Dantewada, Chhattisgarh: It took five days for Gantala Baby and people from the 60 families in her small village in mineral-rich southern Chhattisgarh to cross the Dandakaranya forests and arrive at their destination, Khammam in Andhra Pradesh. Several people died during the 260km trek through unfriendly terrain, and Baby’s son Aadavi Ramudu was born en route.
That was in 2006. Baby, now all of 18, is still struggling to make ends meet at Charla in Khammam. She is among at least 150,000 tribals who have been forced to leave home in Chhattisgarh. Some have moved to Andhra Pradesh. Others live in camps run by the Salwa Judum, a state-backed militia formed around three years ago to fight Maoists (or Naxalites) in the region.
After criticism from several entities, including human rights organizations and India’s top court, the Chhattisgarh government, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) one, is disbanding Salwa Judum, which is translated as peace force by some people and cleansing water by others.
Mahendra Karma, a Congress legislator from Dantewada who played a role in the creation of Salwa Judum, announced recently that it will soon cease to exist. Both the Congress and the BJP supported Salwa Judum, which essentially functioned as the local government’s deterrent against the growing influence of the Maoists.
Formed in 2005—the result of a secret deal between the state and a giant conglomerate that wanted to set up a steel plant at a cost of Rs10,000 crore or roughly $2.3 billion, according to a popular rumour prevailing among the mostly illiterate tribals in southern Chhattisgarh—Salwa Judum sought to conscript villagers, moved entire villages to what were essentially detention camps so as to cut the support base for Maoists, and engaged in pitched battles with the insurgents.
Over three years, the Maoists and Salwa Judum had an equal hand in displacing tribals such as Baby from their homes and destroying local economies.
Many of these tribals now live in camps in Chhattisgarh or in settlements in Andhra Pradesh. The state government is trying to lure them back with the promise of free forest land and elections are due in November.
That, and the disbanding of Salwa Judum could see some tribals returning to the state, although the issues that resulted in the growing influence of Maoists in the region—a model of industrialization that doesn’t factor in the tribals as stakeholders and government-sponsored inward migration where people from other northern states have been brought in, settled, and often given free land—are yet to be addressed.
Large-scale displacement
Nobody knows how many people have abandoned their homes and villages in the three years Salwa Judum has fought the Maoists.
“Displacement is a big challenge for us. Five out of the 11 development blocks in Dantewada and Bijapur districts are severely affected,” says a local government official who asked not to be named.