Fruits of struggle

Orissa tribals win rights over cashew plantations after 50 years

An official of Orissa's cashew development corporation got a rude shock when he entered Hantalpur village of Koraput district on February 6. He wanted to persuade the people to bid for the cashew harvesting contract being auctioned by the corporation. It infuriated the women of the village so much that they tied up the official. "We told him if the corporation wanted it could cut and take away the trees but the land would remain ours. When he did not listen to us we tied him to a post. He was released only after he promised never to come again to the village, let alone talk about auctioning," said Subarna Hantal who led the women. Batti and Rukmini of the village said they had been harvesting the fruits in the plantation near the village since 2003 against the corporation's wishes. "We are not afraid of arrest," they declared.

Tribals and dalits in Orissa have turned the tables on the Orissa State Cashew Development Corporation (oscdc), which controls 30690.5 hectares (ha) of cashew plantations and has been auctioning the harvesting contracts for nearly three decades. First the people began to demand rights over the plantations, then they resorted to open defiance. In the past few years they subverted the corporation's auctioning process and began harvesting cashew themselves.

Giving in to the people's 24-year-long protest, the Orissa government last year decided to grant them the right to harvest fruits in 20,234 ha of plantations in the state's 20 cashew-growing districts. The process of selecting benefeciaries has just begun. The land was transferred to the corporation in 1979 by the soil conservation department, which had taken up plantations as a soil conservation measure in the catchment areas of reservoirs in the 1950s. oscdc will now be left with only those plantations raised through its own resources and over which it has lease.

According to the decision taken by a high-level meeting chaired by chief minister Naveen Patnaik on July 31, 2008, cashew plantations will be distributed among families in predominantly tribal or scheduled areas and in areas of smaller tribal concentration--officially recognized as Modified Area Development Authority and Cluster areas. The biggest beneficiary will be the tribals of Koraput, Orissa's biggest cashew growing district with 6,608 ha under plantation.

People will get only usufructuary rights, that is the right to harvest fruits but not ownership of land. No family will be given more than 0.8 ha (two acres). Priority will be given to landless tribals followed by small and marginal tribal farmers below the poverty line, then other tribals. Surplus land will be distributed among poor scheduled caste families.

The corporation's assistant manager responsible for finance, R K Kar, said the beneficiaries would be selected in consultation with gram sabhas by the sub-collector-level committees in each sub-division. The committee will include the block development officer, assistant district welfare officer and representatives of oscdc and the soil conservation department. The process of forming committees has begun in most areas, but the selection of beneficiaries might get delayed because of the general elections, said official sources in Bhubaneswar.

Koraput mla Taraprasad Vahinipati said the government was forced to take the decision because people had prevented auction of plantations by oscdc for two years. There had been gheraos and demonstrations. Tribals of Koraput, one of Orissa's most backward districts, call usufructuary rights a big victory.