Chhattisgarh: In Dantewada, Maoist Threats Have Receded But Development Hasn't Come in Either

Dantewada (Chhattisgarh): It is November 5. Thirty-two-year-old Bhuma Tamo is standing outside his tin-roof house in Dantewada’s Hiroli village. Tamo is watching men, women, children and cattle use the new water pipe that stands just a few feet away.

Clean fresh water flows from the pipe. Villagers take baths and collect water. The cattle drink water from the vessels which have already been filled.

“I saved my earnings from working as a labourer in the fields for around 5-6 years and got this motor installed for Rs 30,000 in my house which is connected to this pipe. There was a hand pump here which would only pump red iron water. Now the motor pumps up clean water from below the groundwater level and people from the village use the clean water for their daily needs,” he said to The Wire.

“Nothing has changed in Dantewada in my lifetime. Electricity comes and goes. There are no roads at all. You can see how we live here.”

Hiroli village is barely 15 kilometres away from the Bailadila Iron Ore Mines-Kirandul Complex of the National Mineral Development Corporation – India’s largest producer of iron ore. The Kirandul complex of the NMDC, which operates under the Union Ministry of Steel, is located in the southern tip of South Bastar in Dantewada district. It is surrounded by a range of hills that house deposits that are “very rich in iron ore content and are rated one of the best in the world,” according to the NDMC website.

Hiroli village lies just beyond the Kirandul complex. There, while residents worry about groundwater contamination from mining, they are yet to see the fruits of development, including basic amenities such as metalled roads, pipe water connections and uninterrupted electricity supply.

The first phase of elections is to be held in Chhattisgarh on November 7 and 12 of the 20 constituencies including Dantewada, are going to the polls in the tribal belt of the Bastar division.

Long known as the bastion of Maoist activities, Dantewada has seen some of the worst incidents of Maoist violence over the years. This includes the 2010 Naxal attack on a CRPF battalion, in which 76 jawans were killed in the Tademetla forest area of Dantewada.

In April this year, 10 jawans of the District Reserve Guard (DRG) and a civilian were killed when the vehicle they were travelling in was destroyed by an improvised explosive device (IED) triggered by Maoists in Dantewada.

This was the worst such attack in Chhattisgarh since April 2021, when 22 police and paramilitary personnel were killed and several more injured during a gunfight with Maoists at the Sukma and Bijapur district borders.

In August 2021, 15 villages in Dantewada were declared “Maoist-free” on Independence Day. While locals say that Maoists are no longer seen as much as earlier, development is something that evades them too.

“We want all the facilities that other parts of the country have that we feel we should also get,” said Tamo. 

“I’ve voted three times now and I will vote this time as well. Every time I go vote with the hope that things will change and we will also get development. But nothing has changed here.”

“Adivasis have nothing here”

According to the 2011 Census, Dantewada has a population of 5,33,638. The NITI Aayog’s multidimensional poverty index 2023, which uses NFHS 5 data from 2019-2021, shows that 29.53% of Dantewada’s population is multidimensionally poor.

The district ranks sixth in the state on the multidimensional poverty index after Bijapur, Sukma, Narayanpur, Bastar, Balarampur.

There are many flags of both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, and a few of the Communist Party of India (CPI), on the trees all around the mud roads leading to Hiroli.

Young villagers say that politicians come to campaign before elections, Bastar’s adivasis are where they were decades ago.

“Adivasis have nothing here. We don’t have roads. There is a school in our village but till 10th standard. We want roads, we want connections under Har Ghar Jal [the Union government’s flagship scheme to provide water pipe connections to every rural household], we should get jobs. Bastar’s Adivasis are where they were,” says Chhannu Netam, 25.

Netam, who has studied till Class 10 says that he had appeared for the NMDC’s job entrance exam but did not get through. 

“Now I work as a farm labourer,” he says.

Netam says that only three villagers work at the nearby NMDC. A fourth was killed by Maoists on suspicion of being a police informer a few years ago. 

“There is no encouragement to send children to schools. What is the point of opening a school when no one is encouraged to go,” says Netam.

