Khedu Ram Shah is facing the prospect of losing his home and having his land appropriated for a big-ticket project for the third time in his life. Having been in the same situation in the past is not shielding him from despair about the future.
hreat on shelter: (above) Women in Gharaswal village, the site of Essar Power’s proposed 1,200MW plant. (Photograph by Harikrishna Katragadda/ MINT)
“We don’t know where to go or do what,” says Shah, about 60 years old, whose 2 acres of land in Siddhi Khurta is part of the site where Reliance Power Ltd’s so-called ultra-mega Sasan power project is being built.
Siddhi Khurta is a tiny village in the Singrauli region that straddles eastern Madhya Pradesh and southern Uttar Pradesh. The area that falls on the Uttar Pradesh side is already one of India’s largest energy hubs, meeting about 10%, or 10,000MW, of the country’s power needs.
Now, drawn by ample water and a chain of coal-rich hills, companies such as Reliance Power Ltd, a part of the Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (R-Adag), Essar Power Ltd, Jaiprakash Power Ventures Ltd and Hindalco Industries Ltd are flocking to set up electricity plants on the Madhya Pradesh side.
An estimated Rs45,000 crore will be invested to generate more than 11,000MW of power in the next few years in Singrauli, promising to transform the face of the district, state authorities say. The Reliance project alone will bring Rs20,000 crore and generate 4,000MW of electricity.
“Singrauli will turn into Singapore,” Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had said recently.
Khedu Ram Shah (centre) and son Krishna (to his right) inside their house in Siddhi Khurta village, the proposed 4,000MW project site for Reliance Power. Villagers say the local administration has refused to discuss a rehabilitation package. (Photograph by Harikrishna Katragadda/ MINT)
For farmers such as Shah, and his family of 15, there is only the dread of being displaced by the government’s use of a national land acquisition law that can evict citizens at will and take over their lands, an issue that’s shadowing industrial projects across the country.
Multiple displacements
In the past decades, more than 100,000 people in Singrauli have been displaced by the 91m-high Rihand dam, seven big and small power plants and a dozen coal mines.
Shah lost his first home and 10 acres of ancestral farm land to the Rihand hydel power project that came up in the early 1960s. About 123 villages were affected and thousands of people uprooted by the project. Litigation continues to this day over alleged government failure to keep promises of jobs and compensation.
Shah was promised land near a forest in return, but that plot did not have a patta, or a title deed, he says. When hope of ever receiving the promised land faded, Shah and his four brothers bought five acres with their own savings in a village 20km from here.