Express Focus -- DEVELOPMENT -- by Indian Express

In his first ever address to the spanking new Jharkhand Assembly on November 23, Governor Prabhat Kumar listed the need to electrify every village in Jharkhand within ‘four-five years’. Ironically, a power project that promises power to the people of Jharkhand since decades didn’t find any mention in Kumar’s 18-page long speech.

The Koel-Karo power project has been hanging fire for years, costing the national exchequer Rs 40 crore till date. The National Hydro-Electric Power Corporation (NHPC) incurs establishment costs of Rs three crore every year on this project, which has been facing opposition from the local tribal population which it will displace. It’s one of the NHPC’s most ambitious projects, envisaging generation of 710 MW of electricity during peak hours at a cost of Rs 23,000 crore. It proposes to harness the bulk of hydel power potential in the water of two rain-fed rivers — Koel, and its tributary Karo — by integrating them through a 34.5 km long trance basin channel, two dams and two power production units, one at Basia in Ranchi district and another at Lohajimi in Gumla district.

Conceived by the Central Water Commission in 1956, the project was handed over to the NHPC by the Bihar State Electricity Board in 1980 with the avowed goal of meeting the demand of power in the country’s eastern region.

It was approved by the Cabinet committee of Economic Affairs in 1988. Though an organisation representing the affected population moved the Supreme Court against the project, it got a nod from the court in 1989 and the next year, from the Union Ministry of Forest and Environment (MoEF). But the project couldn’t take off because the NHPC could never lay its hands on the 51,188 acres of land (of which nearly 16,000 acres are government or forest land) required for the project. ‘‘We haven’t taken any decision on the project,’’ says Jharkhand Chief Minister Babu Lal Marandi. ‘‘The matter is under consideration.’’

The NHPC is also ready with a report which was approved by the Public Investment Board, seeking clearance by the MoEF and CCEA for releasing funds for the project, says the NHPC’s Chief Engineer-cum-Incharge of the project, B.K. Choudhury: ‘‘These approvals will come. There is no problem about funds either since financial institutions have shown their willingness to finance it. But without the land, we can’t raise a brick.’’

‘‘The work of land acquisition has to be carried out by the Directorate of Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation (LAR)...To carry out this work it was decided to make several teams...who will go to each and every plot marked for acquisition,’’ states the NHPC’s report.

However, neither of these teams has been formed yet, nor has any official of the Jharkhand government or the NHPC surveyed even one of 70,787 plots in 134 villages in the project area.

Here’s why the government may be disinterested: ‘‘The atmosphere in these villages is so hostile that government servants cannot enter there for preparation of its rehabilitation plan,’’ states the NHPC’s report.

The villages had never welcomed the project which threatens to displace around 20,000 families comprising two lakh people, 70 per cent of whom are tribals. Representing these people is the Koel Karo Jan Sangathan, which had filed the petition in the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in its verdict dated February 6, 1989 had quashed the Sangathan’s petition asking the state of Bihar to ‘rehabilitate the oustees as per the plan approved by it’ before displacing them. The plan entails identification of the Project Affected Persons (PAPs) for paying them compensation. The package includes: paying the land value, (around Rs 50,000-Rs 70,000 per acre at present), deciding the amount to be deposited in bank accounts of the oustees, their houses that are to be set up in the nearby areas with schools, hospitals, religious sites and a job to one member of the oustee family, if possible.

The Sangathan rejected the package, and, when it learnt that the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao was to inaugurate the project on July 6, 1995, enforced a ‘curfew’ in the project area. Rao ultimately had to cancel his programme.Even today, the Sanghatan’s curfew prevails for the police and NHPC officials. ‘‘We dare not go there, or we’ll get lynched,’’ confesses Choudhury. At the proposed site of the power unit near Lohajimi, Sangthan President Paulus Gudia reiterated his old slogan: ‘‘We will give our life but not the land.’’

The octogenarian leader of the Jharkhand Party, N.E. Horo, who had represented Torpa constituency in 1995, echoes Gudia’s sentiments. ‘‘We will brave bullets rather than get displaced to become beggars like thousands of oustees of projects like Swarnarekha.’’

Interestingly, even the BJP’S MLA from Torpa, Kocche Munda does not support the project. ‘‘Why can’t smaller hydel projects be set up so that there are fewer oustees,’’ he asks.

However, his party MLA from the neighbouring Hatia constituency, Ramjilal Sarda, favours the project. ‘‘We will mobilise people and with the consent of the oustees and after their rehabilitation, we will kickstart the project,’’ he says. But few of the project affected share his enthusiasm.

‘‘It’s the NPHC’s engineers who’re saying they will produce 710 mega watts of power. Even the hydel project at Sikidri (in Ranchi) had envisaged generation of 50 mega watts, but it’s not producing more than 30 mega watts. How can we trust them and get displaced like weeds,’’ argues Simon Tigga, a school teacher at Lohajimi.

The project may not even be viable any more, feels a retired NHPC engineer. ‘‘When it was conceived in the 50s, the Koel and Karo rivers were full. But over the years, due to siltation, soil erosion and deforestation, the area’s topography has changed. These rivers may not provide sufficient water to generate more than 100 MW now.’’