Meanwhile, the concrete jungles spread their tentacles ever wider. People are learning to live in a new world of iron and brick cages. Through television, they watch the varied sights of the world within minutes. Offices of big companies hang oil paintings of jungles and beautiful Adivasi women – and this is meant to project their appreciation of Adivasi culture. When they feel bored, the people of this world go to Darjeeling, or to Goa, to watch the sunset over the Arabian Sea.
– Shankar Guha Niyogi, 'Our environment', 1991, translated from the Hindi by Rajni Bakshi
Even without the martyred Niyogi's haunting presence, or knowing that 14 February happens to be his birth anniversary – marked here in Chhattisgarh by marauding Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (the student wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party) goons looking for young courting couples – the day could still give you a different take on life if you are stuck, as I am, in a seedy hotel in Jagdalpur, in Bastar district. This was once a small town that now shows all the signs of the unthinking, ragtag race to industrial growth and development that political voices have tended to adopt as a mantra.
Had you visited this area during the early 1980s, you would have had a different but no less disturbing picture of Jagdalpur. You would have seen the history of this area in the architecture and planning typical of territories once administered by the British – where the plums of the good life were kept for the rulers, and the leaves, twigs and wild berries doled out to the rest. In the British part of town were always to be found the broader, tree-lined roads; on either side of these, behind walled grounds and gardens, sloping tiled roofs neatly perched on gleaming whitewashed offices and bungalows – government officials protected then, as they are even today, by large wooden gates manned by sentries who come to attention when approached. That was also a pre-plastic age, and the population was far smaller. The roads were surprisingly clean, and the drains and gutters in the town almost unnoticeable.