a Deputy Minister.

During the Emergency, he became very close to Sanjay Gandhi and was promoted as a Minister of State of Defence. Mr. Patnaik lost the 1977 general elections as most of the Congress candidates, including Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. But when the second split in the Congress party took place in 1978, he became the sole torchbearer of Congress (I) in Odisha. When Mrs. Gandhi returned to power in 1980, Mr. Patnaik was able to take with him 20 Lok Sabha MPs out of 21 seats in Odisha to become a Cabinet Minister at the Centre.

Six months later when the Assembly elections were held in Odisha, the Congress secured two-third majority and he returned as Chief Minister of the State. Under his leadership the Congress won the next Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Odisha comfortably. He continued as Chief Minister for the second term and continued till 1989 when the Congress lost the Lok Sabha elections. He again led the Congress party in Odisha when P. V. Narasimha Rao was at the helm of Congress at the national level.

He brought back Congress to power in 1995 by dethroning Biju Patnaik and became Chief Minister for the third time. Mr. Patnaik was a great literary personality who won both Kendriya Sahitya Akademi and Odisha Sahitya Akademi award for his contributions.

He was a rare politician with so much of versatility from journalism to literature and administration.

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Hill of resistance

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At the annual Niyam Raja Parab, Dongria Kondhs and other tribal people renew their pledge to carry on the fight against bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri hill. By PRAFULLA DAS in Niyamgiri

ANYONE who reaches the top of the Niyamgiri hill in Odisha after several hours of trekking to be part of the annual Niyam Raja Parab celebrated there by thousands of Dongria Kondh (also known as Dangaria Kandha) tribal people can easily sense the strength of their uprising.

All the pain caused by the trek vanishes instantaneously upon seeing the huge plateau on the hilltop resonating to chants such as “Paaen, Pawan, Jharan, Dangar, Sabu Nijara” (Water, air, streams, hills, slopes, are all ours) accompanied by rhythmic drumbeats and dancing by the Dongrias before their Niyam Raja, the presiding deity of Niyamgiri forests.

The Dongria Kondhs living in this bauxite-rich hill range derive their strength from their innate simplicity and love for nature. This is reflected in their traditional wear and their ability to walk miles in the hilly terrain barefoot.

Millions of tonnes of bauxite lies beneath the Niyamgiri plateau, which is situated at an altitude of nearly 5,000 feet (1,500 metres). As many as 112 villages are strewn across the slopes of the range, spread over the districts of Kalahandi and Rayagada in the south-western part of the State.

Their opposition to mining in the Niyamgiri range for bauxite has got a shot in the arm in recent years with the age-old traditional cultural festival turning into a show of unity by the tribal people and other forest dwellers.

The Niyam Raja Parab, which used to be a low-key affair in the past, now attracts thousands of tribal people living in the hill range. The uprising started in 2003 against the proposal by Vedanta Resources plc to source bauxite for its alumina refinery, situated at the foothills of Niyamgiri.

The three-day Parab begins with hundreds of Dongria men and women draped in their traditional attire assembling on the plateau to sing and dance, sip salap (their indigenous brew), eat together, spend the night under the star-studded sky and worship and pray to Niyam Raja to protect them.

The festival culminates with a few animal sacrifices before Niyam Raja. The tribal people also sacrifice a buffalo to the deity once in three years. This did not happen this time as it was done only last year.

This year’s Parab, however, was different from the preceding ones. At the end of the festival on February 22, hundreds of tribal people joined a large group of anti-displacement activists from different parts of Odisha and burnt copies of the controversial Ordinance relating to the amendments in the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, recently promulgated by the Narendra Modi government.

The screening of a documentary film titled “The Referendum”, produced by Samadrusti Television, was also a major highlight of the festival. The documentary contained video recordings of the gram sabha proceedings in which the Dongrias vented their anger against the mining proposal in Niyamgiri in their mother tongue Kui. The tribal people relived their experiences after watching the documentary with rapt attention.

Spearheading the agitation is the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti (NSS), an association of the tribal people who live in the villages in the hill range. The Samiti came into being after London-based Vedanta signed its first memorandum of understanding with the government of Odisha to establish a one million tonne per annum (mtpa) capacity alumina refinery at Lanjigarh.

In fact, the Dongria Kondhs did not initially realise the gravity of the situation when Vedanta started felling trees for laying roads to the hilltop. A clear picture only emerged when Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik laid the foundation stone for the proposed alumina refinery before the 2004 Assembly elections when environmental clearance for the project had not yet been obtained.

Soon, the agitation grew in strength after some tribal activists leading the rebellion were arrested by the police on false charges, while the Naveen Patnaik government went on defending the company’s refinery, claiming that the company had not violated any environmental laws. Progressive commissioning of the refinery started in 2007.

