Chitrangada Choudhury - Anger In Coal-Rich Orissa District Reflects India’s Flawed Mining Policies. Resource conflicts are intensifying and under-acknowledged // "God will not forgive the company"
NB - India's new political regime is throwing all social and ecological concerns to the winds as it accelerates the drive towards corporate totalitarianism - already in evidence under UPA rule (see The cult of cronyism). In the name of growth, the poorest Indian citizens will be targeted for destitution, and if they protest will be labelled anti-national. Their protests will be ignored by the TV channels and mass media. Communal ideology is merely the force multiplier for the Indian corporates, the source of political energy for this programme of unregulated, untrammeled capitalism. Its opinion-makers will keep up their shrill propaganda against 'Nehruvian socialism', whilst at the same time ignoring what is going on in the name of 'growth'. The BJP/RSS regime is a government devoted to the dictatorship of big money. DS
The number of Indians displaced between 1947 and 2000 is approximately 60 million (other estimates put it at 65 million), with 5 million of these displaced by mining. Adivasis are 8% of the population, but make up 40% of the displaced
Every day, for the last 30 years, India has been destroying 100 soccer-fields of forests: "God will not forgive the company..." See video, Adani vs Aam Admi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Chhendipada (Odisha): It was just after 7 a.m. on Thursday, September 4 when the first
marchers—men, women, youth, children—streamed down the street, into view. They wielded Oriya and English placards mounted atop young,
green bamboos harvested from their lands for this overcast morning. (Turned
upside down, these could double up as a counter to police batons, a villager
had explained to me the previous afternoon: “We won’t hit them first. But if
they hit us, let them not expect us to take it lying down.)
As dawn’s drizzle turned into pouring rain, the slogans rose
to a crescendo through a canopy of black umbrellas. “Adani Company (sic) Down Down. Down Down, Down Down.” “We Can Die, But Not Give Up Our Land!” Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, and Prime Minister Narendra
Modi were targeted too.“Modi used to sell tea, now he wants to sell us to Adani”,
one man hollered. “Give us land, if you want to take our land,” chanted a
gaggle of women farmers in bright sarees and rubber slippers.
As your correspondent took photographs, she was periodically
asked: “Are you with us, or with the company?” It was a reflection of deep
mistrust of the media among villagers, who alleged local journalists were
routinely bribed by industry and did not report their side of the story. The mutinous crowd turned into the open ground, framed
against distant, blue hills. This was the bucolic site of an environmental
hearing for a proposed coal mine, called by the administration in Chhendipada
town, in the forested, mineral-rich Angul district of central Odisha.
More than 600 tense, but unusually restrained, police
personnel and home guards—deployed at the ground since dawn with rifles,
batons, tear gas and protective gear—looked on. The protestors started taking
apart the rickety stage that the security forces were protecting. Some wrecked
the loudspeakers, then the blue and red plastic chairs. Others dismantled the
bamboo boundaries, erected to separate the officials from the locals during the
hearing. Men and boys carted off these poles through the mud and slush.
This done, the crowd turned its attention to district
officials and individuals, rumoured to be company representatives, who were
attempting to leave, escorted by a tight ring of police. Raucous protestors sat down on the winding lane leading out
of the ground, insisting the officials could go only after formally calling off
the hearing. Say it is cancelled because of people’s strong opposition, they
demanded. A fire tender had pulled up minutes ago, followed by a truck marked
‘Riot Control Vehicle.’ Faced with this unyielding crowd, the district official
weakly declared that the hearing was cancelled because the villagers were
opposed to it. Loud cheers broke out. It was now 8.54 a.m. ,
more than 90 minutes before the hearing was to officially begin.
Resource conflicts are an intensifying
and under-acknowledged phenomena across the coal-rich farms and
forests of central and eastern India
– a mineral used to generate over 60% of India ’s
power. Few urban Indians know or think about these pitched battles unfolding
almost every month in rural, often remote, areas of their country. That will have to change.
First, cities and towns will need more energy than ever
before to meet growing demand, a fact brought home time and again by power
shortages and blackouts, the most recent, a power failure across Mumbai, a city where the electricity
always stays on, and news of tariff tussles and fuel shortages. Second, the conduct of the state and businesses in rural
areas is key to reforming discredited public institutions and processes, and to
creating an accountable policy regime around natural resources.
Take for example the proposed coal block, for which September
4’s environmental hearing was first called, after ignoring intense protests,
and then reluctantly abandoned—the third time this has happened in as many
years. Located in Angul district, home to one of the country’s
largest coal deposits, the proposed coal block contains an estimated 12 million
tonnes of coal and a life of 48 years. The mineral lies beneath 7,500
acres of a thriving agrarian economy across nine villages. These are home to
more than 10,000 people, whose education and relative prosperity put them in
the rural middle class, with capabilities and resources to assert their rights.
The tract was marked out as the Machhakata Coal Block by the
Ministry of Coal, one of several coal blocks created in this area, and was
allotted in 2006 to MahaGuj Collieries Ltd, a public sector power company
jointly formed by the Maharashtra and Gujarat
state governments. As has been the case so often, rural India’s forests, farms,
mountains and water bodies have to make way for open-cast mines to fuel urban
India, with little attention paid to the corruption, conflicts and injustices
these transitions produce.
As the accompanying graph shows, millions of Indians have
been displaced by industrial projects, but there is no reliable record of these
displacements. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs, for instance, in displacement
data from 1999-2013 says that 665,131 people were displaced across India .
