Vendor Of Tea And Truth

Vendor Of Tea And Truth

DAYAMANI BARLA, 44, is Jharkhand's first adivasi journalist. She fights India's largest steel plant with a mass movement and a tireless stride

IMAGING: RAJESH KUMAR SEN/TEHELKA

GROWING UP in the Arhara village in Jharkhand, Dayamani Barla, 44, could have been just one of the faceless thousands displaced by India's largest steel plant. Today, she leads the mass movement against it. She could have been another adivasi with a crumbling house and a buried story. Instead, she became a storyteller, the "voice of Jharkhand," the first tribal journalist from the state, the founder of Jan Hak Patrika. "We presented the point of view of adivasis, dalits, women," she says. "They believed we'll stand up for them." A rural reporting award from P Sainath, and a Rs 25,000 bank loan sustained the paper for over two years. By then she'd convinced established local media like Prabhat Khabar to give space to adivasi and dalit issues.

"We'll shoot so many bullets, people won't recognise your dead body" – that was the threat Barla received in March 2008. "I don't know whether the threat came from the company or the State," she says, "since both work together." By then, Barla had already been part of several local people's movements — against dams on the Koel and Kari rivers, against delimitation that would reduce the number of seats for scheduled tribes, against corrupt NREGA dalals. The death threats would not deter her from the latest fight.

In 2005, Barla discovered maps in a Block Officer's cabin marking 38 villages with one lakh families to be displaced by Arcelor Mittal's 12 million tonne steel plant. It stirred her long journey across four districts of Jharkhand, through dense forests and rivers, alerting village after village to the impending doom. "Are you willing to give up your land?" Barla asked unaware villagers. Everyone said no. The mobilising began; she taught them the word 'virodh' and showed them how to.

Soon the local village meetings grew into the Adivasi Mulvasi Astitva Raksha Manch, uniting thousands of adivasis and farmers across Jharkhand. More than 15,000 of them followed Barla in street protests every week in March 2008. "Jaan denge, zamin nahin denge," they chanted. A few months later, Arcelor Mittal told the Jharkhand government: "We can go ahead with the project whenever we like, but we're not doing so because of the andolan." Such victories gave the movement new impetus. The slogan changed: "Jaan bhi nahi denge, zamin bhi nahi denge."

THROUGH FOUR DISTRICTS OF JHARKHAND, BARLA ALERTED VILLAGE AFTER VILLAGE TO THE IMPENDING DOOM

Barla's own revolution began as a class III student in a local missionary school. The rice, dal and mustard fields her parents cultivated were snatched by "businessmen from another village". Her parents had inked their thumbs onto paper that sold off their land. Within months, her family split. Her mother and brother moved to Ranchi to work as domestic help, her father left home to work as farm labour. She stayed in Arhara, worked from sunrise, separated chaff from wheat to "buy dinner and pencils."

It is this early struggle that helped Barla see the "maha vinash" being unleashed in the name of development. "By uprooting our ancestral lands, they also tear apart our entire social fabric," she says. "It destroys the language, traditions, culture, identity, financial structures of an entire community. It wipes out generations to come."

SHE WASHED DISHES FOR THE POLICE, ATE THEIR LEFTOVERS AND STAYED WITH BUFFALOES WHILE FUNDING COLLEGE

In the years that followed, Barla moved to Ranchi, worked as domestic help, washed dishes for the police, ate their leftovers, stayed in a shed with buffaloes and coolies, earned her BCom degree, learnt to type in English and Hindi, worked as a typist for one rupee an hour and funded her MCom. By then it was 1997; she joined a local NGO as an office assistant. "There I saw the real face of NGOS. They collect money in the name of children and women, but don't spend it on them." Disillusioned with the idea of NGOS, she quit her job. Simultaneously, she learned that dams on the Koel and Kari rivers could submerge her village. She returned to Arhara, joined an already brewing people's movement, and hasn't looked back.

Today, Barla runs a teashop on Club road in Ranchi. Unknown figures have appeared on several occasions to attack it, but failed. "The masses are with us, they can't touch me," she says. When she's away, her husband, previously a paan vendor, manages the shop alone. "The biggest challenge if you want to work for society," she says, "is to find a way to get your daily meals."

TUSHA MITTAL