05/30/2014

Prime Minister Modi ignores Indigenous Rights – General strike in Telangana

Controversy over large dam project overshadows establishment of the new State of Telangana in India (June 2)

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) accuses the new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of violating the rights of indigenous peoples. "Regardless of the protests of tens of thousands of Adivasi natives, Modi is trying to push through with the forced relocation of 300,000 people in order to pave the way for the controversial dam and irrigation project Polavaram," said the STP's Asia-consultant, Ulrich Delius, in Göttingen on Friday. After taking over government, Modi explained that the controversial project is a national priority project and ordered a local government reform to break the resistance of the people against the forced resettlement. On June 2, 2014, the state of Telangana, which was founded as India's 29th state, will lose 205 villages. Yesterday, a one-day general strike was proclaimed for ten of Telangana's districts as a form of protest. .

Modi had already used his election campaign to emphasize his willingness to carry out the Polavaram project. Without any consultations with the regional and local authorities or the
affected villagers, the territorial reform provides that 205 villages in the district Khammam in Telangana will be assigned to Andhra Pradesh. The major project, which got stuck due to years of legal disputes, involves the construction of a 45 meter high and 2.3 kilometer long dam wall. In an area starting at 150 km before the dam wall, several villages will have to make way for the water reservoir and two irrigation canals. The mega-project is meant to ensure both energy production and irrigation for the crops. However, critics emphasize that about 85% of the land around the planned channels are already irrigated. In total, 276 villages affected in several states are affected by the project. The villages are mainly inhabited by Adivasi people. "The villagers are supposed to receive financial compensations – but in the 40 settlements that already received compensations, the payments resulted in new disputes. Most of the money was soon gone, because fraudsters managed to sell useless insurance policies to the villagers," said Delius.

On Monday, with the establishment of the new state of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh will lose around 115,000 square kilometers and 35 million inhabitants. So far, the 6 million Adivasi represented about 7% of the population of Andhra Pradesh. In Telangana, there is an especially large number of native Adivasi people (belonging to the Gond, Koya and Konda Reddy) who live a life below the poverty line. Their average life expectancy is only 40 years. The newly founded state does not offer much hope for an improvement of their disastrous situation, since the politicians from Telangana and from Andhra Pradesh are ignoring their land rights in order to establish new major projects on their territory.

"We fear that Modi's government is planning to continue with the forced relocation in order to finally implement a controversial canal project which is supposed to connect 37 rivers." The project was developed under the BJP party, but did not make progress due to lack of donors. Mrs. Uma Barthi, the BJP's new River Development Minister, is known to be in favor of the mega-project. Human rights activists and environmentalists have labeled the plans to be grotesque.


Ulrich Delius, head of STP's Asia department, is available for further questions: +49 551 49906 27 or asien@gfbv.de.