To start with the history behind Statue of Unity. A 182m tall (240m including base) worlds largest statue known as STATUE OF UNITY that is twice the height of Statue of Liberty, was inaugurated on October 18, 2018 by Prime minister Narendra Modi in the remembrance of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
The statue overlooks the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river. The cost has been around 3000 crore. Thinking to attract tourist and to emphasise countries name, this brought a lot of damage to local people more specifically, The Adivasi People.
An article published by scroll.in mentioned interviews taken of Adivasi people who had been suffered a tremendous loss. Following describes how this step detached the housings and farming of locals living there.
Lakhan Musafir, an activist from Garudeshwar village whose house is 8 km away from the statue, was among 24 other Adivasis detained for 20 hours in the block’s Pipaliya police station. When Scroll.in spoke to Musafir after his release on Wednesday afternoon, he explained why villagers are angry. The statue, for them, is a colossal waste of public money – a product of Modi’s personal desire for a lasting legacy – built at the cost of Adivasi rights.
The activists – many of them Adivasi farmers – had planned to protest against the statue for which their land and farms had been taken over. The government responded by jailing them for a day in police stations across the district and deploying an army of special police forces for security at the inauguration.
In the tourism zone, farmlands and Adivasi homes is replaced by a “valley of flowers”, a “Tent City”, guest houses for every state, hotels and a boating lake. To make this possible, the government completed the construction of a weir (a low dam across the river) at Garudeshwar, around 6 km from Kevadia. The weir is built, and water from the Sardar Sarovar Dam is released to fill up a portion of the region.
Six villages near Garudeshwar have lost land to the weir. The weir is completed, land in seven more villages on both sides of the river is submerged.
“These are villages that have been asking for Narmada canal water for irrigation for years,” said Lakhan Musafir. “We have always faced water problems and if the government really cared, they could have extended the canal to include all of our villages in the dam’s command area. But they have no political will to really give us what we need villagers were given alternative plots of land.
“But they were forced to disperse far away, in places that have still not been provided with basic water and other amenities,” said Musafir. “For many farmers, their homes are now far away from their farms.”
In order to fill up water in the canal around the statue, the government released water from the dam without any warning to the villages near Garudeshwar weir,” said Musafir. At least 30 farmers in two or three villages lost their harvest, he said, all for the sake of picturesque photos of the statue in the media.
“This project has no benefit whatsoever for the people living here,” he said. “Even the little employment they are promising to give locals will be on a contract basis.
Moreover Adivasi from a long period are being examples of exploitation. For example:
1. Loss control over Natural Resources.
2. Lack of Education.
3. Displacement and Rehabilitation.
4. Problems of Health and Nutrition.
5. Gender Issues.
6. Erosion of Identity.
There are various acts and schemes developed in 1900s but the continuation and implementation has been stagnant. An example to describe this, The 1989 Act is important as Adivasi activists refer to it to defend their right to occupy land that was traditionally theirs. This Act merely confirms what has already been promised to tribal people in the Constitution – that land belonging to tribal people cannot be sold to or bought by non-tribal people. (Civics)
Among them majority people possess farming as their leading profession, suffering loss in habitat Adivasi also suffer problems including irrigation, crop management, technological backwards, no schemes to enhance their working skills and lack of aid for their families that makes their life even more worse.
However, even today many Adivasi people from places such as Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat etc. have been facing issues including land grabbing, agriculture vandalism and disregard their rights.
“But they think Adivasi will not speak, and that’s why we have been protesting”, said an Adivasi activist.
Culture and tradition play a big role in the development of any community. This is especially true of marginalised rural communities such as India’s Adivasi tribes. (Dev. And Coop.)
