The starving guests of Khammam

The fear of daily random violence and sudden death no longer haunts the internally displaced persons from Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district. They have found a sort of refuge in Andhra Pradesh’s Khammam district. But they are haunted by a new malaise — hunger and thirst — in the IDP settlements. There are an estimated 16,024 refugees across 203 settlements in Khammam district. Summer surely is the cruellest season of all, as a survey of eight settlements shows.

In Kamantome, the only source of water is a miasmic well dug into the dry riverbed. A dead scorpion is floating in the water. Four people are already sick, everyone suffers from rashes, no one has any work, and there is barely any food — all they eat is a little rice with imli (tamarind).

Kovasi Santo, 6, has been lying in bed all week, barely eats and barely talks. His mother doesn’t know what to do. No doctor has visited them yet. Shamala Idma can’t work, can’t get out of bed, complains of stomach pains and vomits constantly. Two other men complain of similar symptoms. Another has malaria. They all say they started to fall sick when they started to drink that water.

In November last year, the Child Rights Commission had recommended that hand pumps be built in Kamantome but there were none as of May 31. The temperature regularly crosses 470 C — this summer is one of the harshest in recent times.

Kamantome started as a settlement for Gotti Koyas or Murias when they migrated from Chhattisgarh for land, and to escape the Salwa Judum-Maoist conflict. Their homes were demolished by the Forest Department in 2005, yet they returned a few years later.

Last year there was an encounter, in which one tribal was be killed as an alleged Maoist. Two were arrested and booked under the Andhra Pradesh Public Security Act. Both were eventually released. One of them, Madvi Hidme, now in Kamantome with his three infant daughters recollects how after his hands were tied behind his back, he was hung from the ceiling and interrogated at the Bhadrachalam police station for information on the Maoists.

The police had acted on an evidently erroneous tip-off from neighbouring Ramachandrapuram, which is also native to Gotti Koyas. Kamantome villagers are in constant conflict with them, owing to the limited resources available in the jungle. In Ramachandrapuram, Maoists had killed two people. The village has a hand pump (built by missionaries) and is over a kilometre from Kamantome. It may be the closest hand pump to Kamantome but the villagers will never go to it.

They spend all their days trying to beat the heat, as there’s no work to do. They

received NREGS cards and all last received their payments in April. Kunjam Deva was paid Rs 1,038 on April 22. All the money was used to repay loans he took last year to buy rice for his family. Of the 20 families in Kamantome, this pattern is repeated. Now they have very little rice left for this year, and there’s no prospect of work and no money in sight.

“Even if we have work, what’s the point, as there is no water?” asks Madkam

Mulaiya s/o Ganga. “There is no food either, the rains failed last year.”

There isn’t a single child in Kamantome that doesn’t suffer from malnutrition.

Kovasi Santo’s sunken stomach isn’t just indicative of hunger in one family — almost all the children have thinning hair and the symptom of Grade 2-Grade 3 malnutrition: bloated bellies.

“We sent an application for a hand pump in Kamantome three months ago,” says Srinivas Rao, the Mandal Parishad Development Officer. A year ago, a similar application was rejected by the Forest Department. In fact, no hand pump can be built on reserve forest land or in any of the 110 IDP settlements in the reserve forest — legally the IDPs are encroachers. There are allegations by members of the administration that forest officials routinely hamper their efforts to help the Muria or the Gotti Koya. It’s no secret that the forest department wants to send them back to Chhattisgarh.

“We can’t go back, we’re afraid,” expl­ains Madkam Mulaiya of Kamantome.

“We’ve demolished their homes some seven or eight times,” says DFO Shafiullah, Bhadrachalam North Division. “And yet they come back.” So there must be some compelling reason for their persistence.

On May 25, the IDP settlement of Chalam­palam in Murmuru Panchayat was

demolished by the forest department.

“The entire jungle is a honeycomb,” says Shafiullah, “In three compartments of the reserve forest, 141, 142, 143, right in Murmuru, at least 60-70 acres of forest land have been cleared by the Gotti Koya. They have done a lot of damage to the forest.” The irony is hard to miss. Historically, they have protected the forest, now the state is protecting the forest from the starving Adivasis.

Shafiullah’s division is directly connected to Chhattisgarh and sees a regular influx of migrants and IDPs. Satellite imagery confirms regular felling of trees in the entire division.

In Chalampalam village, the Muria claim that it was the ‘Dorlawalla’ who called the forest department to break up their homes. While the Dorla from neighbouring Simalpad support the Muria in Chalampalam, the Dorla from Murmuru do not.

In the 22 homes in Chalampalam, almost all the villagers take money from the Dorla (non-tribal landlords) to feed their families in the months they have no work. During the ‘mirchi’ cutting season, they work for lower wages to repay the debt. For instance, the regular wage labour is Rs 60 or Rs 70, but they work for Rs 50. This is a widespread practice in Khamman district.

“We’ve offered some Gotti Koya Rs 100 to work under NREGS,” says MPDO Srinivas Rao. “But they are very sincere people. They’d still work at Rs 50 for the locals to repay debts.”

Stories of official ill-treatment are common. When forest officials demolished Madkam Ganga’s house he says they stole Rs 500. He is unmarried and has no children and lives alone. He points to the small tuck box where he keeps his money, and then locks it. He only started locking the box after he lost his money. Kovasi Seema also claims that officials stole around Rs 1,000 from his home.

Madkam Hidma is physically disabled. He says forest officials dragged him out of his house before tearing off the roof. His two daughters, one 18 and another 12, and his wife Laxmi, are the only ones in his family who can work.

“We all have problems with food,” says Kovasi Hoonga, adding that three cows had died in his village for lack of feed. Then there is another aspect of Muria life — they refuse to drink cow’s milk. “If we did, there’d be nothing for the cow’s children.”

The Muria would rather starve than drink cow’s milk. At the same time, they need to secretly cut down trees in the hope of cultivating enough land to feed themselves but are prevented from doing so by the forest department. Back in Kamantome, I had asked the Muria about the department’s allegations.

“The forest department thinks that if given the chance, the Muria will cut down all the trees,” I said.

“If we did, where would we live?”

“We need a policy change,” says Shafi­ullah, “These people need to be rehabilitated.” The question is, who will do that?

— javed@expressbuzz.com