Once upon a time there was a village called Raigoda in the heart of the Satkosia Wildlife Sanctuary and Tiger Reserve forests. The Odisha Tourism Department promotes Satkosia as ‘Seven Miles of Smile’ for the tourists. Satkosia’s Raigoda tribals are popularly known as ‘Zamindar Kondhs.’
In the lap of the dense forests, the lives of these tribals were completely in harmony with the nature. Agriculture in the forest land, abundance of the forest produces and the forest works offered by the Forest Department from time to time provided their livelihoods. They had enough for their need. These simple sons and daughters of nature lived there happily.
Now Raigoda is the epicenter of tiger conservation efforts in Satkosia reserve. The tribal inhabitants of Raigoda had to clear their village to make way for the habitat of the tigers. For the first time in India, for the interState tiger relocation project, jointly implemented by the Ministry of Forests and Environment, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Odisha Forest Department, special enclosures have been set up in the erstwhile Raigoda area where the tigers to be relocated are acclimatized and made used to the environs.
Forest and tiger conservation officials believe that inside the tiger project sanctuary local tribal habitations are an anathema to wildlife conservation. Satkoshia was declared as a tiger reserve in the year 2007. A tiger reserve warrants that there should not be any habitation within the Satkoshia core area. The Odisha Forest Department started working hard on the relocation of the village Raigoda.
The villagers of Raiogoda were informed that they have to make way for the tigers and other wildlife. Promises were galore. They will be rehabilitated in another area, near the forests. A new village will be set up for them replete with the facilities like community toilets, community hall, school, hospital, temple, drinking water facilities, a pond for their use etc. Each of the households will be given land for agriculture, apart from the homestead land for their houses and an amount of Rs 10 lakh as compensation. The villagers of Raigoda agreed. Actually, they could not but agree, as there was no way out.
On the fateful day of December 8 2017, the Zamindar Kondhs of Raigoda bid farewell to their ancestral place with tearful eyes. They left behind their worship places, perennial streams, the piece of geography around which their lives as well that of their ancestors unfolded. Their cremation ground also left behind with the memories of their ancestors and their near and dear ones. It was not an easy task for the tribals. But they had to make way for conservation, which is so important for the nation. The Forest Department shifted around 80 households of Raigoda to New Raigoda, place near village Saruali under Bantala block of Angul district.
It is one year since the villagers were shifted from Raigoda and settled in New Raigoda. They were housed in temporary one room sheds in New Raigoda. A community hall has been erected there. There also has been a common kitchen, a bathing cum toilet complex has been constructed. A tube well has been dug there. And after one year the villagers have all the reasons to feel cheated and let down by the forest department and the district administration.
The core of the contention of the villagers of New Raigoda, their new reference, is about the land.
Binod Pradhan president of Raigoda says, “The boundary of the New Raigoda has not yet been demarcated by the Government authorities. That is leading to conflict with the neighbouring villages Saruali and Nuakheta. They are the local people and we are the outsiders for them. In the absence of a proper demarcation, we are not able to assert our right. As promised by the Forest Department, we were to be provided with a burial ground. But it has not been provided to us. And a few months back, we had a serious conflict with the villagers of Saruali and Nuakheta over the cremation of the first person to die in this new village. We are being bullied here and we have to play the underdog. Old persons like Ghasia Pradhan, Budhia Behera, Padan Pradhan and Kuni Pradhan have not been provided with any land for house. Out of 80 families more than 25 have not been given any homestead land.”
Mita Dehury, a tribal girl in class V, in her inherent simplicity spelt out her sorrow. She says, “We were very happy in our village within Satkoshia. We were climbing trees, playing there, bathed in the stream water, collected fruits and flowers from the forest to eat and play. We had bigger houses there, where we were getting ample opportunity to play. We do not have any of those things here. Even the water here stinks. Water from the tube well has dust in it and it cannot be drunk. But, we have to drink it, as no alternative is there.”
Mita is too young to understand that they have been uprooted and they have to take roots in the new world with a different set of rules and norms. New Raigoda has been provided with a tube well. But, dust particles come out with the water extracted. And the water is iron contaminated. During the summer months this tube well does not yield any water.
Old woman Puni Pradhan laments, “We are here since a year. Yet there is no place for our deity. The promised ritual places and the pond are nowhere to be seen. How can we live in a village without our presiding deities? We are struggling really hard for water. We are not used to taking bath in the enclosed spaces. We are used to streams and rivers. Where is the pond?”
Little does Puni know that in the modern days of development the deities are not as important as for the Kondhs. Actually for a village of 80 households the toilet complex constructed has limited number of utilities. And water availability to these complexes also is an issue.
The displaced tribals of Raigoda have the compensation money to fall back on for the time being. But they do not know what they will be doing once this money is exhausted. They do not have agricultural land. In the old village of Raiguda each of the families had land in the valley as well as in the up land. They earn their six months livelihood only from mustard crop. The perennial streams allowed them two crops of paddy and vegetable cultivation. Apart from paddy, mustard, vegetables, they also were cultivating ragi and other minor millets in the upland and the return was good. During the summer months the Forest Department engaged them for dousing forest fire. In the New Raigoda all these livelihood options are not available. Agriculture land is not provided to them as yet.
The biggest conflict and controversy arise when the displaced tribals are preparing their agricultural land. Nearby their resettlement colony’s periphery, in their hard work they clean the bushes and roots of trees and develop the land for their cultivation. At the same time the people from the adjacent villagers claim the land to be theirs. So the effort of the new settlers to develop or acquire their agricultural land has not yielded any results. Now they have to wait for the Forest or the Revenue Department to show them a piece of land to develop. In such a situation, the villagers do not know what they will be doing for their livelihood.
Raigoda Kondhs have a belief that they are the descendants of the King and that is why identifying them as ‘Zamindar (Landlord) Kondh’. That is what they have strongly believed in and lived with. Even in the land records their caste column has the entry ‘Zamidari Kandha’. They working as wage labourers is not going to be easily acceptable to them. For the tigers they have left behind everything that they had. May be now they have to shed their special identity ‘Zamindar Kondh’, that they were so proud of.