- Introduction
70% per cent of Chhattisgarh’s population lives in rural areas and 45% are below the poverty line. With 35% of its geographical area under cultivation, agriculture is the mainstay of its economy. Almost 80% of the working population is dependent on agro-based livelihood, but the irrigated area in the state is only 16% of the total area, according to government figures.
Forests, rivers, and fertile farmland have been taken over by flourishing industries backed by an unjust state. For several years, thousands have been displaced despite violent activism by the oppressed. Rivers have been bought and diverted leaving hundreds of villages thirsty and acres of farmland parched. Tribal people, who have roamed these mineral-rich forests for centuries, have been forced to seek employment and adapt to a different way of life as industries continue to encroach upon their lifestyle. Protected forest land has been sold to greedy miners who exploit its riches without considering the disastrous effect of industrialisation on the flora and fauna.
The state has been the first in the country to go to the extent of selling rivers such as the Sheonath and Kelo to a private owner who will use it to supply water to industries. This is just the beginning. Industrialists are lining up to pour money into Chhattisgarh in return for extracting a great deal more from it and, in the absence of just legislation and regulation, destroying both its people and the environment.
- Data/ Information Collected and Analysis
Impact of Industrialisation:
- Land Holding Pattern
On the analysis of two years’ data from the respondents before the advent of the industrial drive, the respondents cultivated almost 50% of the land they owned. It means they still had 50% of the land uncultivated. They sold 88.34% of the uncultivated land and 8.76% sold part of their cultivated areas.
Table 2: Average Land Holding Pattern Before and After Industrialisation
- Income
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Agriculture: Average income from agriculture was before industrialisation was Rs 31,974 which increased by 32.46% and the resultant average income after industrialisation became Rs 47,338. This has helped the villagers in two ways. Firstly, the uncultivated land did not give any return to their owner. Secondly, the income they received from the sales of the land also gave them the opportunity to employ extra resources for the cultivated land and to increase their agricultural income.
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Job Salary: Average income from job salary before industrialisation was Rs 14,429 which increased by 24.46% and the resultant average income after industrialisation became Rs 19,100. This is due to the construction of the industry and increased scope for the employment of the local labour force mainly for manual work such as monet, mechanics, drivers and cooks.
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Others (Small scale entrepreneurship (SSE)): The average income from SSEs has increased from Rs 9,750 by 25% to Rs 13,000 after industrialisation. This is due to the increased spendable income with the villagers after the sales of land.
Table 3: Average Income Level Before and After Industrialisation
- Expenditure
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Agriculture: The average expenditure on agriculture has increased from Rs 1,702 by 294% to Rs 6,720. This is due to the fact that the respondents have sold land and the money is now utilised for the cultivation of the land available with them.
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Food Consumption: This is the main expenditure head for any household. Same is the case here. The average expenditure before was Rs 17,484 which increased by 31.88% to Rs 25,668 after the industrialisation drive. Due to the increase in income people are now changing their food consumption pattern.
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Education: Before industrialisation the children went to the nearby Government School and the expenses related to education were confined to the payment of exam fees only i.e. Rs 30/ paper with 6 papers per class twice a year along with cost of notebooks, accessories because books were distributed at the school free of cost. Before industrialisation the average expenditure on education was Rs 814 which increased by 60.14% to Rs 2,044. This increase is due to the fact that many of the respondents are sending their children now to private schools.
Table 4: Number of School Going Children
The number of students going to Government Schools was 57 before industrialisation but it reduced to 41 and the other 16 are now going to a private school for their studies.
Table 5: Average Expenditure Pattern Before and After Industrialisation
- Food Availability:
Before industrialisation on an average number of months the respondents could afford buying food was 8 months by using both their BPL cards and income from different sources. But after industrialisation they can afford 12 months of food availability without much effort. This is because they now have more money in their hands than before and as such their purchasing power as well as bargaining power has increased.
