Rahul Maganti

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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“I pray for the night to get over soon. Hardly anyone lives in this
village now, so snakes keep moving around,” says Kavala Sridevi. She and her
family have been spending the nights in near-total darkness after the
government cut the electricity connections in her village in May 2016.  

Sridevi’s
family is one of only 10 who have stayed back in Pydipaka village in Polavaram mandal of West Godavari district,
right next to the Godavari river. Around 429 other families were forced to
move from here in June 2016 when the government acquired their land for an irrigation
project. Part of a huge scheme called Jalayagnam, the project was inaugurated in 2004 and was scheduled
to be completed in 2018, though only around 60 per cent is constructed at
present.

“A month after cutting the
power connections, they cut off the drinking water too,” says Sridevi, who now
gets a 20-litre water can for Rs. 20 from Polavaram town, eight kilometres
away, travelling with her husband Suryachandram in his autorickshaw.


For a
while, the couple and their three children (see the cover image on the top) also shifted to a resettlement
colony in Hukumpeta in Gopalpuram mandal, along with the many other families who moved out. But after
around a month, they returned to Pydipaka. “We believed the officials, but came back after losing hope that the government is going to act on its promises,&quot; Sridevi
says, fighting back tears.

All the
families were shifted to four colonies – one each in Polavaram and Hukumpeta villages and two in Jangareddigudem mandal, between 10 to 65 kilometres from Pydipaka. They were given many assurances by the
government – that they will get an equal amount of land as what they owned in
Pydipaka, up to two acres for families who didn’t own any land, a job per
family, a pucca house, a one-time settlement package of Rs. 6.8
lakhs, and compensation for family-owned structures, trees and livestock. These
measures, among others, are specified in the Land Acquisition Resettlement and Rehabilitation (LARR) Act,
2013. But, the villagers say, the government has not fulfilled any of its
promises even two years later
(More on this in the next story in this series).

Sridevi
and Suryachandram are Dalits; they don’t own any land and worked as
agricultural labourers in Pydipaka, earning between Rs. 100-300 as daily wages.
“I have no work now and my husband earns 300 rupees a day driving an autorickshaw
in  Polavaram town to earn for the family,”
says Sridevi. He bought the rickshaw for Rs. 1 lakh, after taking a loan from
private moneylenders at an interest rate of 36 per cent.

Their three
children Smiley, 6, Prashanth, 8, and Bharath, 10, are playing with Snoopy, the
family’s pet dog, unmindful of how the Polavaram project will alter their lives,
when I visit their house one afternoon. “I had a lot of friends a couple of
years ago,” Bharath says. “All of them went to a new colony.”  He and his siblings are the only kids remaining
in the village now. They discontinued school two years ago when it was closed
and demolished by the project authorities; their parents cannot afford to send
them to school in Polavaram town.

Most of the houses in the village have also been demolished, which
makes it difficult for families to return after they realise that the
resettlement colonies are not at all what they imagined. Sridevi&#39;s house escaped by sheer luck, since it is located in the Dalit basti at a far end of the village.

Pydipaka
is one of seven villages – with a total population of around 5,500 – located
right next to the project site, from where residents were forced to move in
2016. The project authorities wanted this land for construction activities. People
in 22 more villages and hamlets upstream – with a total population of around 15,000
– on the northwest Godavari river bank in Polavaram mandal will also eventually be
displaced and their houses submerged. 

The Polavaram
project, known officially as the Indira Sagar Multipurpose Project, is expected
to irrigate 3 lakh hectares and generate 960 MW of power, in addition to providing
water for industries and drinking water to 540 villages. These numbers are from
the Environmental
Impact Assessment Report of the Ministry of Environment, though they
vary in the state’s own Government Order 93 of May 2005, and the chief
minister’s statement at an all-party meeting in Hyderabad in December 2005.  

Once the full
Polavaram project is constructed, at least 462 villages on the banks of the
Godavari, spread across nine mandals in Andhra Pradesh, will
vanish. The villages are home to the Koya and Kondareddi Adivasi communities, and come under the Fifth Schedule of the
Constitution, which gives areas with a predominantly tribal population special
rights to safeguard their land, forests and culture. 

More than 300,000 people —
including 1.5 lakh Adivasis and 50,000 Dalits — will be displaced from 10,000
acres of forestland and 121,975 acres of non-forest land, according to
documents obtained by me under the Right to Information (RTI) Act from the Ministry
of Environment. Another 75,000 acres of land is being acquired for canals,
distributaries, townships and a ‘green belt’.

