Gyanmati, a kol adivasi from the Chilka Dand resettlement colony, shares her experience of NTPC: “I am a widow. I work as a sweeper and domestic help inside the colony. The wages are very little for women. We barely get Rs 50-60 and the rest is ‘eaten up’ by the contractor. Our lands were taken over by both National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and Northern Coalfields Limited (NCL), and a job was promised to us but, see, in what condition we are living.

“Our children cannot go to school. How can I send them to school? We are not able to fill our stomachs. My sons work with the ‘kabadi’ (the coal mafia) and earn a little bit. The government school is till the eighth standard. Our children don`t have any facilities for education; the NTPC school charges three times higher fees from us whereas the employees of NTPC get subsidised education. There is discrimination in the hospital run by the NTPC, where the treatment is very expensive for the displaced people. We suffered for the nation`s development but now we do not deserve good health and education?

“I had to struggle very hard to bring up my children, I was sick for five months. I was sacked from my job but somehow persuaded the management to give my job back to me. My 17-year-old daughter works with a contractor at a construction site and earns some Rs 50. Our wages are given to us every month. We do not get weekly payment.

“We did not get any agricultural land. We also need land, where is the land? The forest has been taken away by the forest department and by the NCL. The empty lands have been encroached upon by the mafia or the powerful forces. If we try to occupy the land, police come and attack us. No one listens to the poor.”

Any discussion on the issue of adivasi and women labour in NTPC necessitates an understanding of how the owners, once of a rich wealth of natural resources, were ruthlessly uprooted and displaced and how their identity was crushed by converting them into cheap wage labour for the industrial growth of the region.

Singrauli is a beautiful mountainous terrain spread now in the states of UP and MP and earlier called the ‘Kashmir’ of the Kaimur region. This region was also described by Jawahar Lal Nehru as the ‘Switzerland of India’ in 1968. It had an abundance of forest and rich fertile land and the adivasis ruled this area till Indian independence. Finding energy sources was important for the nation`s progress, and the exploitation of rich fossil fuel for generating energy was crucial to complete the mission of building modern India. The government identified this region for industrial expansion and targeted its rich mineral resources. Hundreds of villages were taken over to establish a sea of public sector units, first for the Rihand Dam, next for coal mines, then NTPC, a railway network, transmission lines and finally for dumping fly ash, evacuating and damaging the beautiful villages and the landscape.

Today, Singrauli is known as the ‘energy capital’ of India. The estimated target for the production of energy is going to be around 35,000 MW (from around 10,000 MW now) if the new projects planned by JP, Essar, Hindalco, Reliance, Lanco and others are started in this region. There is currently a web of NTPC power generating plants and their accessory coal mining units in Singrauli.

When the innocent tribal populations were robbed of their land, livelihood and their culture in the 60s to 70s, no compensation was given to them. They settled down wherever land was available in that particular region. There was forest land in abundance. No official settlement was done by the government. The tribals were evicted again because the forest department claimed the land belonged to the department. A circular of the NTPC mentioned that jobs would be given to those whose lands had been taken away, but the promise was never fulfilled. Jobs created, however, have been grabbed by the educated and the outsiders, and the adivasis have managed to get only lower class jobs. Not even 5 per cent of the tribal population has been accommodated. More than 20,000 displaced people from 141 villages of both UP and MP, from Rihand dam and other power projects are reportedly missing as nobody knows where they went. People from villages such as Chilka Dand, Parsa Raja and Navjivan Vihar (MP) have been displaced three or four times, resulting in their being reduced from dignified citizens to beneficiaries. Beneficiaries whose fundamental rights have been snatched away by the state itself. The excess land taken over by these public sector units was later sold at three to four times the price at which it was secured to other units. For example, NTPC Shaktinagar sold excess lands to the NCL.

The villagers were totally bewildered as to who would ultimately pay them the compensation. They were made to run with their papers from NTPC to NCL. There are thousands of families, which, after 25 years, are still running around for compensation and jobs in these units. Ashok Pandey, a resident of Bhiarava village, who was displaced and relocated three times in the 1980s, says that the titles of land have been taken over by the NCL illegally, without any registration or sale deed. Gyanendra Pandey, a local leader belonging to Congress Party, says that the local workforce has not been given priority in recruitment. Contractors bring labour from neighbouring states such as Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh or MP. The labourers from these states are tribals and a majority of them are women. Social policy measures that could assist the displaced, such as the newly enacted Forest Rights Act passed by the UPA government, which commits land to tribal and other forest dwellers, and the announcement by the government of Uttar Pradesh under Mayawati of the payment of Rs 100 for workers in the NREGP, will not benefit the tribals of Singrauli because their lands are already gone and most of the tribal workers are migrating outside the area.

Women workers and tribal women are the worst hit. The Human Rights Watch Report 1997 on Singrauli noted that the impact of the displacement has been severe. It has resulted in a breakdown of the social support network and of many aspects of the culture of these tribals. All festivals connected with forests and agriculture have disappeared. It has also resulted in a sense of insecurity, migration to other places, a rise in alcoholism, increased violence against women, loss of livelihoods due to loss of access to resources and difficulty in getting daughters married.

In this miserable scenario, women are compelled to work in the colonies of the plants as domestic help, where they are exploited both sexually and economically by the officers and employees of the plant. In various cases, women become pregnant and commit suicide. The National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers rescued a woman while she was being sexually used by a senior officer of the Vindhyanagar plant. To save her from shame, she was taken to Delhi where she gave birth to a baby boy and had to leave the baby in an orphanage. Such incidents are quite common.

Maina Devi of the Chilka Dand resettlement and labour colony spoke about the condition of the dalit women workforce in the NTPC. “I work as a sweeper in NTPC Shaktinagar, which produces 2000 MW electricity. We are employed by the contractor and not by NTPC directly. My daily wages are Rs 113. But I am not allowed to work all through the month. I am made to take compulsory ‘rest’ while the contractor uses some other labour. The contractor decides our employment and wages. We are not told in advance about the compulsory ‘rests’. Instead, these are declared after we travel all the way to the plant, 3 km from here. We are forced to return. We don`t have work here. We hardly get 12-13 days of work in a month. The work under rural employment guarantee scheme is also not given to us. There is rampant corruption. I have four children. My husband suffers from high BP and is in a critical state. My children do some menial jobs for the contractor. I have to arrange for my family`s needs, including the medicines for my husband. We are living from hand-to-mouth. At times, we go hungry. My father-in-law had one acre of land. That land was taken over by the NTPC. We were given a piece of land but we were again displaced, this time by NCL. We were promised a job in the plant but no job, no land and no employment has been given to us. I have a debt of Rs 90,000.”

There is no organisation of displaced persons that addresses these violations of labour standards. Trade unions are not strong and, therefore, are in no position to initiate collective bargaining. Besides, there are no serious efforts from the organised trade unions to organise the unorganised sector workers. Trade unions in this area will have to handle issues of the difference between conditions of work inside and outside the plant, especially where environmental, labour and human rights violations are far worse outside these industrial sector units. 

How do the displaced and the workers see their future? The future is dark for them, and the women workers are angry about the discriminatory policies of the government. The women and youth interviewed said clearly that if their lives do not improve they “will pick up arms.” It should be mentioned here that this whole Kaimoor region is under the influence of Maoism and many poor dalit and tribal youths are joining this group. A new dimension of people’s politics is picking up in this area, where women are coming forward to launch a militant struggle to reclaim their lost land and the excess land acquired by these plants, to restore their forest, to have access to water, safe healthy environment, drinking water, education, health, labour standards, and stable employment, and to challenge the anti-people development paradigm of the state.