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Development with Brutality
- Increasing recourse to repression indicates that the state is losing the argument over “development”.
- On 5 October 2011, the police and security forces fired at people celebrating Durga Puja in Roing town of Lower Dibang Valley district, Arunachal Pradesh.
- The context behind this particular act of state-terror is the forthcoming public hearing for the Dibang multipurpose project slated to be held on 24 October 2011 in Roing town.
- Arunachal has been identified for a slew of dams on its rivers and the 3,000 megawatt (MW) Dibang project is among the bigger ones (with the proposed dam being the world’s tallest concrete gravity dam at 288 metres). Other projects are slated for the Siang and Subansiri rivers.
- In 2008, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid the foundation of the Dibang multipurpose project even though it had yet to get environmental clearance
- The district administration of Lower Dibang Valley is reported to have claimed that Maoists had infiltrated the anti-dam movement in Dibang.
- Even if some activists are Maoists or members of other militant organisations, none of this can be a reason for the police to shoot at unarmed civilians at a religious function.
- The authorities claimed that the Maoists have influenced the Idu-Mishmi tribe of the area and the firing was on members of this tribe when the situation went out of control.
- The chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Jarbom Gamlin, has been a strong votary of these dams and for developing the entire 50,000 MW worth of hydropower the state supposedly sits on.
- Unfortunately, despite so much popular opposition and many obvious alternate policy choices, governments in India, both at the centre and the states, have managed to only push “development” projects which dislocate without compensation and destroy without regeneration. This is clearly unnecessary, unsustainable and often, illegal.
- This accusation of being Maoist, like the accusation of jihadist against Muslims, is routinely hurled against those opposed to the takeover of land, livelihoods and natural resources from local people for industrial development
- While on the one hand the Maoist tag is used to persecute and torture those who speak out against the excesses and illegalities of the State, whether it is Binayak Sen or Lingaram Kodopi and Soni Sori, on the other there is a growing trend where the institutions of the State are used to push the vested interests of one section of the population – those who consume high energy and high cost industrial products and profit out of its investment, production and distribution.
