Marooned by a dam and persecuted as Maoist sympathisers, Malkangiri’s tribal people feel isolated
Thousands live without subsidised food, access to schools or healthcare. Many did not even get polling booths to vote in this year’s general election Prafulla Das The highlands around the Balimela reservoir in Odisha’s Malkangiri district have all the elements of a tourism hotspot. The rolling hills are lush, many of them emerging ethereally from the green waters. On the hill slopes grow paddy, ragi and pulses, and quite a lot of cannabis. The mustard fields are blazingly in bloom right now. But this idyll belies a disquieting reality: the 30,000-odd tribal people of the 151 villages in this area live with a deep sense of being cut off, forgotten and persecuted. It started in the early 70s, when the construction of the Balimela dam picked up speed on the Sileru river at Chitrakonda. Several families who would have lost their homes to submergence were given land in resettlement colonies. But thousands, including many who did not have land pattas, moved further up into the