There is more to Malkangiri than Maoists

Looking for a holiday destination off the beaten track this spring break? Consider Malkangiri.

No doubt, in the popular perception, it is the sort of place where Maoists lurk at every corner, hell-bent on kidnapping district collectors, and perhaps everyone even aspiring to join the “repressive state”.

But there is more to Malkangiri than Maoists. This hilly, forested district in Orissa, blessed with breathtaking beauty, has always had popular picnic spots for locals.

And now for the culture tourist, Malkangiri offers a delightful opportunity to witness first hand not only how some ‘primitive tribal groups’ (PTG) like the Bonda and Didayee live, but to also meet an illustrious specimen of the most  exotic and endangered tribe of them all: R Vineel Krishna, the district collector.

Krishna is a civil engineer from IIT Madras who cracked the IAS — a combo which makes him a poster boy of aspiring India, with the world as his oyster.

Strangely, this 30-year-old chose to make a small part of this world a better place.  Stranger still, even after being kidnapped and released by Maoists after a harrowing week in dense jungles in the back of beyond, he refuses to seize the moment.

How many times in life does an IAS officer expect to be kidnapped, even if he is from IIT? If another bureaucrat gets kidnapped, as many members of the commentariat have been warning, irked by the state government’s decision to heed Maoist demands, Krishna would lose his shot at glory. So why isn’t he milking the moment for all its worth? Immediately after being released, he did talk to reporters, thanking everyone and all that.

But then, he kept the focus on roads, access and tribal development in the area.

Since then, there has been silence. No sharing of the minutiae of his life during his captivity or after. Not even a tweet, as far as I know.

My worst fear — that Krishna has gone quietly back to work — was confirmed when I saw a news item which mentioned that undaunted by successive failures in building a bridge over the Gurupriya river that separates the “cut-off” area, where Krishna was kidnapped, from the rest of Malkangiri district, the Orissa government has once again floated a tender for a 900-metre-long bridge that would finally provide a road link between the Maoist-influenced zone and the rest of the state.

The would-be bridge has a long history. Its foundation stone was laid twice since the ‘80s when it was first proposed. But the project never took off. Five years ago, contractors reportedly cried off, citing the Maoist threat.

This is yet another shot at building the bridge. Krishna may well be one of the moving spirits.

What is this “cut-off” area? For a tourist, it is Malkangiri’s unique selling proposition — eight panchayats of the Kudumulugumma block separated from the rest of the district by a reservoir (Balimela) that came up in 1977 due to the construction of a dam.

Over 30,000 people were separated from the rest of Orissa though they still had a road to Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh. Lack of a bridge scuppered all development work in these villages.

This helped the Maoists spread their influence.

What are Malkangiri’s ‘must see’ sights? Well, tourist guides suggest that you don’t miss Balimela. It is a favourite picnic spot because of its scenic beauty. Many come to see the hydroelectric project.

A prime attraction — the Bonda hills —the land of the Bondas, one of the primitive tribal groups. There are some 75 such PTGs in India, spread over 17 states and one union territory.

They are the ‘poorest of the poor amongst scheduled tribes’, according to government documents. Then, there are hill temples, waterfalls, the Satiguda dam.

What you cannot afford to miss if you really want to convert this merrymaking in Malkangiri into conversational ammunition for all times — a first-hand experience of the “cut-off” area where the state was conspicuously missing till a certain Vineel Krishna came along in 2010.

On the day he was kidnapped, electricity had arrived to one of the villages in the “cut-off” area, for the first time. Krishna celebrated with the tribals.

There is still no easy way to reach this area. But it sure is a pretty place for adventure tourism. Take a boat at Chitrakonda and enjoy the cruise on the reservoir through the maze of forest-covered islands till you reach the “cut-off” area at Janbai and start seeking masks and beads.

And don’t forget to have a dekko at that rare and endangered species - a bureaucrat actually trying to do his job.

Patralekha Chatterjee writes on development issues in India and emerging economies, and can be reached at patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com