Table 6: Food Availability
- Assets Position:
Agricultural input includes plough, thresher (wooden), etc. After industrialisation the agricultural inputs increased by 21.42%; number of tractors increased by 150%; number of private wells increased by 475%; motor engines increased by 125%; vehicles whether two or four wheelers increased by 225%; gobar gas installation at homes increased by 100%; bullock cart holders increased by 40%; telephone (mobiles) increased by 166.67%; number of refrigerators increased by 100%; number of television sets increased by 121.43%;
Table 7: Assets Position Before and After Industrialisation
- People – People Relationships
People – people relationships relate to the social structure and the interaction between the classes of the society. Here in my area of study i.e. village Kolam there is a class system based on the following:
- Upper class or Rich
- Middle class or Medium
- Lower class or Poor
The upper class comprises of people from the upper strata of the caste hierarchy such as the Brahmins and also people who own considerable amount of wealth such as the Brahmins. Here wealth would mean wet land, education level, house type, whether they have jobs or businesses, number of vehicles owned by them, irrigation facilities, health condition, etc. The middle class comprises of the middle strata of the caste hierarchy and people who have marginal land holdings, and vehicles such as motorbike or bicycles, such as the Sidars, Rathiyas, Yadavs, Chouhans and Nais in the village. The lower class comprises of people who don’t own any land, have to do daily wage labour for their livelihood such as the Manjhis and Uraons.
After the sales of land during an industrialisation drive by Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL), this scenario changed. People who sold their land to JSPL are now rich and so have money to spend on commodities which are other than the basics. People who were power centres before are now facing reduction in their power.
But this power shift is not without any flipside. The village is a predominantly Scheduled Tribe (ST) village and hence their old habits of liquor consumption doesn’t give way to the new prospects of a better standard of life. People now are consuming more liquor than ever before. And due to this there is an increase in the incidences of drunken escapades such as accidents and domestic violence. During the festivities of the election of a new Sarpanch one Mrs Ramkunwar Chouhan was brutally beaten up by her husband as he was drunk and this landed her with a ruptured lip, a broken elbow and a swollen forehead.
Along with the violence and accidents there is also a danger of children falling in the traps of these habits. Though children are starting to educate themselves yet there is a lack of motivation from their family to quit these habits. One of the children I interacted told me that he liked to drink liquor. I was shocked to hear this as this child I’m talking about is just 6 years old. Many children consume tobacco too. Family members don’t give any attention to this trend and ignore it. Children generally drop from the school when they are in class VIII or IX. Rarely have I seen children above the matriculation level of education. There is a need for this to stop but who will take the initiative as the generation on which it depends is already in the grip of these bad habits.
People may think how is industrialisation related to all this. Well, it is. With the extra amount of money in their hands, they have become careless about the way it should be utilised. The way it has changed the village dynamics can be seen by the village interactions between people and the way their future generation is going to bear the burden of these advancements.
7.5. People – Resource Relationship
My village Kolam is situated in the Chhota Nagpur Plateau which means the ground water level here is not that good. Industrialisation has affected the interaction between the environment and the villagers as well. Here the sale of land has made them more financially self dependant but this has led to environment exploitation.
The land which was used for agricultural purpose, now sold doesn’t give them that opportunity again and hence a reduced agricultural output doesn’t solve their problems of food. People now have to buy pulses for their consumption which they earlier used to grow themselves.
People who used to drink water from the same well (Government well) now have individual wells. This has led to a serious threat to the ground water level. Before the onslaught of summer the level of water in these wells are already going down.
The land which is bought by JSPL is being boundary – walled due to which bears from the forest roam into the human habitat which is not only dangerous for the villagers but also the animals including the bears.
This is a known fact that this plateau is rich in coal beds. This is the reason why JSPL wanted to start an industry here. Once the extraction of coal starts the environment as well as the people will have to bear its consequences. For this purpose the stake holders can come forward to form a group with the objective to protect environment from the reckless behavior of the industrial units. The method would be to form collective organisation based on voluntary agreements among all the stake holders including the representatives of the polluting industrial bodies, local leaders of the political parties, local bodies of social organisations, NGOs and members of the pollution control authorities, apart from the directly affected rural people.
