Gorre Meena and her mother Gorre Achamma, living in Ulumuru, a Koya tribal habitation in East Godavari agency, have been spending sleepless nights staring at an uncertain future.
Their habitation is among the 371 areas to be submerged (+45 contour) under the Polavaram irrigation project in the State.
They are among several Adivasi families that share a similar fate as their ouster from the habitations appears imminent going by the project execution schedules while the Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R&R) exercise seems nowhere near the completion.
According to R&R Commissioner (Polavaram project) O. Anand, the disbursement of the R&R package was less than 20% by June-end. While the project is likely to be commissioned next year, only 25 of the 115 habitations (+41.5 contour) have been rehabilitated so far.
“None of the tribes living in the project submergence area has opposed the project, except seeking a fair R&R package. We are sparing our land, forest, houses, and habitations. Whose Polavaram project is it as it displaces lakhs of Adivasis?” asks Ms. Meena. Her family has given away 13 acres, including eight acres of patta land, for the project.
‘R&R should be priority’
“The tribes (Koya, Konda Reddy and others) living by the Godavari and Sabari are sacrificing everything. But our voice for the entitlements will be unheard as long as the government sees success in completing the project construction rather than fulfilling the R&R component,” laments Ms. Meena, studying to be a teacher.
“We have never imagined that the Godavari and the Sabari will become our enemies. We have lived by them for generations and worshipped them. But now they may flood us any time,” bemoan Achamma and other women in the Chintoor-Rekhapalli submergence stretch.
Of the 1.05 lakh families to be displaced by the project, 70,929 live in the East Godavari agency sharing the Andhra-Chhattisgarh border and 34,672 families in the West Godavari agency.
The Polavaram Project Authority claims that the multipurpose project is meant to irrigate 4.36 lakh hectares, provide drinking water for 28.5 lakh population and supply 80 tmcft to the Krishna river basin. It is also designed to generate 960 MW of hydropower.
Painful separation
“The sacrifice of immovable assets can be compensated in some way. But did ever any government realise how painful it is to leave one’s land, the river, the forest, and the traditional practices that are part of one’s life? We feel betrayed by the way we are being driven out,” complains Kotla Bhavani, a koya, working on a makeshift shelter to save themselves from the fury of the Sabari flood in V.R.Puram mandal.
A sense of despair is writ large on the faces of the people living in the habitations that this Correspondent has visited along the stretch of the Sabari and the Godavari rivers and Chandravanka and Sokuleru streams that will be submerged before long, as realisation seems to have dawned that they are waging a losing battle for a decent future.