When Basanti Hembram, the BJD MLA for Karanjia in Odisha, was rushing for a meeting with Tata executives, she was completely unaware who would be the elephant in the room, or rather on the road. Villagers squatting on National Highway 220 in protest against inadequate and delayed compensation for damage wrought by wild elephants accosted the lawmaker. The protestors asked her to come and see for herself the devastation, but she tried to wade through the crowd.
Their anger, driven to desperation by the apathy of forest authorities to their problem, boiled over. They surrounded her vehicle, made her get out of it and forced her to walk 7 km with them to Kada Modaka village to see the havoc. Additional conservator of forests (ACF) Diganta Shovan Pal and forest range officer Saroj Panda walked the entire stretch too. Alleging that they were yet to receive the promised compensation for the destruction two years ago, the villagers said the range officer shooed them away when they pressed for the damages.
The politician sought to make a virtue of the walkabout, saying she walked on her own with the protestors. “If I wanted to move ahead in my vehicle, I could have done so. But I decided to walk with my constituents since there were not enough vehicles for all of them,” she said. But the ACF gave the game away: “The villagers are obviously angry…they made us walk.” Such scenes are routine in the coastal districts, but a rarity in the predominantly tribal Mayurbhanj district.
By Sandeep Sahu in Bhubaneswar
