Back on the map

Honanga was taken into custody on August 10,2011,booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act UAPA and sent to Chaibasa jail. His arrest was one of 47,with police picking up individuals accused of being cadres of the banned CPI Maoist or members of one of its frontal organisations,as part of Anaconda-I.

A month-long operation from August 1-31,2011,to demolish Naxal structures within Saranda,it was led by deputy inspector general-level officers of the state police and CRPF. The security forces claimed to have destroyed at least five Maoist training camps.

Section 132 of the UAPA,under which Honanga was booked,involves imprisonment of up to five years for those who assist the unlawful activities of a banned association.

We had to go into the forest when the police came in August 2011. For three days,we were in the jungle without food or water, says Budhram Godiya,village chief or munda of Tirilposi.

West Singhbhum Superintendent of Police Pankaj Kamboj explains that Tirilposi was crucial to the Maoists: The Eastern Regional Bureau headquarters was set up along the 13 km road from that village to Thalkobad. West Singhbhum Deputy Commissioner

K Srinivasan says that the presence of the administration was an achievement in itself: When I went there,it was the first time in 15 years that a DCs vehicle was entering the area.

What followed Anaconda-I was the Rs 250-crore Saranda Development Plan SDP in 56 villages across six panchayats,a project of Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh.

With Maoists melting away in the face of the large number of police and paramilitary forces,the Ministry of Rural Development mooted an action plan to introduce development and governance in the region. Formally launched on December 2,2011,after detailed planning,it involved the implementation of a clutch of projects in Manoharpur block of West Singhbhum district.

Srinivasan calls the action plan a showpiecea test model for similar development efforts.

Honanga says the news of the changes happening on the ground reached him while he was in jail. When my wife visited me,she would talk about the roads that were being built near Kudlibad, he says. On December 12,2012,he was granted bail. After managing to arrange his bail bond,Honanga finally emerged from jail on February 1. He insists he is innocent.

The Honangas have received a solar lantern,bicycle and transistor as part of the SDP,with the Steel Authority of India spending a combined

Rs 3.85 crore as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility initiative to procure 7,000 of each.

There was a setback,in November 25,2012,when a contractors four dumpers and two earthmovers were burnt in Usuriyaeven Honanga heard about it in jail. The attack came at a time when it was presumed that Saranda had been wiped clean of Maoists. This complacence did not take into account that Saranda has the near-contiguous forests of Kolhan and Porahat on one side and the Orissa border on the other.

They came in from Kolhan. Bishu Hasda,formerly a member of the Jan Militia of the village,was leading the team. After Anaconda-I,we had made arrests from Usuriya,weakening the Maoist structure there. Some others had run away. Those youngsters had returned to the village but were refusing to work for the party again. Hasda wanted to threaten them into helping him, SP Kamboj says.

Hasda is now believed to be dead,lynched by the villagers. He wanted the contractor to finish the Usuriya section of the road first. Our sources say that when the villagers realised that he was hindering the development that was coming into the area,they finished him off. We have not recovered a body,but his wife has broken her bangles,and that is usually a giveaway of death, Kamboj says.

On December 10,2012,the second phase of Operation Anaconda was launched,with the objective of providing protection to road construction in the area. While Anaconda-II is officially not over yet,the first two-month intense phase is finished. Three battalions of the CRPF are currently camping in Saranda as part of the operation.

Munda Godiya of Tirilposi village stands before his new house constructed under the Indira Awas Yojana. I have received Rs 20,000 from Indira Awas. About 30-40 households in the village have received the money. About 18 have built houses already, says Godiya. The scheme,which provides Rs 48,500 in two instalments towards building a shelter,is among the most visible presence of the SDP in the region.

Self-help groups come in next. A six-member team from Andhra Pradesh is in Tirilposi as part of the Jharkhand State Livelihood Promotion Societys efforts to provide a long-term solutionfive of the members are from women self-help groups and the sixth a professional resource person.

We were trained for three months in Andhraeven in Hindiwith the brief to replicate the success we have had with our SHGs. We will be here for a month,telling the women about everything they need to know about such groups,starting with how to form them, says M Vani.

