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Posco: Rain keeps away cops, not protesting children by Debabrata Mohanty


Around 10 platoons of armed police came to Gobindpur in the morning and went back to their camps, citing “inclement weather”.

But long before the cops came, Biswambar Mohanty, a Std 9 student of Kapteswar Vidyapitha of Gobindpur village, was up there with a torn umbrella at the sandy fields that separated Gobindpur and Nuagaon. Just a few feet away, a barefoot Soni Parmanik, 5, clad in a grimy yellow frock, also joined the anti-Posco chorus.

With raindrops slowly lashing their faces, hundreds of barefoot children with their ageing parents sat patiently on the sand, occasionally shouting “Posco hatao, Dhinkia bachao”.

As the Orissa government on Friday took a ‘rainy day’ break from land acquisition for Posco’s 12-million tonne steel plant before they move in to Gobindpur, the last bastion of anti-Posco protesters, it is the children they have to encounter.

“The children would lie on the ground, preventing the advance of cops. The women would be the second line of defence. Our strategy is bapa-maa-chhaua (father, mother and children) would protect the betelvines,” said Abhay Sahoo, the president of Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti. “We are all determined. Unless the cops fire at the children, they would not be able to acquire land.”

Villagers’ fear of losing their home and hearth has engulfed the children who come to the village border between 5 and 6 in the morning and leave the place in the afternoon.

Most of the children did not attend their schools, though their classes resumed Friday. “What will I gain by attending classes when my home and betelvines are razed ?” asked Priyadarshini Sahoo, a Std 7 student of Gobindpur UP School, as she wrapped a gamchha around her head to escape the rain.