The State government-owned Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) and Vedanta had formed a joint venture company to extract bauxite for the refinery from Niyamgiri. While Vedanta has a 64 per cent stake in the venture, the OMC owns the remaining 26 per cent stake.

Subsequently, the company made plans for a phase-wise expansion of the refinery from one to six mtpa. Given that scenario, had the mining lease been granted, the 72 million tonne bauxite reserves in Niyamgiri would have lasted barely four years.

The N.C. Saxena Committee and the Usha Ramanathan Committee appointed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) appointed by the Supreme Court had all documented the blatant statutory violations on the part of Vedanta. It was pointed out that the company had commenced construction work for the expansion of its refinery even before obtaining clearances from the MoEF.

Various other instances of violation and non-implementation of the Forest Rights Act, the Forest (Conservation) Act, the Environmental Protection Act, the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act and ancillary laws impelled the Saxena Committee to observe in 2010 that the proposed expansion was “an expression of the contempt with which this company treats the laws of the land”. The CEC had made similar findings in its reports in 2005 and 2007, opposing the project.

However, the Supreme Court, ignoring the CEC’s recommendations, allowed Sterlite Industries (India) Limited, at present known as Sesa Sterlite Limited (a Vedanta subsidiary), to undertake mining in Niyamgiri in 2008. Later, in 2010, the Stage-II environment clearance given to Vedanta was rejected by the MoEF in the light of the findings and recommendations of the Saxena Committee. The rejection order was challenged by the OMC in the Supreme Court.

The apex court, on April 18, 2013, while recognising the rights of the Dongrias to worship their Niyam Raja, directed the Odisha government to convene gram sabhas in the affected villages to decide whether mining bauxite in Niyamgiri would affect their religious and cultural rights in any way. It directed that if the villagers decided that such rights would be affected, those rights must be preserved and protected.

What followed then made history as India’s first environmental referendum. The Dongrias and other villagers asserted their community rights over the entire Niyamgiri range.

“We worship and depend on the Niyamgiri for our existence,” said Lada Sikaka, president of the NSS. That was how the tribal people won the first major battle. But at the Parab this year, they vowed to strongly oppose any move by the Modi government to hand over Niyamgiri to Sterlite in the years to come.

Although the MoEF had made it clear that there would be no mining in Niyamgiri after the gram sabhas conducted in the 12 villages in the hills vehemently opposed the joint move, the tribal people now fear that the Modi government may take a pro-corporate stand by reviewing the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government’s decision on the issue.

In case the Modi government begins the process for handing over Niyamgiri to Vedanta, NSS leaders are prepared to approach the apex court, which had ordered the referendum.

The NSS is also thinking of approaching the court to seek the dismantling of the controversial alumina refinery being run by Sterlite since it adversely affects the ecology and causes severe health hazards for people living in the vicinity. The people also feel insecure because of the very presence of the refinery so close to their villages.

In the wake of their uprising, the peace-loving Dongrias have been living under threat of police violence as the police have already arrested a few tribal people, accusing them of having Maoist links. Lada Sikaka too was not spared by the police. He was taken into custody in August 2010 and physically tortured for four days before he was let off after they took his signature on a piece of blank paper.

In one such recent incident, Haribandhu Kadraka, an activist of the Lok Sangram Manch that supports the cause of the Dongrias, was accused of having links with left-wing extremists and was arrested by the Rayagada police on October 20, 2014.

After Kadraka was arrested, a large number of villagers staged a demonstration outside the Muniguda police station seeking his release. Three days after the protest, the inspector in-charge of the police station was transferred. Kadraka, however, continues to be behind bars.

At a time when combing operations for extremists are being carried out in the region, the helpless Dongrias are finding themselves sandwiched between the police on one side and the so-called Maoists on the other. This has forced the Dongrias to oppose even the laying of pucca roads to their hamlets. They fear that the construction of such roads will not only facilitate the police forces to terrorise them but also open the doors to bauxite miners.

All that they expect from the government is the procurement of the forest produce they grow or collect during the different harvesting seasons. “We are self-sufficient in foodgrains, which we grow on the hills in different months of the year. All we need is a little cash to meet our other needs and this can happen if the government agencies can procure our surplus produce such as pineapple, jackfruit, turmeric, neem and mangoes,” said Lada Sikaka.

With innocence writ large on his face, Sikaka wondered about the sudden eagerness of the government to ensure “development” of the Dongrias. “Where was the government in the past till Vedanta started eyeing our heavenly habitat? How can it take away our hills from us? Had it created these hills? These hills are ours. The soil is ours and it belongs to us, the people, and not the government.”

Sikaka wonders whether any government, by any model of development, can ensure what Niyamgiri has provided the Dongrias. “Niyamgiri has remained our lone source of life, livelihood and happiness. No government or company can ever replace it,” said Sikaka, adding that the Dongrias would never allow mining in the hill range.