'Kill us before you take our land', say Orissa villagers

At the National Conclave – Towards A People's Alliance, Dalit communities from as many as seven Orissa villages renewed their vow to fight any move to displace them from their homes and land.

The villagers expressed their determination to fight till the end any attempt to dislocate them from their territory which is currently under threat by plans from major South Korean company POSCO to set up a steel plant and port.

The proposed development will disrupt livelihoods and traditional lifestyles of scores of Dalit groups like the Behra community that collect and deliver milk and marginal farmers. The villagers of the coastal district of Jagatsinghpura are in no mood to leave the land they have been ploughing for generations.

"We will never give up our land for a project that will displace us, destroy our livelihoods and the environment," said Nrusingh Behera of Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti, a local group resisting the forcible land acquisition.

The four-day long National Conclave, organised by ActionAid, demanded an immediate halt to displacement of indigenous communities.

Villagers fear the steel plant will wipe out a bustling agrarian and fishing economy where residents grow two paddy crops a year and women often supplement income with bamboo cane and livestock rearing.

POSCO, one of the world's biggest steel makers, signed a deal with the Orissa government in June 2005 to launch the plant near the port town of Paradeep in Jagatsinghpur district by 2016. Since then, determined local opposition has stalled any major progress on the project.

The deal promises to bring a total of 5,20,000 million rupees, the highest ever foreign direct investment in the country and requires as much as 4,004 acres of land to be acquired at the project site.

"The state killed 13 tribals in Kalinganagar to take their land for a Tata project and it will have to kill 1,300 people to take our land," stated Basudeo Behra, a farmer and leader of the Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti.

In Kalinganagar, police fired at indigenous people in January 2006, killing over a dozen. The tribal groups were protesting the construction of a boundary wall of a Tata steel plant.

"Such is the resistance from people that police don't dare enter our villages. All our villages have barricades and they are guarded round the clock," said Basudeo.

"But the villagers are living under the shadow of fear. We can't move out freely," he conceded.

UNDP says that in Orissa perhaps 100,000 have been displaced since independence and about two million because of industrial development projects.

"POSCO will be a poor alternative for farmers who will turn into labourers in their own fields", confessed Basudeo.

He revealed that the government had defied all regulations while holding a mandatory public hearing in April to seek villager's opinion about the plant. Residents were not properly alerted about the hearing which was also held too far from their villages for many of them to attend.

Madhumita Ray , an ActionAid campaigner from Orissa, said protesters would file a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the manner in which the public hearing was carried out.

The Samiti, which has about 15,000 members, has the support of a further 15,000 fisher folk. The fishing community fears that the port POSCO plans to set up at the mouth of Jatadhari river would hit their livelihood and income also.

"This will also destroy the ecology of the area famous for Olive Ridley turtles," Madhumita pointed out.