The Agony and Ecstacy of having been in Bastar !

The Agony and Ecstacy of having been in Bastar ....

The agony surfaced in the most brutal of manners on our TV screens on 25/26^th of May’13. Not many believed that this was actually happening. Not many, even today, after three days of relentless media campaign to highlight some or the other aspect of the mayhem at Dharba valley, are confident of this huge aberration of our democratic lives being forgotten like many sensational news items. For, in this carnage lies the serious threat of the ‘comfort zones’ of all of us citizens, individuals, corporates, government and countless others including the radicals being permanently disturbed. In June 2005 when I went as the Chief Resident Executive of Tata Steel to Chhattisgarh, I was happy and yet disturbed.

Happy, because here was a chance to replicate what the great Jamsetji Tata had done, with a sense of adventure thrown in.  Not that I would have done something as great as him alone, or that I was stepping into his shoes, but the fact that the ‘wonderful world’ promised by massive industrialisation of the belt would be achieved with some miniscule yet important effort by me, and perhaps recognised at a much later date in our future.

 I was immediately disturbed at the very officious and ‘company like approach’ of our organisation to the whole Project. In two years time I had not only quit the Chhattisgarh Project, but also a great organisation like Tata Steel , thoroughly disheartened and disappointed. You do not change the lives of the poor people of this country without feeling for them or doing your business with only the profit motive as the driving force of all businesses. At least that is what Jamsetji Tata had in his mind .......

Without going further into details and ifs and buts of that two/three year period of 2005- 2008, I can only regret that we couldn’t do much to give confidence to the common man in Bastar.  No social Projects, ( Hospitals, Schools, or even up gradation of the existing ones), no action on the communication front, and no clear cut commitments to the Govt and people who mattered resulted in the organisation getting embroiled in PILs and useless wranglings -the sole fight for the Iron ore tracts of Dantewada and Kanker seemingly hogging all attention and importance. Admittedly, Iron ore is important and has to be extracted for the success of the Steel Projects, just like seven tons of water required for every ton of steel. But if we already know that the Adivasis and others who live on those tracts and mountains are nearly absolutely illiterate, with their own family systems which have not been exposed to the modern world we needed to handle the situation with kid gloves. Not only us but the entire polity and businesses, government, the press, competitors and collaborators and most importantly, including those restless youths who thought and even now think that matters can be resolved by the barrel of the gun, has been really un concerned to the plight that these unfortunate Adivasis and many poor people like them in that area face. The Adivasis have been used by all and sundry. To give them a few lakhs per acre and expect them to part with their only asset and hope, without a guarantee of a better life, is very unfair. All of us have to think out a way to get them on a better plane of lives and not become trouble mongers when the money finishes and they hang around their erstwhile abodes indulging in unlawful and wrong activities. We already have examples of the young spoilt scions of the Haryana farmers who sold their lands and now having nothing to do, money gone,  just hang around and create problems for our ‘civil society’. Same is the case in NOIDA and many other areas where projects have taken off. The Bastar Adivasi doesn’t even ask for much and is not greedy. He would like to live his peaceful life in a better way, maybe get to work in a Cooperative farm, a animal husbandry project or some other rural economy based project where his simpe lifestyle is bettered and he gets a sense of belonging to the new winds of change brought about by the above industrialisation. The Corporates wanting to set up their Plants and Projects have to take a major chunk of this burden and responsibility on themselves. They have to hold the immense value of the raw material wealth ‘in trust’ for the poor and un provided for mass of the people. This Gandhian approach has to be accepted by all wanting to set up their businesses in such areas without exceptions or amendments.

As the soil parches up the spilt blood on the roads of Bastar, I bow my head in respect to the people who lost their lives, irrespective of their politics, for this is not how anyone, including  a political being has to go from this world. I remember the simple atmosphere of Chhattisgarh, its simple people and the very ‘Indian ethos’ that no one can miss there. My tributes ....to those who lost their lives..