Governance Now, March 1-15, 2011
Krishna brought about both qualitative and quantitative change to development in the Cut-Off Area
The obvious takeaway from the abduction and subsequent
release of Malkangiri collector R Vineel Krishna is that the Maoists use tribal welfare only as a ruse to achieve their ultimate and professed goal of overthrowing the state through an “armed struggle”. Had that not been so, Krishna not only shouldn’t have figured in the Maoists’ scheme of things, they wouldn’t have delayed his release by 48 hours insisting on the release of five of their members.
That Krishna is hugely popular with the local tribals of the grossly neglected Cut-off Area (called so as K Guma block of Malkangiri is completely cut off from the rest of the state by the Balimela reservoir and Gurupriya river), which is also a safe haven for the Maoists, is evident from the way they went to the forests to search for him, confronted the Maoists and cheered him when he was freed. His peers too hold him in very high esteem for his commitment to the welfare of this neglected region.
His predecessor and Rayagada collector Dr Nitin Jawale says Krishna brought about both qualitative and quantitative changes in the development work. “He introduced micro-planning, carried out land development through the NREGA works and frequently toured the area to oversee the progress,” Dr Jawale commented, adding that Krishna fulfilled his promise of taking electricity to the Cut-Off Area. Krishna had, in fact, gone to the area to see electrification of Siliguma village, the first one in the area, and hand over pension money and land rights to the tribals at a ‘jan sampark shivir’ when he was abducted. In his enthusiasm, the young IAS officer made the cardinal error of rushing to a nearby village of Jantapai to inspect an incomplete culvert without any security escort and was picked up by the ultras on his way back. But this was not the first time he was doing so. Chitrakonda tehsildar D Gopal Krishna says Krishna did so in the past too, probably confident that the ultras posed no threat to him.
He was wrong. In the past few decades, the state government has made several attempts to connect to the Cut-Off Area by a bridge over the Gurupriya river at Janbhai Ghat. Even today, tell-tale signs of Gammon India’s effort to build a bridge exist at the place. A local sarpanch had told me a year ago that one day the Maoists called the engineers and told them to just leave the area. After he was released Krishna too expressed his surprise at his abduction, saying that he was travelling in the area with the express purpose of evaluating development projects.
The Cut-Off Area came into being at the Orissa-Andhra Pradesh border when the Balimela dam was built in the 1970s. The reservoir water and Gurupriya river cut off 150 villages spread over seven gram panchayats having a population of 26,000. The Balimela hydel project supplies about 500mw of electricity to the two states but its own backyard, the Cut-Off Area, never got electrified until Krishna drew up the first lines to Siliguma village this month.
The other takeaway from the incident, and a decidedly positive one, is that Krishna seems determined to carry on the good work that he has been doing, though he has become a bit more diplomatic. When reporters asked him if his interaction with the Maoists had changed his perspective on development, he said: “There is always scope for debate on the nature of development. Ultimately, the tribal community must benefit.” Amen! n
prasanna@governancenow.com
No comments:
Post a Comment