Among the SDP proposals is setting up of 10 integrated development centres IDCs in the area. Each IDC is to have space for a hospital,two banks,an anganwadi,a public distribution system shop,various government offices and a community centre. Power will be provided by a diesel generator.

All those who work in these IDCs will have to live at the facility. I have recommended to the government that they should be given at least 25 per cent of their basic pay extra as an incentive, says Srinivasan,the deputy commissioner.

Work has started on one such IDC at Digha,with inauguration scheduled for the first week of March after several missed deadlines. Sponsored by the Steel Authority of India for

Rs 5.4 crore,it will have 26 shelters made of pre-fabricated material over a two-acre built-up area.

Where the government is dragging its feet is on education. According to the Saranda Action Plan documentdetailed in an October 25,2011,letter written by minister Ramesh to then Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda10 residential schools were mooted for the area. Now,a more sober administration is hoping for one. Except for the anganwadis proposed at each IDC,the SDP has no plans for setting up schools.

We have requested the Ministry of Tribal Affairs to build a school in Manoharpur town. The Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences has also expressed interest in building a school, says Srinivasan.

A teacher at the Upgraded High School in Lilor panchayats Domlai village wants the administration to build better schools,then colleges,before thinking of allowing mining. The second batch of class X students of this school will be giving state board exams. Shashibhushan Mahto talks with pride of how he managed to get even 22-year-old dropouts to register for the exam,which will be taken by 53 students.

There is,however,a problem: Mahto is just qualified to be a primary school teacher. I am not a high school teacher,neither is my colleague Dharmendra Das. Apart from us,there are three para teachers for 325 students, he says. The government did not appoint new teachers when the school was upgraded to have classes up to VIII in 2005. Then,two years ago,it was upgraded once more,again with no appointments.

At the Lailor primary school,located next to the panchayat bhavan,para teacher and head-mistress-in-charge Seema Kumari is cooking the mid-day meal. The cook is on leave. She has to construct her Indira Awas house, she says. The school,which has another para teacher to help Kumari,has 78 students.

Schools are important in places like Saranda,and not just for education. Teachers often are critical first responders in crisis situations. Vishwakarma narrates a scene that played out annually in the area till as recently as two years ago: There were no good sources of drinking water in the area and every summer there would be diarrhoea-related deaths. We would go out and request the villagers to boil their water before drinking. But inevitably,there would be a time when we would have to make them lie on the ground,tie a rope between two trees and hang saline drips from it for them like a clothesline.

Corruption threatens to derail the work done under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme,one of the other important interventions of the SDP. Those who clear the money under the BRGF Backward Regions Grant Fund and MNREGA always want a 5 per cent commission. If the junior engineer doesnt get his cut from MNREGA payments,he stalls, says Bhimsingh Thigga,Lilors panchayat samiti member.

MNREGA rules have been relaxed to accommodate Saranda. Accounting for the fact that most villages are not close to post offices and banks,the government has also permitted cash payments by panchayat officials,provided these are videographed. However,the MNREGA report card for the SDP remains highly inconsistent,at best. If at Digha village,there is too much work,at Dodari,all MNREGA work has stopped. The pay never comes on time, says Sushil Champia,additional rozgar sewak of the village.

DC Srinivasan admits that it is difficult to check corruption: We have been attempting to minimise it. It should be kept in mind that every decision goes through the panchayat mukhiya. She or he knows everything.

However,while panchayat elections were held in Jharkhand after a 32-year gap in November 2010,it was mere political posturing on the part of the Arjun Munda governmentno powers which come in the form of the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act PESA have been passed on. The delay in PESA is inextricably linked to the arrival of Maoists in Saranda. Mora Munda was an influential leader in the Saranda area,who was part of the campaign to bring about PESA. When he understood that PESA was not going to be implemented here,he became a disillusioned man. Soon,he joined the Maoists. A large number of his supporters joined the movement along with him, says forest rights activist Sanjay Basu Mallick.