But when IndiaSpend totalled up the figures for only 11 states, it added up to
840,703. Also, states like Bihar , Gujarat
and West Bengal are not included in the list from this
source.
“People in Bombay
(sic) will turn on their ACs, while we will lose our lands and roast in the
heat of a rehabilitation colony, outside the coal mine?” one Machhakuta farmer
asked your correspondent a day before the hearing. “Why?” (Several coal mines
and industries operating in Angul have landed it the dubious distinction of the
state’s most polluted district, where summer temperatures can hit the late
40s.)
In 2010, Mahaguj signed an agreement with the Gujarat-based
Rs 47,000-crore industrial conglomerate, Adani Enterprises Ltd, to mine the
coal. The details of the deal have not been shared with the villagers whom the
state is trying to evict. Neither is Adani mentioned in public documents like
the mine’s Environmental Impact Assessment report, released for the
September 4 hearing.
The company’s response to phone calls, texts and an email
from IndiaSpend was that its officials were travelling. Adani Enterprises—deeply linked in local perception to Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
since he campaigned in its aircraft during elections this summer—is now the
prime target of local protests, closely followed by IDCO – the Odisha
government body with a violent track record of acquiring land from farmers
for industry.
In conversations, villagers also brought up the bloody
fate of other displaced communities in the district, seeking
rehabilitation from mining corporations (Warning: Video contains graphic
violence). Anger in the area was equally directed at the administration
and regulatory authorities. In recent times, apex court rulings and enquiry commission findings have outlined how in the
complex policy arena of natural resource governance, authorities have
consistently undermined public interest, and depleted the public exchequer. But
there is little attention paid to the fates of protesting rural communities,
who have borne the brunt of this misconduct.
In the villages earmarked for erasure, residents were quick
to point out that the coal block that would displace them was among the
218 allotments declared “arbitrary and illegal” by the Supreme Court on
August 24. These blocks had been allotted beginning 1993, when the state wanted
to involve the private sector in mining, for power production and other captive
uses. Hearing public interest litigation, the court held that the allotments
“followed no fair and transparent procedure, resulting in unfair distribution
of the national wealth”. The eventual fate of these allotments will be known in
the coming days, when the court gives its final ruling.
In Bagdia village, the head of the protesting villagers is
Prafulla Pradhan, a portly, baby-faced man in his 60s, who looked like he
should be telling stories to grandchildren. Pradhan told your correspondent in
English: “When the government has told the Supreme Court this week that these
allotments should be cancelled, how is the company going ahead to try and get
environmental clearance for the block?”
In another village, a school teacher, who declined to be
named since he had a government job and feared retribution, displayed a letter
from 24 August addressed to the state’s Pollution Control Board, the body in
charge of environmental regulation and hearings. Signed ‘Villagers in
Machhakuta Coal Block’, the two-page letter described problems with the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report for the
mine. The teacher said he wondered why board officials routinely accepted
faulty reports from distant, industry-commissioned consultants but never paid
attention to contrary evidence offered by villagers about the lands they lived
in.
What rankled residents most was the fact that the EIA did
not mention, let alone assess, the fact that the 7,500 acres of agricultural
and forest land to be acquired for the proposed mine currently provided the
10,000-odd residents of the area with year-round food, work and income, which
the coal mine would end. The area abounds in lush paddy fields; sesame, pulses
and mushroom are also harvested. On a March visit, villagers had pointed out
sprawling fruit orchards and vegetable farms. The EIA’s omissions were further proof to locals, if any was
needed, that in the eyes of the state and corporations, costs incurred by rural
citizens did not need to be accounted for while clearing projects.
The new NDA government has barely acknowledged this deep
absence of trust between government institutions, corporations and citizens in India ’s
mineral-rich areas. Since taking power in May, it has instead moved to quicken
mining and industrialization, with a focus on altering laws to shut out the
voices of rural Indians from decision-making. For example, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF)
has decided to do away with the requirement of public hearings as
part of the environmental clearance process for some projects, such as mines
seeking expansion – a move, which was begun by the UPA government towards the
twilight of its regime. As a recent Amnesty alert suggests, on the ground,
communities will experience these changes in the form of renewed state excesses
and violence against them. The MOEF is also devolving clearances for other
projects to state governments, even though their regulatory capacity and intent is suspect.
According to two senior bureaucrats your correspondent spoke
to in recent weeks, there are also growing demands on the Ministry of Tribal
Affairs from the Prime Minister’s Office and the MOEF to drop the requirement
of consulting gram sabhas, or village councils, before forests are cut down for
mining and linear projects – currently mandatory under the Forest Rights Act. Similarly, one of the first things Minister for Rural
Development Minister Nitin Gadkari did on assuming office was to begin work on
altering the new Land Acquisition act. The new law came into effect this
January, replacing its colonial-era predecessor, which was in force since
1894. The note prepared by Gadkari’s officials proposes that
gram sabha consent and social impact assessment provisions in the new law be
diluted, and the list of exceptions to the law be expanded.
A bureaucrat involved with the creation of the land
acquisition law expressed doubts about how the proposed dilutions might play
out, telling me last month, “Even if these changes are made, how will they be
forcibly implemented on the ground?” As Machhakata’s protests suggest, rural Indians inhabiting
resource-rich areas are increasingly hard to silence, or subjugate. In Prime
Minister Modi’s grand vision of development, they will have to be engaged with
greater democracy and dignity, not less.
Note: At the time of publishing Adani Enterprises had
still not responded to the reporter’s questionnaire.
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