“Politicians visit before elections but they also come and just give their speeches. There is no scope to talk to us. There is no Maoist threat here now, but there is no development either.”

Villagers have decided to quiz Aam Aadmi Party and CPI leaders. It is only based on their answers that they will decide who to vote for. 

“We have already seen that the Congress and the BJP have done nothing for us. We want to ask them what they will do for us and then we will decide who to vote for,” Netam says.

A few kilometres away from Hiroli, a group of villagers from nearby Palnar who work on farmland through the week and set up weekly markets on Fridays and Saturdays in these two villages say that livelihood is the chief concern.

Sunil Yadav, 27, who has come to sell the mahua fruit that is used to make the local liquor, said that while Dantewada may be known for Maoist activities, unemployment is the worry.

“Dantewada is not just about Naxalwaad. We need jobs, private schools. If other areas are getting quality education then we should too,” says Yadav.

Development ‘not possible’

Outside the villages, in a market place near Geedam, Congress’ Dantewada candidate Chavindra Karma is going shop to shop meeting people on the campaign trail. Karma is the son of late Congress leader Mahendra Karma who was killed along with the entire top state leadership in the Sukma Maoist attack in 2013.

Chavindra’s mother, Devti Karma, has been the sitting MLA from Dantewada after winning the by-election in 2019. 

While the BJP had originally won the seat (its lone victory in the 12-seat tribal Bastar belt) in the 2018 state elections, the new Dantewada MLA Bhima Mandavi was killed by Maoists in an IED blast in April 2019 during the Lok Sabha elections. 

With the Dantewada by-poll win, the Congress is in power in all 12 seats in Bastar division, and is looking to repeat its performance in this election.

Speaking to The Wire, Karma says that development is yet to come to Dantewada’s villages as the Congress is still undoing the work done by the BJP’s Raman Singh government that ruled the state for 15 years from 2003 to 2018.

“For us two issues are important. Giving employment to the unemployed and to help farmers,” he said.

When asked about the lack of roads and development in villages like Hiroli, Karma said that the interior villages have many issues.

“In Hiroli it is not possible yet to build roads but we are trying our best. There are many issues in these interior villages. We are making efforts to ensure health and education. But at the moment, our first priority is to give employment. Congress has been trying to give jobs to the unemployed since 2018 and we will continue to do that. We don’t need private schools at the time because we are giving English medium education in government schools. After 15 years we have got rid of the BJP so it will take time to do many things. We have done many things. Without connectivity (in interior villages) we won’t be able to bring development. So we are trying to ensure connectivity,” he says.

BJP’s Chetram Arami, who is taking on Karma in Dantewada, on the other hand says that the lack of development in Dantewada’s villages is because the Congress government in the state did not allow the penetration of Union government schemes.

“The Congress government has stopped all schemes that the Union government is giving. Har Ghar Jal has been stopped by the government, that is why there is no proper water connection. Modi ji has given us Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana to build houses for everyone but the state government has stopped this as well,” he said to The Wire. 

Arami said that once the BJP wins in Dantewada, the “double engine government will bring development not just in Dantewada but in the entire state.”

“Maoist conflict has become an excuse”

According to Bastar based academic and researcher Bela Bhatia, the conflict in Dantewada has become an excuse to not provide development in the region.

“It is true that Hiroli has been under Maoist influence but the same can be said about many villages in the area. If the government can build paramilitary camps inside these villages and roads for these camps, there is no reason why it cannot also provide basic services to the civilian population” she says.

“The ongoing conflict should not be used as an excuse not to deliver. Rather, a promise ought to have been made by the contending political parties to make every possible effort to end the conflict. But there is a silence on this question. This indicates their status quoist preference for militarisation over a peaceful resolution exposing in turn their pro-corporate character for it is increasingly clear in Bastar that the extensive militarisation that is taking place ostensibly for curbing the Maoists is actually for protecting and aiding mining companies that are operating often in violation of the law. The Adivasis of Bastar will be able to access their democratic rights and live lives free of coercion of any kind only when there is a ceasefire and a political dialogue is initiated.”