Despite the scale of
displacement, the LARR Act is not being implemented, villagers say. So 10
families, including Sridevi’s, have refused to move from Pydipaka. She also wants the Act’s special provision
– that Dalits should be given land if they are being forced out – to be
applied.  

Though only a few families have
stayed back and continue to fight, many of the others who moved also protested
strongly. The state’s revenue and the police
departments, the villagers say, exerted severe pressure on the protesting
families. Besides cutting off the electricity and drinking water, during the 2016
monsoon, officials allegedly asked labourers to dump mud and sand on the road
to Pydipaka – creating a marshy road that blocked access to the village. “We had
to cross a knee-deep puddle to go out or come into the village,” says Sridevi. 

Botta Trimurthulu, 42,
another protesting villager who has stayed back in Pydipaka, says he faced
severe harassment. On June 30, 2016, the project authorities brought labourers
who dumped stones, sand and mud on his 2.5 acre banana plantation. “The crop was
about to come to harvest and I begged the MRO [mandal revenue officer] to wait for a month… I
lost 4 lakh rupees worth of harvest. A total of 75 acres of crop in the village
was destroyed that day,” says Trimurthulu, who has since been working as an
agricultural labourer for Rs. 250 a day in Tellavaram hamlet, 10 kilometres away. Tellavaram is
among the 22 hamlets from where people will eventually be displaced as the
project progresses. 

Trimurthulu’s wife
Botta Bhanu, 39, used to take care of the family’s 10 buffaloes, 20 goats, 40
sheep and 100 chickens.  Some of the animals
were crushed under the dump of stones and sand.  The
family didn’t get compensation for any of them. And they sold the other animals
because no workers were left to look after them. “We used to employ 10 people
in our house to take care of the dairy activities and do household work. Now,
we have to work in someone else’s fields to earn our livelihood,” says Bhanu.

She recounts the fear they
felt during the chaotic days of April-July 2016: “Some 40-50 policemen would
come every day and threaten us that they will tie our hands and legs and throw
us in the police jeep and transport us. Many of the families didn’t want to
leave but they couldn’t take the pressure any longer,” says Bhanu. 

When asked about this, the Polavaram circle inspector, Balaraju, tells
me, &quot;What you are saying is absolutely false. We actually helped the
villagers with transportation.&quot;  

The mandal
revenue officer, Mukkanti, also refutes everything
categorically. “No pressure was used to move the people,” he says. “In fact,
the people moved out happily as they liked the package and their new pucca
houses in the R&amp;R colonies.&quot; About the dumping of debris on Trimurthulu’s farm.
he says, &quot;No such thing ever happened. These allegations are
baseless.&quot;  

Meanwhile, the
protesting families of Pydipaka continue to demand that the government fully implement the
LARR law. “Any number of pressure tactics will not work. We have lived in
darkness for two years and got used to it. We will not move out of our village
till we are given what we are legally entitled to,” says Trimurthulu. “I
will die here, but we will not move till we get what we are supposed to under
the law,” adds Sridevi. 

Around 174 kilometres from Pydipaka, on the floodplain bank
of the river Krishna, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu,
reviews the Polavaram project every Monday sitting in his house – an
illegal construction, widely reported about in the local media – even as Sridevi’s legitimate
home on the banks of the Godavari might be pulled down any time.

Pydipaka families: and then there were ten

పైడిపాక కుటుంబాలు పది

പൈഡിപാകയിലെ കുടുംബങ്ങൾ: ഇപ്പോൾ അവർ പത്തുപേർ മാത്രം

பிடிபக்காவில் உள்ள 10 குடும்பங்களின் போராட்டம்

पायडिपाका परिवार: और वहां केवल दस बच गए

پایڈیپاکا کُنبے: اور وہاں صرف دس بچ گئے

পাইড়িপাকার পরিবার: রইল বাকি দশ

पायडिपाकाची कुटुंबं – आणि अखेर राहिले दहा

ପିଡିପକାର ୧୦ ପରିବାର

Pydipaka

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Pydipaka families: and then there were ten

Hundreds of villages will vanish over time due to the Polavaram project on the Godavari. In Pydipaka, ten families are refusing to move, demanding from the state at least the legally mandated resettlement package

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