That still leaves out the Jharkhandi villages. A product of the Devendra Majhi-led Zameen Wapas/Jangal Kato Aandolan in the late 70s and the early 80s,settlements like Jumbaiburu have tagged themselves thus,after a time when Jharkhand was an idea rather than the name of a state. West Singhbhum district has 110 such villagesnever surveyed,never recognised by the government. It is estimated that at least 5,000 adults live there. The SDP,on the other hand,covers only revenue villages. So,the 40-odd families of Jumbaiburu wont see any Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana roads,or MNERGA or IAY benefits.

Srinivasan says he has distributed 3,500 pattas across 92 of the 110 Jharkhandi villages in his district,which will make them like revenue villages eventually.

Congressman Sushil Barla admits the omission of these villages is dangerous. When the Maoists came in,these villages,because of their inaccessibility as well as deprivation,became easy targets. It is these villages where the SDP should have reached first.

The numbers are big in Saranda,as are the stakes. Ask for an estimate of the number of trees in the forest and Divisional Forest Officer K K Tiwari starts to speak,then smiles: Multiply 85,000 hectares total area of Saranda forests with 2,500 trees per hectare. R N Jha,SAIL general manager,too beams when asked about the reserves in his mine: We have two billion metric tonnes of average quality iron ore here in the 2,376 allocated hectares. The 19 mining leases that are being processed for the Saranda area will involve another 9,753.53 hectares of mines.

While development and governance are taking baby steps in Saranda,the challenge is to make sure these are sustainable.

A local resident working on an Integrated Action Plan-funded check dam at Digha village puts it best. Asked about the future of the SDP minus the top-down funding and enthusiasm of minister Jairam Ramesh,he says,with apologies to Sholay: Jab tak yeh saans chalegi,tab tak Basanti nachegi.

A ground ripe for Maoists

Saranda,the home of the Ho tribals,has always been a fiercely political space. In 1834,when the British captured the area,they found the Hos to be extremely reluctant to live under occupation. Captain Thomas Wilkinson,who had led the troops,drew up a document that suggested a simple administrative system that incorporated features of the traditional system, says Sanjay Basu Mallick of the Jharkhand Jangal Bachao Andolan,an NGO. After Independence,however,this Wilkinson Rule that respected the autonomy of the tribals was ignored.

The customary rights of tribals to the forest were ignored in the 1927 Forest Act. Then,in 1977,the forest department decided to go for large-scale teak plantation in Saranda. They fell sal trees to make space for the teak saplings. Sal has a cultural,spiritual significance for the tribals; teak was never accepted, says Mallick.

The retaliation and rage led to the birth of a new movement,led by Devendra Majhi,who would later become a Bihar Assembly legislator. The villages that were created as a result of Majhis movement were called Jharkhandi villages. However,Majhis movement gradually withered away. With the 1996 Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act not implemented in the region,a political vacuum began to form. It was ironically accentuated by the carving out of Jharkhand from Bihar in November 2000. The people here felt betrayed that Shibu Soren,who led the movement for a separate Jharkhand,did not become the chief minister. Instead,Babulal Marandi did, says Congress leader Sushil Barla. The regions timber business had by then given way to mining,with tribals watching haplessly as people clamoured for the ground beneath their feet. Into this soil,ploughed and prepared for them by decades of resistance movements,came the Maoists.

The Saranda Development Plan

56 villages

7,223 households

36,215 people

Schemes

7,000 each of solar lanterns,bicycles,transistor radios. Allotted funds: Rs 3.85 crore. Delivered

10 Integrated Development Centres. Allotted funds: Rs 60 crore. Work on at one site,not started at the

Other nine

13 roads,covering 130 km. Allotted funds: Rs 104 crore. Work on two roads completed

Money for building 6,000 houses to BPL households. Allotted funds: Rs 30 crore. 5,500 households have received first instalment,1,500 second

168 handpumps. Allotted funds: around Rs 1.2 crore. 118 installed

18 security camps. Six established

5/10 residential schools. Allotted funds: Rs 5 crore per school.

No school yet