BHUBANESWAR: Mamata Das (name changed) of the nondescript Dhinkia village in Odisha has perhaps never met any of the members of Meera Paibi, the all-women group fighting state atrocities and human rights violations in Manipur. But last week, there was an underlying similarity that linked Das and other women villagers with the Manipuri group.

Bringing back memories of the bare-all protest resorted to by Meera Paibi against the Indian Army in 2004, Das and other women in her village stripped down to protest against the proposed steel plant by Korean giant Posco in their area. This made it one of the very few instances when public nudity has been used as a form of protest in India, especially by those protesting against an industrial facility.

But what made Das and her co-protesters reach such levels of despair and desperation that they chose to shed their clothes to protest? "We are determined to drive out Posco and the police from our area," says the spunky villager. "Why just our clothes? We are even ready to give up our lives to save our land."

With the state government refusing to relent, emotions like these are running high as the eight-year-old fight against the proposed project, billed as the highest foreign direct investment in India ever, reaches a confrontational phase.

During their struggle against the proposed steel mill, which requires an estimated 4004 acre spread over three gram panchayats, local villagers, especially of Dhinkia, have resorted to different extremes such as putting up wooden barricades to prevent entry of police officers to using children as shields in order to stop land takeover.

"When everything else failed, the women preferred to bare their bodies so that the government and the public wakes up from their slumber and understand what is happening," says Abhay Sahoo , who heads Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), the organization spearheading the anti-industry movement.

The reactions to this step have been varied. Health minister Damodar Rout , in whose constituency Paradeep, the Posco project is planned, terms the nude protest as 'unfortunate' and blames certain political parties and NGOs for supporting the anti-industry brigade without understanding the ground reality.

Social activist Namrata Chadha , on the other hand, says she is pained at the "unconcerned attitude" of society towards the helpless poor rural women protesters. "In a country like India, such protests are undemocratic and unacceptable to society," she says. "But, I look at these protests through very sad eyes. Development and industrialisation at the cost of dignity of women is something to be condemned."

Sociologist Anup Dash agrees. "Everyone should be ashamed about the happening," he says. "Even now if we do not become sensitive to the resistance, we should not consider ourselves civilized."