This land is whose land?

UNDER a bodhi tree, their brightly coloured saris draped over their heads, some 500 women brave the midday heat just outside the pretty and rather prosperous village of Dhinkia. Just a few hundred metres of rolling sand dunes from the sea, Dhinkia, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha (formerly Orissa) is a hub of protest. The women, one from every village family, are staging the village’s daily dharna, a sit-in. Sisir Mohapatra, a former sarpanch or village head, makes a rousing speech. He seems respected, though his police record would suggest he is a mafia don: he says he faces 35 criminal charges, and of his 60-strong extended family in Dhinkia, 40 are also wanted by the law. They claim that the charges are all trumped up. Their real crime is to oppose the biggest single foreign-investment project India has ever attracted.