This case is not an exclusive case but a case among series of such cases across Indian states. Governments encourage/target few cities to transform into academic or industrial hubs for entire the entire population. There is no need for counting such examples of regional disparity; the list is endless in Indian context. Here is a letter written by a citizen of Odisha to the concerned governments on an academic institution corridor in his home state. –Editor
Dear Governments,
For the last six and half decades, you displaced our people, cut our trees, exploited our mineral resources, and oppressed our people whenever they resisted to such moves. All this you did in the name of ‘development’. For the last couple of decades, you have accelerated your pace of such development and have widened roads to cut more trees, located power plants and other industries in our areas by killing more water bodies, by displacing more people and by reinventing your forms of oppression against the agitating masses. All these decades, we have been hearing that ‘bhittibhumi’ (i.e. infrastructure) is being created in the state.
After all these years of bhittibhumi bikash, can you answer us why it has not been possible to locate an IIT or IIM in the western or southern Odisha, in want of appropriate infrastructure? Where are you building the infrastructure then and at whose cost?
When will you stop exploiting the Other Odisha to build your Odisha (Bhubaneswar-Cuttack corridor)?
We need an answer!
Ranjan Panda
