Where development spells misery

AS ONE of the most ambitious blueprints for energy and industrial development takes shape in Singrauli, the inhabitants of the region are sinking deeper into misery for they know a new project always means another displacement for them.

In 1960, when the Rihand dam was built on the Son river, about 200,000 people, mostly tribals, were ousted forcibly. They were displaced again following the discovery of coal deposits in the area and the beginning of open-pit mining. Their third displacement took place in the 1970s, when proximity to the Rihand reservoir and coal mines prompted the Centre to build a series of coal-fired, water-cooled super thermal generating plants in the area.

By the mid-1980s, about 200,000 area inhabitants had been displaced three times with little or no compensation. At least 150,000 people were displaced when 2,500 ha were acquired for the Singrauli Super Thermal Power Station (SSTPS) in 1982 and for the Vindhyachal Super Thermal Station in 1989. Even now, local residents are fearful of being displaced should there be an expansion of open-cast coal mines.

Environment Defence Fund, a US-based non-governmental organisation, surveyed the environmental and social consequences of development projects in Singrauli and condemned in its report the "complete negligence of... the human environmental impacts on the indigenous population... and of compensation and rehabilitation."

Bank funds
Since 1977, the World Bank has contributed $850 million for development activities in Singrauli: First thermal power project, $150 million; Second thermal power project, $100 million; Dudhichula coal project, $151 million, and Singrauli-Delhi transmission line, $250 million.

NTPC officials insist they have made every effort to rehabilitate the oustees, including making available contract jobs to them and providing them vocational training. NTPC has employed about 1,000 oustees and SSTPS chief personnel manager A C Chaturvedi says about 400 more displaced persons have been given jobs.

But unemployment runs at about 25 per cent in the resettlement colonies. Many oustees work on short-term contract jobs and are exploited by the contractors. Gulab, an oustee working as an attendant in the field hostel for 10 years, complains he has not received any increment or other benefits. Many oustees point out they are not NTPC employees, but "employees of NTPC contractors".

The resettlement colonies, too, are in miserable shape. Only when the bank put its foot down were roads built in the oustee colonies of Chilkatand and Nimiatand. "In a sense," says Bhola, an oustee, "we are living in a jail. Nimiatand and Chilkatand are surrounded by the railway station, the NTPC plant, its township and the Kharia coal mines. As soon as the sun sets, the NTPC guards close the gate, which snaps our link with the world. Imagine our plight should someone fall ill during the night and has to be taken to the (NTPC) hospital."

Ram Bulare, another oustee, complains, "Regular blasting in the Kharia coal mines have damaged the walls of the houses in Chilkatand and Nimiatand." Many of the houses are close to ash ponds and marshlands and prone to both periodic flooding and industrial pollution. For example, Jawahar Nagar is situated close to the SSTPS ash dyke but not a single medical van has visited the village in one year, its residents say. Basic amenities such as public lavatories, a sewage system, schools and health care are inadequate, they add.

But R V Shahi, director of operations at NTPC, responds, "We do not have municipal authority. In one village, for instance, although we laid electricity lines, the state electricity board did not bother to supply power."

Meanwhile, Banvasi Sewa Ashram, a voluntary association in Singrauli, petitioned the Supreme Court for redress for the Rihand oustees. In its 1991 ruling, the court ordered NTPC to give a maximum of Rs 750 every month to every landless oustee for the next 10 years, or until their rights were determined.

With criticism mounting, NTPC was forced in 1988 to commission a comprehensive socio-economic and environmental study by Electricite de France International. The study, released in July 1991, severely indicted NTPC for its R&R programme, but nothing was done until the bank threatened to withdraw funding, whereupon NTPC promptly revised its R&R plans to include a land-for-land option.

Says Shahi, "A detailed rehabilitation action plan was drawn up by us and approved by the bank, at both Washington and Singrauli." The new package identifies every person who had been deriving income directly or indirectly from submerged land as a project-affected person and they will be allowed to select their own compensatory land. All working members of a displaced family will be provided vocational training and each project-affected person will be entitled to relief.

But these attempts at socio-economic development have not had a significant impact on the oustees. Though Shahi insists "living standards have definitely improved with so much economic activity in the area", the oustees deny this. Says Baiga Chaithur, "Earlier, I had some land on which I raised crops. I got this plot and Rs 4,000 as compensation for my land. No one in the family was given a job. Now we are without any means of livelihood except making pattals (plates made of leaves)."

SHACHINDRA