7.6. Resource – Resource Relationship
60% of the sponge iron producing units is small scale industrial units with very small investment and production capacities. Majority of the production technology is coal based rather than gas based due to high price and non-availability of gas though gas based technology is a cleaner technology.
Steel and power industry in Raigarh being mainly coal based is one of the very polluting industries under strict regulations imposed by central pollution control authority, implementation of which rests upon the state pollution control board and different local bodies under it. These industries are to comply with certain requirements for maintaining standard with regard to emission of Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Carbon Monoxide (CO) and Sulfur (S). Its emissions contain:
- Cadmium (Cd)
- Nickel (Ni)
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Hexavalent Chromium (Cr +6)
- Arsenic (As)
- Manganese (Mn)
- Copper (Cu)
The heavy metals in this particulate matters are most dangerous. The emission of oxide and sulfur cause quick damage of fruit trees and agricultural harvest. They are also very harmful to human lungs.
The way the environment interacts with itself is also affected by industrialisation. Though the long run effects of industrialisation are not visible in Kolam, one can form a picture by looking into the fates of places with industrialisation such as Purulia and Bankura in West Bengal. These places now suffer from lack of drinking water and the water which is available for drinking too is polluted and people suffer from the heavy metals dissolved in the water. They suffer mainly from fluorosis of teeth, the dissolved cadmium in water damages the nervous system of humans and arsenic is also known to poison the human systems.
Another impact of industrialisation is the construction of a dam in the Kelo River. Though the construction is still going on the effect on its environment is evident from the fact that the trees on near the construction site were nearly 80 – 100 years old which now lay uprooted in the site. According to the district irrigation department officials, 21 villages get affected by the project of which houses submergence will be in five villages, viz.
- Danot
- Lakha
- Ujjalpur
- Gerwani
- Chandbauna
Land acquisition will be in the remaining 16 villages. They also mentioned that loss of forestland will be compensated by compensatory afforestation. They mentioned that money around Rs 186.79 lakhs has been paid to the forest department for the afforestation against loss of 361.9 ha of forestland.
Kolam is bound to be affected by these advancements. This surely has affected the local environment as the onslaught of summer can be seen way beyond its usual time of March and also as this year the rainy season has stayed for a shorter period of time. Also one of the streams flowing nearby this village comes from this river only and without water coming from the river, the stream would eventually dry up.
- Coping Mechanism, Challenges and Opportunities
The industrialisation drive in Kolam has taken place from last 2 years as the sale of land started since then only. JSPL started to buy land from the people @ Rs 3.5 Lakhs/ acre. This led many people to sell their land to make a profit of the opportunity as the market price of land at that time was upto Rs 3 Lakhs/ acre. Now they have money but they sold their cultivable land. Some of the coping mechanisms are listed below:
- Sale of land in Kolam and purchase of land in nearby villages.
- Invested money in banks in Fixed Deposits (FDs)
- Purchased cars and using it for rental purpose
- Bought water pumps and also to install a bore well near their fields
- Bought livestock of the money realized by the sale of their land
The challenge faced by them is just their remoteness from the urban area. It is 14 kms away from Tamnar, its development block. After the acquisition of land JSPL walled its boundary with concrete walls making many of the people living on the nearby of the village and of the village to commute in a different route taking a lot more time than before. Many grocery stores which boasted of customers from different nearby villages now don’t have their earlier shine. People coming from different villages to the Sunday weekly haat in the village are reducing.
As far as opportunities are concerned, Kolam has a great advantage here as the industry is establishing its plant in the village bringing people from different states to this village.
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These people need accommodation and people in the village can reap the benefits out of this opportunity by constructing extra rooms in their homes to give it for rent.
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People of this village can also benefit from this by installing more grocery stores. There is also scope for other businesses to emerge after the establishment of the plant here.
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Also people who own livestock like cows, hens, chickens and goats can reap the benefits of this opportunity by selling milk, chicken, eggs and mutton to the people who work at the plant and also to the nearby villages.
