40 years on, Melghat still starves as courts plead with indifferent governments

Melghat’s agony and Gadchiroli’s fight reveal the double standard of Maharashtra’s tribal policy

On April 15, the Bombay High Court will once again hear a petition on ending child malnutrition in Maharashtra’s Melghat. The issue first drew national attention in the 1980s, when a young reporter wrote what was perhaps the earliest in-depth account. At a time when the health of neglected communities rarely found space in the mainstream press, Rupa Chinai’s article in The Sunday Observer shocked and moved the paper’s largely urban readership.

It’s been 40 years, but conditions in Melghat remain shocking. Arguments made in court by an NGO working in this forested, hilly, tribal-dominated region, had the judges exclaiming: “This is horrific. The government should be worried and concerned, just as we are. (Your) approach is extremely casual.”

This was in November; the court was informed that 65 infants had died of malnutrition since June, and 220 were in the acute category.

The latest hearing, held last month, made it clear that the government’s approach remained casual. "Babies are dying for want of food and crucial medical attention... their ribs and bones can be seen," remarked the judges. Asking the government with ‘folded hands’ to provide a timeline for implementing their assurance to construct 50-bed hospitals in the region, the court remarked: “Somewhere, the agonies have to end.”

It was in 1993 that activists first approached the court to get an indifferent government to act.

None of the political parties that have ruled Maharashtra over the last 40 years have forced the administration of India’s richest state to save Melghat’s tribals. Nor have harsh court orders made a difference. In last month’s hearing, the court was told that the NGO working in Melghat had to pay for the blood bags sent by the government; and that the gram panchayat owed Rs 30 crore to the electricity department. If these dues remained unpaid by the end of the financial year, Melghat’s water pumps would become non-functional. Incidentally, the same government spent Rs 13,000 crore on Mumbai’s coastal road designed primarily for private vehicles.

Melghat’s tribals may waste away before the government deigns to look at them. But there is another set of tribals in Maharashtra who are being showered with attention. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has chosen to be the guardian minister of tribal-dominated Gadchiroli, once known for its forests and the Naxalites who controlled them. Gadchiroli is now ‘Naxal-free’. With the Naxals gone, it may soon be forest-free.

The government has just ordered the cutting of 1,23,000 trees in Gadchiroli to clear the land for mining projects, as part of Fadnavis’ oft-expressed dream of converting Gadchiroli into India’s steel hub. Fadnavis must surely be aware of the long fight against mining by Gadchiroli’s tribals; indeed, in June, after the issue was raised in an RSS meet, Fadnavis declared that the people’s jal, jangal, zameen would be taken care of while ‘developing’ Gadchiroli.

The hollowness of this promise is reflected in the preparations being made by Gadchiroli’s tribals to take both the government and mining companies to court.

So, though Gadchiroli’s Naxalites have either surrendered, been jailed, or eliminated, tribals are still fighting against mining. That shatters the myth that tribals want the ‘development’ brought by big projects, and that Naxalites were stopping them from enjoying its benefits.

What is true, though, is that it was only the Naxalites, with their organised strength, who shielded the forests where they operated, and managed to keep off the corporates eyeing the minerals that lie under these forests. Without the Naxalites, the forest would disappear — this was a fear expressed not just by sociologists and activists working among tribals, but also by Gadchiroli’s elected sarpanches.

That’s the only reason for the State’s determined push against Naxalites, which started under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but acquired a new ferocity under the Narendra Modi government. It is revealing that the first phase of the anti-Naxalite Operation Green Hunt, conceived of in 2009 by then Home Minister P Chidambaram, started in Gadchiroli.

Now, with the Naxalites gone, will the Adivasis be able to fend off the mining companies that are backed to the hilt by the government? They may be preparing to approach the court, but the recently formed Gadchiroli District Mining Authority has been granted immunity from any legal proceeding against it. If they cannot approach the court, the Adivasis will be left with none but themselves to resist the destruction of their lives.

Last week, to save their forests and land, Madhya Pradesh’s tribal women fended off cops by lying on mock funeral pyres to protest against the Ken-Betwa river linking project, and in Odisha, tribals confronted police against mining giant Vedanta. Are these precursors of what might happen in Gadchiroli?

(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.