States: Karnataka: Cast Adrift

Tardy rehabilitation efforts compounds the trauma of villagers displaced by a Naval base construction project.

"With 15 families dependent on fishing where can we go with just Rs 50,000?"
Dunga Kumarsa Tandel
Evacuee from Chendia village

Meenakshi Umakant is a refugee in her own land. This indignity was heaped upon the 27-year-old villager from Aligadda near Karwar town in north Karnataka when the district authorities demolished her house. Hundreds of other villagers who shared her fate are not victims of war or natural disasters. They are the hapless casualties of a Ministry of Defence (mod) project to construct a major naval base at the picturesque site on the Konkan coast . The Karnataka Government has shifted nearly 300 families and would, by the end of June, clear all the 13 villages that fall within the 8,320 acres of land required by the naval project.

"We are refugees in our own land. We would be happy if we are given some means of ekeing out a living."
Meenakshi Umakant
Displaced resident of Aligadda village

The misery of the displaced villagers is compounded by the inadequate rehabilitation efforts of the Karnataka Government. The only relief comes from the Karnataka High Court. Acting on a petition of Ganapathi Mangre, sarpanch of one of the affected villages, the court has appointed two commissioners to look into the entire rehabilitation process. However, it did not stop the demolition of the villages.
Way back in the '70s, Karwar was identified as an ideal site for a naval base since the congested Mumbai harbour was both insecure and inadequate to meet the needs of the navy. Says former chief of naval staff Admiral O.S. Dawson (retd): "Karwar's topography makes it the best place to locate a naval base." Work on the project, codenamed Seabird, began during the time of prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. With the evacuation of the core villages of Arga, Chendia, Aligadda and Binaga, the mod hopes to get the work going. These include the construction of three breakwaters, each 5.1 km in length, and the dredging of the approach channel and the harbour basin. All this is expected to cost about Rs 600 crore. A consortium of specialist foreign and Indian companies are undertaking the first phase of the work which is to be completed in five years.

The project will displace about 4,400 families in over 13 villages. To minimise the problem of relocating villagers, the project area was scaled down from the original 30,400 acres to 8,320 acres. Of this, 2,495 acres were private holdings while the rest was government land.

The fishermen and the agriculturists affected by the naval base project say they do not mind being relocated. "All we are asking is, please give us a better alternative," pleads 47-year-old fisherman Janardhan Chandru. "We have lived along the sea shore -- just 10 m away from the shore in fact -- for centuries and suddenly you throw us into the middle of a rocky terrain. What can we do? How do you go fishing on the rocks?"

Dunga Kumarsa Tandel, aged 70, head of 15 families in the Chendia village in Karwar taluk, is equally aggrieved. Tandel's house was valued at about Rs 1 lakh. But all the state Government offered him as rehabilitation grant was Rs 50,000. "With 15 families, all traditionally fishermen, where can we go with just Rs 50,000?" he asks. The Government has yet to submit a detailed project report for constructing a fishing harbour at Amadalli and Majalli.

Farmers, too, have been given a raw deal: compensation for land was fixed at Rs 120-750 per gunta (40 guntas make an acre) depending on the cropping intensity. "My fertile land is worth Rs 30,000 per gunta but I have got only Rs 120 per gunta," says a farmer. That's because the state Government used 20-year-old records to fix the rate of compensation.

The misery of the displaced doesn't end here. Unimaginative bureaucrats have decreed that joint families are a single unit. Says one of those affected: "It's all right when we are living on our land, not when you are to be crammed into a 13 ft by 15 ft tin shed (provided to the evacuees as temporary accommodation)." Irrigation facilities promised in some of the relocation sites are yet to be developed.
Though the cost of the naval project is pegged at Rs 25,000 crore, the state Government's rehabilitation package is a stingy Rs 180 crore. Even that is being doled out in inadequate dribbles that add to the problems of the dislocated. Says 67-year-old farmer Sadanand Padti, general secretary of the 4,500-member strong Seabird Naval Base Evacuees Forum, who has lost two acres to the naval project in Avadalli village: "The Karnataka Government has always been reluctant to provide rehabilitation to evacuees."

Further, the rehabilitation package does not provide them with alternative livelihood. Though according to a mou signed on August 6, 1998, the Centre and the state Government are to provide Rs 50,000 to each project-affected family, the package does not adequately address more pressing questions relating to rehabilitating the economic earning power of the fisherfolk and the farmers. Work on seven rehabilitation centres was begun by the state government way back in 1991. The centres were to have shops, a post office, a police outpost, a primary healthcare centre, a veterinary dispensary, a primary school, roads, drinking water and electricity.

But a visit to the Mudageri rehabilitation centre shows that this programme is way behind schedule. A lone watchman there says: "Nobody wants to move here because this is a complete wilderness.There is no water, roads or even basic civic amenities." There were no signs of the metalled roads or the primary health care centre and veterinary hospital the Government claims to have built there.

The district administration has now accelerated the rehabilitation work. Says R.S. Raikar, general manager of the Seabird project: "We have met all the demands of the evacuees. Our rehabilitation centres are ready for occupation and we have identified all the families for compensation. So there is no problem."

But his words provide little comfort to the affected farmers and fisherfolk who will take a long time to recover from the trauma of dislocation from their ancestral lands.