Police Firing at Kalinganagar: An Insider Introspect

Monday, 2nd January, 2006. Sounds of bullets echoed in Kalinganagar. 12 tribal were killed in the police firing of Kalinganagar. The 12 plate like stone pillar are standing as witness to the incident near Ambagadi village of Kalinganagar.

Let’s keep all the anguish aside and ask any of the residents of Kalinganagar, “Do you support industrialization (especially TATA) at Kalinganagar?” The answer will be unanimously ‘YES’. Do you want to ask how do I know? The answer is I am a native of Kalinganagar from the day I know my world and from the day the area was distributed as few small villages trying to figure themselves in the Orissa map. You can say, I saw the birth of today’s Kalinganagar, the steel hub of India.

Then why all the hue and cry over the issue?

The Issue:

In my view, it’s more political than social. The tragedy was an unforeseen incident against the backdrop of well intentioned move of government to bring Orissa to a conspicuous position in All India Industrial map.

There were lots of loose ends as per my understanding. The major flaws were

• Inadequate compensation

• Difference in purchasing price of land per acre from the locals with the selling price to the industries

• Compensation to the locals only having land records (as it’s a hilly region and most of the displaced people are having no land records fails the criteria)

• Compensation pocketed by third parties

• Great Delay in compensation money reimbursement

• Corruption in all the administrative levels

• Land fraud

All these were fueled by vested interest groups, nexus of local touts and politicians, corrupt and inefficient administrative machinery.

Whatever may be the situation nobody wanted to kill innocent tribal. It’s for sure. Whatever happened, is just a tragedy happened unintentionally.

Role of Politics:

The industrialization was begun by Late Biju Pattnatak with the MESCO at Jakhapura with Lord Swaraj Paul (Indian born, UK citizen). This incident greatly accelerated the industrialization and so many small and big industry houses eyed on Orissa, mostly Kalinganagar area for setting up their base. But something tragic happened and in the next election Biju Pattanayak led Janata Dal was defeated. To gain political mileage Mr Janaki Ballv Pattanayak, inaguareted Mesco Steels at Manapur in hurry and the proposed big dream was just a dream. But the irony was, congress party could not get the mileage what they thought to get.

The situation made a U-turn with the tragic demise of Biju Pattanayak. All the other political leaders of Janata Dal thought of it as a great chance to capitalize the sympathy and enjoy the power by inviting a ‘puppet’ in place of Biju Pattanayak. They made one f the greatest mistake of their life by dragging Naveen pattanaik into politics. But it did not take much time for the Delhi University graduate to learn how to play the cards in politics and Naveen Pattanayak. A year later he formed Biju Janata Dal and came into power. His handling of the bureaucracy has been exceptional. Like his father he had managed to control the otherwise errant and greedy bureaucracy and have transformed it to a machine for the development of the state. Gradually the pace of the industrialization in Orissa started to accelerate and Kalinganagar emerged as a future Steel hub of India.

The pace of industrial progress made the Political opponents jealous and wanted to checkmate Naveen Patnaik. They wanted a ground. Mass propaganda was being carried out how POSCO will destroy Orissa, how steel plants would do more damage to locals than benefits etc.

I am not saying that all the allegations of the people and the unions those who object POSCO etc are baseless, but at the same time I am not at all agreeing the way the political parties represented the entire issue. For a person who knows abc of economics will analyze the aspects of industrialization through cost-benefit-analysis angel and if there is any lacuna then make it noticed so that it will be rectified before time to limit the damage and enhance benefit. But there were hidden political interests and publicity of demerits were mere ploy to accentuate those interests.

All these led to the unfortunate incident to happen and the rest is history. Political interests have now been laid bare. Congress now wants to discuss only Kalinganagar in the Assembly, state and restate through speeches, newspapers and by anything possible. And recently the errant BJP is also warming the hands with the Congress to burn its anger on Naveen Pattanayak.

The dark side: 

It is said that ‘Solution lies, where the problem is’. But to the irony, nobody is interested to discuss details about reasons which made the incident so dirty. It’s not only me but also any sensible person of Kalinganagar believes that by analyzing the following basic issues the problem can be easily solved. The major issues were

• The role of local Tehsildar and other concerned officials in the land deals

• The compensation package and disbursing procedure followed during the last 10 years

• Details of land transfers in the area

• Procedural mistakes where exactly package for displaced people went wrong

Now a days, some political parties and unions are echoing the sentence, ‘Naveen Hatao, Sukinda Banchao’ (Replace Naveen, Save Sukinda (Kalinganagar is a part of Sukinda assembly constituency)). I have never seen such foolish slogan which actually meant, issue is to push Naveen out of power, not sorting the problems affecting the tribal.

Mistake of the Govt:

It takes two to make a quarrel. By saying its all the fault of the political opponent and sitting in the AC room with so called intelligent (actually useless) bureaucrats to wait for a miracle to happen to solve the issue is like waiting for the flood to clean the courtyard. The Govt should be more proactive and should do much more than announcing relief packages day in and day out.

It has to find the answer for

• Why the displacement packages failed to deliver?

• Why the local legislator could not gauge the simmering discontentment of the villagers

• What is the view of the local people, not the view of the local leaders?

• What is the way to remove third party pocketing compensation package ?

• What is making the so called big companies to delay in giving compensation?

But do you think Mr. Naveen Pattanayak is having time to analyze the root cause rather than assuring the people ‘Everything is fine, Orissa is growing’. Time will say, what will happen.


But the greatest tragedy is that those who lost their lives or those who are continuing the month long economic blockade are blissfully unaware of the political dice game.