On April 30, president Pranab Mukherjee was in Jharkhand’s Godda district, laying the foundation stone for Jindal Steel and Power’s 1,320-MW power plant.

Barely a kilometre away, at the Sundarpahari police station, more than 50 people from tribal communities were detained from 10 in the morning till late evening.

Locals from 11 villages in Nimpaniya and Goriajor blocks had assembled to protest land acquisition for the Jindal project, leading to their imminent displacement. Some of the protesters are being displaced for the second time, having earlier lost land to the Sundar Dam project.

Gladson Dungdung, a prominent tribal rights activist from the state, has written to president Mukherjee, highlighting the violation of the rights of the tribals in the state in the backdrop of the incident. Voicing the indigenous people’s anguish with the state, Dungdung wrote that the government needs to protect their interests or “shoot them” down.

Godda district is part of the Santhal Parganas where the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act governs the sale or transfer of land. According to the Act, land in the area cannot be sold or transferred, irrespective of whether it is owned by tribals or non-tribals. Acquisition of land by the Jindal power project, therefore, is in violation of the Act, Dungdung pointed out.

In detaining the tribal people, the government has willfully violated their fundamental right to freedom of expression even as they were preparing to protest the violation of SPTA, which comes under schedule V of the constitution, he said.

But these violations come much later in a series which seem to have prompted Dungdung, a member of the Jharkhand Human Rights Movement, to ask for him and the other tribals to be shot. He has cited the supreme court’s recent ruling on the powers of the gram sabha under the panchayat extension in scheduled areas Act (PESA) over issues that relate to the cultural identity, community resources, dispute resolution within the community and preservation of traditions while highlighting the complete sidelining of the gram sabha in decision-making that went into the approval of the Godda power project.

Land rights abuse is set to worsen in the state, with two industrial corridors — along the Koderma-Bahragora and Ranchi-Patratu-Ramgarh Road — set to come up under the Jharkhand industrial policy. The corridor will be made with 25 kilometres of four-laning on each side. A lot of the tribal land in the area will have to be acquired under the policy. Besides, the Jharkhand government has signed many MoUs with national and multinational companies for projects, including mining, in the Chottanagra region.

In Jharkhand, the state worst affected by ultra Left-wing extremism, it seems government policy is being framed without taking into consideration interests of the tribal people. In Saranda, an iron-ore rich region in southern Jharkhand, the groundwork for mining projects has already started threatening tribal livelihoods and the tribal way of life.

In many places, infrastructure work and land acquisition for industry (Steel Authority of India Limited) has desecrated sasandiris (stone graves) and disrupted livelihoods. In the face of this apparent apathy on part of the state and sustained cultural and livelihood losses, local activists worry that more people would follow the ‘armed resistance’ path of the Maoists, India’s single-largest internal security threat.