Angana Chatterji

On 1 December 2004, the Orissa Police attacked and critically injured 16 adivasis (tribals) in Kashipur, in Rayagada district. Many, disproportionately women, were arrested. More than 300 adivasis and Dalit (erstwhile ‘untouchable’ castes) were targeted for protesting the creation of a police station and barrack for armed police at D Karol village, in proximity to the proposed aluminium plant site of Utkal Alumina International Limited (a joint enterprise of Aditya Birla Group, and ALCAN, a Canadian company) at Doraguda.

The project is expected to cost Rs 4,500 crores, displace and dispossess 20,000 people, and impact rights to life and livelihood across 82 villages. The plant might provide employment to about 1,000 people over 20 years, exhausting bauxite resources in the process. The people were demanding that the State construct healthcare and education facilities instead. Those injured were sequestered in Rayagada jail, denied hospital care, and some were reportedly missing. Armed police, the Central Reserve Police Force, and the Indian Reserve Battalion patrol the area as thousands congregate, demanding justice.

The government of Orissa betrays its legal and ethical mandate by suppressing public dissension through police brutality. Exercising citizenship to encourage responsible government action, Dalit and adivasi groups have been dissenting the establishment of the aluminium plant. Why are state police prioritising the interests of corporations over those of citizens? Why are rights of those imprisoned being violated?

Kashipur witnessed State repression of adivasi communities in December 2000 as well, when state police fired on non-violent dissenters in Rayagada protesting the mining of their lands, in the process killing Abhilas Jhodia, Raghu Jhodia and Damodar Jhodia. In July 2003, the Orissa government permitted the unconstitutional transfer of lands in Schedule V areas for industrial use. Orissa’s decision contradicts the 1997 Samata versus Andhra Pradesh judgment, where the Apex Court had ruled against the government’s lease of tribal lands in Scheduled Areas to non-tribals for industrial operations. In January 2004, adivasi villages – Borobhota, Kinari, Kothduar, Sindhabahili, in southeast Kalahandi – were razed by Sterlite, a multinational corporation building an aluminum refinery adjacent to Kashipur. The villagers were forcibly evicted. Terror, brokered by the State.

Bauxite mining and aluminum projects are ongoing in Kashipur, in Rayagada district, and at Lanjigarh, in Kalahandi district. The Lanjigarh project will mine bauxite at 4,000 feet from the northwest rim of the Niyamgiri mountains. Mining will displace the Dongaria Kondh adivasi community from their remaining home in these mountains. Bauxite deposits are located in Niyamgiri, Baphilimali and Khandualmali mountains, near the Karlapat sanctuary, abundant in biodiversity and the spring of river systems. Baphilimali, in Kashipur block, is estimated to contain a deposit of 1,957.3 lakh tonnes of bauxite. Lok Pakhya, a civil society organisation, calculates that the value of aluminum processed from bauxite in Baphilimali, will amount to, approximately, Rs 288,000 crores (US$ 65 billion) at current prices, while the State of Orissa will accrue Rs 1,200 crores (US$ 260 million) in royalties, at Rs 60 per tonne of bauxite over 20 years. Who benefits? At what cost?

For 12 years, local communities in Rayagada have been protesting bauxite mining by a consortium of industries, condemning the breach of constitutional provisions barring sale or lease of tribal lands without consent. People dissent the devastation of their ecosystems, histories and futures, the destruction of forests, agricultural lands, mountains, perennial water-streams, the water retention capacity of mountains, integral to life and livelihood. Orissa is a tragic affidavit of the intersections of irresponsible globalization, State complicity in defiling human rights, and police participation in fostering social violence.

In the 2004 election campaign, the Bharatiya Janata Party manipulated the ‘jal, jangal, zameen’ (water, forest, land) platform, appropriated from land reform movements to persuade adivasis in Orissa to vote for the party. The Bharatiya Janata Party-Biju Janata Dal government, allied Hindu nationalist organisations, and other major political parties manoeuvre Dalits, adivasis, and minority religious groups for sectarian interests, with abject disregard for the well-being and self-determination of these groups.

