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I agree with you Kundan that the Orissa Act does not prevent the Government from acquiriting tribal land, nor does the AP Act. Some restrictions were placed on the AP Act by the 1997 SC Samata judgement and that has made a difference to the tribals there. In fact, the Land Acquistion Act itself is overarching. As for Kandhamal, the state has acquired very little land. It was declared an industry-free district. I do not know whether that policy has changed today. The real problem there is land alienation to the non-tribals particularly Dalits. The trouble today has its origin in that. Linked to it is marketing of ginger and haldi of which the district is one of the biggest producers in India. But the producers are exploited. Merchants advance them money and take away most of their produce. Initially the Dalits used to be their agents. Later the Dalits began to lend money directly and supply the produce to the merchants from outside. As a result, much tribal land has been alienated to the Dalits. Then came the turning point of the PESA Act 1996. The social activists in that district did a good job of making the tribals aware of their right to the land they had lost. The tribals began to demand their land back under this Act. That is the background of the 1998 communal conflict. A large number of Christians in that district happen to be Dalits. The 1990s also happened to be the decade during which Christian fundamentalist evangelists and Hindu fundamentalists led by the swami tried to convert them to their own religion. So what was a land-related tribal-Dalit conflict was given a communal dimension. In 1998 the Dalits began to demand a tribal status. It had begun already as a status-related rather than an economic demand. I remember in 1993 the UN Indigenous Division had asked me to recommend some tribal names for the 1993 UN Indigenous year meeting and one of those I recommended happened to be a Pano (Dalit) from Kandhamal. She was among the group of them who presented themselves as tribals. It did not have a religious dimension because she was not a Christian. The demand at that stage was both for a higher social status and to protect tribal land alienated to them. They would have been allowed to keep it if they were declared tribals. The agitation grew stronger in 2007 when also the Christians among them joined the movement because they had seen very little possibility of Dalit Christians being accorded the SC status. Tribals remain in the schedule whatever their religion. The swami's followers could present this demand as a threat to the tribals and give it a religious dimension. The tribals felt that if the Pano were accorded tribal status they would lose all rights over the land alienated to them. That was given a communal dimension and the December 2007 trouble is linked to it. The rest is history. I am giving this history just to show that land is the basic issue and one should attend to it but very little is being done about it. Walter
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