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ADARSHA GRAM

Creating new landless to rehabilitate landless

MAHBUBA ZANNAT, back from Dinajpur
Indigenous villagers of Baradal woke up on June 22 morning to festivities in a cheerful mood. That day 20-year-old Santal farmer Roshan Murmu was wedding 18-year-old Taramoni Hemrom of the nearby Doshmile village.
Suddenly, the wedding music jerked to a stop, as some 300 outsiders led by a magistrate and the local union parishad chairman entered the scene. Silence sucked in the jubilation; for a few minutes the village remained frozen in a deathly hush, wondering what calamity was lying ahead.
The gate-crushers broke the suspense. Pompously, they announced that the 'old' village would be demolished to make way for an Adarsha Gram, a model village
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the government plans to establish there.
The villagers burst into panic. Shell-shocked, they begged of Mostofapur UP Chairman Shamsuddin Mondol to take pity on them, not to destroy their ancestral homes. Mondol's heart did melt but only after wrecking 60 houses.
Two days later, Taramoni came from Doshmile to Roshan's Baradal home. But her heart had not the flutter of a new bride. Instead, it was heavy with the grim reality of coming to stay at a demolished house, an uncertain address.
Like Roshan and Taramoni, 400 indigenous people, Hindus and Muslims of the village, where they had been living for over 60 years, lost their ancestral homes to the government's model village project. The village is in Parbatipur upazila of Dinajpur.
The eviction drive was part of a process to reclaim and requisition land for the Adarsha Gram project initiated in 1999.
Since June 22 the poor villagers have been living in the open under the sky without knowing whether they will ever get back their lands, their uniquely stylised houses made of mud and the fruit trees they have grown using indigenous techniques.
"The dishonest chairman had been threatening to evict us on various occasions in the past. Twice he filed false cases against us. He is desperate to evict us in the name of the Adarsha Gram project," alleged one of the villagers.
They also said the chairman earlier misappropriated 54.6 metric tons of wheat meant to be used for land filling under the project, although the land filling was not being barred by a court injunction. No sooner did the court vacate the order he started uprooting the people mercilessly.
"The eviction team looted our property. Now the villagers keep their utensils and furniture at Baradal Kali Temple for safekeeping," said a Santal woman seeking anonymity, adding, "I have sent my furniture to my daughter's house."
Making matters worse, the indigenous people have no way now to repay the loans they had taken for fishing and agriculture. "The evicted poor people are now starving. To add insult to the injury, they are also facing pressure to repay loans totalling Tk 26 lakh they took from different NGOs," says former UP chairman Bishnu Roy.
Though the local administration did not deny the eviction but it disagreed with the number of evicted people. It also dismissed the allegation of evicting 65 families without any notice as totally baseless. However, the Dinajpur
deputy commissioner (DC) could not show any written notice of eviction.
"Only 18 families including two indigenous ones have been evicted. And it was done as per a government decision to evict encroachers," DC Surut Zaman told The Daily Star.
He said, "A political conspiracy is on to give an exaggerated and false impression about the situation." The DC also claimed that those of the indigenous people who owned lands in the village will get priority in getting the benefits including plots of the Adarsha Gram if they apply as "land-less people".
The Parbatipur upazila nirbahi officer said the Adarshagram project aimed to establish 100 families in 9.07 acres of land. As soon as the project completes a committee will allocate the houses.
But locals have no faith on the committee and the chairman. They are afraid of being cheated and deprived, and just want to get back their lands.
The indigenous leaders urged the government to have a discussion with them before taking such initiatives. They also demanded security and setting up the Adarsha Gram in khas land.
Human rights activists also demanded cancellation of the project, which they term utterly inhuman, as there is no justification for making so many people landless to rehabilitate a few other landless people there.