Mining in Rayagada and Kalahandi contradicts the United Nation’s Declaration on the Right to Development, which mandates “free and meaningful participation” in development. It violates the right to life and livelihood guaranteed by Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, and contravenes the directives of the National Forest Policy, 1988, which legitimates the traditional claims of forest dependent communities to public resources. It negates the ‘Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act’ of 1996.

Known as PESA, this law enables adivasi control over forest resources in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan. It applies to tribal areas of eight states in central India that are administered by Schedule V and VI of the Indian Constitution. PESA accords adivasi communities the right to oversee industrialisation in tribal areas and receive just compensation as shareholders for land, resources, and social capital, and be active and equal agents in determining costs and benefits connected to technological and capital inputs.

The Orissa government has invested in generating an affirmative climate for brisk industrialization, without regard for the massive social and ecological destitution that has become the tragic bi-product of modernization in India. In November 2004, the World Bank sanctioned a US$ 125 million Socio-economic Development Credit/Loan for Orissa. People’s groups and Left political parties estimate that Orissa has received bids for investment amounting to Rs 250,000 crores over the next decade, committed to large industries and related infrastructure.

Such investment will lead to employment opportunities for only 175,000, analysts say, while two million are unemployed and another two million are underemployed. In contrast, an investment of Rs 5,000 crores in cottage, small and medium industries can generate employment for about one crore. The Orissa government estimates that 20 proposed mining projects and five large dams will displace 250,000 people, radically impacting mineral resources and the ground water base. Such development will decimate what holds value and is sacred to myriad communities, accelerating cultural genocide. Corporate activity and State-sponsored development in Orissa remain divorced from people’s participation in decision-making.

Maldevelopment imperils environmental health, endangering people who depend on natural resources for subsistence. This is of particular concern in the context of growing liberalization and corporate globalization prioritized by the State in trade, industry, tourism and agriculture, and through the privatization of public resources and infrastructure. The State often charges poor rural communities with the primary responsibility for ecological degradation, while plans for allaying rural poverty emphasize capital and resource intensive strategies as devised by the National Forestry Action Plans prepared by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in 1999. The Revised Forest Strategy of the World Bank, approved in October 2002, is another example of centralized policies that alienate the poor by privileging ‘free’ market activity through endorsing the unchecked involvement of the private sector in development processes.

Dominant development has failed to halt the rise in the absolute and relative number of people below the poverty level in rural Orissa. While schemes and programs focused on poverty alleviation have been continued in the Tenth Plan (2002-2007), their impact on rural poverty remains dubious. These agendas are ill-planned and mismanaged, surfeit with corruption, inattentive to the needs of 47.15 per cent of Orissa’s population who live in poverty, making suspect the government’s commitment to human rights and social security. Lack of access to common property resources, including water and forests, heighten impoverishment, and the wreckage wrought by the cyclone of 1999, the floods of 2001, the droughts of 2000 and 2003 pose formidable challenges for environmental, political and social sustainability for the 36.7 million residents of Orissa.

On 16 December 2004, four years after the Maikanch firing, more than 7,000 people gathered to commemorate those who died in struggle in Kashipur. Armed police and company goons assailed the dissenters, and targeted and detained members of the state legislative assembly attending the event. Outraged by the attacks, Left and progressive parties and organizations staged a demonstration in front of the Orissa Legislative Assembly in Bhubaneswar.

Resolute voices of dissent, in solidarity with the affected people of Rayagada and Kalahandi, unequivocally condemn the actions of Navin Patnaik’s government. Yet, the construction of the armed police barrack continues in D Karol. History tells us that when irresponsible corporate globalization and a callous and authoritarian State collaborate to marginalize local communities, it exacerbates social suffering, betrays the disenfranchised, and furthers gendered violence. The Orissa government and civil society must take immediate action to stop police brutalization and mining operations, and set up an independent commission to inquire into the social and environmental damage resultant from past action. Investigation into human rights violations and plans for reparations must be central to the mandate of such a commission. Failure to do so will only further evidence the despairing breakdown of governance in the state.


Copyright ©2005 Angana Chatterji. About the author