BHIMGARH BANDH SANGHARSH SAMITI DIST. SIVNI M.P.
15 years back I was working in the fields when I spotted a man taking measurements. I went to him: bhaiya, what are you doing, I asked him. Nothing, he replied, this place will be flooded with water. The water will reach that height he said, pointing to a tree. Where will we go? I asked him. Go anywhere, Sarkar will give you money…The dam was finally constructed. Yes, they gave us compensation. How much? The patwari says, what is the value of this land anyway. When the cheques were given, some got Rs. 1500, other Rs. 500. We took the money. Where do we go? We asked. We don’t have any place they answered. How will we go? We asked. We will provide you with a truck they said. And when the waters came, we fled to the forests. We left everything behind—our wood, our homes. We fled to Sivni. Sarkar gave us a pramaan patra (certificate) which said that we could build houses anywhere in Jabalpur district or Mandla district. We went there, took over some land. The basti patel (community head) asked us what are you making here? The letter given to us, what would they understand who gave us the letter and what it meant. They did not believe us and came to break our homes at night. The tehsildar also came, why did you make houses here, this is government land, he told us. We replied, we have made them, you pull them down if you can. They did not. But went to court instead. Hearings continued for a year after which we had to dish out fines—Rs. 25 one year and Rs. 50 the next. This went on for 3 years. Then a madam came along. She said I was to build a house here; I will break these constructions of yours. We did not allow her to do that. She got angry. We said we will not give you even as much as a pathway, where will we keep our cattle? She slapped a case in the tehsil. We fought for two years. Now it is 15 years since we left. We have neither patta (land title), nor land. 22 families got together in Sivni to build a mandir (temple) for our god Shankar bhagwan. Where after all, will our gods go but with us? We made a small mandir. The sarpanch asked, is this your property? Our lord is the sarkar who has forced us to leave and this is ours, we said. We met the SDM and the dam official, whoever he is. He said, hum tumko dekh lenge. The struggle for the mandir is going on and I am here for this meeting. I don’t know if our brothers are still fighting over it. This is our story of misfortune. Sarkar handed us a blind man’s stick and threw us into this hell.
We have educated our children with such difficulty. One is in the 9th standard, the other in the 12th. At the very least Sarkar could have given one job for one child. They would have been spared the trouble of looking here and there for mazdoori. Tell me, can a 6th standard child do mazdoori…We do not have clothes to cover ourselves. Is this why sarkar has created such a ruckus? To throw us out. 18 families are suffering this way. Some have eight members, some twelve. We live in these broken little huts we have made…And for 15 years we have tried to encash these cheques which turned out to be false. 50 cheques in this area are false. In the meeting we had the other day we talked about this. I don’t know how many thousands these cheques are for. And we have been taking them around for 15 years. What, tell me, what can be done about all this? They will be relieved when we die. They say we have given you compensation. What about the abuses and kicks that we have been receiving because we have constructed houses in other people’s places/lands? Who will give us pattas (land titles)? The contractors have made it good with the dam. Sarkar is making a profit with the sale of fish…They drove half the population out. And they don’t care if we die.