Koraput: Along the Koraput-Kotpad road, a signboard will show you the two-km-long narrow path to a village of nearly 500 people. These villagers were all rehabilitated here in 1988 after being displaced, losing their ancestral homes to the Upper Kolab Dam project in Koraput district built in 1976 across the Kolab river.
The name of the village changes depending on who you ask. If you look into the official records, it is known as Colony 6, while villagers call it Baikunthapur and going by the local parlance it is known as Camp 6. Even the signboard displays the dilemma, bearing the latter two names in English and Odia.
In the beginning when we came here, we were told we were being moved to camps. Eventually, we got our Aadhaar cards and official documents, saying we lived in colonies. But we are still identified as camp-dwellers,” says Gangai Burudi, a local.
Such a grievance is not new in many dam-rehabilitation camps in this district. These villagers do not know where they belong to and these human habitations called ‘camps’ and ‘colonies’ never got an official name or identity even as three decades have passed already.
In 2018, locals of Colony 5, 6 and 7, three of the five villages without an official name, rolled up their sleeves. They put up boards bearing the names ‘Santoshpur,’ ‘Baikunthapur’ and ‘Purshottampur’ at the entrances to these villages between April and May. These names also appear in some of their postal addresses nowadays. Baikunthapur and Santoshpur fall under Batasuna panchayat while Purushottampur comes under SB Nuagaan GP.
However, these names are yet to be officially mentioned in land and revenue records.
Back in 1988, each of these ousted families was given 3 acre of land for housing and farming, along with Rs 14,000 as compensation. Only after 2000, these camps started getting basic amenities such as drinking water, electricity, schools and Anganwadi centres. But the absence of an official name still rankles.
“This keeps reminding us of being displaced from our own ancestral village where we grew up. It does not help us feel settled,” says Burudi. More than 3,000 families from 57 villages were displaced by the Kolab Dam project. About 52 per cent of the oustees belong to Paraja tribe and 17 per cent are Dalits, according to a study conducted by the South Orissa Voluntary Action, an NGO in Koraput.
Asked, tehsildar Janardhan Dalai said, “Some of the villages have changed their names voluntarily but that is not acceptable legally. They are still registered as Colony 6, 7 etc, as per revenue records. But these hamlets can approach us for changing their names. No such change is in process at this moment from our end.”
Kuma Muduli, a resident of Camp 4A with a population of 603, says the villagers have held consultations with block-level officers but in vain. “We start the dialogue with one official and by the time the papers are to be processed a new official comes in and we are back to zero. Villagers also keep getting anxious that they would have to go through so many procedures and formalities all over again. But we are still at it and we would want to change the name of our village, not just by ourselves but officially as well,” Muduli says.
Harihar Nayak (60) from Colony 7 says, “When you are uprooted and moved to a new location, there are a lot of things in mind to begin with. Pain of leaving one’s shelter and fear of an uncertain future also accompany hopes of a lot of basic facilities and services. But eventually one realises that we have been reduced to camps and colonies. A person anywhere in the world obtains his or her identity from the place they come from. We come from a camp. Our Aadhaar says we live in colony number 7. It feels like we do not belong here.”
PNN
