 
Why are the tribals so
desperate? Because they have witnessed the trauma of being
‘displaced’ from really close quarters. Since Independence, dams and
mining industries have come to cover more than 5,00,000 hectares of
land in Koraput region alone in Orissa. The story is the same in
most other parts of this mineral-rich state. Result? Thousands of
tribal families who used to live in and around the forests (now
turned into mining sites) land up in city slums. The story gets even
gorier.
More than 100 families
living in the vicinity of the Hirakud dam—once considered to be the
‘pride of Orissa’—have attained the status of being ‘thrice
displaced’!!! First by the dam, and then by Eastern India
Collieries, and then again by the National Thermal Power
Corporation.
Lets take another
instance.
57,000 Tongas from Zambia and Zimbabwe had to make way for the
Kariba dam in late 1950s. “Everything was buried by the water and
soldiers were sent to kill our people who did not want to move,“
says Chief David Syankusule. The dam today provides electricity to
millions of city dwellers in Harare, Lusaka and beyond. But for the
Tongas the dam has spelt doom. Before it was built they had access
to clean water from the fast-flowing River Zambezi. Then they were
relocated to rockier, less fertile land, from where they had to
travel five kms to fetch water from man-made lakes. The
‘displacement’ has left a lasting impact. Even today, the Tonga
children suffer from diseases like bilahazaria and malaria, thanks
to living in such close proximity to stagnant water. “Their bodies
are sick and thin, and they are running out of blood,” laments
Syankusule.
The Tongas in Africa and the tribals in Rayagadh have problems in
common. The lives of both these communities have been dramatically
and permanently affected by changes in natural environment — their
original homeland. Both are environmental refugees.
Who are they?
The term was first coined in 1985 by Essam El-Hinnawi, an
Egyptian professor at the National Research Centre, Cairo. He
divided them into three categories:
‘Natural’ refugees: Those who have been temporarily displaced
from their habitat due to natural disasters like earthquakes,
floods, cyclones, or yes…I know what you are thinking…a tsunami!
Driven out for development: Those who have been forced to
leave their home and hearth because these have been destroyed by
man-made constructions like dams, roads, or some urban development
projects. In Indonesia almost 50,000 people became refugees so that
the roads in and around Jarkarta could be widened. 15,000 had to
abandon their homes for the sake of building a modern, state-of-the
art sewerage system in Shanghai…
Forced to migrate: Those who have migrated from the land that
they were born in because it can no longer sustain them.
Every year, in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and
every other state of India, thousands of poor farmers are forced to
push their way into crowded, unwelcoming towns and cities simply
because they cannot make a living out of their land any more. For
some, the water source — a well or a lake or even a river — has
dried up due to over use. For others, the once fertile farmlands
have turned barren due to water logging or salinisation. And for the
rest, who never owned a piece of land, but survived by grazing
animals in the village commons — those lands have been declared off
limits. They have been grabbed by the richer, more powerful farmers
in the village, or given away by the government to an industry or a
dam project or a mining plant.
There is one factor that is common among all three categories of
environmental refugees. They belong to the economically, socially,
and politically weakest and most vulnerable sections of the
population.
 Lets
take India as an example again. Adivasis or the tribals form only
eight per cent of our total population. But they make up 40 to 50
per cent of those displaced by development projects in our
country!!!
And, interestingly, this is true of even for the first category of
environmental refugees — the ones evicted due to natural calamities.
The number of people killed or rendered homeless due to natural
calamities are far higher in the low and middle-income countries as
compared to the high income nations. This is because of a number of
factors. In the developing countries |
